What to watch, listen to and read this Halloween weekend

Halloween is now screening.

OPINION: When I was a little kid, I was convinced a witch was floating outside my bedroom window.

Not all year around, but specifically at Hallowe'en.

Every October 31, when sent to bed, I'd cower in fear of the light being turned off, knowing the silhouette would be visible outside the window.

When I hit a sensible age, I realised the so-called witch was nothing more than some trees waving. But the damage was done - and the fear of what it could be had wreaked its psychological terror.

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Thank God it's frightday: 10 great horror films for Halloween

Michael Myers is back ...
SUPPLIED
Michael Myers is back ...

Box office figures show Kiwis love to be scared on a fright night out, with scary movie releases regularly topping the charts.

While horrors went through their meta-phases thanks to Wes Craven's Scream series (the first of which is still worth a watch all these years on), the primordial fear of a killer coming to get you scares the willies out of us.

It's no surprise then that Michael Myers is doing so in Halloween (in cinemas now), the apparent definitive sequel to 1978's John Carpenter film. His impassive mask (apparently modelled on a William Shatner mask with bigger eyes cut out) still strikes some sense of fear, as the impassive towering mute dispatches more victims at whim.

Toni Collette in Hereditary.
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Toni Collette in Hereditary.

The latest film concentrates a little more successfully on the trauma inflicted on Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode, who's lived four decades knowing the killer is still alive, but it's the film's finale which soars.

Centring on Myers' hunting of Strode at her own home, it's chillingly and claustrophobically effective. Like the best horrors, the inability to reason with your terroriser is why these films, and others of their ilk, continue to resonate. While laughter may serve as a release to their innate clammy grip of terror, the true horrors don't play for laughs, knowing these can effectively scar and scare us for years to come.

Equally, Toni Collette's Hereditary, is sickeningly good home viewing.

Delivering one of the best and most unexpected jump scares seen in cinemas this year, the home release's psychological effects are deeply disconcerting - even if it its ending may leave you scratching your head.

Behind-the-scenes of Hereditary.

If you prefer a more solo experience, the Friday the 13th Game (PC, XBox, PS4) gives you the option to either be the masked killer Jason or those trying to stop the killer. It's a brilliant love letter to the series that's terrified for over three decades.

If you have a moment this weekend ... take some time to check out 60 Second Docs on Twitter

The short subtitled pieces, which last all of, you guessed it, 60 Seconds, open a series of windows into worlds and inspirational insights into lives lived elsewhere.

Be it a nine-year-old who melts down bottle caps to create benches for schools for kids to find buddies, or from crusaders trying to change perceptions of pit bulls, these little pearls of wisdom offer concise nuggets of truth to revel in.  - DARREN BEVAN

HORROR PODCASTS

Ken Kirzinger as Jason Voorhees in a scene cene from the film Freddy vs Jason.
VILLAGE ROADSHOW
Ken Kirzinger as Jason Voorhees in a scene cene from the film Freddy vs Jason.

If you're keen to soak up the creepy Halloween atmosphere, there's nothing like some spooky sound design to get your toes curling. and the hairs on the back of your neck rising. The horror genre of podcasting runs second only to true crime so there's a plethora of binge-worthy scary tales out there.

The Horror of Dolores Roach
This scripted, fiction podcast centres on the street-smart main character Dolores Roach, who returns to her New York neighbourhood after 16 years in prison.

After taking the fall for her drug-dealing boyfriend, she's trying to rebuild her live and starts working as a masseuse.

It's all going well - until the murders start. What follows is a macabre urban legend of love, betrayal, cannibalism and survival.

There are stunning performances from actor Bobby Cannavale and lead Broadway star Daphne Rubin-Vega.

Dead Bodies
Dead bodies and the people who find them are the subject of this Australian podcast.

Crime reporter Sharnelle Vella, who is used to seeing dead bodies, partners with Aussie radio veteran Dee Dee Dunleavy who is terrified of ever seeing one.

Together they present gripping tales of crime and shocking stories about the discovery of corpses.

There's a healthy dose of humour mixed in with these personal stories, but the pod is a realistic exploration of the impact of finding or seeing a dead body.

Haunted Places
This chilling, spooky podcast from the Parcast Network (known for their original storytelling) profiles haunted places from all over the world.

Each episode investigates the supernatural history of an inconspicuous place. The everyday nature of these locations makes for an goosebump-inducing listen.

Superb sound design and tingling audio also help make your insides shiver.  - KATY ATKIN 

DON'T STOP WITH THE FILM 

If you can't get enough of these two singing, I absolutely don't blame you.
If you can't get enough of these two singing, I absolutely don't blame you.

If you've spent this month devouring the soundtrack for A Star Is Born, you're not alone.

There's a reason those songs are so big, powerful, and earth shatteringly good - they were penned by pop, Americana and country music's finest.

If you can sense the soundtrack starting to wear thin, branch out into the artists below for some strikingly similar songs to make you dance, cry and sing, probably all at once.

Lukas Nelson's solo career deserves far more credit than his father Willie's shadow will ever allow. A fact Cooper must have known: Nelson was recruited to co-write some of the album's biggest tracks.

Along with Cooper and Gaga, Nelson wrote Alibi, Black Eyes, Too Far Gone, Out of Time and I Don't Know What Love Is, among others.

Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real's recently released Forget About Georgia EP will gently ease you into the country rock genre.

Close your eyes and it's as if Bradley Cooper is right there strumming along.

If you're wondering why Cooper's stripped back song Maybe It's Time keeps giving you goose bumps, it's probably because one of the world's greatest storytellers wrote it.

Penned by Americana powerhouse Jason Isbell, the way Isbell writes on alcoholism and sobriety strongly parallels Cooper's character Jackson Maine.

His Grammy Award-winning albums Something More Than Free and The Nashville Sound are essential listening.

For those after the real deal, Lady Gaga is it. Writing more than half the film's soundtrack, her 2016 pop-country album Joanne is a logical next step.

It's by no means new, but if you've never listened beyond her ballad Million Reasons, today's the day.

A record produced by Mark Ronson - one of the other legends behind Shallow - Joanne delivers both painful breakup songs and upbeat pop numbers that far outshine those performed by Ally in the film. - KATE ROBERTSON

WATCH WITH YOUR GRAN

PRIME
DCI John Barnaby might be just what Nan wants to watch.

My Nana once took her self off to the movies and ended up seeing Eli Roth's Piranha 3D

That's the one where a man's most valuable bits get bitten off by psychotic fish, only to float past later in the film.

Horrified, I asked her what she thought of that. "We just laughed and laughed," she said. 

She's 93 now, and she still loves a good scare and a good laugh. But not everyone is blessed with a grandparent who's super chill about the kinds of films and TV they watch. 

Top of my list for Universal Grandparent Friendly watching is Midsomer Murders. This show's delightfully soporific effects are criminally underrated. There are literally months worth of it to be found on Sky's UKTV

James Norton as the dashing Vicar Sydney Chambers in Grantchester.
Supplied
James Norton as the dashing Vicar Sydney Chambers in Grantchester.

While you're there, skip John Cleese's Hold The Sunset unless nan's a serious fan, in favour of the latest season of crime-busting swoon-inducing vicar drama Grantchester, or Dawn French's foodie drama Delicious

But if it's Inspector Barnaby that floats nan's boat, you might want to push that boat out and try Brit comedy and Midsomer homage, Hot Fuzz on Netflix. 

Not only is it chock-block with the kind of dad-puns and dad-jokes The Greatest Generation invented, but it stars certified nana-bait Nick Frost. 

If your nan has an adventurous spirit stick with the 'Flix and pop her in front of Antony Bourdain's Parts Unknown. For more laughs and less thrills, post-life comedy The Good Place might be a winner too - depending on her tolerance for irreverent humour about kicking the bucket. Speaking of irreverent humour, I can't recommend the bucolic charms of The Detectorists, also on Netflix, highly enough. 

If nan likes to get her laughs a little closer to home, Lightbox has doco Get It To Te Papa, which is just nostalgic and silly enough to make her giggle. - KYLIE KLEIN NIXON 

WHAT TO WATCH

Orson Welles holds court on the set of The Other Side of the Wind.
Netflix
Orson Welles holds court on the set of The Other Side of the Wind.

He was the man who stunned audiences time and again.

From his audacious Mercury Theatre stage productions to his Halloween radio adaptation of The War of The Worlds which sent America into panic, Orson Welles had an uncanny ability to transport you to another time and place.

Then there's was his movie debut, 1941's Citizen Kane. A compelling "biopic" of newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane (in fact a thinly veiled cover for the real-life William Randolph Hearst), it revolutionised cinematic storytelling and is still one of the most revered motion pictures of all time.

YouTube
Raw: This film might just make you sick.

Now, some 33 years after his death (and 32 after he voiced a planet in Transformers: The Movie), Hollywood's larger-than-life, one-time enfant terrible is back with a new movie. Forty-eight years after he first began shooting it, The Other Side of the Wind will take its bow here on Netflix on November 2.

Set in and around the lavish 70th birthday party of legendary Hollywood director Jake Hannaford (John Huston), it feels both like a semi-autobiographical work (like Hannaford, Welles had returned from a long semi-exile in Europe) and a mockumentary meditation on the demise of classic Hollywood and the rise of avant garde filmmakers (heck, some of them even appear as themselves).

There's also the film within the film, Hannaford's The Other Side of the Wind, a deliberately provocative, near silent movie he is struggling to complete, especially now that his leading man has disappeared. It's travails seem to mirror the problems Welles had finishing his own Wind.

Taupo-based author/illustrator Donovan Bixley has a new book out this week.
Matt Jordan
Taupo-based author/illustrator Donovan Bixley has a new book out this week.

After six years in production, "complex, legal, financial and political turmoil" meant it was never completed before he died (Welles did have a history of unfinished or troubled projects) and it was only the persistence of his old friend Peter Bogdanovich (who plays Hannaford's protege Brooks Otterlake) that has allowed it to see the light of day.

Boiled down from hundreds of hours of footage, Wind has been crafted from Welles' workprint, annotated scripts, thoughts and directives as an attempt to honour and complete his vision. The result is a somewhat chaotic curio constantly mixing film stocks, viewpoints and switching between colour and black-and-white.

It's less Forgotten Silver or The Player and more a product of its late 1960s, early 1970s hedonistic times, echoing the likes of Bob Rafelson's Head or the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky (The Holy Mountain, El Topo). 

PICK OF THE WEEK

Like Interview with a Vampire's rat biting and Pulp Fiction's hypodermic needle, Raw (Wednesday, 8.30pm, Rialto) is a film that leaves some who view it reeling. But while French film-maker Julie Ducornau's debut is certainly not for the fain-hearted or squeamish, that doesn't mean it isn't one of the most visceral, vital and visually inventive movies of the past few years.

It's the tale of first-year, vegetarian veterinary college student Justine (Garance Marillier) who finds herself forced to eat a raw rabbit kidney as part of her "orientation". It's a reluctant act that has an unexpected affect on both her body and mind. Think of a cross between the best of David Cronenberg (The Fly, Dead Ringers) and Dario Argento (Suspiria, Phenomena) and you'll get some idea of the nail-biting, sweat-inducing terrors that Raw holds. - JAMES CROOT

WHAT TO READ

Broken Play by Nicholas Sheppard

Rumours often swirl. Occasionally a name surfaces then, just as rapidly sinks again. Statistically, however, it is almost inevitable that there has been a gay All Black, probably more. Plenty of other sports have seen players out themselves, but not that last bastion of homophobic masculinity, rugby.

Nicholas Sheppard's impressive debut novel bravely confronts this timely issue. Its protagonist is a talented, Puckish young player, Alec Haudepin, who climbs the provincial ranks to the brink of All Black stardom. His apotheosis, however, is not trouble-free.

Alec struggles with deep personal problems. He has had to deal with the death of an older brother, for which he blames himself. At school, he was the subject of innuendo. He was mentored by a sympathetic English teacher, who inspired him with a study of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in a nodding reference to Dead Poets' Society. It will come as no surprise to learn that Sheppard himself teaches English at Auckland's Sacred Heart College.

Alec's deepest issue is his "hidden orientation". He begins the novel by chasing a schoolboy crush. Sheppard then drops and forgets this lead to focus on a new arrival in Alec's apartment block. Maxim is a troubled youth who has suffered abusive advances from a piano teacher. The two bond – the start of Alec's encounter with the crushing collision of rugby's staunch masculinity and its codes of conformity, and his own sexual orientation.

Sheppard's exploration of the ramifications of this conflict is sympathetic. Alec is a compassionate, if troubled, young man. He reveals true empathy for a boy who has been the subject of homophobic violence at school. His feeling for Maxim is genuine, if countered by his own concern about his chances at All Black inclusion. Sheppard's understanding of the lies and evasions of a life kept secret is profound in its recognition of the pressures and powerful tensions caused.

Likewise, Sheppard's probing into reactions to loss, issues of repression and self-control display real psychological insight. It is not just Alec who suffers: his parents, Maxim and his mother and father have all encountered major upsets in their lives. Alec's own problems are set nicely against this background.

Yet, there is a mawkish element to this novel. Sheppard remains prudish when it comes to Alec's sexual relations with Maxim. A discreet veil is drawn after lips touch. This, and Sheppard's use of a 23-year-old hero, suggests that the book's real target is the young adult market. It would make an admirable book for study.

I had one major gripe with the novel. The editing has been sloppy. In a book focussing on rugby, a knowledge of practice/practise is essential. Most of the time it is the wrong one. Sheppard is far too fond of the verb heft, which appears an inordinate number of times. There is one schoolboy howler: what is a suburb athlete? A misspelt superb one? A quotation ascribed to page 209 is actually on 207. Small issues – but enough to irritate.

Still, this is an impressive debut, well worth the read, and the thought it will provoke. - STEVE WALKER

Mozart: The Man Behind The Music by Donovan Bixley

Donovan Bixley, a children's author/illustrator with more than 100 titles to his storybook-worthy name, will release another on November 1.

Bixley and his wife are from Taupo, returning to their hometown after university "when they had too many kids", he once told Stuff.

In addition to being a dad to three daughters and writing international bestsellers, Bixley makes props for local theatre productions, and plays in a few bands.

His latest book, Mozart: The Man Behind the Music, is his book about the composer, a figure he describes as "completely unlike what I thought a classical composer would be". We asked him why chose to explore the topic. 

Tell us about your fascination with Mozart - how did it begin? 

I was actually planning to create a book on Beethoven and instead discovered Mozart's letters. I flicked to a random page of Mozart's letters and was instantly blown away by this vivacious and hilarious young man describing a ballet dancer who farted each time he leapt across the stage. Like that ballet dancer, Mozart's personality simply jumped out at me. He was completely unlike what I thought a classical composer would be, and I wanted to make a book for people who wouldn't normally read a big academic tome on classical music. It's a format which would really appeal to Mozart, because he was never a musical snob. He used very childlike, everyday language to describe the astounding music he created.

Was there any particular anecdote or fact about the composer you found particularly thrilling?

I was initially thrilled with all those irreverent stories - the Mozart who loved telling rude jokes at parties - but I became more interested in Mozart's place in history as a social change-maker. The most devastating thing was how the nobility regarded Mozart as a money-grubbing beggar. It was so tragic to read Mozart's letters where he lays out his hopes and dreams to be employed by aristocrats, completely unaware how much they despised him. They resented that he presumed to be on equal standing with them, and they were never going to employ him.

Why is it important for us to continue to remember and learn about historical figures?

The life of Mozart is particularly inspiring to any artists out there, because he grew up in a world where composers were regarded as servants. Mozart believed in equality and he demanded to be valued as an artist in his own right. He broke away from that old aristocratic system and became the first freelance composer, but he had to fight and work against society for every little success. I think it's reassuring to see that even the greatest of history's geniuses had to struggle against society norms, family expectations, economic downturns, jealous rivals and even self doubt - all the same factors we can connect with today.

Your favourite quote of his?

Reading Mozart's letters is like getting personal advice from one of the greatest geniuses. My favourite quote is a piece of advice that every creative person will appreciate. "We carry our riches in our brains, and these no one can take from us." Mozart wrote that in complete frustration after an aristocrat claimed he had no money to pay for Mozart's brilliant Flute and Harp Concerto. - BRITT MANN

 

Sunday Star Times