Movies (recently seen)

[End Master]

I watched the White Queen series not too long ago and I can't even remember most of it. I just remember it being okay for a viewing.

Speaking of history being written by the victors, I recently saw "Saving Mr. Banks" which was some insidious revisionist history by the Disney Corp.

Not that they're a stranger to that since they do that with every tale/story they get a hold of and spread their corporate feces on and have been doing it for decades, but this one was pretty low even for them.

They basically Disneyfied a dead woman who in real life had major problems with what they ultimately did with her Mary Poppins character.

The whole movie was like that big grinning rodent was ass raping the miserable corpse of P.L. Travers while saying in that high pitched tone:

"Ha ha ha! You think we forgot how difficult you were? We're Disney bitch, EVERYTHING has a happy ending! Even your life!"

Actually though, I can't help but admire such bastardery to a small degree. Lol.

[Vesnic]

Thanks, End. I think it's just as useful to have a strident non-recommendation as an endorsement so that I don't end up wasting my precious time on truly bad or historically modified tripe. I'm not all that familiar with the author of Mary Poppins, but I remember something about a "double insult" when the film was being promoted and now it all makes sense.

Speaking of Disney's evil revisionism, but this time back in the sparkling realm of the imaginary, I recently watched their version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, just for a lark really. I had purposefully missed it when it first came out, as it did so just at that time in my young life when I was officially Too Old for absolutely everything and could no longer be bothered with such childish bosh. The so-called Disney Renaissance was petering out at that point anyway.

I won't bother to rehash or review, but suffice it to say that Disney's take railroaded Hugo's delightfully twisted classic. And I mean twisted in the sense that not only is the plot of the original novel knotted and complicated and unpredictable, but nearly every character is also a sexual deviant of some kind or another. Or several kinds at once.

On the positive side, it was nice to see one of the last examples of old-school animation and I found the score surprisingly mature for a Disney flick, especially "The Bells of Notre Dame".

That reminds me of a true story of my own. Back in my misspent youth, I spent a few unfortunate months working in a city clerk's office, charged primarily with the generation of death certificates. One particularly oily ambulance-chasing attorney seemed to be at the desk every other day digging up his assorted dead clients. He took to calling me "Desmeralda", with a funny little glimmer in his beady eyes every time he said it. One day I finally blew my fuse and shouted at him, "Make up your mind, buddy! Am I Desdemona or Esmeralda?!" After that, I was merely "you" to him, and I do hope he's read up a bit since then. Or at least seen some more hacktastic Disney.

Disney's Othello. Now that's something I'd pay to see! I think they should do a Steamboat Willie-era Mickey in blackface throttling Minnie with her own polka-dot bow!

P.S. In my last post, I mentioned Nigel Terry from the highly recommended television version of Far from the Madding Crowd. However, he's better known to international geekdom as King Arthur from the 80's movie Excalibur. Unfortunately, he just died about a month and a half ago from emphysema. Camelot and Hardy share the West Country in common, and it sure was nice to see a real Cornish corndog in both adaptations.

RIP, Nigel.

[Vesnic]

Since I'm thoroughly mired in lazy fuck mode, I decided to go and watch Deliverance all the way through for the first time, not just the dueling banjos or the "Squeal like a piggy!" bits. I knew exactly what to expect, but that made no difference in the executive decision I have made tonight to keep my ass firmly sealed shut with duct tape for the rest of my life.

[End Master]

Well, it was bound to happen soon given his age, but Christopher Lee died.

Always liked whatever villain he was playing as during his career. From Dracula to Saruman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmmo8R2dBp0

[Vesnic]

Welcome to the Otherside, Chris. Hope they have lots of public hangings and beheadings and the like to keep you happily occupied.

[Vesnic]

Black Mass
Two and a half of five stars

Competent. Forgettable.

The previews alone said it all. Spooks, spooks, spooks, gangsters with a spooky B-story, spooks. And now to your feature. Can you guess what it is?

Gangsters and spooks and spooky gangsters who turn informer.

And that's really all you need to know. I saw it today because I had some time to kill (that is, to garrote with bare hands), the free movie pass in my wallet was about to expire and the events all take place in Beantown. Of course Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger is popular here, a real local boy makes bad. However, I never really learned why he is more compelling than any other venerable crook granted tenure on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted.

The film was competent. It was well funded. It was topical, in fact so imbued with its own topicality that it never ventured to examine any of the many themes embedded in the plot, to push even an inch beyond the immediacy of its own events and momentary relevance. In another year, no one will remember the particulars, no memorable scene will find its way into the collective consciousness. When Whitey dies, assuming he's not the vampire they made him look like here, there might be a slight uptick in iTunes downloads. Is there anything inherently wrong with this? Not necessarily -- it's just that "not bad" is not the same thing as "good".

I was thinking to myself as the movie was just getting started: "Boy, it'll be great to see Johnny Depp out of his eyeliner!" Unfortunately, the makeup department did a ghastly thing, making him look like a mashup of Gollum, a powdered corpse and a cautionary advertisement for the American Dental Association. He first appears in a bar, his translucent blue contacts flitting dizzily from thug to thug. There are ashtrays everywhere, but I'll be damned if I can remember one conversation where anyone was smoking and talking at the same time. Having worked in a really lovely bucket-o'-blood bar one summer before the ban, I can assure those of a younger persuasion that this is not what any bar once looked like, roughneck or otherwise.

This odd bit of crazily misplaced censorship jarred terribly against those futile attempts to make Depp look as Whitey as Whitey. I thought the whole point of acting was to inhabit a character convincingly enough that you just don't care whether both the model and its impersonator are blond or brown-eyed or precisely 26 and a half pounds overweight. This movie was pretty clearly angling for an Oscar, so it would seem important to get the whole ambience right, not just bits and pieces that happen to fit into our current prejudices. It managed somehow to earn a "Black Lung" rating from an online smoking watchdog group, to which I say, "Purpose defeated". Keep in mind that it's still totally okay to shoot someone pointblank in the chest and head and to film every delicious gore-spluttering second of it in closeup.

The score sucked. The soundtrack was heavyhanded to the point of being ridiculous at times, as though Bulger constantly moved through some sort of amped up fun house with a gun glistening in every twisted mirror. Take it from a native daughter: Boston ain't that interesting, not even for the criminally inclined. I also couldn't figure out what a 60s song by the Animals was doing as intro music for a segue into the mid-80s. Wicked wee-ud.

Too much fucking complacency was going on here. The cast included some great people, none of whom were doing their best work. I know, I know: blame the director. But there was just such a workman type feel to the whole shebang, like all the goodies and baddies, honest hookers and hysterical wives, put their noses dutifully to the grindstone for exactly eight hours, clocking out at the stroke of 5:00 along with all the union guys in order to go smoke a cig, finally getting that nick fix denied them on screen.

The premiere was held at my favorite Boston movie house. Depp was at least nominally present, causing quite a stir when, in his classic deadpan ganja-dude voice, he weighed in with the notion that old Whitey had a "kind heart". He also briefly mentioned the "cold heart" bit, perhaps in reference to the fella's talent for titanic self-delusion and pure old-fashioned nastiness. This didn't do much for the families of the victims, who were not invited to the party and did not much like to hear about Whitey's terribly tropey misunderstood angst. This raises the obvious question of why Depp is so fucking glib despite repeated proof that he is at least 63% idiot, as well as the slightly less obvious question of why people are treating the opinions of a textbook "dumb actor" like something worthy of serious consideration.

Perhaps the problem arises from the fact that this film is very nearly a documentary. The events are so recent, the memories so fresh, the people involved so extensively recorded that it's just about impossible to impose any sense of mystery, inner life or even full personalities, all of whom seem irretrievably bent into the extreme arc of an attention-grabbing tabloid headline. I don't see the point of turning non-fiction into fiction, only to then strip it of the interpretive bits. The answer, while perhaps obvious, is just so unsatisfying: the hordes won't show up unless Johnny B. Better-than-in-Pirates is on hand to combine his trademark woodenness and weirdness. Rather than numbly cataloguing every turd Whitey dropped in the bowl over a twenty-year period, the script should have focused on a few select events, of which there is a plethora. How did Whitey win the lottery? Just how much did his senator brother know? What was the real map of his emotional life after losing his son, mother and marriage in quick succession? All I could glean was that he was kinda bummed out by all this. A good little Catholic boy, he couldn't even bring himself to genuflect at the funeral. Such narrative pussyfooting, trying so hard not to ruffle the feathers of a select few, has successfully covered a wide swath of liposuctioned studio asses.

It seems to me, though, if you're gonna walk like a pussy, you gotta savage the whole fucking pigeon, feathers and all. As stoolie tales go, this one seems destined to quick decomposition in the real-life Bulger Burial Ground.

[End Master]

Hmm, guess I'll wait for it to be free on Amazon. Sounds dull like Public Enemy was, when I was hoping for something more like Donnie Brasco.

Supposed to go see The Visit tomorrow, which I'm sure in true Shamalama Ding Dong fashion will have some sort of twisty twist end. I know a lot of people in general hate him on general principle for doing it all the time, but I never got into the whole hype train with him (Still haven't seen 6th Sense or some of his other popular movies from the beginning of his career) so I'm more or less indifferent to the dude.

Don't really have any movies that I can think of that I've seen recently that have been excessively bad or good enough to have any major comments on except maybe the new Mad Max movie that came out months ago which surprised me in that it was actually good enough to rank up there with Road Warrior and wasn't the suckfest that I was mostly expecting it to be.

Well I suppose I can extend the review on that a little bit more…

Mad Max: Road Fury

First of all I should clarify, I still think Road Warrior is a superior movie and it isn't just nostalgia talking. I'm comparing it to that one since it was obvious THAT was the one they were really trying to remake or recapture the same magic. In fact Road Fury was basically like they took the last chase scene with the oil tanker from Road Warrior and extended it to make a full movie out of it. Surprisingly it more or less worked. In fact it probably was for the best that they went that full non stop action route since the characters in this one weren't quite up to the task of making me care excessively about them.

(While it is going to sound like I'm down on the movie, I actually really did like it)

Despite both of them being action oriented, I genuinely found the characters a little bit deeper in Road Warrior. There were just little moments with all the main characters (no matter how fleeting) that gave them a bit of an edge in personality.

Compare with Road Fury and well…it wasn't like I hated any of the characters, but I just never cared as much about them. For example they had more of a variety of quirky villain lieutenants who as the movie goes on get predictably killed along the way like they were Mad Max's video game boss fights.

They might have been a little more interesting had there been less of them though since it was a classic case of too many characters and not enough time to focus on them. "Looking cool" wasn't really enough to put them over the top for me and that went for the major villain as well. Immortan Joe wasn't a terrible villain and he did his job well enough, but he was no Lord Humongus, let alone Wez. He just came off a bit silly rather than intimidating. Still, it was sort of cool the guy who played him, played the Toe Cutter from the original Mad Max. (He was a better villain in that movie)

The heroes didn't really fair any better. Like the villains, they did their jobs well enough, but nothing that excessively stood out. Furiosa I suppose was to be the bad ass action chick that everyone was supposed to enjoy and cheer for, but like I keep saying about everyone; "she did her job". (I'm not excessively into Charlize Theron anyway, but a bit more on Furiosa later though)

I'm not really counting Mad Max himself in this because there's a slightly different standard to compare him to rather than average "anti-hero", namely the question of whether or not he matched up with Mel Gibson and the answer to that is yeah if they make any more of these movies Tom Hardy is good in the role. Granted there isn't too much to it except being a near silent action hero, but really Mad Max shouldn't talk too much to begin with except when it's absolutely important for him to do so. He looked the part and acted the part, so he succeeded.

Now I could go on about the CGI bits with the desert wasteland storms and such, but eh… I'm kind of to the point where I know they're going to have CGI in most action movies (or movies in general) nowadays so I'm not really going to rage about how "it's sucking everything that's good about movies!" because in the scheme of things they probably used a hell of a lot less CGI than I expected them to. It really wasn't too overdone except for the desert storm segment.

The only thing I will say is this one felt and looked a lot more "cartoony" than Road Warrior. And yeah I'm sure one could point out Road Warrior with all it's leather clad S&M mohawk bikers and some big dude driving around in a metal Jason mask is cartoony as well, but this one looked and felt more like "Borderlands: The Movie" if you're at all familiar with that video game. Road Warrior still had an air of grittiness that made it at least feel a bit more serious in parts.

Okay so now let's move on to the "social commentary" portion! (This might be fun for Ves, since it involves the rapist patriarchy and grrl powAR!)

Now if you pay any attention to the unwashed masses on the internet (A dangerous past time to be sure) you would find many many MANY threads bitching and arguing back and forth that this wasn't a true Mad Max movie and was in fact a Furiosa movie since it focused on her struggle/mission more than it focused on Max.

Furiosa's goal was basically freeing Immortan Joe's untainted wives and getting them to the safe place (Her original home). Naturally Joe isn't too keen on his bitches being taken from him since he's got a legacy to maintain so that's what causes all this in the first place.

Eventually when they do get to Furiosa's place, it's filled with a few other older women who then basically say, "Yeah, you haven't been here for awhile and this place sucks now and we have to go find a better place to live" and then that of course is when it is decided that instead of running from Immortan Joe, he needs to just be overthrown since where he lives is fine except for y'know all the dictatorship.

Obviously they succeed and it's a happy end (Or as happy as one can be in a post apocalyptic setting).

Okay, now it still sounds like a typical action movie with the way I explained it, but everyone feels the need to look DEEPA, and what causes most of the arguing is the idea that this particular Mad Max movie was in fact a feminist movie and just another example of feminism and faggotry taking over America (or something)

…

Okay well, I CAN see where that point of view might be valid to the angry dudebro crowd. You've got a strong female action hero who is rescuing a bunch of other women from a tyrannical brute who is essentially keeping them quite literally barefoot and pregnant. True, he actually isn't beating them and they're living probably better than 99% of his citizens (Hey, he's trying to keep them healthy) but a "nice cage" is still a cage right? And it's pretty clear that deep down he doesn't really care about any of these wives and just wants them so he can have more sons to ensure his bloodline continues.

Combine that fact with EVERY villain in the movie (From Immortan Joe to his lowly thugs) is a dude. All the women in the movie are either the victims (the wives) or heroes (Furiosa and her entire clan of lesbian biker grannies) and by the end of the movie they bring down the quite literal rapist patriarchy. About the only guy who isn't trying to kill/rape any of them is Max.

Which bring me to the point that this is NOT in fact a feminist movie…

Basically, if Max hadn't been around to help these ladies out in the first place, they wouldn't have even escaped as far as they did. Plus, he's also the one that convinces Furiosa and her lesbian biker grannies that they need to stop running and just go back and kick Immortan Joe's ass.

So essentially when it all came down to it, these ladies still needed a man to help them out.

Male Supremacy is secured! Yay!

I will say too, the complaints about the movie not focusing on Max aren't really valid. Other than the first movie, Max has never been the main focus of them. He's always more of an wanderer that just sort of gets into these situations that are of more importance to OTHER people before moving on to the next, so I didn't really think his role was diminished in comparison to Furiosa's.

Anyway that's about it.

[Vesnic]

Thanks for your review End. I'd be curious to check this one out, especially if I get to watch lots of men bleeding profusely and kicking the stuffing out of each other, which as everyone here knows by now is pretty much my definition of HAWT. You'll be proud of me to know that I recently, completely willingly, of my own volition even, took in an absolute testosterone fest called The Warriors. I fucking loved it. Talk about memorable lines and characters, people not just there to pick up their paycheck (probably because in a 1979 indie, they were lucky to be paid in coins for the pinball machine). I know that Rockstar put out a game based on the movie about 10 years ago, but I'm a poor unfortunate soul who never ventured onto any gaming platform except my 'pooter. I'm sure you're all more than familiar with this gritty-ass classic. I was kind of disappointed that the chicks called the Lizzies, no doubt the younger selves of the grandma dyke bikers in Mad Max, were literally the gang that couldn't shoot straight. They had approximately thirty-six opportunities to waste those guys at point-blank range, but only managed to turn all the walls of their seedy bar into Swiss cheese. The joy of watching psycho-clown baseball hooligans in action was enough to compensate for the PATRIARCHAL NAZIS on prominent display throughout. I've also managed to get a great impersonation going of "Warriorrrrs! Come out to plaaaayyy-ayyy!", which completely creeps the fuck out of absolutely everybody I know and thereby lets me get my shit done without anyone bothering me. Works for me, Boppers.

Shamalama Ding Dong

I think I'm in a majority of about one when I say that I actually kind of liked Lady in the Water, which I thought was sort of a noble failure, with certain moments that were really kind of magical and a concept I was more or less on board with. Even as things started to descend into ridiculousness, as they tend to do with Ding Dong, I still felt that there was a degree of integrity in place, something he has certainly lost since then. Am I the only person who figured out the big twist of The Village within the first five minutes? No, I don't imagine I am.

...they did their jobs well enough, but nothing that excessively stood out. Furiosa I suppose was to be the bad ass action chick that everyone was supposed to enjoy and cheer for, but like I keep saying about everyone; "she did her job".

Same pattern emerging on multiple fronts, then.

Those Warrior boys can pull a train on me any time they want. Just not that gay one who died of AIDS, mmmkay.

[End Master]

Ah yes, The Warriors. I was back in high school the first time I saw it completely by chance on cable. Certainly a favorite.

Lot of trivia with that movie for those interested in that sort of thing, like did you know Swan was supposed run afoul of a gay S&M gang and get raped by them before escaping?

Didn't happen for a few reasons, one of them being that the actor who played Fox didn't have any chemistry with the actress who played Mercy and he was bitching a lot on set, so he got killed via subway train and Swan became Mercy's love interest instead.

So glad the remake never panned out (It already sounded horrible from what I heard of it)

The director also did a movie called Streets of Fire, which also has a slightly alternate reality feel to it. Different sort of movie, but still feels a bit Warriorsish in areas. It could easily take place in the same "world."

Anyway never got around to seeing The Visit, maybe some other day, but I did recently see Cooties, which wasn't bad. One of the better zombie movies I've seen in awhile.

Of course they had to play it more for laughs since it's a bunch of zombie children and actions resulting in them either gruesomely killing people or them getting gruesomely killed, because there is usually some weird taboo about killing kids on camera.

I liked it better than Shawn of the Dead at any rate, which I always found a bit overrated as far as zombie horror comedies go.

[Vesnic]

Revisiting the classics...

Days of Heaven
4/5 Four of Five Stars

Directed by Terrence Malick, starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard and Linda Manz, cinematography (Oscar-winning) by Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler.

I tend to follow the work of specific actors more than directors, but I've always had a soft spot for Malick. Taken in manageable doses, there is nothing more mesmerizing than the classic Malick "look", a succession of stunning images that are simple but never easy. When I was a teenager, my marimba-loving mother insisted that I see Badlands and I suppose it's true that I've never really looked at a movie the same way again. The moving visual element, that unique contribution of film as an art form, is also the decisive thing here, whether depicting a field of wheat blowing in the wind, a roaring fire burning out of control, or a woman's silhouette cast behind a ruffling sheet. I'm not as familiar with Malick's more recent efforts, which I know haven't gone over as well. I'm not sure if the reason for this is a stagnation in Malick's vision or a public less willing to set a slow pace or entertain a plot that won't spoon feed them everything. Probably it's a mixture of the two; but regardless of what happened later, Days has a kind of purity about it that can probably only happen once.

Richard Gere offers his thoughts on the Criterion Collection release from 2007, in which he leaves no doubt that Malick is not the ideal actor's director. The man, like his movies, is remote to most around him, singular in his vision, an absent-minded professor type with credentials from Harvard and Oxford, but little idea of how to communicate his rich inner world in any verbal form. Gere remarked with insight that this film, with its plague of locusts and relationships troubled by some of the most basic problems that can ever arise among people, has more to do with the Bible than with any kind of social commentary. The sheer scope of sky visible in almost every shot would seem to support this idea. The people involved, despite their outsized emotions and operatic tragedies, are dwarfed by the weather, by the earth, by the roiling currents of change far beyond their control.

The story is at its best when least hampered by plot devices. The enthralling first act gives way to a somewhat disconcerting second act, where improbable events like the arrival by airplane of an Italian flying circus threaten to push the narrative into the realm of the absurd. The emotional effect on the viewer is an unpredictable one, projecting on the surface a fairly easy amorality, which then suddenly sinks underfoot like quicksand, leaving you to wonder how you could ever have been so gullible.

It has been said that Malick sees his actors as "models", as figures to inhabit his scenes and create the personal link needed to avoid pure abstraction. It truly doesn't seem that important if they're very good or not. Gere lamented that many of the more verbal scenes were left on the cutting-room floor, including moments of more heightened emotion which, he reluctantly admitted, would probably have shattered the somewhat distant and second-hand tone of the overall narrative. The story belongs not to the adults and their grown-up problems, but to the girl who sees it all happen, who experiences events not as a primary player but as a very small fish in a big pond whose fate is not her own to determine. The use of Aquarium from Carnival of the Animals was masterful in conveying danger swirling in circles with natural beauty, a small yet essential microcosm seen from without. The girl herself, played by the angular and precocious Linda Manz, is a cinematic sphinx if ever there was one.

For me personally, it is always a relief to be able to take a deep breath in the middle of a film, to let it wash over me rather than to throw my arms up in ineffectual self-defense as I'm assaulted by a cascade of images and sounds I can barely comprehend. Having grown up in a place defined far more by nature than industry, this film elicited a powerful, almost gnawing feeling of nostalgia. With its prompting, I could almost remember how the hay smells in fall or how the air, as Shepard says in his own commentary, is a thing not only of sight, but of constantly changing, tangible texture.

[Vesnic]

The Babadook

3.75/5 stars

The Babadook is a horror film you may have heard of, a joint Australian and Canadian feature released late last year. An American friend here in Germany invited me to go see it, as we're both missing the idea of Halloween in the States.

This is not your usual slasher flick, not much in the way of fast action or cheap thrills, with an external monster who literally jumps down the throat of one of the two main characters at a pivotal moment, thus steering the movie fully into the realm of psychological horror.

The plot in short: a young mother is widowed on the day of her son's birth, as her husband dies in a car accident on the way to the hospital. Although the six intervening years since this event are not clearly spelled out, the viewer is led to believe that things have gone from bad to worse for this woman and her child. While there is clearly a lot of love between them and she is a competent mother, she is also emotionally distant, damaged and sinking ever deeper among her many demons. With the exception of a kind elderly next-door neighbor, her friends are self-absorbed and harsh in their judgments, quickly expelling her from their circle when her son begins to act up and when she finally says a word or two to put them in their place. Mother and son read a mysterious picture book called The Babadook about an evil black shadow monster demanding "Let me in!", who threatens that the more they fight him, the more horribly they will suffer.

That there are bits and pieces of plenty of other horror films mixed in here is really my one major critique. Some scenes are just too close to moments from The Exorcist, The Shining, Nightmare on Elm Street, even for a brief moment Home Alone (!), to name but a few. These little vignettes, however intentional or not, were distracting and had a somewhat cheapening effect on the deeper psychological narrative, which was really quite original.

Babadook is a fascinating examination of trauma, of how people process trauma, of how it lingers, how it can wreak havoc not only on the circumstances of an individual's life, but ultimately on the very shape of personality and quality of spirit. At what point does the terrorized become the terrorizing? Even before the arrival of the ghastly Babadook, a silent yet powerful inclination exists in the mother to destroy the child who, however unwittingly, ended the happiness in her life and its sense of stability. The question remains tantalizingly suspended whether perhaps all parents, with or without an accompanying trauma, have a voice inside them hissing, "Kill it. Kill it!".

In the few conversations involving other people, there is also some very subtle social commentary. Neither the young women in the mother's social circle nor the officials at her son's school nor the police seem to have any language at their disposal with which to understand the underpinnings of what is really happening. They all come off as flat, emotionally stunted, and in their own way far more monstrous than Babadook, who at least possesses recognizable human attributes, however dark and destructive they may be. The Babadook's power grows from denying him, from fighting him as if the fight against one's own shadow could ever really be won. Have we truly become foolish enough to believe we can erase our own evil?

I won't say anything about the ending, except to suggest that, unlike the deer-in-headlights teenagers from many horror flicks, this movie's protagonists are intelligent people who experience a real learning curve from start to finish.

My American friend said it was depressing. I said I felt really unsettled and actually pretty scared. However, we both agreed that the true horror show was sitting next to us in the form of two fat German dykes who did nothing throughout but stuff their faces with bottomless bags of chips, drop said chips all over themselves and the floor, check their cell phones regularly, blow their noses like they were trying to reawaken the entire Nantucket ghost fleet, coughed and sneezed abundantly and laughed uproariously at some of the very worst moments, including a girl falling face first from a tree house and breaking her nose and one moment of terrifying animal cruelty. There's a word for that: Schadenfreude; taking extreme pleasure in watching others suffer, and boy have they still got it bad. Yuck.

[End Master]

Katie liked that one, I was sort of indifferent to it. I don't even remember the scenes you mentioned that the two fat lesbos were laughing at.

I do remember really liking the artwork for the Babadook storybook though. I recall having more than few children's books that had creepy artwork like that.

BAAAH BAAAH DOOOOK

[BatCountry]

Just finished watching The Babadook and I really enjoyed it! Thanks for the suggestion Ves! I've lately been discouraged with horror films recently. Jump scares are cheap and overly gory also seems like a cheap way to get scares and turn stomachs. The psychological horrors and paranormal/supernatural stuff is usually what creeps me out as long as it's done well. It's done well here.


The movie did remind me a bit of The Shining, which is a good thing since it is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. Definitely a good flick and just in time for Halloween. I swear the last decent horror movie I can remember seeing was 30 Days of Night, and that was kind of corny at the end if I recall. Not like there is anything wrong with corny...In fact I notice that Re-Animator is on Netflix now too. That might be my Halloween treat.

But yeah...Babadook...Good stuff.

[End Master]

I've lately been discouraged with horror films recently. Jump scares are cheap and overly gory also seems like a cheap way to get scares and turn stomachs. The psychological horrors and paranormal/supernatural stuff is usually what creeps me out as long as it's done well. It's done well here.

That’s sort of a problem for me. I don’t get scared by horror movies and haven’t done so in decades.

As a youth I can say there were 3 major scares that pretty much killed that avenue of potential appreciation in the horror genre.

The first and probably the one that stuck with me the longest was a made for TV horror anthology called “Trilogy of Terror” and it was the last story with a Zuni Fetish doll screaming and chasing Karen Black around her apartment with a big ass knife. Was constantly on the look out for that thing for quite awhile.

There was a brief worry about the clown from Poltergeist (You know which scene) but that still didn’t stick with me as long as that damn doll.

The last one was Faces of Death which of course we now know isn’t actually snuff, but rather fake shit mixed in with some violent scenes that news crews happened to catch. While that one sort of went a long way towards my desensitization to the gore factor in horror movies, it was the real animal killings that sort of got to me at the time.

It was sort of a delayed reaction though, it didn’t bother me at the time when I saw it (I just complained that I wanted to see people getting killed, not animals), but when I tried to sleep that night, yeah I kept visualizing animals getting slaughtered. After that unpleasant night though I was all better.

By the time I got around to the glorious year of 1985 when Day of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead AND Re-animator came out, I was pretty much desensitized to the scare AND gore factor completely. (And those 3 were probably the bloodiest at that time, what a great year!)

Still, I felt a little weird at the time when I saw Re-animator in theaters since I noticed I was the only kid there. Everyone else was either a teenager or adult. I did see one other kid with his dad, but before the movie even started they had left the theater. Felt like I was going to be watching a porno movie.

Of course when the movie got going, that weird feeling went away and I was enjoying the movie as normal…until towards the end when the decapitated head of Dr. Hill started giving head to a naked girl he strapped to the table. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to look away or something, but when it’s on the big screen like that, well it isn’t like you can get away from it. Lol.

I remember glancing over at my mom a few times who was sitting next to me. While she had probably already seen her share of some odd movies (John Waters stuff) by that time, but this still wasn’t something that you saw every day. We didn’t really say anything to each other, just sort of a “Wow…just wow.” look and then returned to watching the screen.

I suppose after that incident I never felt awkward watching ANYTHING else with either parent ever again. So there was that at least.

So without the fright factor to scare me or gore factor to revolt me, I sort of have to judge horror movies solely on their story (Though I can still enjoy some inventive over the top kills). Fortunately I’m pretty forgiving on most horror tropes so even the overly used ones don’t bother me, which allows me to enjoy most of these movies on some level.

[Vesnic]

The First Movie You Ever Saw

A billion out of five stars!

It was summer 1984. Hot and Orwellian. Mommy gathered up her incredibly happy and well behaved baby Ves and decided to take her to the movies. What was up on the marquee that day? Why the original Ghostbusters of course! Baby Ves wasn't afraid of no ghost. In fact, she slept peacefully though the entire show. However, she has maintained a lifelong affinity for Slimer that she attributes to her early exposure to the best of Hollywood.

It wasn't even Baby's first foray into the world of entertainment! Mommy had already taken her out at a tender two weeks old to hear Bernstein conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra at an outdoor venue. Little Ves was so little and lost in her swaddling clothes that a mean old lady actually scolded Mommy for exposing her darling child to god knows what pathogens, first among them being a woodwind section that wasn't quite up to snuff that day. But again, Mommy prevailed. She may not have turned her little one into Baby Beethoven, but she did instill in her a lifelong love of classical music. That's why Ves now cares about going to random places like Bingen, Germany.

Our young heroine doesn't remember either of these occasions of course. Not in the strictest sense of memory, anyway. Much to her mother's horror, the first melody she remembers hearing was actually the theme music to Chariots of Fire. It used to play incessantly on the radio. Mommy thinks she got that one in vitro, while she was sniffing lots of fumes in the midst of painting her new house.

The first movie Ves remembers watching at the cinema was a one-time showing of Disney's classic Cinderella. She thought it was pretty dumb, even at age three. She didn't start wishing for her own fairy godmother until her late twenties.

So, my dears, what were your first movie experiences? Do you even remember them? How did they form and inform the twisted bunch of freaks that you, I mean we, have all become today? End's reminiscences of the year 1985 inspired this post, in case you're wondering why my synapses have been firing off in any and all directions lately.