By now, the story of Jason Eisener’s Hobo with a Shotgun has taken on an almost mythic air. As a youth, the Halifax-based filmmaker chewed through rented tapes like a faulty VCR, fuelled by a voracious appetite for horror and exploitation oddities. As the years piled up, so did his ambition and before long, he had begun making films of his own. Aided by a crew of likeminded maniacs, Eisener cranked out short after short, each one a crimson-caked valentine to the VHS generation.
As human beings, we pride ourselves on thin membranes of civility. We go through life thinking of ourselves as complex, empathetic creatures who – more often than not – are peaceful to a fault but there’s something about the concept of revenge that seems to get us off. Whether it presents itself in the threadbare simplicity of The Virgin Spring or in the ephemeral thrills of the Kill Bill flicks, there’s something innately satisfying about watching evildoers receive their just desserts.
When Arnold Schwarzenegger recently announced that he'd be coming out of retirement, the blogosphere lit up with excitement. There was talk of him taking on some new, challenging projects that would push him to the limit of his craft. Take, for example, the rumored With Wings As Eagles, which would see him as a Nazi officer burdened with the unenviable task of murdering children during WWII. Might we see a new side of The Oak? One weathered with maturity and esteem and prestige?
There are a lot of things we don’t know about Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained – who the lead is, when it’s going into production, even whether it’s going into production at all – but there’s one thing that you can be certain of: this is a film that’s going to turn some heads.
We’re living in strange times. Between the “Aflockalypse,” the Singularity, Harold Camping’s highly prophesized and publicized Judgement Day predictions and the cold, black shadow of December 21st, 2012, the air seems to be thick with doomsday anxiety.
Hollywood – not usually one to shy away from exploiting cultural fears – seems to be preoccupied with an apocalypse of its own, though. As the gears of the studio system spark harder than ever to churn out what they deem to be “safe bets,” they seem to have forgotten one of the surest successes of all – the doomsday picture. Leave it to the indies pick up their slack, then. For some strange reason, 2011 seems to be chock full of dark, low-budget films dealing with the end of the world.
