It's Only a Movie.

"On Saturday, the scholarly cineastes at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens will unleash their ingeniously timed It's Only a Movie: Horror Films From the 1970s to Today, a sprawling (splattering?) five-week retrospective complete with 30-odd features and shorts, discussions with critics and academics (no way it's 'only a movie,' man!), and an appearance by the great American satirist Larry Cohen, who'll screen an archival print of his 1974 killer-baby opus It's Alive (currently slated for a remake, natch)." And, for the Voice, Rob Nelson talks with Cohen and, of course, Eli Roth.

Updated through 6/14.

Then, another good long talk for the City Pages' Culture to Go blog: "Adam Lowenstein, an associate professor of English and film at the University of Pittsburgh, [argues] that it's 'still too soon' to determine whether the Splat Pack films engage the 'post-9/11 moment' as meaningfully as the classic American shockers of the 70s - The Last House on the Left, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, et al - addressed the Vietnam War and other atrocities of their era."

Update, 6/14: ST VanAirsdale observes that the "possibility - the potential for intellectual inquiry in the blood and gristle - makes the series unique in New York, where repertory series at the Museum of Modern Art, Film Forum, BAM and elsewhere have long emphasized horror's industrial heritage over its conceptual and emotional forebears. In fact, as Fangoria Magazine editor Tony Timpone told The Reeler, the Moving Image program showcases exceptions to the rules that guide safe, studio-driven horror of the present day."

Posted by dwhudson at June 13, 2007 2:11 PM