Movies (recently seen)

[Sven Smokevich]

Apoth, I really enjoyed Dark City when I saw it awhile back; the story didn't deserve to be tainted by that climactic fight though.

Regarding authors and their creations, Stephen King actually wrote a short story very much like that; it appeared in "Four Past Midnight." Granted, like some of his stuff, *cough*FromABuick8*cough* it just isn't that good, but I guess it's a fairly common theme. Sort of egotistical, though, as a plot, or a bit of fantasy fulfillment at the very least, not that I'm saying it can't be enjoyable. I loved everything to do with Myst back in the day. Uh, holla.

[Vesnic]

Around this time of year, we always end up talking about horror flicks. Oh, who am I kidding? We're ALWAYS talking about horror. But I was pondering the genre the other day, talking to my big black bird friend at the window who actually had a couple of insightful points to make in between that repetitive "nevermore" bullshit. We came to the conclusion that something is frightening if it

a.) Makes the seemingly innocuous suddenly very malignant. I recently got Jacob's Ladder from my queue and there are tons of examples of this in the movie. For instance, there's a part when this woman is staring at him in the subway. Without any warning, her stare morphs into a threatening glare, which she holds for an unnaturally long time, without any apparent cause. This, to me, is at the very least unsettling.

b.) When part of the horror is actually being generated by the person who's horrified. I guess this is what you'd call psychological horror, but I mean it a step further, when the protagonist actually somehow furthers their own undoing. That old self-destruction impulse put into action.

Big knives and blood spurting everywhere just don't do it for me. I mean, granted, that's all very funny. It just doesn't make me piss my bed at night.

[End Master]

You might like Angel Heart.

Jacob's Ladder was cool, I got the uncut version that wraps the ending up a little more neatly.

[apotheosis]

I watched Old Boy recently. Those Koreans are pretty twisted. Overall it was a very enjoyable film though.



SPOILER ALERT

I didn't get why he was so upset when he found out that he had been railing his daughter. I mean sure it is a little weird, but she was pretty hot, and he hadn't been getting any for fifteen years so I don't see why he should be complaining.

[End Master]

Lol.

There was a Bollywood version of Oldboy that completely changed that particular premise of the film which sort of defeated the purpose of the movie as well as being a bad rip off.

I can just imagine what the US translation is going to change. Hopefully it stays in "Development Hell"

[Usoki]

Bollywood anything is just frightening. Some things just shouldnt' be made into a musical. Pride and Prejudice is one of those things.

As long as they keep the awesome classical tracks during the really horrific scenes, I'll be good. That was the best part, really- hearing the music change and knowing something twisted is going to happen.

[apotheosis]

Unfortunately I got the dubbed version. I would have much preferred subtitles. I hate dubbing. It always seems like they are trying to be as cheesy as possible.

You know, come to think of it, the menu probably had an option to do subtitles. I'm just a lazy motherfucker I guess. Actually, I've never fucked anything that has produced children, so I'm just a lazy fucker.

[End Master]

Saw SAW 5 on Halloween.

It was okay. The series is getting to that "meh" stage at this point though. (Still better than the first one though)

[Usoki]

I saw What Lies Beneath- it was the scariest thing the girls at the party would allow. It was, quite frankly, really really boring. Only the last fifteen minutes could even qualify as scary, and even that part was boring. The whole thing was far too predictable.

[End Master]

Saw Funny Games

It was "meh".

The big problem with it is I didn't really like any of the characters. Mainly the villians weren't imposing or remotely intimidating. I questioned why the hell the family they were fucking with wasn't fighting back a lot harder.

Shit, even with a fucked up knee the father could've fought back a lot more than he did considering the villains didn't have them restrained or even have a gun to threaten them with for a good portion of the movie. Which pretty much means I didn't find the family really sympathetic. (Though I guess the kid performed a better showing for survival than his parents)

I understood part of the point was to have villains that seemed so nice and polite that they didn't seem dangerous on the surface, but it's been done before and these two still weren't coming off as menacing or scary despite all the mind fuck games they were playing.

I don't know, maybe I was watching it from a naturally suspicious perspective since I wouldn't have been leaving the doors unlocked to begin with, let alone allowing these two assholes to be in my house long enough for them to linger, fast talk and eventually grab a golf club to smash me with it.

The breaking of the 4th wall a few times was alright, but it was silly when he uses the remote control to change the outcome of the movie.

EDIT: (in case Ves wants to debate about the movie for fun) Yeah I got there was the whole artsy director's fat musings about rooting for the bad guys, violence in movies, breaking taboos, and pissing off the audience by changing the "rules" message and all that came with the 4th wall breaking bit. I got it, but I still thought the whole thing was "meh".

[Vesnic]

Yeah, End, but you're not being culturally sensitive enough!

*whine whine whine, cue world music bongo beat dream from the jungles of Djibouti*

Keep in mind, these are Austrians we're dealing with. What does that imply? It implies that they are an exceedingly genteel people who had their minds warped from an early age on waltzes, apple strudel and aesthetically titillating Jugendstil guardrails. Didn't it tip you off at the beginning when the family was cruising through the countryside in their nice little automobile, playing that amusing game of trivial pursuit guessing which opera they were listening to and whose recording it was? Coming from a mindset like that, would it be anywhere near plausible that a couple of nice-looking young men in tight white homostimulating tennis suits could be murderers? These people are masters of declaring their own reality and conveniently disposing with anything more sinister that might be encroaching from the sides. Word on the street is that there was some nasty shit going on in the 30's and 40's that went mostly ignored and unacknowledged by the entire country.

It's for these reasons that a lot of modern Austrian art focuses on the seedy underbelly of an apparently pristine society (no blackies here, please!). There's an adaptation from a Nobel Prize-winning novelist done by this same director called The Piano Teacher that deals with a musical prodigy whose dearest desire in life is to be raped and beaten senseless. I also recommend Benny's Video and The Seventh Continent, all by the same director. All three of these are better than Funny Games, respectively more sexually deviant, more disturbingly violent, and more bleakly nihilistic.

[apotheosis]

Quantum of Solace was a monumental disappointment.

The film was essentially a very weak plot strung together by a series of heavily choreographed action sequences. I guess I should have gone in expecting this, but for some reason I expected more. You'd think with all the money and resources they put towards making these monstrosities they could spare a dime to get decent writers, but I guess that's not what the general public wants. There was absolutely no character development. Everyone was incredibly two dimensional and simply parroted cliche' lines. I didn't buy any of it. It seemed like they weren't even trying anymore. And the plot, what the hell? The bad guys are just rich people stealing poor peoples water. Not a terribly compelling plotline. That happens in real life all the time, and we don't send in secret agents to stop them. There weren't even any good sex scenes. No epic games of poker. Just explosions, gunshots, shitty acting, and bad writing. And I thought this one could be really good. Dark Knight had gotten my hopes up that they were still producing decent film, but maybe it was a fluke....

[Vesnic]

Does Squeezit have Chicken Identity Disorder or what?

[End Master]

He just identified with chickens since he pretty much was one in real life. Even when he tried to help, he didn't do much good and got his head cut off like...well a chicken.

The commentary with the guy who played Squeezit and the director for that movie is pretty funny.

[End Master]

Saw Stranger Than Fiction and despite Will Ferrel being in it, I actually liked it. Of course he wasn't trying to be funny in it, so that made a difference.