I’ve just seen the much ballyhooed John Carpenter MASTERS OF HORROR episode, CIGARETTE BURNS, and it was good, but not great. I think that a couple areas it fell down for me was in the lead actor, he’s so laconic, and unemotive, that you don’t really relate, connect, or care about him. Which is a problem when most of the screen time revolves around his face and his reactions, it makes for exposition heavy scenes with nothing of interest to carry you through those scenes. And third I think the episode slapped gore up on the screen in place of a story, the kind of mess you see in Argento’s PELTS (though that’s a far worse episode), . The episode seems oddly derailed because of all of these… digressions. C/C+. . Like Argento, I think Carpenter is a director whose current work suffers in comparison to his old. That said, about two months ago, end of June, I was sitting in a packed crowd in the Aero Theater in Santa Monica. I was there with other movie people, and we were seated two rows away from John Carpenter as he sat in front of the crowd and discussed the movie we had just seen, his classic THE THING. There’s some things I’m not crazy about with LA. But one of the great things, for a film fan like me, is the access, the ability to see in person… directors I’ve grown up idolizing. John Carpenter is one of those directors. And this comes from a guy who adores films from the silent era to today, from Stroheim’s GREED to Cuaron’s CHILDREN OF MEN, even in that rarefied company the films of John Carpenter… stand out. So often his films are touchstone moments for cinema, moments where he asks of the audience and the genre… to transcend. Being a genre director, his pictures aren’t nominated for the academy award, but I’ll argue his HALLOWEEN and THE THING will still be remembered and viewed and loved, long after the Academy award nominees and winners are forgotten. Going on three decades later and HALLOWEEN and THE THING have only grown more praised and more iconic. You think the same will be said for best picture winners such as ENGLISH PATIENT, GLADIATOR, MILLION DOLLAR BABY? Films whose dubious and faddish praise, only grows more dubious and suspect as time moves on. No, while the Academy Awards yearly become ever less an indicator of quality (seriously, it’s getting to the point that an Academy award is a good indicator of a movie not to see), directors such as John Carpenter, and their body of work, will only grow in comparison. ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, HALLOWEEN, THE FOG, ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, THE THING, THEY LIVE, primarily his 70’s 80’s output are films that have stood, and will continue to stand… the test of time.