Creamy Nougat

Making Pretzels

2012-02-22T16:09:00.000-08:00

Now that I have a video camera, friends keep telling me to shoot anything and everything just for the practice, so I did. I decided to bring the camera along on my attempt to make hard pretzel sticks. I failed, but I mostly blame my unreliable oven. There are certain shots I missed, but the experience was just for fun and not perfection.

Anyway, here it is. There's no soundtrack since it would have been massively discontinuous and distracting, so throw on whatever you like to listen to. Maybe it'll turn out like a Dark Side of the Moon and the Wizard of Oz.

Everyone Should Watch Justified

2012-02-21T11:59:00.000-08:00

My fiancee and I have been systematically watching complete runs of series for a while now (not having cable, a lot of time is spent finding streams that work). We started with The X-Files, which understandably took a while to get through. Using the Vince Gilligan connection, we moved to Breaking Bad, which led to Deadwood (unintentionally) via Anna Gunn. Timothy Olyphant brought us to Justified (you didn't need to know all of that, I'm just really fond of drawing connections), which I'd been hearing a lot of good press about on NPR and the AV Club. We're closing in on the first season finale and it's easily become one of the most entertaining 40 minutes of television I watch.

To be sure, I need to adjust to the styles of the show. Justified doesn't have a distinctive look like Deadwood or Breaking Bad. It mostly just looks like any number of shows like Burn Notice or Royal Pains, sort of blandly polished. Also, I've gotten so used to heavily serialized shows and have such an aversion to the seemingly millions of police procedurals out there that when it became apparent that Justified was going to feature a different conflict every week while trying to balance an over-arcing story, I instinctively wanted to reject it. However, after a few bumps in the early going, Justified has won me over, full force.

The AV Club makes the point that Justified has cracked the formula for combining serialized and procedural plotting and they are spot on. But what I didn't expect from the procedural elements was how exciting and mysterious it makes the next episode (I never watch the "next week on..." previews for shows because they are always misleading and always give away too much for my tastes). Instead of going into the next episode wondering how the protagonist(s) are going to extricate themselves from whatever problem they are in (and I can't help but think of Breaking Bad right now), Justified makes you wonder what sort of case Olyphant's Raylan Givens is going to have to deal with while he tries to deal with bigger priorities.

Another bonus of the procedural elements is that they allow for a cavalcade of amazing guest stars. The first few I got excited about were Alan Ruck and Tony Hale, but then a trend started to develop. Peter Jason. Ray McKinnon. W. Earl Brown. Sean Bridgers. Every episode was turning into a Deadwood reunion! Con, the reverend, Dan Dority, and Johnny Burns were all back shootin' the shit with Seth Bullock (well... not so much the reverend). Little makes me happier than thinking about the between takes conversations and everyone reliving their Deadwood experiences. Plus, I'm a fan of filmmakers who work with the same people repeatedly because it really gives the sense that everyone likes each other and is having fun making movies and that's the feeling I get when I see these guest stars. I can't wait to see who else is going to pop up.

As it's based on the work of Elmore Leonard, I'd be remiss if I didn't include the amazing and often funny dialogue. Everyone gets to shine, but any time Raylan gets to banter with an adversary, the show is electric. This is probably why the episode with W. Earl Brown is my favorite. The only issue I have with Justified so far is that some of Raylan's colleagues cyphers. They are simply there to follow orders. For a show that creates such memorable one-off characters, it's disappointing that the supporting cast gets such short shrift. Hopefully that will change as the show builds its world.

Oh, and the theme song sucks. Two issues. Watch Justified!

Mission: Impossible III

2012-02-19T22:25:00.000-08:00

I never really expected to watch any of the Mission: Impossible series. Action movies don't do too much for me unless they feature some rad car chases (I'm a sucker for those). Also, I have a rather strong distaste for Tom Cruise as an actor and as a person (or more appropriately, how he's represented as a person). A growing appreciation for Brian de Palma in conjunction with a desire to see Brad Bird's entry into the franchise prompted me to catch up and I've been (mostly) pleasantly surprised by the first two. There are massive amounts of ridiculousness in the series, which is what I can't stand about action movies in general, but they are a lot of fun and watching them plan and pull off missions is always exciting.

I'm no J.J. Abrams fanboy, but I like what he seems to be about (don't ask me what that is). If there's one thing the M:I franchise has done well, it's attached interesting directors with their own style. It's a little surprising that Tom Cruise capacity as producer didn't compromise that, but maybe I've always been too hard on Cruise. Sure, John Woo's "operatic" gun fights (read: slow-motion and doves) is excessive, but it's distinctive. in M:I III, Abrams uses lots of colorful lighting and lens flares (or at least saturates the screen with the light), which is unmistakably a staple of his. One can't help but wonder how long some of the scenes took to light.

As for the plot, it's just as convoluted and twisty as one would expect and the surprise turn at the end isn't much of a surprise. Ethan Hunt and his crew are out to catch Owen Davian who is selling weapons and whatnot to terrorist groups. However, an inside operative frees Davian who captures Hunt's wife in order to make Hunt get "the rabbit's foot" for him. The story is pretty interesting and takes the viewer to some fun and impressive locations, but since the film starts out with Hunt captured and his wife tied up with a gun to her head, we know basically where it's headed. Not only do we know that nothing bad can happen to Hunt until he gets to that point, we already know his wife is in danger. Even worse, though, is that we know that what we are seeing at the beginning isn't going to be exactly what it seems. I really hate the device of showing a later event at the beginning of a film because it saps drama and makes the viewer skeptical of what they are seeing. It's the difference between "how do we get there?" and "where are we going?" I find the latter much more exciting.

The other major issue with M:I III is that Philip Seymour Hoffman is so good as Davian that one wishes he was featured more prominently. He's easily the best and most terrifying villain thus far in the series and he's really only featured for about ten to fifteen minutes. He's casual, disinterested menace that's far more intimidating than the generally over-the-top bad guys in action movies. He steals the movie every time he's on screen. I would totally watch a film about his rise to power and affluence. Simon Pegg is another welcome addition to the M:I world, but of course he is. He's Simon Pegg!

There haven't been many regrets in catching up with the M:I films. At their worst, they're still fun ways to spend two hours as long as you don't mind random acts of masterful marksmanship while, say, sliding down the roof of a building but convenient lapses in said aim at other points or the fact that putting on a Philip Seymour Hoffman mask suddenly gives one his gut as well. Those are silly gripes in the face of a franchise that is based around completing impossible missions that are apparently not so impossible.

A Host of Disappointments

2012-02-17T12:52:00.000-08:00

I think I might drop this feature going forward and instead focus on writing longer reviews of the movies I watch. An advantage of this is that I'll be writing right after seeing the movie and not struggling to recall salient points. Also, it will give me more content (and more content means more page views HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!). So, we'll see how that goes...

Mission: Impossible II -- John Woo

I'm not terribly well-versed in the ouvre of John Woo. He's always been kind of a caricature to me what with the dove trademark. In fact, until last year, I'd only seen Broken Arrow yet I'd made loads of jokes about the doves and his ridiculous action. I'm still a bit of a Woo neophyte, but I've seen Hard-boiled and The Killer and if there's one thing I've taken away from watching his movies it's this: John Woo makes absurd movies. That's not a pejorative statement by any means. They are quite a bit of fun, just devoid of anything but the aforementioned ridiculous action. The sense of playfulness of the first film is traded for doves and slow-motion. Tom Cruise's Ethan Hunt seems less a human than a vessel for weapons to go off. I expect this to be my least favorite of the series (Simon Pegg is added to the cast in III, so how can that not be more fun?). Also, Ethan Hunt is pretty good at completing these "impossible" missions.

Night Moves -- Arthur Penn

The critical reaction to Night Moves appears to place it in the underrated/cult classification, but I found it to be a disjointed mess of plots, few of which hold much interest. There is no flow to the story, editing, or dialogue. Half the time it feels like people are speaking in riddles and there's a jarring discussion of a chess move that exists solely to be a metaphor (and to give the movie its title) since there's no indication that Gene Hackman's Harry Moseby even likes chess, let alone is a student of it, until that moment. I did find Moseby's acceptance of his wife's infidelity and willingness to work it out with her to be refreshing and unexpected, so it's got that going for it. I also had a good time imagining that this Moseby is the father of How I Met Your Mother's Ted Moseby.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams -- Werner Herzog

This might be one of my biggest disappointments in the last few years of movie watching. I love Herzog's films and I haven't seen a documentary by him that wasn't amazing until now. It's not that Cave is bad, it just starts to feel completely redundant. There's only so much time one can spend looking pans across the cave paintings until one says, "yup... I get it." Maybe I'd feel different had I seen it in 3D, but I felt like I was watching a Discovery Channel documentary, not a Werner Herzog exploration of Ecstatic Truth. I almost feel like he recognized this, which is why he put the albino alligator epilogue in.

Hanna -- Joe Wright

Another disappointment. Hanna starts out pretty great, but the minute Hanna meets the British family, the film grinds to a halt. Maybe it's that the family is filled with one-dimensional cartoons of people or just that the daughter Hanna befriends is one of the more obnoxious characters to appear on screen last year, but the good will I felt toward the film was sapped away by the minute. Fortunately, the action scenes are uniformly bad-ass and Wright does a nice job with the camera, particularly moving through the Grimm's amusement park (upside-down shot aside). My biggest issue with Hanna is that it feels more like a style exercise than a movie with something to say. That doesn't make it bad, just middle-of-the-road. Plus, the lack of subtlety in bookending the movie is glaring and inelegant.

The Devil and Daniel Johnston -- Jeff Feuerzeig

Daniel Johnston is a fascinating and infuriating person to learn about in this documentary. He as severe mental issues that make it hard to sympathize with him since he treats his friends and family so horribly at times, but he's clearly disturbed and needs your sympathy. It's very strange to see an artist who is so respected live at home with his parents well into his 40s, but such is his life. Johnston is the perfect subject for a documentary. I just wish I cared at all about his music. Not long ago, I downloaded a bunch of his stuff and have been struggling to eradicate it from my iPod since (the labeling of the tracks is occasionally mystifying). He sounds better when playing piano than guitar, but it's a struggle to listen to and I can't help but feel many people appreciate him more for his legend than his music. If you like his music, then you will love this documentary. As it stands for me, it's good and worth seeing.

Silverado -- Lawrence Kasdan

I didn't always like westerns, but after a class and exploring some of the more famous works in the genre, I've grown to quite like them. One of my professors referenced Silverado as a pretty great return to the dormant western form, so it's been on my radar for a while. Now that I've seen it, I have to agree. The landscape and sets are very impressive (and reused) and the cast is pretty great (in addition to being an asset for any "Six Degrees of..." game, the cast doesn't date the film as much as say, the cast of Young Guns, either). I'm very surprised I hadn't sought Silverado out earlier when I was at my peak Monty Python obsession since John Cleese makes an (all too brief) appearance. The film strains credulity in the ways the paths of the heroes diverge and converge, but it's not so glaring nor is it unexpected since we know they can't be gone for long. Silverado is a solid and competent movie with some beautiful shots (though Kasdan falls short in a few shots where he seems to be channeling Leone).

Deadwood: An Appreciation

2012-02-16T11:20:00.000-08:00

There was a time when I rejected westerns completely. No matter how many people recommended the classics to me, I wasn't interested. This mindset continued through my first year of graduate school where I was studying film. During my first year, I had a friend (who is still a friend) expound on the excellence of Deadwood. I dismissed her with a wave of the hand (in my mind, anyway) as westerns offered me nothing. But a funny thing happens as you dive into a subject (in this case, film). You get exposed to a lot of new ideas and new ways of thinking. During my second year, I even took a Ford and Peckinpah class and realized that not only are westerns interesting, many of them are pretty damn awesome.

In the Ford/Peckinpah class, we watched the pilot to Deadwood. At the time, I was wholly unimpressed. It was OK, but amazing like I was led to believe. I felt completely comfortable ignoring its existence and did so for the next four years. Now that I've finally watched the entire series, I'm pissed at myself for not having done so sooner.

In my defense, it makes sense that I wasn't enamored after the first episode. Deadwood is a deliberate show that plays its cards close to the chest. There's not a real sense of what the show will be until the first season is almost over. The cast of characters is massive (and constantly dying off while new people come to town) so it takes a while to establish who is who and what their position is in Deadwood. Clearly, Seth Bullock and Al Swearengen are going to be major players, but others take into the second and third season for their roles to be fully revealed. It's almost impossible to judge the show without seeing it through to the end (and how sad that the end came so abruptly for the viewers who watched it while it was on the air). Probably my favorite aspect of Deadwood is that once the characters and motivations are established, the show bends over backwards to not only put people at odds with each other, but with what we believe of the character. Alliances between enemies are frequent because in the end, everyone wants what's best for the town.

Swearengen is easily one of the best, most complex characters I've ever seen in any entertainment. Ian McShane got a lot of press for his performance (it's remarkable the role only got him one Golden Globe and no other awards) and I was prepared to dismiss it going in, but damned if he doesn't own every minute he's on screen. Swearengen is a man who is always thinking ahead and how he can play things to best benefit him. He's not above setting aside his differences and even respects Bullock most of the time even if he thinks Bullock is crazy and a tad irrational (maybe the fact that Swearengen is so rational is why I find him appealing).

But the real reason I love Deadwood and that I'm mad at myself for not watching sooner is the vibrancy of the town. Creator David Milch and his crew created something amazing in that town. It would take more words than I would like to type to detail every character in the town who makes an impression, but it's a lively community and even the smallest parts (well, maybe not the extras) are well-realized and leave an impression. The town of Deadwood is the star of the show. The reality is like nothing I've ever seen. The action is amazingly choreographed and you really get a sense that you're watching the town from a balcony like Swearengen (or Tolliver or Hearst) with all the pieces moving around via an unseen hand.

I can't help but feel like I've inadequately represented Deadwood here, but it's really difficult to describe the way it sucks you in. The closest parallel I can make is the way Deadwood makes me feel about the community is the way The Tree of Life makes me feel about childhood. Sure, there are times during the show that I don't understand a word being said even though they are speaking plain English, but that's no matter. Just means I'll have to rewatch. Because I may not ever want to go to Deadwood, but I never want to leave, either.

The Innkeepers and Ti West

2012-02-14T23:42:00.000-08:00

This write-up will contain spoilers for both The Innkeepers and The House of the Devil and since I don't know that many people who have seen one or both, I might be writing to the ether. Be that as it may, I remain undaunted.

Ti West is going to make a legitimately great movie one of these years. He's got amazing sensibilities. In a world of fast-cuts and hand-held cameras he is steady, deliberate, composed, and competent. The House of the Devil got plaudits for being a throwback to the pacing and aesthetic of horror films from the '70s and '80s and this patience continues with The Innkeepers. It's not just that the films are deliberate, the timing is immaculate. West's sense of rhythm does much of the heavy lifting for the mood and tension. Yet, I can't say that any of his films are any more than good (and I think he'd agree with me regarding Cabin Fever 2).

Bad-ass poster

The House of the Devil spends its run-time building up to a bloody finale and revealing our hero (Samantha) is the victim of a demonic plot (not unlike Rosemary's Baby). However, with the exception of one amazing and shocking moment in the middle of the movie, House of the Devil struggles to stick the landing. So much effort is spent recreating a genre long past that it feels like fortifying the script was lost in the shuffle. I remember being disappointed in the end that Samantha doesn't die after shooting herself in the the head. It seemed like a copout that existed just so she'd live with the knowledge that she is carrying demon spawn, but I can think of any number of ways to have her dead (which only feels right for the movie) AND have the evil threat live on.

The Innkeepers is no different. There is an amazing sense of place and watching in an old theater with its own history heightens the sense of isolation and mystery. One definitely doesn't want to be alone in their after hours after watching The Innkeepers, which is a highly effective horror movie in spite of its shortcomings. Throughout the screening, I kept thinking it would be a fun practical joke to play on the audience to ratchet up all this tension only to reveal in the end that there is no haunting and I almost got that. I firmly believe that much of what we see in the movie is in the head of Claire, one of the two remaining workers at The Yankee Pedlar Inn. True, the inn may be haunted, but what Claire is experiencing is separate from the actual hauntings. One of my viewing buddies brought up a point that I'd have to rewatch the film to confirm, but I believe to be correct, that an early scare is reused during the climax that seriously points to the conclusion I made above. I respect the decision to treat the haunted house subgenre this way as it really gets to the heart of how we scare ourselves irrationally, but it may also be completely justified.

What hurts The Innkeepers almost irreparably is that so much of the action is completely contrived. It doesn't feel like that because the characters are uninteresting (they are totally enjoyable), but because the script again feels half-baked. Someone needs to do something and instead of it being an organic process, the script just makes it happen. Sure, Claire is scared shitless, but she's totally fine being left alone. "You just saw a dead body and wants to leave immediately? Well, sit here in the lobby while I go look for that last customer instead of waiting outside and across the street. Or hey, why don't we go together?" It's enough to drive one mad.

The worst offense, though, is that West kills Claire off in the end! We spend the whole time getting to know and care about her (and she is eminently likable, especially in a moment when she takes a trash bag to the dumpster [even though it presents it like it's the first time she's ever done the job, which makes it feel like an excusable contrivance since it's amusing]) only to kill her off in the end. It just doesn't fit with the rest of the film. I wish I could switch the ending of The Innkeepers with the ending of The House of the Devil. It would work perfectly if not for the demon fetus. It feels like West was writing these movies simultaneously and mixed up the endings.

Even with the shortcomings, I find myself looking back fondly on each of these films (and I've only had a day to think The Innkeepers over. Imagine what three months will do to it). As I said, Ti West is going to make a great movie some day and I hope he sticks with the horror genre. There needs to be more people making scary movies without feeling the need to wink at the audience. West's films are going to hold up and I will continue to look forward to his movies (though his next one is apparently starring Liv Tyler, so I might be speaking too soon).

How I Could've Been Interested in The Human Centipede Films

2012-02-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

I haven't seen The Human Centipede and don't think I know anyone who has. The reasons for this, I feel, are pretty obvious:

The same goes for the sequel, which goes the Blair Witch 2 route and features a man obsessed with the movie:

It all looks like stupid, hollow horror.

However, watching the trailer for The Debt, it didn't seem like such a stretch to make that the sequel to The Human Centipede. And were that the case, I would be onboard 100%.

No One Can Say I Wasted My Time

2012-02-09T11:28:00.000-08:00

I just spent about two hours and fifteen minutes waiting to buy a poster online. There was a limited run of 320 and the posters, sold through Mondo Tees, typically sell out in a matter of minutes. The posters go on sale at a random time during a specified day. Most of the time, I sleep through it or forget to check in the morning. Today, I forced myself to wake up, and, of course, it didn't go on sale until long after I would've been up and active.

I've been having trouble with my wireless router (it might be on its last legs) and at one point, it failed on me. Panic ensued. I scrambled around the room to unplug (and replug) the router and rushed back to my computer. Crisis averted. No drop. But would it happen again?

An our or so later, after much refreshing and minor efforts to occupy my time (but not too occupied), the drop came. Panic really ensued. I refreshed the Mondo homepage repeatedly to know avail. Turns out, I should have been refreshing the "Shop" page. I clicked the Twitter link repeatedly and got nothing but the Pinwheel of Death. My computer and my anxiety were out to foil me. Three separate pages for the "Shop" page were trying to load. I eliminated all but one.

The page finally loaded and I was able to click "Add to cart," but the page was taking forever. Even though I know that traffic to the site at that moment was brutal, I still anxiously pressed "Add to cart" in an effort to speed things along. Finally, it was in my cart! But I didn't know if that meant it was reserved for me or if I finished checking out it would tell me the poster sold out. Fortunately, all of my information was in from a prior purchase, so the only thing I had to fill in was my credit card info. I was so close and terrified of making an error. Forgetting a required field. Typing my credit card number in wrong. Pure adrenaline was coursing through my veins. I hit submit...

It's mine.

Lonesome Ghosts is one of my favorite Disney shorts ever (if not the favorite) and this poster (hell, all of Tom Whalen's work) is amazing. Knowing how hard it can be to get poster's from Mondo, I'm lucky to have this one. It sold out in six minutes.

It's a little sad that my most exciting moment in terms of pure adrenaline in recent memory happened as a result of trying to buy a poster, but I earned it, dammit! I feel like a champion.

Hot 'n' Fresh Out the Kitchen: Home-made Bagels

2012-02-08T10:40:00.001-08:00

Having tried my hand at making donuts (and struggling due to not having a fryer with a temperature gauge), I wanted to try to make my own bagels. Thanks to a timely post at Eating for the Rest of Us, the task was upon me, because damn, those bagels look awesome. I left raisins out of some of the bagels because my fiancee isn't a fan of that particular dried fruit. While he details the process, I'm just going to show you the end result with a few notes.

-- It is possible for your house to be too cool for the instant yeast to activate.
-- While this recipe is by no means difficult, having a mixer and a hook attachment would have been nice.
-- My oven sucks, so I ended up undercooking the bagels slightly for fear of burning them. The good news is that they're still delicious if a little chewy.

IMDB Recommendations

2012-02-06T10:25:00.001-08:00

I guess IMDB picked these recommendations from stuff that I've searched, but I still can't figure out how it arrived at this distribution of films. Once of these things is not like the others:

It's almost as bad as the Netfix suggestions.

(Mostly) Catching Up With 2011

2012-02-03T16:51:00.000-08:00

I had quite a few thoughts on Scream 4, Moneyball, and Attack the Block after watching them and not a lot of time to write posts about them, so I fear they'll be getting short shrift (or this will be a really long piece [I don't think I've ever written "shrift" before]).

If... -- Lindsay Anderson

My reaction to If... is basically summed up by the ellipses in the title. It was good. Nothing about it arrested my attention for more than a few minutes at a time (the first time it switches from color to black and white then back to color caught my eye). It's a world I'm not too familiar with made all the worse by my exposure to the world of Harry Potter. Private schools and the lives within will forevermore recall Hogwarts. Of Anderson's films, I've only seen this and This Sporting Life which garnered a similar reaction. Still, kudos to the movie that brought Malcolm McDowell to the attention of Stanley Kubrick.

Scream 4 -- Wes Craven

Scream 4 didn't get the best reviews on its release and I've learned since talking to people about it that the Scream series isn't viewed to highly by many (I'm very surprised by how many hate the second Scream as I remember critics claiming it's better than the first at the time of its release). I classify as a full-fledged fan of the series. It hits the right marks between comedy and horror and it wholly justifies it's existence as a series (which I speak of in this post from a few years ago). Plus, I'm a big fan of who-done-its and that's exactly what the Scream movies are so I was optimistic about the experience.

And it's fun. Exactly what one would expect from a Scream movie. The opening scene playfully mocks the opening scare M.O. of endless horror films (including this series) and there's tons of other meta stuff to play around with including references to Courtney Cox and David Arquette's real life marriage and divorce and Hayden Panettiere saying that she might have super-powers. It's also a lot of fun that while there have been no more Scream movies, they are up to seven Stab movies within Scream. I like that the series went from being based directly on Sidney to jumping off into ridiculousness (if the brief descriptions are to be believed) while Sidney lives a safe life. Sure, the meta-ness gets a little too cute at times and sure, there are more red herrings than imaginable, and yes, how long has Ghostface been waiting in that closet for this exact scenario to happen so the kill can be most effective and have the proper audience, but it's all still a good time. It's well made and tense, though it's hard to believe I ever found the series as scary as I did. There's also a great line about messing with the original that I wish was the last of the movie.

A few other comments about the series:

-- I really like that it's one of, if not the only, horror series that has maintained three of its leads and that the expectation that one of them is definitely going to die keeps getting subverted. At least until now...

-- It's really cool that the series is able to just replace the killer(s) under the costume for each new movie. This prevents them from having to figure out how to resurrect the iconic monster while maintaining said monster. Even though there's a lot of suspension of disbelief in the Scream series, it still basically takes place in a real world.

Moneyball -- Bennett Miller

Fire Joe Morgan changed the way I watch and think about baseball (who knew a comedy writer could do that?). Much of their writing dealt with Joe Morgan and his absolute rejection of Moneyball and mocking him for thinking that Billy Beane actually wrote the book (I wonder if Joe Morgan thinks Billy Beane directed Moneyball). I'm not sure if the movie will do the same for anyone, but I hope it at least directs them to the book which is a lot better (an age-old refrain).

It's not that Moneyball (the movie) is bad; it just focuses on some of the wrong things. I know that a Hollywood movie has to try to "humanize" characters and appeal to many demographics, but the stuff with his ex-wife and daughter is treacly nonsense. It's there for narrative purpose only. Why does he go back to the stadium? His daughter tells him to. Why doesn't he take the Boston job? His family daughter isn't there. The only good thing about that plot is that Spike Jonze pops up as his wife's new man. Since I've been catching up with The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret where Jonze plays a similar character, I've crafted an alternate universe where it is the same guy. The idea amuses me greatly.

The film is at its best when we're learning about the new system and how much adversity they face trying to implement it. Getting a look at how trades are made and a team is built. The book didn't become a best seller. It became a best seller because it's about how to operate a successful business against incredible odds. There is no need to add a family because the story is inherently relatable and dramatic. It's not about baseball. It's about adversity and that dogma isn't always truth. The saddest thing is that Beane never got to win a World Series and now nearly every team is playing Moneyball which puts him right back where he started.

Attack the Block -- Joe Cornish

It's a brave move to have the characters you're going to spend the entire movie with rob someone at knife-point in the first scene. Everyone talks about the importance of having "likable" characters and this sets them off on the wrong foot (I've only seen one bolder attempt at this ever). They don't even show any remorse. It's unrepentant. But, being a movie, they are forced into interacting with their victim in dire circumstances where everything can get worked out. That sounds sappy, but the portrayal of the Sam (the victim) encountering the gang is solid and believable. It's an extreme situation and some threats are bigger than others.

I was nervous about Attack the Block because I really hate British thug life (really, thug life). It's just a bunch of people acting like assholes for no reason (though, as AtB attests, there are multitudes of reasons). Fortunately, the action starts fast, so our time with the obnoxious version of these characters is short. The rest of the film flies by and is remarkably effective. It's very tense with some good scares and a lot less humor than I was expecting, which isn't a bad thing (though it's not unfunny). There's a lot that suggests what a small world these characters live in which really helps create a sense of reality in this unreal scenario. Speaking of which, the aliens are amazing creations. They practically devour light save for their glowing teeth which, in an awesome design move, look like eyes when their mouths are closed.

My only real issue with Attack the Block is the chanting at the end. I seriously doubt that most of the people chanting know anything about why they are doing so (unless it's a commentary on mob mentality, which I doubt). It's overly sentimental ending for a movie that takes very little time for sentiment.

King Corn -- Aaron Woolf

King Corn makes the mistake of thinking that it's "protagonists" are the most interesting part of the documentary. Any time Ian Cheney and Curtis Ellis are on screen, the movie reeks of contrivance. The shots are all set up and they're pondering aimlessly, or "discovering" something (except the camera is already inside so we know that they've already had a look around), or playing whiffle ball. Even the idea of going to Iowa to plant an acre of corn is contrived (and I can't stand that they talk about the "work" they were doing when it was all someone else driving machinery over their acre. They paid for the seed and the lot. That's about it). Infinitely more interesting is when they actually getting around to discussing the corn culture of our country. The uses, the subsidies, the volume. There is something clearly very wrong. But they put themselves at the center of it all. And guess what: they're not that interesting. King Corn is almost good despite itself.

Is God Divorced?

2012-02-01T12:28:00.001-08:00

You know how churches like to put "cute" (I can't keep that word out of quotes today) sayings on their little word boxes (I don't feel right calling it a marquee) in their front yard? I saw one while on a bike ride today that struck me as particularly odd. It read:

"God wants full custody, not just weekend visits."

The point is obvious. Sundays shouldn't be your only day of worship, yada yada yada. But, as usual, I've been over-thinking this metaphor. So here we go,

First of all, this quote implies that God is divorced. Some infallible, omniscient being, huh?

Not only is he divorced, he doesn't have (or is struggling to get) full custody.

And if we continue the God just wanting his kids back, we have to consider that God has doled out his share of abuse and may not deserve full custody of his children.

I can already here the more devout amongst you muttering that it's all part of God's plan and that he loves us all and he has a reason for meting out tragedy seemingly at random. But doesn't that sound just a little like the father defending himself? "I'm doing this because I love you." "I know what's best." "This hurts me more than it hurts you." "It builds character."

In the context of the metaphor this particular church supplied, it seems to me that God is lucky that he has weekend visits. Perhaps the church needs to rethink this particular message.

Obligatory Cat Post

2012-02-01T11:32:00.000-08:00

I have a complex relationship with cats (complex meaning I don't like them). While I was out taking pictures for Backboard Jungle, I walked by a yard with a cat sitting in it. We made eye contact (I like to stare down cats as I pass them) and since I am all things to all animals, it approached me and started rolling around on its back in the driveway near my feet. However, since there were no basketball hoops around, I had no reason to stop and left it behind. Two or three houses down, though, there was a hoop which I proceeded to photography (as you'll recall, this was the point of my excursion). My concentration focused through the viewfinder, I felt something around my ankle. The cat had left the security of its front yard to be with me. I took a picture of it being "cute:"

I put cute in quotes because I know that if I had motioned to pet the cat, it very easily could have decided that petting is its least favorite thing and mauled my hand beyond usage. Cats are devious like that.

Organics to You (Me)

2012-01-31T14:12:00.001-08:00

As with most things in life, I take my cues from Paul Toohey. When he tells me to play with my camera more, I do it. When I need something to fill in the void between the end and beginning of baseball seasons, he has a hockey team chosen for me to root for (which team is it again, Paul?). His only bad idea is rooting for that Yankees. So when he started getting organic produce delivered to his house, I paid attention (I'm even stealing his idea for a post) Clearly, he was on to something.

With a child on the way, this could be a game-changer. We only have one car, so trips to the grocery store have to be planned. Plus, going with a baby is just a pain. They always pick out the worst stuff. Having the stuff delivered by Organics to You (me) ensures that it's (mostly) locally produced (since it's a year-round service, obviously certain things won't be in season, which is OK because we'd run into that problem at the grocery store anyway) and offers a variety of produce that we'd never think about getting, such as beets (seriously, I have no idea what to do with beets. All I know is that beet salad will make your poop red).

We got our first delivery today and I'm stoked. It's kind of beautiful. There are still odds and ends that need to be picked up from the store, but this will more than do for now.

Here's a list of what's in the box:

3-4 Gold Nugget Tangerines-Cali'
3 Fuji Apples-Local, farm direct*
4 Bosc Pears-Local, farm direct*
2 Grapefruit-Cali'
2 Avocado-Mexico
1/3lb-1/2lb. Crimini Mushrooms-Local, farm direct*
1 bunch Carrots-Cali'
1 Yellow Onion-Local, farm direct*
1lb. Beets-Local*
1 bunch Broccoli-Cali'
1 bunch Hardy Greens-Local, farm direct*
2lbs. Potatoes-Local, farm direct*
1 bunch Cilantro-Cali'

A Very Specific Monsters, Inc Appreciation

2012-01-27T15:49:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, I was studying up for Pixar Trivia night presented by Shanrock's Trivia and, for the first time, I noticed the brilliance of the Monsters, Inc logo.

It's got the "M" and "I" for the name of the company, they eye evokes being watched by a monster in your room, and it actually forms the face of a monster with the pointed, white cut-outs in the "M" forming teeth! It's simple and incredible. And all for a fictional company. With how many bad logos are out there, it's a wonder that Pixar hasn't opened a side business to design logos for everyone. When I finally noticed the many facets of the logo, it blew my mind nearly as much as the time I realized that The Beatles are named such because the word "beat" is contained within (a realization that occurred embarrassingly late in life).

Yorkie Bar

2012-01-26T11:56:00.001-08:00

I'm pretty sure I've shared this with people before, but I a friend's Tumblr post reminded me of it. It just blows my mind that a company would be OK with this slogan* (and it's been the slogan since 2001!).

Of course, there's this:

And this:

So... nevermind.

The military rations of the candy say "It's not for civvies!" which I am amused by (though it does still feature the "no women" image).

More Nostalgia

2012-01-25T15:57:00.000-08:00

I've already featured a few posts dealing with nostalgia after I returned from Pennsylvania earlier this month. I'd imagine this has something to do with having a child and getting married in the next two and six months, respectively. Age and responsibility lead one to look back the path leading to the present, I guess.

Anyway, I just want to share something that I threw away while I was sorting through all of my junk over the holidays, but rescued when I remembered I needed a calculator with a big screen at work.

Yes, I was willing to throw out this amazing and still functional calculator (albeit, with two pieces missing) while I was at home. It has since stopped working (that dot on the screen is all it displays now) and I'm having trouble letting go. Maybe it's because the calculator is one of my oldest possessions or maybe I'm just too excited for baseball to start up again, but I just can't throw it out. It's too awesome!

Awful Songs by Good Bands

2012-01-23T23:40:00.000-08:00

I was going to make a numbered list on this subject, but realized that it'll work better as an ongoing project. Every band has at least one song that is awful, so why not give myself to explore the subject at my leisure? Just because I'm only including one song from a band, don't believe that I don't recognize there may be more. The songs I'm selecting are just the worst. Feel free to add your own in the comments and I'll feel free to agree or to remind you that that band was never any good.

Neil Young -- Sample and Hold
Neil Young is known for shaking things up musically. His catalogue is littered with experiments, not all of which panned out. Here, he discovered computers! Upon re-listening to Sample and Hold, I almost reconsidered its position. It's oddly hypnotic. Then I remember it's eight minutes long and immediately want to bail. The song also sounds more like Electric Light Orchestra than Neil Young to me.

Coldplay -- In My Place
This song is the reason I say "Good Bands" in the title of the post and not "Great Bands." I haven't listened to the last two Coldplay albums at all and have barely listened to X&Y, but I believe that A Rush of Blood to the Head is legitimately great. Except for In My Place. How it became the lead single from the record blows my mind and is an exemplar of why I don't purchase greatest hits albums. You miss a world of great music for what the record company wants you to hear. On the other hand, it's been in my head ever since I decided to include it, so what do I know?

The Beatles -- The Long and Winding Road
Before including this, I listened to the Let It Be... Naked version of The Long and Winding Road just to make sure it belonged. The Phil Spector-(over-)produced original version drips with emotional manipulation (it feels like a really bad film score from the 40's).While the Naked version is indeed better, it still comes off as cloying and, ultimately, dull.

Bon Iver -- Woods
Woods is from the Blood Bank EP and while Justin Vernon has done amazing, non-irritating things with the vocoder, this isn't one of them. There's an ethereal beauty to some of it, but it winds up feeling like an experiment that got too complicated and went on for too long in the end.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds -- Death Is Not the End
I was going to put Green Eyes in this place (accidentally name dropped two Coldplay songs in one sentence fragment), but remembered how much of a drag Death Is Not the End is. Murder Ballads is one of my favorite albums of all time (and damn the person who borrowed it and never gave it back!). It's full of energy and sadism and great imagery. Just a masterclass on how to be badass (seriously, Stagger Lee sounds like it belongs in Deadwood) yet maintain one's soft side. Then it ends on the dreadfully dull Death Is Not the End. I don't know how a song that features multiple vocalists and actual verses, a chorus, and a bridge can feel more repetitive and longer than a 14-minute ramble on the same album. It's an awful way to go out on an amazing album. While the original doesn't feel quite so bad, it's not very good, either. But we'll get to Bob Dylan some other time...

Surprises and the Sheen/Estevez Family

2012-01-20T13:32:00.000-08:00

I had to hold off on writing the Roundup because I use Wikipedia quite a bit for it and, even though there were some simple workarounds, the blackout would have made things at least slightly annoying. I spent a lot of time with the Sheen/Estevez clan in the past week or so. One of the films (which won't be spoken of here since it wasn't a Netflix rental), Young Guns, actually features TWO members of the family. What fun I have!

Cobb -- Ron Shelton
Cobb is a piece of shit. The title should really be "Tuesdays with Cobb-y" or "Stumpy: The Story of Ty Cobb's Biographer While He Spent Time with the Man before Cobb's Death," but that's a bit unwieldy. I guess I can see why they went with the most recognizable name. Basically, we get a brief, barebones history of Ty Cobb's playing days and the rest of the time we spend with Cobb (Tommy Lee Jones) and Al Stump (Robert Wuhl). Cobb is ancient and insane and Stump's having marital woes. Maybe my disappointment in the film is that I was expecting an actual biopic about Cobb and this isn't it. However, who the hell cares about Al Stump? And, you know what? I might. But not in a movie called COBB!

Another You -- Maurice Phillips
The last of the Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor movies and, though I have yet to see Stir Crazy, I feel comfortable saying this is the worst. It's not that it's bad, it's just bland. Pryor was already diagnosed with MS when he made this film and it's evident. He doesn't have the physicalness and the dynamic way with words that made him such a great performer. As a result, he comes off as pretty wooden. Another You is almost oppressively silly at times and I felt a little embarrassed for both Pryor and Wilder, but it actually picks up some steam as everything comes together. Definitely not essential viewing, but if you like Wilder and Pryor and don't mind extremely dated movies, there are worse ways to spend your time.

Elephant -- Gus Van Sant
Things would be so much easier if directors I don't care for would just make movies I don't like so that I can write them off completely and get on with watching the other movies on my queue. But since going from disliking Brian de Palma to his placement in my top ten filmmakers of all-time, I don't know what to believe anymore. I've seen a number of Van Sant's movies (and even served him coffee!) and, as of Elephant, have like exactly three. But two of them were the last to Van Sant movies I watched (the other was My Own Private Idaho). Elephant should be everything I hate about a movie. There's no plot or story, no real characters (meaning no character arcs), and it's all hand-held. What the movie lacks in the elements that enhance my enjoyment of a movie, it makes up for in craftsmanship and structure. Elephant takes place on a school day that ends in a massacre. It creates a normal, realistic world where no one could ever see it coming (and if the viewer didn't know the gist already, it would be a shock for them, too). There's loads of long steadicam shots through the halls and grounds of the school with scenes overlapping at different points to orient the viewer on the timing of the various diversions. It's almost like a stream-of-consciousness form of storytelling and becomes hypnotic. The shear amount of coordination with extras kind of blows my mind. I fully expected have a miserable time watching Elephant and I was shocked to discover it's easily my favorite film of Van Sant's.

Badlands -- Terrence Malick
Speaking of surprises, The Tree of Life is easily in my top five films of the 2011 list (accompanied by Drive, I Saw the Devil, Trollhunter, and Hobo with a Shotgun [thus far, still plenty to see]). I started watching it a midnight after work and fully expected to doze on and off throughout. It utterly mesmerized me (I think I have a weakness for steadicams). It was also the only Terrence Malick film I'd ever seen. Going in to Badlands, I didn't know what my expectations should be other than looking beautiful, which it is. Badlands is the story of two fugitives on the run from the law, but there's never really a sense that the outside world cares about them until the end. It's almost like we live in the Kit's (Martin Sheen) delusions of grandeur. Except, it turns out they're not. What I wasn't expecting at all was how funny the film is. I don't know if I'd call it a comedy (I guess that would depend on one's mindset), but there's almost never a moment where I wasn't chuckling to myself whether it was something Kit was rambling on about or the nonchalance he and Holly (Sissy Spacek) have about their crime spree. Badlands is terrific and I can't believe Criterion hasn't been able to get the rights to it for a release.

Mission: Impossible -- Brian de Palma
And hey! Here's de Palma. Even though I've admitted to loving de Palma, I'm wary of his work in the 90's and 00's. I do like Femme Fatale, though, so who knows? However, I also can't stand Tom Cruise (let's lump Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts in there, too). It didn't take Mission: Impossible to win me over, though (I've never seen the show, so I didn't have that hurdle to, well, hurdle). First, Emilio Estevez! I never thought I'd be so excited to see him. Then I see the Rob Bottin (The Thing) did the make-up effects and Robert Towne (Chinatown) co-wrote the script. A pretty impressive pedigree. The ultimate bonus is that Tom Cruise actually seems like he has believable human emotions in this film. Like a sense of humor. The pre-credit scene is pretty good, but the opening scene for the main plot is what really hooked me. I was afraid Cruise' influence would overwhelm de Palma's style, but those fears were unfounded. Particularly neat is the elevator sequence where the wall is cutaway so we can see the action in the hall and the elevator shaft. I remembered people talking about how confusing the film is when it came out, but it was pretty predictable to me. Maybe I'm just used to the conventions at this point. That didn't diminish the ridiculous (and it gets pretty ridiculous) fun. The only reason I watched Mission: Impossible is because I want to see the Brad Bird directed fourth film, but feel obligated to do my homework. I'm glad I did, though I'm not so excited about John Woo's second installment...

This Is Everything I Hate About Statistics

2012-01-17T22:11:00.000-08:00

Or maybe everything I hate about the way these statistical studies are reported. An article about how the number of pedestrians killed while wearing headphones has tripled popped up on a number of the websites I follow. Usually, I'm happy just reading the comments from those sites because, after all, I go there because I like the writers, but no one was answering the questions I had about the article. So I went to the main cited source, which was equally devoid of the information I desired. I can only assume that the AFP reporter is lazy and only got the gist of the study or that the researchers have no idea what they are doing.

I don't really care one way or another about the results of the study. I go running with headphones on, but I hate seeing cyclists and drivers using them (their inattentiveness tends to have greater ramifications, especially drivers). As for pedestrians, I feel no ill will, though I choose not to wear them while walking. What irks me about the article and maybe the study is that, given the information we have, it's meaningless. Let's see what's missing...

-- Since we have no data on how many pedestrians listen to headphones while walking around in 2004 versus 2011 (the dates cited in the article), we have no idea if there is a real increase in deaths. It could easily be exactly what's expected if the pedestrian-killed-while-listening-to-headphones:total-pedestrians-that-listen-to-headphones ratio is the same.

-- Similarly, the article claims that from 2004 to 2011 there were 116 deaths in this group, with sixteen in 2004 and forty-seven last year. That leaves fifty-three deaths from 2005 to 2010. We aren't given the dispersal of those deaths, but I'm fairly certain the numbers over that time period do not constitute a rising trend. Maybe we aren't given a chart tracking this data because 2011 looks like an anomaly (just speculating...).

-- Maybe the reason there are more accidents of this nature is not because more pedestrians started picking up there headphones along with their keys and wallet, but because there are more pedestrians period. The article states that in more than half of the incidents, the pedestrian was run down by a train. Perhaps, said pedestrian was running to catch the very train that caught him (the article makes it known that 2/3 of the victims were male and under thirty, so I'm comfortable saying "him"). And yes, I'm fully aware of the irony in citing statistics in a write-up decrying just that.

-- Hell, and where are the statistics on public transportation usage? Most of us don't live right off of a bus/subway line. We've got to get there somehow. Does the study differentiate between pedestrians and commuters?

-- Why does the study exclude cell phones when so many of them are used as mp3 players now, not to mention have any number of other distractions attached? Isn't distraction distraction regardless of device? Why not shift some blame to buses that feature adds on the side of them? Surely that's a distraction. The researchers are claiming one form of distraction is worse than another, whether they intend to or not.

-- And what are the numbers on non-headphoned pedestrians? Are they going up as well? Surely pedestrians in headphones aren't the only people getting run down out there.

This is the exact type of report designed to try to scare people into doing something. It's vague and on shaky ground. Whether that's the researcher's fault or the reporter's, I'll never know because I haven't been able to find a link to the study. I get the sense that Dr. Richard Lichenstein has a child to whom he's trying to prove a point.

Public Service Announcement: Turn Signals

2012-01-13T13:36:00.001-08:00

The lack of turn signal use makes me apoplectic. Aside from pressing down on the gas pedal, it might be the easiest thing to use in a car and there is no excuse not to use it. As such, this post is a bit of a surprise for me.

For the love of god, people... when you are faced with an off-set intersection such as this one:

and you want to go straight, DO NOT USE YOUR TURN SIGNAL! It's confusing and creates all sorts of traffic related confusion, be it cars, bikes, or pedestrians. As you can see from the picture, you don't even change street numbers. Plus, there's only only three options: left, right, and "straight." Ideally, we can figure out that if you don't signal, you're continuing on 52nd (in this scenario and provided you aren't one of those assholes who doesn't signal at all).

This intersection happens to be on my bike route to work, so I've had time to build up a lot of rage about this subject.

Conversely, when faced with an intersection life this:

please, do use a turn signal, even if you're making that slight right. It's the nice thing to do.

Redheads as Villains

2012-01-12T12:00:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, it felt like everywhere I turned, someone was talking about redheads*. Redheads were being bullied:

Sperm banks were shutting us out and redheads kept popping up in movies I was watching as villains. So, with all of this negative redhead content in my mind, I thought it'd be fun to make a list of movies that feature a redhead as the villain (or a villain). I'm sure I've missed a bunch, so feel free to add to the list in the comments. In no particular order:

The Incredibles

Ghostbusters
Children of the Corn

The Iron Giant
Ferris Bueller
-- Honestly, I could probably just load this list up with Jeffrey Jones appearances, but I'll leave it at one. Same goes for William Atherton in Ghostbusters.
A Christmas Story

House II: The Second Story
Batman Forever

*I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge how weird it is that we call them "redheads." We don't call people "blond heads" or "brunette heads" and "black heads**" has an entirely different meaning. Red heads are already set aside as other just by the way we refer them.

**Honestly, I'm not really sure what you call someone with black hair. I'm going to call them "noirs" from now on.

Monster Rugs

2012-01-11T15:28:00.000-08:00

The following rugs were given to me by my cousin who has a friend with an ability to print on carpet and rug. It's pretty sweet, as you can see. Luckily for me, he made a bunch and gave some to my cousin who was kind enough to pass them on to me. If you've ever wanted to know the inner workings of a monster, boy have you come to the right place. I just can't decide if I should hang them on the wall of the baby's room or put them on the floor.

Godzilla:

The Smog Monster (I had to look this one up):

Double bonus from all of this... upon showing my nieces, their interest was piqued and we spend the next 10 minutes or so watching clips of Godzilla and learning about the various monsters from the series. Yes, I introduced them to Godzilla (and luckily, it was one of their birthday's the next day and I was able to get them a Godzilla toy. Happy days, indeed).

Odd Combo

2012-01-10T13:53:00.001-08:00

A while ago, I bought the Alien soundtrack on vinyl. I haven't listened to it nearly as much as I should because I thought my fiancee might be annoyed by it, which is crazy because it's Jerry Goldsmith and he rules. I listened to it yesterday and I don't know what I was thinking. However, because it's been sitting on my shelf for a while, I either forgot or didn't know that there was an old receipt trapped inside the album cover:

Maybe I'm just prejudiced and can't believe that someone would by the amazing soundtrack to one of my favorite movies AND whatever Hot Rod Hootenanny is, but that seems like an odd combination to me.

Also, it's very clearly the Alien Soundtrack, not Aliens. Get it right, Multnomah Antique Gallery salesperson!

Dustin Pedroia: Short and Hard-Working

2012-01-09T16:20:00.000-08:00

My grandma and I have a playful relationship when it comes to baseball. She's been a Tampa Bay Rays fan since the beginning (back when they were bad and called the Devil Rays). You can see Tropicana Field from their apartment in St. Petersburg, and, if you really wanted to, you could walk to and from the games. She also has season tickets. I, as you may know, am a Red Sox fan. Watching the games is a bit less convenient and attending games is nearly out of the question since I moved from Boston to Portland. The nearest American League stadium is Safeco Field in Seattle. Hell, we don't even have a Minor League team anymore. I bought MLB TV just to keep up with the Sox this past year, something I have to do because I know my grandma is going to be talking smack to me throughout the year (and, to be fair, just as much smack about her own team who I frequently have to defend against her attacks).

Last year she sent me Dustin Pedroia's autobiography because she really likes the guy she thought I might be interested. Of course, she couldn't resist sending a few items along with it:

To be honest, I probably never would have read Born to Play if someone hadn't bought it for me (as I previously mentioned, I can't ignore things loved ones gave me). I love autobiographies/biographies, but I have little interest in reading about someone's life who is my age. It feels like the only thing I'm going to get out of it is yet another "struggled against adversity to become successful" story, the idea of which bores me to dry heaves. Somehow, though, Pedroia's book is much worse than that.

Before I go on, I should make it clear that I love Pedroia as a ballplayer and am very happy he's playing for the Red Sox. He's fun to watch and is solid all around. I don't think I've ever been annoyed, exasperated, or angry watching him play. But dear god, he sounds like an insufferable person to be around in his book! The overall impression of him from the book is a relaxed, considerate, and friendly person, reading about how competitive he's been his whole life and how much he hates losing strikes me as a total lack of perspective on life in general. Thinking about being around that type of attitude puts me on edge.

But all that only points to a larger issue: the man has a MASSIVE Napoleon complex. Seriously, this seems to be the only reason the book was written. The adversity in Pedroia's life is that he's short and that feeds into everything in his life. At every stage, someone tells him "you're too short to be a ballplayer" (except, for some reason, his high school football coach put him in at starting quarterback). I get that he doesn't fit the mold for a professional baseball player, but about half of the pro ball players don't fit that mold. I love baseball to death, but there aren't many sports that have more variance in body types. So, Pedroia literally makes a list of all the people who doubted him so that he can rub his success in their faces. That's not really healthy behavior or a very good lesson to inspire with. He spends much of the book discussing how he trash talks to everyone (even coaches when he first meets them) like we're supposed to view that as an admirable trait.

Pedroia says in the Acknowledgments that "I want to share my story because I know a lot of fans will be able to relate to it in a positive way," but really, his story boils down to "I'm short and I worked hard." Sure, I guess there's a good message in there, but it's boring and totally unnecessary. Do you know how many pro-athletes worked hard to get there that didn't write books? Me either, but I do know it's lots. The short angle is really the hook for the whole book. His family was loving and supportive (which is awesome, for real) and his only struggles were broken bones that he obtained playing sports. Even his wife's battle with cancer seems artificial (I may got to hell for this). She spent her life baking in the sun and in tanning beds without proper protection. In a time when we know very well the danger of that, it feels like she knowingly brought on her struggles herself. Also, it just pushes forward the fallacy that if you work hard, you will be rewarded. That's the sort of mindset you can have when you're already successful (whatever your definition of success is). Many people work their asses off just to stay afloat.

Finally, because it's an autobiography, it has to detail his life to the point of writing except that the story was the same each step of the way so the book is incredibly redundant. I can't believe his co-writer, Edward J. Delaney didn't edit the text accordingly. Things will be repeated three times on the same page, even. Born to Play is a chore to read and kind of makes Pedroia seem a little insufferable. Fortunately, I only have to watch him play.

Ringing in the New Year

2012-01-06T15:03:00.000-08:00

The first week of the new year brings the first Netflix Roundup. I know you've all missed it. There's not denying that. If this column feels more rockin' than usual, it's because I'm listening to Black Mountain. If it doesn't... well, that's on you.

Chawz -- Jeong-won Shin
On all fronts, this a ridiculous Korean movie. Chawz is nowhere near the caliber of the work of Jee-woon Kim, Chan-woo Park, or Joon-ho Bong. It's more in line with an original SyFy creature feature. And that's OK, because Chawz is a lot of fun. What attracted me to the movie was that I heard it was basically a remake of Jaws except it takes place on land with a giant wild boar. Hell yeah! That's basically what it is. Chawz hits many of the Jawz story beats and takes more beats from some of Steven Spielberg's other films. I kind of wish that I'd done a Jaws/Chawz double feature just so the former was fresh in my mind. Chawz isn't great and it depicts the Korean population (especially the police) as a bunch of bumbling fools who can't remain on their feet for more than five minutes. Even without the Jaws inspiration, I'd recommend Chawz based solely on the depiction of the people. It's an odd and entertaining movie.

The Harold Lloyd Collection -- Hal Roach
I like the Harold Lloyd persona. He's got a sort of dope-ish, nerdy confidence that makes him very appealing. Unfortunately, while I was watching this collection, my iPod crapped out on me just before I was to fly across the country and I was trying to deal with that while watching this. I don't know how many of you have tried to watch silent films while trying to work on other stuff, but it doesn't really work. There was a lot to like, but I feel disingenuous forming a solid opinion. Fear not, though. I jumped volume two of the collection near the top of my queue and shall not be distracted the second go 'round. This is my promise. This is my oath.

The Happiness of the Katakuris -- Takashi Miike
One of the more bizarre movies I've ever seen. It's Miike's take on musical comedies with a little horror thrown in. I was enthralled by the opening stop-motion work (oh yes, there's stop-motion), but the film couldn't really sustain that momentum, nor do I think it could. Katakuris errs a bit too far on the light-hearted side of things which is weird to say about a movie that features a fair number of people dying. It would have worked better with a more sinister, blackly comic streak going through it. That said, there are some really amazing scenes or even pieces of scenes that make it hard to look away from the screen. Additionally, there's a really intense showdown near the end that plays all to real and feels like it's out of another movie. Somehow, in light of everything that's come before, the scene totally works for me. Even though I tend to hate musicals, Happiness of the Katakuris is by far the most satisfying Miike experience I've had. It's playful, bizarre, and very silly. There's not many movie-watching experiences like this one. It'd be fun to pair it with Forbidden Zone or Phantom of the Paradise.

The Ward -- John Carpenter
It's better than Ghosts of Mars... Actually, The Ward isn't terrible or even bad. It simply doesn't offer a lot of new or interesting ideas to the genre. It feels workman-like, hitting all the necessary beats and throwing in some nonsensical scares just to keep the audience engaged. The scares are effective and there is a fairly palpable tension running throughout this story of a group of haunted girls in a mental ward, but by the end of The Ward, it all feels a little pointless and silly (in the bad way). The ending calls to mind a movie from 2003, which if I mention it's title, will give away everything, so everything feels like well-worn territory. Still... it looks nice and it's cool that John Carpenter is making movies again. I just hope he picks some better material to work with next time (notably, he didn't write the screenplay or do the music for The Ward).

11 Harrowhouse -- Aram Avakian
I like Charles Grodin. I really do. He can be very entertaining and engaging. But in 11 Harrowhouse, he may as well be a corpse. I've never seen someone sleepwalk through a movie like this and I've certainly never heard someone sleep-narrate a movie. It's almost as if the producers and director shot the movie without any narration, realized it was a tremendous bore and tried to punch it up and turn it into a comedy by adding snarky Grodin narration which he delivers with a disinterest one reserves for those people who come to your door preaching their particular version of the "gospel." He must have been in the booth watching the movie, waiting for his cues, barely able to keep his eyelids open. Seriously, a movie about a jewel heist should NEVER be this dull. At least James Mason brings his A-game, but then, he just has a sympathetic tenor to his voice that makes it near impossible for him not to bring some gravity to a role.

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore -- Martin Scorsese
It totally makes sense that this was turned into a TV series. Most of the time, I felt like all of the various plot lines and vignettes were rushed and wanted to spend a little more time developing them. Of course, the movie would have been four hours long, so like I said: TV show. I wonder if that's just the nature of this style of film. M*A*S*H is also episodic and was turned into a TV show. Maybe that's the secret in successful translations: the source material should be episodic. Anyway, I thought I was really going to like ADLHD a lot at the start, but it kind of drifted in and out of interest for me. The relationship with the son is pretty odd and the relationship with Kris Kristofferson felt like it turned without much prompting. Seriously, where'd this rage come from? But it was affable and Ellen Burstyn was mostly good (though occasionally she seemed like a cartoon version of Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence). I kind of wish that Scorsese had stuck with the stylistic aesthetic of the opening scene, though that probably wouldn't have worked out in the end.

Disney Villain Deaths

2012-01-05T15:43:00.001-08:00

While I was home over the holidays, my nieces watched Beauty and the Beast. I came into the room right at the climax where Beast and Gaston are fighting on the rooftops/balconies of Beast's castle. My memory of the moment where Gaston plummets to his death was that Beast wheeled around after being stabbed in the side and knocked him off the side of the castle. This was several other's memory, as well (including a Cracked list of the most terrifying Disney deaths). I was surprised and slightly offended to discover that Gaston simply loses his balance after Beast jerks towards him after being stabbed. Can't a Disney hero even kill a bad guy who just stabbed him in the back after to hero showed mercy? This led me to think of all of the other villain deaths in Disney animated films (sticking with the 2-D movies because, while I believe there is a thesis in here, I don't want to spend my life researching it for this blog).

Of course, not every Disney movie has a villain that needs to be killed. In many instances, they receive their just comeuppance. In Cinderella, living well is her greatest revenge on her bitchy step-family. In Robin Hood, the king returns and sentences Prince John and his crew to hard labor. In Aladdin, Jafar's ego compels him to wish to be a genie which traps him in a bottle. You get the point. They don't die, but they are justly punished.

Then there are the films that don't really have a main villain, but several obstacles. The stakes aren't very high individually, but the succession makes life for the protagonist fraught with peril. Think of Pinocchio, which is basically one long morality play, or Bambi, in which man is the "villain," but really he's just one of the many aspects/perils of growing up in the forest.

Finally, there are the movies that don't really have any bad guys of which to speak. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Dumbo come to mind here. That's not to say there isn't any conflict or drama, just that these stories don't really need a threat to work.

In my search, I came up with twenty-four Disney animated features that have a strong antagonist. Of these, fifteen end with said antagonist dying or an implied death* (in the cases of Hercules and The Princess and the Frog, it's hard to say if the villains actually died or were just taken away by evil spirits. Regardless, their punishment is significantly worse than the standard comeuppance).

Before moving on to discuss how Disney (and, of course, I mean Disney the studio and not Disney the man) deals with dispatching it's villains, it should be noted that they have trouble showing their heroes playing an active role in stopping the bad guys. In 101 Dalmatians, Cruella de Vil's bumbling henchmen crash into her car resulting in her arrest. As I mentioned, the king in Robin Hood punishes Prince John. In The Emperor's New Groove, much like in Aladdin, Ezma's turned into a cute kitten and can't get the vile open which results in her jumping off the temple, bouncing off a trampoline, and hitting her head which delivers the correct potions to Kuzco (man, I love that movie). Disney is already peckish when it comes to the heroes exerting too much control. Should it be surprising that they balk at having the heroes kill someone?

Here's how all of the deaths I could find play out. I haven't rewatched these and am using Wikipedia as a resource for the one's I haven't seen, so if I get some of the details wrong, do tell.

Snow White -- lighting strikes cliff as witch is trying to roll a boulder onto the dwarves; she plummets to her death

Sleeping Beauty -- Maleficent turns into a dragon and is killed by a sword to the heart

The Black Cauldron -- the Horned King is devoured by the cauldron

The Great Mouse Detective -- Basil and Ratigan are fighting on Big Ben; they both fall, but Basil manages to save himself

Oliver and Company -- there's a crash into a train during a chase in which our heroes get out of the way just in time, but the pursuers don't

The Little Mermaid -- Ursula grows to gargantuan size and is rammed in the belly by a ship

The Rescuers Down Under -- the bad guy's pet lizard is tricked into knocking said bad guy into croc filled waters; evades crocs, but goes over waterfall

Beauty and the Beast -- discussed above

The Lion King -- Simba throws Scar over a cliff, but Scar survives only to be killed by the hyenas

The Hunchback of Notre Dame -- Quasimoda almost kills bad guy, but Esmerelda wakes and he goes to her; fight ensues with bad guy in which they both topple off of the balcony; Quasimodo saves himself as baddie falls to a fiery death

Hercules -- Hercules punches Hades into River Styx where he is dragged down by vengeful souls

Mulan -- Mulan signals for fireworks to be shot at the bad guy and he explodes quite beautifully

Tarzan -- the bad guy accidentally hangs himself pursuing Tarzan through vines

Atlantis -- hero slides baddie with glass which crystallizes the baddie's body

The Princes and the Frog -- princess destroys charm and angered spirits take the villain to the underworld

Of these fifteen movies, two feature a fight and a fall in which the hero lives which, doubtfully, is how the hero planned it. Five actually feature the hero actively killing the bad guy and two of these feature a monstrous villain which, to me, distances the hero from culpability. The bad guy is no longer human and can therefore acceptably be killed (I know Ursula isn't a human, but we're dealing with fish-people, here...). The three other films where the hero is actually a killer were all made in the last fifteen years. The rest exhibit a kind of passive climax in which the hero takes a back seat to outside forces.

As I said, I think there is a thesis here, both in how Disney shies away from portraying it's hero as active dispatchers of evil and in how content has changed in the past 80 years and how children (or people in general) react to that.

*I find it immensely interesting that thirteen of the 15 features in which the bad guy dies were released in 1985 and after.

Digging Through My Past

2012-01-03T15:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I posted an artifact from my archives, which basically means that I found it in a box of my junk still being stored at my parents' house. I doubt that I'm alone in utilizing my former residence as current storage (at least all of my junk is relegated to my old bedroom, unlike someone else I know), but as a approach 30, it's starting to feel pathetic. Also, my parents came up with a plan to drive my junk out to me if I purchase a home before my wedding in July. The fear of filling my potential home, which will be much smaller than my parents' place I can assure you, with my excess garbage (which doesn't even count my fiancee's stuff at her parents' place) was enough to compel me to dig out the non-essentials (surprisingly little. I'm a sentimental man. What can I say?).

I did a modest version of this years ago that apparently got rid of all of my high school memorabilia (oh! the lost love notes!) and some undergrad stuff, but this more thorough pass was kind of enlightening. Firstly, having a child on the way helps to justify keeping all of those toys and stuffed animals that have been sitting around in a closet for 15+ years. I liked them when I was a kid! Plus, nothing quite matches the awkwardness of digging out old, framed pictures of myself with ex-girlfriends while my pregnant fiancee is lying on the bed behind me (that goes doubly for the mug that features a picture of myself and my undergrad girlfriend at Madrigal together). Fortunately, finds that stuff amusing (as well she better since I hang out with some of her exes now and then! Don't worry Ian... you're top-notch!).

A lot of time was spent reading old comments on college papers and, if the paper wasn't too long, re-reading that. Dear lord, I was a bad writer as a freshman (I know, I know... WAS?). I was tasked with writing "journal" entries for an Extended Orientation class on supplied topics and every one reads like Ralphie's Red Rider BB Gun report in A Christmas Story.

I'm scrapping most of those old papers (unless my mom decides to see what kind of student I really was in college), but hopefully there will be some more golden nuggets from my past when I finally have to unpack those boxes. Of course, a friend of mine has the Holy Grail of personal memorabilia: an apology note for knocking her down written on awesome dinosaur paper.

As I already mentioned, I'm very sentimental. I have a difficult time getting rid of inanimate objects (and animate objects, for that matter). It's even more of a struggle if the person who gave me said object is important to me. That's partially why I hate getting cards. They're just pieces of folded paper, but some people take a fair amount of time picking out an appropriate card and they kind of stand as a representation that someone was thinking about you in their spare time even if cards are generally saved for special occasions. I tend to have to blindly grab a pile and throw them out (generally after a few years of piling up and going through each of them first because you never know when you'll find money stashed in one!). This last experience doing this was relatively painless until I found two that made me balk at tossing them. They were cards of condolence from when my dog, Farley (the best dog ever), died. To top it off, one was from an ex-girlfriend. So many emotions. Ultimately, I tossed them with only a slight tinge of remorse, but mostly because it reminded me of how much I miss my puppy (hell, all of my dogs that have died).

Going through my boxed up history was an exciting, surprising, amusing, and emotional experience. It's kind of a shame that we get rid of so much of our history in the process of condensing our lives and joining lives with another. As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about posterity (I keep a journal and wonder what future generations will think about it), I feel like each item I throw out throws a shadow on who I am in regards to the future. As someone who tries to be practical, I know it's necessary. I just hope I don't get rid of too much that rediscovering my past is no longer exciting (I hope I don't sound too narcissistic, I'd go through all of your stuff to learn about you in a heartbeat. What do you say? Tomorrow at 3?).

From the Nate Capp Archives

2012-01-03T10:28:00.000-08:00

I'll let Mrs. Mayle's letter of reminder explain what this post is about, but I'm kind of curious as to how many people still have this or had to do something similar. Also, I clearly didn't take this project seriously. My letter to my future self couldn't come off as lazier. I'm such a slacker (though Monty Python and the Red Sox both rule!).

Beating the Holiday Slump?

2011-12-21T16:43:00.000-08:00

Apparently, December is a terrible month for me to blog. I know where some of my time went, but surely there was time to write more than I did, right? October was so good to me. Why couldn't that continue? Obviously, I blame a combination of the economy and the Socialist agenda in this county. So with that, I present the last of my Netflix Roundup's for the year (perhaps even my last post?). This may be one of my most diverse collections of films yet for this feature (at least in terms of genre).

Red State -- Kevin Smith
I never really cared for Kevin Smith as a director. I really like Chasing Amy and somehow accrued Clerks, Dogma, and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back but those all leave me pretty cold. Kevin Smith the man always seemed affable enough and you have to respect someone who makes personal movies. Somewhere along the line, though, he became kind of a dick. Maybe he was always a dick and his sense of humor and charisma glossed it over, but he got mixed up in various controversies and hasn't recovered. His actions regarding the sale of Red State are a mix of P.T. Barnum and being a straight up ass, weighing more heavily to one side depending on how you feel about the man. Of course, maybe he was insecure about the sale of his movie because it fucking sucks! Smith never had much of a visual style, but the lack of one in a genre movie has the ability to crush the impact. Instead, he gets really crappy footage from the RED camera (aside from looking terrible, every time there is a fast camera move, the image is choppy) and sacrifices suspense for surprise and deus ex machina while half of the movie is told via Special Agent Exposition (played by John Goodman). Several plot points make no sense and the dialogue is ridiculously overwrought while saying very little (the only other writer more in love with his words is Tarantino). It's like Smith got so wrapped up in making a "brutal" horror movie that he forgot to include anything else but the "brutal" elements. This is an out-and-out terrible movie.

Tyson -- James Toback
I don't want to take the comparison too far, but I can't help but think of this movie as The Fog of War, except featuring Mike Tyson. It's largely Tyson, sitting on a couch, telling his life's story. Obviously, with a structure like this, we're only getting one side of the events, but that's all the movie (and, hopefully, the viewers) is interested in. It's easy to see why he became a joke, but to hear him recount these events (Robin Givens, the ear biting) is near heartbreaking. His lisping, high-pitched, nasally voice makes him sound dumb, but clearly he's not. As someone who never saw him in his prime (aside from as the ultimate fight in Mike Tyson's Punch-Out), the movie gave me a lot of respect for the man. As with any of these "rise and fall" type of lives, it's easy to forget that, in many cases, the person is insanely young during the rise and some people simply aren't equipped to handle that. It's nice to see Tyson portrayed as something other than a joke.

Caged Women -- Bruno Mattei
It's rare that I don't watch every movie that comes to me via Netflix. In this case, the DVD was a double feature of Caged Women and Women's Prison Massacre. After watching the former, I didn't have the stomach for the latter. Not because I was disturbed, but it was too... damn... BORING. Holy christ! How can people watch this stuff? Once again, there's tons of nudity, but who cares when everything else is so bad. The women-in-prison genre basically remakes the same movie every time, so my hopes for WPM dashed. There are a few more produced by Roger Corman that I want to check out and Jonathan Demme directed possibly the definitive film (plus there's the one with Linda Blair), but my enthusiasm is waining. On the plus side, Black Mama, White Mama was pretty good and Pam Grier is in a few more, so... optimism?

Pontypool -- Bruce McDonald
Pontypool is a movie I think everyone should see just so I can talk to them about it. I'm not sure it makes sense or that I like the execution, but I like the set-up, it's single locale and insular perspective, and the take on zombie conventions (though I'd never call it a zombie movie. NEVER!). It's one of those movies that you don't want to know too much about going into it. Let the movie take you where it goes and then contact me so we can chat about it.

Casualties of War -- Brian de Palma
My love of Brian de Palma grows. With the exception of Scarface, from '74 to '89, the man doesn't really have a misstep in my eyes (I've yet to see Obsession, Wise Guys, and all of The Untouchables in that timespan). Michael J. Fox' performance is terrific hurt only by the fact that you never really believe there is a risk of him backing off of his belief and raping the kidnapped girl (oh... the movie's about a group of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam who kidnap and rape a Vietnamese woman). I mean... it's Michael J. Fox! Alex Keaton! Marty McFly! So there's a bit of missing drama in that the we don't think the peer pressure will get to him. But the real flaw of the movie is Sean Penn. I don't know where he got his accent for this role, but it's terrible. He sounds like a cartoon character (I would love for someone to make a montage of the various voices Sean Penn performs with in his movies. It would be hilarious. I'd do it myself, but I can't spend that much time watching Penn or I'll go insane). The film also illustrates the difficulties to be a dissenting voice in such a strict institution. You want to talk about personal responsibility vs. people acting under orders? It's not always as easy as it sounds. Casualties of War is awesome and even overcomes the cheesy flashback "dream/remembering" structure.

One, Two, Three -- Billy Wilder
This is about as madcap and screwball as a relatively modest story can get. The setup is pretty deliberate, but the payoff is tons of fun. A Coca-Cola exec in Germany is supposed to watch over his boss' daughter, but she goes off and marries a Communist and her parents are flying in. There's lots of fun mockery of Communism and Capitalism and playful back and forth. James Cagney rules as Mac MacNamara, carrying much of the movie and delivering an impossible amount of dialogue. It's neat to see him in a comedy role and doing so comfortably. It's amazing to me that people can write dialogue so witty and fast-paced.

Who Is Harry Nilsson (and Why's Everybody Talking About Him)? -- John Scheinfeld
Basically, if you like Harry Nilsson, this is interesting because it reveals a lot about the man and his struggles/troubles (particularly fun feeling about his night out with John Lennon and the Smothers Brothers show). If you don't know who the man is, you should watch this to get a sampling of him music, because the man was amazing. Most people know him for Everybody's Talkin' from Midnight Cowboy or Put the Lime in the Coconut, but he's so much more (as my cousin pointed out, he beat "Fuck You" by nearly 40 years).

In the end, everyone could use a little more Nilsson in their lives, so you might as well watch this.

Insidious -- James Wan
Better than you'd think. The film probably met a lot of resistance because it's from the creators or Saw and while it suffers from a lot of modern horror conventions in addition to being just a little bit too flashy, Insidious is fairly affective. There are some conveniently knowledgeable characters who, while they don't know things for sure, are surprisingly accurate in their assertions, but basically, the movie is a good creepy time and bucks a few of the old haunted house tropes without being openly aware (read: meta) about it. In some ways, maybe that's why Insidious plays so well. At it's core, it's got an old-fashioned feel mixed in to the modern look. Double bonus: a lack of obnoxious, irrational characters.

Walker -- Alex Cox
All I can say is, "Damn you, Alex Cox." I spend an hour and ten minutes watching your movie and think of it as one thing, then during the last half hour, you reveal to me that it's something else entirely. Now I have to watch the damned thing again because I'm more than certain I didn't "get" it the first time. There are hints along the way, but it's not exactly easy to put it all together until the end. Fortunately, of all of Cox' films, Walker is my favorite, so watching it again won't exactly be a chore (though I'm finding that Ed Harris is a little tiresome to watch. He's always playing the same disposition). This is definitely a movie you don't want to read too much about before seeing it. In fact, I'll add it as the second movie I've ever seen that I felt the need to watch it again right away to better digest it (the first was Mulholland Drive).

Weird Al Time Lapse

2011-12-09T11:16:00.001-08:00

I've never kept it a secret that, as a 29-year old, I'm still a huge Weird Al fan (not to be confused with a huge metal fan). I've only seen the man in concert once, at Hershey Park years ago (I think it was the Bad Hair Day tour), and it was amazing. People who dismiss Weird Al for being too silly or for kids have no idea how dynamic, funny, and complicated his stage shows are. There are loads of costume/makeup changes and the band is a well-oiled machine up there. I need to see him live again.

Which brings me to this time lapse of the set up and tear down on his most recent tour (set to Hardware Store, my karaoke white whale). It's awesome and you get a brief sampling of his stage show. Stick this in your eye holes and love it.

h/t Weird Al

People In Cars, Alone

2011-12-08T11:43:00.001-08:00

I ride my bike nearly everywhere in Portland unless I'm traveling with my pregnant fiancee or going somewhere where I know my panniers won't be enough carrying capacity, like for grocery shopping (note to self: add cargo bike to wedding registry). On these bike rides, which mostly consist of going to the climbing gym and to work, I've compiled a lot of circumstantial data that a vast majority of people driving around town are driving alone. This makes me crazy. Portland is not a big city and is very easy to get around via bike and we have above average public transportation. There is no reason for so many people to be driving around alone (the sheer number of solo drivers I see everyday leads me to believe that it's statistically unlikely that everyone is going to the grocery store or other such errands where they need the extra car space).

So I was glad to see that my observations are correct. The numbers on this report boggle my mind.
Is it laziness or are we such a car-centric culture that it doesn't even occur to people that here are other options? I've talked to a few patrons at the theater who completely forgot that there is a transit stop two blocks away that is fed by three MAX lines and several buses. And the reason we started talking is that they were complaining about the parking! It feels like people just want to complain about all of the inconveniences of driving and not do anything about it.

It's a shame that people don't realize that not driving saves money, saves aggravation (I rarely have trouble finding parking), and keeps them healthy (which can even save money in the long run due to fewer health costs) among other things. Of course, one irony we're facing in Portland is that with less people driving, less money comes in through gas taxes and that's less money for PBOT. However, bikes, walking, and buses all mean fewer cars on the road, which means less wear and tear so the roads last longer.

In the end, I just want people to think if they have to go somewhere alone, do they really need to drive?

Just Call Me MacGyver

2011-12-08T11:16:00.001-08:00

The other day I locked myself out of the house without my phone or my wallet. I was pretty nervous that I was going to have to wait several hours for my fiancee to get home, so I searched my property for tools to help me regain entry. Having locked myself out once before and failed to break in then, I wasn't confident of my chances. Then I found these:

I felt more than a little like MacGyver. It was awesome.

Note: there were special circumstances to my being locked out that aided me in my break in. To try to dissuade attempts to get into my house without a key, I won't be relaying that information.

There ARE Good Movies Out There!

2011-12-06T11:28:00.001-08:00

I've been embarrassingly absent in writing this month and lord knows the end of the month is going to be a wash. Stupid Christmas. Why must you interrupt my blogging!

If I'm going to keep doing Netflix Roundups, I'm going to have to change my methods. I'm not watching nearly as many movies a week as I used to so waiting to have a collection takes a while and I forget stuff about the earlier movies. For instance, I know I had lots to say about Seed People, but at this point, you're all going to miss out on those brain babies.

Fortunately, since I've finally pulled out of the horror onslaught, the movies got better. It's a shock, I know.

The Osterman Weekend -- Sam Peckinpah
My basic reaction to The Osterman Weekend is that it wasted an awesome cast: Rutger Hauer, John Hurt, Christ Sarandon, Dennis Hopper, Burt Lancaster, and Craig T. Nelson (for some reason, it's always weird for me to remember that he had a career before Coach). I'd mention the women in the movie, but it's Peckinpah and so they barely matter (I'm only half joking). The movie is supposed to be a conspiracy thriller, but there's little that's thrilling about it. Most of the time, people are just talking about the past. I'd rather see that stuff than the conspiracy stuff. It makes some sense that this is Peckinpah's last film since directors are rarely much more than serviceable at the end of their careers. I do wish that I'd watched the documentary about the making of the movie, Alpha to Omega: Exposing The Osterman Weekend, on the DVD. It sounds pretty cool.

Seed People -- Peter Manoogian
From Charles Band's (Puppet Master) production company Full Moon Entertainment and written by the man himself, Seed People is everything you'd expect. Bad acting, bizarre plot, and silly puppetry. There isn't much memorable about the movie (except I think I remember finding one of the actresses attractive). But, as with most of Band's movies, it seems like it was fun to make. Maybe it's the part of me that regrets not making my own special effects when I was younger and that's been fantasizing about working at Jim Henson's Creature Shop, but I had a lot of fun watching the seed people roll around and seeing the design of each one, which is really the only reason to watch Band's movies.

Bacchanales sexuelles -- Jean Rollin
I have no idea why I put this on my queue. The only thoughts running through my head were related to how pointless and ridiculous soft core porn is. Seriously, what's the point in having a seven minute sex scene where the man is thrusting into the belly button of a woman (because, god forbid they accidentally rub genitals while they are simulating sex) and everyone is seeming to have a good time with this except to pad out the run time to a terrible, nonsensical movie? It's watching movies like this where I think back to my thirteen year old self and wonder what his reaction would be to the movie and to my lack of interest. "What are you doing!?!?! BOOBS! Right there! Look at the screen, you fool! GAAAAAAAHHHHHH!' Something like that, I think.

King of New York -- Abel Ferrara
This is my first Abel Ferrara movie and I've got to say, I need to check out more. King of New York rules! This is the type of Christopher Walken I was hoping for in The Prophecy, constantly awesome and constantly present. The man is designed to play a king pin. The cast is stacked, but I'll let you be surprised by everyone who is in it who became incredibly well-known. I'm also very happy that the first link. It won't let me embed and there may be an add before you watch it, but this clip is when I knew I loved this movie.

Heathers -- Michael Lehmann
Heathers has a pretty substantial reputation (Entertainment Weekly ranked it #5 on its list of Best High School Movies). The cult is strong and I was afraid that since I didn't drink the Kool Aid years earlier, it might be too late for me to join (in this scenario, the Kool Aid is for initiation purposes [maybe they peed in it], not killing purposes [or killing porpoises]). There are definitely aspects about Heathers that drive me nuts. It feels like Diablo Cody cribbed some of her dialogue stylings from this movie and Christian Slater couldn't be more obnoxious doing his Jack Nicholson impression. But the satire is strong in Heathers. It's well-observed and the dreamlike style suites the subject matter. Nearly every character is a caricature, but not so much so that the viewer can't relate to the various high school experiences. In fact, the heightened level of reality goes quite well with the heightened teenage emotions. The ending kind of falls apart, but Heathers definitely deserves its reputation. Now, if only Stanley Kubrick had directed like writer Daniel Waters desired. I'd love to see his take on the high school comedy. Kubrick wouldn't have even had to drop another film in lieu of this one since his next movie was Eyes Wide Shut.

Together -- Lukas Moodysson
Fuck Together. Here's why. The movie starts off just like any other stupid personal drama except it takes place in a commune just after Franco is killed. There's a sister that comes to live at the commune with her children because her husband hit her. I hate this type of movie. Then, dammit, I started to care about what happens in the movie! Seriously, what the fuck? Together (Tillsammans in Swedish, which automatically became my favorite Swedish word) is basically plotless, following a large group of people who exist in one space and how their relationships with each other shift. I was set to hate the movie in the first ten minutes and I blame Gustaf Hammarsten for sucking me in because his portrayal of Goren is amazing. He looks like the kind of guy you just want to hug for being a sweetheart but you can see his true feelings in his eyes and it breaks your heart. Ultimately, Together is one of those movies that doesn't drag the viewer down to build them back up. It's realistic relationships that are like any other friendly relationships. Ups and downs, but overall, everyone understands each other's perspective. It's a movie that is designed to make you feel good about humankind with soccer being the ultimate sign of togetherness. You can't help but smile in the end. And I HATE soccer. Fuck Together. It made me feel... emotions.

United 93 -- Paul Greengrass
Speaking of feeling emotions... I'm one of those people who's more cynical about 9/11 than anything else. I see those "We Will Never Forget" stickers and whatnot and think "No shit. Way to be proud about not forgetting when the planes flew into the World Trade Center. Good for you." I hate that 9/11 became a political device and I hate the turn the country took in the aftermath. I didn't lose anyone on that day and if I know anyone who did, they haven't told me. Watching United 93 (and World Trade Center months ago), my reaction almost feels like a defense mechanism. It's hard not to get misty returning to that day, sitting in my dorm room watching the events unfold, talking on AIM with friends, before heading out to Organic Chemistry because they hadn't canceled classes yet (seriously, could the day get any worse). I'll always remember it was a Tuesday because I had my Extended Orientation class that day where we talked about it.

So yeah, United 93 is a tough watch, but it's amazing. I'm kind of fascinated by the structure because it's not at all about character or narrative arcs. Everyone knows what's going to happen even though you still hope the people on 93 will be able to pull up out of the dive at the last minute. The movie many of the points of view from before any of the hijackings to the crash. It's like watching a giant game of telephone where people hear tidbits at a time of what's happening and there's an ominous feeling when it cuts to flight 93 after the planes hit the World Trade Center and they don't know anything about it. This method of communication continues on the flight when they pass on information to each other a row at a time. It's thrilling to watch.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about United 93 is that it didn't make the hijackers into vacant bad guys. They are people and feel nervous before moving and don't have everything under control and are scared and paranoid. The viewer may not sympathize with them, but we can understand what they are feeling.

United 93 is terrific and intense. If I have one complaint, it's the score. I feel that they should have dropped it altogether to match the realism the image is going for. Scores enhance drama, but the drama here doesn't need that. A dynamic use of sound design could have done just as well. That's a minor complaint since the score certainly didn't detract from the movie. Definitely see it.

Peter Dinklage in GQ

2011-12-06T11:13:00.001-08:00

I discovered the following pictures via Blogtown, the Portland Mercury's blog. The writer is quite taken with the photos, going so far as making one his computer's background. I, on the other hand, thought the pictures were kind of exploitative. They cry out to me, "Look! It's a little person! With a hot, naked woman! How utterly unusual!"

I get that Game of Thrones is notorious for it's boobaliciousness and I agree that Dinklage is badass in every possible way and deserves to have hot, naked women crawling all over him (if that's what he wants), but these pictures leave a bad taste in my mouth. What says you?

Top Ten Presidential Names

2011-11-25T16:36:00.001-08:00

A while ago, I tweeted that I don't think that people appreciate how awesome the name "Barack Obama" is, regardless of politics. It has a great flow, and miss of hard and soft sounds, and just sounds like a powerful name. This made me think about the names of other presidents. The most common are:

George (3)

John (4)

James (5... though 6 if we include Jimmy Carter)

Those may be the most frequently occurring names, but most of the names of our presidents have been horribly conventional. This is my list of the best presidential monikers. I tried my best to divorce politics from the equation, but I'm blessed with a lack of intimate knowledge of some of these people.

1. Barack Obama

2. Rutherford B. Hayes

3. Ulysses S. Grant

4. Millard Fillmore

(the only president to have consecutive consonants, maybe even letters, in his first and last name)

5. Grover Cleveland

6. Theodore Roosevelt

(may rank so high because I can't divorce his awesomeness from his name)

7. Martin van Buren

8. Abraham Lincoln

9. Chester A. Arthur

10. Dwight D. Eisenhower

Lesson taken from this list: Including your middle initial goes along to making your name sound badass.

My First Time: Castlevania

2011-11-23T13:45:00.001-08:00

I had what I thought was a great idea for a recurring feature for this space. There's a vast number of classic video games that I've never played so I thought it'd be fun to play them for the first time and write about the experience. The obvious place to start was to check out the games on the Wii Virtual Console since I can easily download the games, play them with actual controllers (as opposed to using the keyboard for emulators), and as long as I stick with NES games, it's cheap. Spending five bucks a month to have some fun and write a blog post is worth it to me.

The first game up is Castlevania. I owned the second in the series, Simon's Quest, but didn't know at the time or even until a few years ago that it's widely considered to be one of the worst games ever and was actually the Angry Video Game Nerd's first ever review. I never got too far in Simon's Quest and nothing really hooked me into the subject matter, though now I'd probably be all over it. Once Castlevania finished downloading, I was ready to go and quickly realized the problems with this feature...

For one, it's hard to talk about video games without having video (which as AVGN and numerous others show, is already well-worn territory). There's only so much about the experience that can be related through words and if the reader isn't already familiar with the material, then it's even harder. Maybe if I played more video games I'd have a firmer grasp on how to write about them, but I feel like I've already reached my first hurdle.

Secondly, a lot of these early games (and judging by some of the tomes you can buy for new games) there's a lot to be gained from say, a Nintendo Power subscription (or at least back catalogue). I know I never would have accomplished a thing in The Legend of Zelda without some assistance. That assistance also includes the social experience. I know I learned a lot from watching friends play, playing with them, and trading at every death. I'm flying solo through this game and know that there are plenty of secrets that are going unfound because I don't know to look for them. This was certainly the case when I played Super Mario World with a younger cousin. That's not to say the game is a complete mystery as many of these games follow similar tropes. If you have a history of playing video games, it's pretty easy to guess where some of the mysteries are hidden. I'd go to GameFAQs, but that seems like taking the Nintendo Power assistance to an extreme level. It's too much like cheating.

Lastly, I forgot how frustrating these games can be. I'm not very good with one player games to begin with. I tend to get bored if I don't have someone to share the experience with. It starts to feel like I'm just wasting time for the sake of wasting time instead of having fun (with a few exceptions). Add to that the ceaseless repetition of those levels and scenes that you just... can't... get... past... and my tolerance of the experience drops. I was never one of those kids who broke controllers playing video games, but I did get angry at times and frequently blamed the controller for not working right and would throw my hands in the air in exasperation yelling some mild to harsh expletive to the heavens. So, how did Castlevania go?

It was a lot simpler than I thought it'd be game play wise. As far as I know, there are no doors to enter or secret passageways to deal with. Just a basic side-scroller (with occasional scrolls on the y-axis). Weapons are easy to come by and the monsters are straight forward. Things progressively get harder and more hectic which is when frustration begins. There's a strategy to learn as to which special weapon you should keep (the time freezer, the throwing sword, the boomerang cross, etc) and the walls are where the secrets are found, but it's pretty basic.

The biggest surprise of the experience was that it's relatively unexciting. By design, you have to move cautiously, so things slow down quite a bit no matter what the threat is. It's totally unlike Contra or Mario Brothers in that respect (to bring in other side-scrollers). The pace made it feel pretty redundant to me because there's a lot of time to think about how each step of the game feels like the step before. Even when the monsters are overwhelming me, I thought that I died because of my impatience or not hitting the controller at the right time (or mishitting it) and not because the game was actually challenging. Even the point at which I stopped wasn't because I was overwhelmed but because when you get hit by something, it doesn't kill you but it does knock you backwards and I kept getting knocked into holes and fell to my death, which doesn't really feel like it's my fault. It was simply annoying to keep dying due to stuff that felt like it was out of my control.

The music is pretty cool though and writing about it now does make me want to give it another shot since I know more about the gameplay and could probably get much further this time around without having to continue (the continues, thankfully, don't start you back at the beginning of the game and are unending, at least in the Virtual Console version. Much appreciated in lieu of the ability to save). I don't know if I should be surprised that I'm no in love with the game, but it's hard not to appreciate the fact that I can just pick up the controller and play as opposed to any game now where you have to contend with 8+ buttons and any number of variations and combinations of those to do certain things.

Shifting Definition?

2011-11-22T13:13:00.001-08:00

I got into a semantic discussion with a coworker last night about a word. I've had this exact discussion once before and I understand where they're coming from because in essence, they're right. However, my assertion is that the word's definition has shifted. I come here to offer my point of view and to allow you all to dictate my beliefs. The word in question is euphemism.

The discussion started with me stating that "gash" is a euphemism for "vagina" (as with all semantic arguments, they must feature the basest level of subject matter possible). I was called out for misusing the word in question because at the very least, "gash" is a neutral, if not negative way of regering to a vagina (I acknowledge that our examples may not be the best to use since many people are bashful about saying "vagina" and may actually consider "gash" to be a nicer way of putting it. My personal feelings about the word "gash" lead me to think that's not the case, but it illustrates that some words carry different baggage for different people and therefore inoffensiveness is relative).

My argument is as follows: I would wager that at least 90% of people don't know what the antonym of "euphemism" is and thus have no ability to refer to it when necessary. I certainly didn't, hence why I used "euphemism" in the first place. The antonym/s is/are mentioned in the link above, but if you didn't click it or read that far, take some time to think of what you would an offensive way to phrase an expression (a pretty poor definition, mind you). An example given for this type of thing is "snail mail" instead of postal mail. I wouldn't know what to call that if not a euphemism.

So since the antonym/s (there are three words listed as possibilites, though one specifically makes sense to me as the best antonym) are out of favor in common language, it is my belief that the original definition of euphemism has shifted (or is shifting) to cover the inoffensive, offensive, and neutral categories of substitution. Words are changing and adapting definitions all the time, so I don't see why that can't be the case here, but I could be alone. If that's the case, I will accept defeat with dignity and grace.

Incidentally, the antonym is dysphemism.

Pitchers as MVP

2011-11-21T13:23:00.001-08:00

Justin Verlander won the MVP award in addition to the Cy Young this year. Good for him. He clearly deserved it. But what shocks me is that there are still people out there who don't believe that pitchers should be considered for MVP. Some say that they already have their own award in the Cy Young award. Others, like Jim Ingraham (quoted at the bottom of this article), believe that pitcher don't play in "79% of their games" likening the situation to a quarterback who only played in three games of the season being named MVP.

Can Ingraham really not see the difference in these scenarios? Does he not understand baseball at all? A pitcher may only pitch once every five days, but when he's playing, he's exerting himself consistently on every pitch of the game. The only other person who touches the ball as much as him is the catcher. The strain on the arm is immense and has done loads of harm to many pitchers. The rest is an essential part of being a consistent pitcher and for having a long career.

Another factor: he looks like a nice guy, too.

Secondly, just because position players play nearly every game, they spend much of the time not participating. And many plays don't require them to give 100% of their effort. They aren't called routine fly/ground balls for nothing. Baseball is a pretty leisurely game that's interrupted by bursts of action. That's one of the appeals of the game for me. As a result, the players have a lot of "idle" time (in quotes because they should still be paying attention). As Ingraham mentions, part of the experience is the 162-game season. Well... who really wears down more? The player playing every game but only needing to exert himself at intervals or the pitcher who pitches 100 pitches every game, many in high stress situations, and can't afford to let up on the intensity at risk of giving up runs.

Plus, just because pitchers have off days doesn't mean they are sitting on a couch eating Cheese Puffs. In my experience, pitchers are required to run more than any of the position players because their position is an endurance one (don't believe me? Try pitching in 95-100 degree heat). They also have pitching sessions to keep themselves loose and to fix kinks in the motion. And let's not forgot all the time they spend studying film of other teams and developing the strategy for their next start.

Pitchers may not play in every game doesn't mean that they should be left out of the MVP race. It's ignorant and asinine. They are as much as part of the team as anyone. As the link above shows, Verlander was tied for league lead in WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player). Therefore, even though he only played in about 21% of his teams games, he added more wins by himself than anyone else on the team. It's times like this that I wish FireJoeMorgan was still churning out new content.

October Leftovers

2011-11-21T10:51:00.001-08:00

In preparation for watching horror movies all month long in October, I move about 25 representatives of the genre to the top of my Netflix queue*. Since I dropped my subscription to two DVDs and unlimited streaming, I didn't go through as many DVDs as normal, I had some leftovers and didn't feel like mixing them back in with the rest. Plus, I was looking forward to watching them.

Blood and Black Lace -- Mario Bava
I've by no means exhausted Bava's library of films, but thus far, I'm unimpressed. I acknowledge that he was important and influenced the direction of the genre heavily, but I can't really get behind his particular brand of horror and camp. Basically, his movies are too (unintentionally) silly for me. Part of it is that I don't have much connection to the giallo genre. They are basically all the same movie to me and it feels like there is a cap on how good they can be. My feelings on the genre and Bava aren't enough to put me off watching more, but I don't have the same excitement about approaching them that I used to.

Dead Birds -- Alex Turner
It's funny watching a movie like Dead Birds now because seeing that Henry Thomas (Elliott in E.T.) has lead billing in a recent movie (i.e. one where Henry Thomas is not still a child) over Michael Shannon is absurd. Of course, Dead Birds was released two years before Shannon appeared in Bug which was if not his first starring role, his highest profile role to that date. But just two years before Bug, you can still tell Shannon is a much greater presence that Henry Thomas, who always seems vaguely disinterested in the material. As a whole, Dead Birds is a decent low-budget horror movie with a good cast and some lousy creature effects. Once again, CGI kills low-budget horror more than bad puppets ever would. It's certainly a lot better than the comparable The Burrowers.

Magic -- Richard Attenborough
I can't really express how high my expectations were for Magic. It's directed by Richard Attenborough and I'm fascinated by anomalies in anyone's filmography (in this case, a horror movie). William Goldman wrote the novel and the screenplay. He is the shit. Anthony Hopkins is in it, Jerry Goldsmith did the score, and, shockingly, Ann-Margret exposes herself to the audience. My expectations led me a bit astray. Magic is a lot different than what I was led to believe. I was thinking it was going to be along the lines of the Talking Tina episode of The Twilight Zone and the ventriloquist dummy came to life. However, it's far more subtle than that and I wasn't prepared for it. Magic is more psychological horror than outright horror and I can't knock if for that just because it wasn't what I thought it'd be. I will knock if for the stupid love story angle that's poorly conceived. And I'll knock it once more for not casting Gene Wilder, who apparently everyone but the producer wanted on board. But then, I want Gene Wilder in everything.

Devil -- John Erick Dowdle
Consider this covered.

Sublime -- Tony Krantz
My main interest in Sublime is that it stars Tom Cavanagh who I've like since Ed and loved since I started listening to Mike and Tom Eat Snacks (I would have loved him since Ed, but he always seemed mildly hyperactive and annoying on talk shows, but it appears he was just trying to play to the audience instead of being himself if MATES is to be trusted). Just because I'm a fan of Cavanagh doesn't mean I'm going to rush out to see Yogi Bear, just that I'll take into consideration these efforts that fall outside of my perception of the man. It's the least I can do. I just wish Sublime was better. Aside from a paycheck, I can't really see what attracted Cavanagh to the role. Nearly all he does is lay (lie? I can never get that straight) in bed while stuff happens around him. Often, he's just staring into space. He's like the most passive protagonist ever. Everything happens to him and he initiates nothing. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so clear that what we're seeing isn't exactly what we're getting. We may not know exactly where the movie is taking us, but it's pretty obvious that a particular thing is happening (don't want to spoil it for the curious). In the end, I think Sublime is really trying to tell men to be worried about getting their colonoscopy.

Return to Horror High -- Bill Froehlich
As much as I hate the '80s, the end of them really signaled the end of good, gory, fun horror movies for a while. Much like the Sleepaway Camp sequels and Uncle Sam, Return to Horror High is light on the gore to its detriment. If you're out to make a silly, campy, horror comedy, you need to give the audience something to latch onto just in case the comedy doesn't work. Otherwise, you're just making an unfunny movie without any visceral thrills. It's boring. Return to Horror High almost works. The hooks nearly sink in early and it's bizarre structure is mildly interesting but it's unsustainable. Now, it's most noteworthy for featuring George Clooney in an early role and much like Michael Shannon in Dead Birds or Tom Hanks in He Knows Your Alone, Clooney is clearly better than everyone else (except Alex Rocco who always plays the same character but does it so well) even though he's only around briefly.

Another VHS box I remember vividly from my childhood.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death -- John D. Hancock

File another film in the "Not What I Was Expecting" folder. Let's Scare Jessica to Death is very deliberate and not overtly scary. There's some tense moments and bizarre whispers on the soundtrack but basically the film is building to the final ten minutes. I'm not really sure what happened in those last ten minutes, but that's to be expected when everything is filtered through the eyes of a fragile mind (we're going to pretend that fragile minds have eyes here). The film looks great, but it can be a bit of a slog to get through and there's obnoxious voiceover of Jessica's thoughts that are really obtrusive and inorganic that could have been communicated with looks and cuts. The title implies something sinister, and there may be, but don't go into this film expecting a huge payoff to the title. Interestingly (to me, at least), the director also directed Band the Drum Slowly.

*I rarely adjust my queue because I've no doubt that certain movies would never get watched because I "wouldn't be in the mood" for them. However, I do wish that there was a Randomize button for the queue so that it would mix everything up for you (keeping the TV series as one entity so they don't put the third disc of season three before disc one of season one, of course).

Poor Ron Underwood...

2011-11-20T21:53:00.001-08:00

Well this is disappointing. The man who made this:

Also made this (and about four other made for TV Christmas movies since 2006):

Baseball Bits and Pieces

2011-11-18T10:50:00.001-08:00

It's halfway through November and I'm in some serious baseball withdrawal. I love the Hot Stove action, but the problem is that news comes in fits and starts. Many of the big moves haven't happened yet and anything else (like Dale Sveum going to the Cubs instead of the Red Sox... more or that later) is worth only about an hour of discussion. However, there are a few things worth talking about and my reaction to them varies.

One article deals with two of these issues (it's how I found out about both. I swear I'm not just poaching someone else's blog post. I SWEAR!). First on the chopping block: The Astros are moving to the A.L. West! Periodically in the past, I'd wonder why one division only has four teams while another has six. It didn't make sense to me. Then I'd remember that there are thirty teams and if they were split down the middle, that would leave two teams in each league dangling without a matchup. Of course, interleague play has been around for a while, so having those teams face each other isn't such a big deal, but having two leagues with fifteen teams doesn't do much to help balance the already unbalanced schedules. A team like the Orioles has to play the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rays (all with 90+ wins) over 50 times during the season wheres there was only one 90+ win team in the A.L. Central. Throw in some unlucky interleague pairings and some teams are going to get screwed big time. On the flip side, though I'm not much of a fan of interleague play, I like the idea of having it occur with two teams randomly throughout the year instead of as big chunks of space with forced "rivalry" games.

My solution to all of this is some good, old-fashioned English Football-style relegation. Since it would be asine to add six more teams so each division broke down into six teams each, let's chop it down to 24 teams. The six bottom teams get relegated to the minors while six top minor league teams can join the pros. There's stuff that would need to be worked out to make the system work, but not only does it bring each division to an even four teams, it adds a lot of incentive for the bad teams to keep playing hard. Those end of season Royals-Twins games would be a lot more exciting. Which brings me to...

...The revamped playoff system. I've ranted about this before (ignore all of the stuff about the Red Sox and Braves, if you could) and I still think adding teams to the playoffs is a bad idea. Even at ten teams, MLB would still have the smallest percentage of teams making the playoffs of the four major sports, but having a one game playoff to between to Wild Card teams to see who moves on to the Division Series seems pretty pointless and a recipe for more confusion and additional one-off games. The point of the playoffs is for the elite teams to fight it out for supremacy. The more teams added to the mix, the more mediocrity has a chance to infiltrate the system. But that's not really the big issue. Look how close we came this year to having two ties for the Wild Card spot. Expanding the playoff pool into the pack means that you start getting to that cluster of teams with similar records. Is it that hard to imagine that there could be a tie for the second Wild Card spot? Or even a three-way tie? Now it's not just a on-game playoff, but a one-game playoff to get into the one-game playoff to get into the playoffs. And all of this flies right in the face of having a 162-game season. Why play that many games and get that large of a sample size to have the season literally come down to one game for certain teams? That's the whole point of having a 7-game series (or even a 5-game series). I like this approach to expanding the playoff better than letting four additional teams in, but it doesn't seem in line with the spirit of the game.

Finally, a personal and specific complaint. I don't know what I'll do if the Red Sox hire Bobby Valentine as their manager. He may have had two good seasons with the Mets, but his record doesn't inspire confidence. Plus, his ESPN work shows him to be an idiot and he's volatile presence and we don't need one of those in the clubhouse. Plus, I don't want to have to root for this guy:

Red Sox... please don't do this to me.

Mr. Ed

2011-11-17T22:33:00.001-08:00

I've had the Mr. Ed theme running through my head all day. I'm certain you all remember it as it's probably one of the most famous themes of television history, but here it is as a refresher:

However, I've heard this song untold times. Maybe in the hundreds. But for the life of me, I don't know the lyrics. So, since it's been bugging me all day and I'm mildly amused by them, here are my lyrics (repeat ad nauseam):

A horse is a horse, of course, of course.
Unless, of course, it's a horse, of course.
But then, of course, it'a a horse, of course.
It's the famous Mr. Ed!

Devil

2011-11-17T11:40:00.001-08:00

Remember when the above trailer first popped up in theaters? Audiences laughed at the appearance of M. Night Shyamalan's name. I distinctly remember titters in the audience when I caught the trailer. But laughter aside, I've always been a little bit intrigued by Devil. Generally, I'm a huge fan of entertainment that takes place in a confined space and the onset of paranoia when bad stuff starts to happen. At no point did I expect Devil to be good, but at the very least, I thought it would be fun. Even though I was intrigued by Devil, I never made an effort to see it until a coworker of mine and I agreed that we'd both watch it. He watched it months ago and has been giving me a hard time about not holding up my end of the bargain. Finally, I gave in.

Devil got mixed reviews at best and it's not surprising why. There's little redeeming about the characters, there's ridiculous narration thrown in to explain events in the story (given by a tertiary character), and the movie is entirely predictable. And for a movie about five people stuck in an elevator, there are way too many characters. The filmmakers try to fit so much into Devil that everything suffers, but worst of all, the ending makes no sense at all (embarking on spoilers).

I won't say exactly which character is the devil, though it's fairly obvious from the beginning, but after involvement in killing off at least five different people (most of whom we're told have a history of crime or being bad people), the remaining person in the elevator confesses to killing to people in a car crash and driving away (those two happen to be the police officer-in-charge's wife and child). At this confession, the devil says, "I really wanted you!" and disappears. Now, I'd have to imagine that this character must have done something else bad in his life if that's the only criteria for the devil killing people. Otherwise, why would the devil have no qualms about killing everyone else and not continue with this guy? It doesn't make any sense. And why would the devil "really want" this particular person? Everything about this ending is stupid. There's no sign that the devil would let someone go because that person confessed to one particular sin that is probably one of thousands.

Even if we keep that ending, as flawed as it is, Devil still could have been salvaged. I first learned of the term "bottle episode" from Community and I think Devil would be much better if it adopted that approach. First, get rid of everything that takes place outside of the elevator. Once the characters are in it, the camera should never leave them. You can still have the voice over the PA and people trying to help them, but the viewer experiences things like the trapped people do. This way, when the guy falls on top of the elevator, we're just as surprised as the characters. With this approach, we can also get to know the characters better because we're not splitting time between them and rescue efforts. Tension can build slower and the viewer gets more claustrophobic. Alliances can shift as everyone become more paranoid. Hell, one of the characters can even be an audience surrogate.

There honestly is a good movie to be found in this concept. It's a shame that the filmmakers couldn't see it. Oh, and even though M. Night Shyamalan gets the "Story by" credit, he basically stole the structure from an Agathie Christie story, "And Then There Were None," and freely admits she inspired him. So, if he didn't actually write Devil and just "came up" with the story, doesn't that really mean that Agatha Christie should get the story nod? Or at least a story nod?

Farewell Community?

2011-11-15T19:43:00.001-08:00

Community is off NBC's midseason schedule, a bad sign by any measure. NBC has assured fans that all 22 episodes will air, but this could be the beginning of the end. The show is one of those that has terrible ratings and tremendous critical response and a devoted fan base, which, some may say, means it's for "smart" people. It's endlessly critiquing its form and constantly referencing other forms of entertainment. If it weren't so damned funny, I could see how some might feel alienated by it.

Look at that lovely cast. How could anyone not want to watch them?

Since it does have a devoted fan base, of course there are going to be petitions to save it. When Arrested Development was on the verge of cancellation nearly six years ago, I spent much of its final season signing as many of these petitions as I could. This time around, though, I find myself struggling to care if it gets cancelled or not. Maybe I've spent much of the last decade having my heart broken by the networks to allow myself to get too close. To illustrate this, here's a short list off the top of my head of shows that should have lasted longer: Arrested Development, Party Down, The Tick (live-action), Futurama (before Comedy Central saved it), Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Andy Barker P.I., and Undeclared (why must the American public hate Andy Richter and college so much?).

Oh... maybe this is why.

In reality, shows like Community, Arrested Development, and Futurama were given a decent chance. They got multiple seasons and failed to build an audience for whatever reasons (you could probably base a solid argument around the changing landscape of how people watch TV shows). But I'm happy they lasted as long as they did without much decline in quality (and Futurama is making solid episodes again after those shaky movies). And Community always felt like it shouldn't last for too long. It takes place a community college, for crying out loud. It barely makes sense that Annie hasn't gotten a scholarship to a big school somewhere or that Jeff seems to have forgotten why he's there altogether.

So sign the petition if you must. I won't be sad if it's renewed. It is one of my most anticipated shows of the week. However, if it's not, that just means I have 23 minutes more each week to catch up on one of the dozens of other shows I've neglected.

Costumer Service

2011-11-13T13:42:00.001-08:00

For those of you who were looking for a follow-up as to what I did with my Milanoo purchase from the Customer Service post, here you go:

The Department of Tiny Complaints

2011-11-11T11:24:00.001-08:00

There's a liquor store not far from my house (one might even call it my "local liquor store") that has a tiny marquee above its entrance. The marquee space is used for "clever" word play combining the nearest holiday with encouragement to buy alcohol for said holiday. For example: Halloween was something like, "Raise your spirits this Halloween." It carries the same vibe as those churches with their own plays on words on their marquees (I've never really understood the purpose of those. Is it to try to get us to attend that church? Like, "hey, they're clever! That's the church for me!" Or is it to preach a little on the street?). They're slightly obnoxious, but easily ignored.

However, the liquor store is displaying one of my biggest pet peeves right now and will be for the foreseeable future. You see, the sign says, "Winter is here, holiday cheer." My issue isn't with the quote being mundane and only kind of, sort of makes sense. It's that WINTER ISN'T HERE! This went up just after Halloween ended (which, kudos to them for changing it. Their Cinco de Mayo message was up for almost a month after the holiday) when there was almost two whole months of fall left.

I don't know why people insist on skipping seasons. Every year, June rolls around and people rejoice that it's summer. But just because it's June doesn't mean summer is here. Just as when August ends, there's still 20-odd days left until fall begins. And most people shouldn't be surprised that they it's not a White Christmas (though some had a White Halloween) because it's barely winter. That White Halloween should show people that weather has very little to do with determining seasons.

And to help those of you out there who routinely ignore this: here you go.

Because I Can't Keep Out of an Argument: Weighing in on JoePa

2011-11-10T01:08:00.000-08:00

I don't really care one way or another that Joe Paterno got fired now instead of retiring at the end of the season. I feel bad for him that his legacy will be tainted by the Sandusky scandal, but that's the path he cut for himself. My dad and sister both graduated from PSU as well as many friends. And being from Pennsylvania and living out of state (as well as developing a pretty strong pride in much of what my state offers, mostly food related) I feel a little protective about this whole situation, but in the end, my interest is minimal. I hate the culture around college (and pro) football and try to avoid my Facebook feed on those days because it's like a drill to the brain. But I feel that the people making snap judgments about JoePa are missing a critical thread: Jerry Sandusky and JoePa were insanely close.

Seriously, you can't work with someone for 30 years ('69 to '99) and not be close with them. I'd hazard a guess that during the football season, JoePa and Sandusky spent more time together than with their families. I'm not going to say they were best friends, but I'd say they were very good friends. So my question is this: could you turn in one of your very close friends (perhaps best friend) if you found out they were having sex with underage children?

Most people would probably say yes because they're not in that situation. It's easy to be righteous when there are no stakes. But I've known enough people in my life who have had family or other connections bail them out of trouble with the law without any repercussions to know that there are gray areas in each of our moral compasses. If you found out your child or sister murdered someone, could you turn them in? Maybe, but it would be hard. There's a cognitive dissonance between the person you know and the person he or she turns out to be in these cases.

Paterno didn't see the rape, he was told about it. It's entirely possible he didn't go to the police because he couldn't rationalize his friend doing that to a child. So he goes to his superiors. That way, he didn't do nothing, but he didn't have to turn his back on his friend. I'm not saying it absolves him, I'm just trying to show that the Paterno situation isn't black and white.

My biggest issue with this whole story is that it's mainly getting attention because Paterno has long been lauded as an upstanding man in the community and the sport. He's got the record for most wins and has been and institution himself at PSU since '66 (OK, he wasn't always an institution, but he's been there a while). The real story is that Jerry Sandusky raped children, but that's not interesting because there's no drama. He's guilty. End of story. But Joe Paterno knew about it and did nothing! Holy shit! This guy was supposed to be a pillar of the community. School comes first, and all that. Now it seems he has moral and ethical problems! It's the interesting perspective on the story and will sell more papers/get more web traffic (fingers crossed!). I feel validated by this opinion because, as far as I know, no one has mentioned anything about why the graduate assistant didn't go to the police. He's the one who saw it. He told Paterno just like Paterno told his bosses. Sounds like an apt comparison. But he's a no name, so no one cares if he gets fired (and I don't want him to).

In the end, it's a horrible situation that makes you sick to the stomach. I feel worse for PSU alum and fans (though if they keep doing stuff like this, that feeling might wear off). I'm not going to cry about JoePa's firing and I understand why the fans support him. They aren't wrong to. Sure, there's a fair amount of cognitive dissonance involved, but JoePa's situation isn't nearly as simplistic as the commentators like to think it is.

Treehouse of Bore-er

2011-11-09T11:42:00.001-08:00

It's not controversial to say that The Simpsons is nowhere near as good as it used to be. There are a variety of reasons for this: shorter run time, changes in popular types of humor (call it The Family Guy effect), different writers, no more hand-drawn animation (watch something from season 3 and from season 20 and tell me that the crisp image and sharp lines don't hurt the experience. Animation should be fluid), and of course, running out of ideas. Even with all of this, I still watch the show regularly and frequently find it enjoyable though rarely great. Even in the doldrums of the show, the Treehouse of Horror episodes were always highlights. Except for this year.

Like the show the ToH episodes have also been falling in quality. I'd even go so far as to say that they haven't been the same since they moved on from the humorous headstones or at least having any sort of opening credits. The writers also stopped creating any sort of connective tissue like everyone telling scary stories trying to one-up each other, or eating too much candy and having nightmares, or even Bart telling the stories of the paintings. Maybe it's just me, but I like when these stories feel at least a little bit related to the real Simpsons universe as opposed to being an excuse to do movie parodies.

And that's really the biggest problem. When The Simpsons writers used to do ToH episodes, they'd stick with horror or Sci-Fi stories, but now they basically riff on anything they want (which is what The Simpsons used to do very elegantly with their normal episodes). So this year there is a bizarre mashup of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Spider-man and Avatar (there's also a Dexter parody, which kind of works, but it's not that dark and way to rushed). Avatar may be sci-fi, but there's certainly nothing scary about it and the Diving Bell parody shoehorns Halloween into the segment by having Homer putting up Halloween decorations, but it's an afterthought.

There are still so many horror stories to pay homage to. I don't know why they are avoiding them. Christ, as far as I remember, they haven't even done a Halloween parody yet! They've barely scratched the surface of Stephen King and Hitchcock (who, let's be honest, gets enough attention during the rest of the season). There's tons of Poe and Twilight Zone episodes to cull from. It makes me sad that they're wasting their time on Diving Bell and Avatar.

There's also a dip in quality from season 13 to season 14, which happens to coincide with every segment of the ToH episodes being written by different people to having the whole episode being credited to one. Having multiple voices makes it easier to forgive a lacking segment if the others are good. On the commentaries on The Simpsons DVDs, they always talk about how hard the ToH episodes are to make, so I don't know why they are giving it to one person. Especially this year, where not only did writer Carolyn Omine not come up with anything good, but she didn't even know how to end the segments. I almost thought that it was going to be one story instead of the triptych that it normally and we'd rejoin the action coming back from commercial.

The Treehouse of Horror episodes should be fun, scary, and more than a little gory times. At the risk of sounding like an old man talking about how things were better in my day, the writers need to go back to the start and take a good hard look at what makes those episodes so good. But don't take my word for it:

Customer Service

2011-11-07T12:38:00.001-08:00

I had a grand idea for a Halloween costume. All I needed was a good base to build on (and some help with the sewing) and I'd be set. The likelihood of me finding said base at a thrift shop was minimal, so I took to the internet and found a reasonable price from Milanoo. I placed my order on October 19 and paid extra for shipping to ensure that it would get to me before the 31st. Their shipping estimate was the 28th at the latest. My order didn't get to me until October 31st at around noon. Clearly not enough time, especially since I was really hoping to have it for zombie trivia on the 30th. As I actively decided to pay extra for the shipping and I didn't get my order until after the date they advertised, I felt I was in my rights for at least a refund on my shipping costs. The following ensued.

First Contact:
I placed my order on October 19 and it shipped on October 22. Even with the 3 days it took to process my order and get it shipped, it still hasn't arrived in the time advertised. It's been nearly 10 days since I placed my order, three over the 5-7 in the order. I paid extra money to ensure that it would be here within that week and your company has failed on that contract. As it stands, the least you can do is refund my shipping costs as the shipment falls outside of the cheaper option, as well.

Response:
We have shipped out your package since 2011-10-22 17:07:10 via FedEx.
You may track your package with the number 503130307034 with the link http://www.fedex.com/us/.

For we have turned over your package to the shipping company then the delivery is out of our control .
We beg for your understanding and please do not worry about it, they will delivery your package to you later.

Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Thank you again for your support

The link they gave me offered no information about where my package was or anything useful. Just that I ordered the item and that it shipped. And even though it shipped from the UK, you get the sense that perhaps their customer support isn't a native English speaker. I sent another complaint restating my case. Unfortunately, their response copies my original message and not the follow-up, so I can't repost it for you.

Second Response:
We are sorry about the delay.

But the fact is that we have shipped out your package on 2011-10-22 17:07:10 as we promised to you on the confirmation email after you placed the order and it just because for the FedEx promised to us that they could delivery your package to you in 3-5 days that means you could receive your package before the Halloween!
We are not to get rid of our responsibility.
We just want to explain the reason why you have not received your package on due time.

As for we have the direct relationship to you, so we would like to lessen your loss by offering you the discount code which is offered to VIP of our website to you for making up.

Is that OK to you?
Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Thank you again for your support

With best regards

I was getting tired of them trying to pass the buck to FedEx. They didn't mention that they'd be using FedEx and as far as I was concerned, my contract was with them. If FedEx screwed up, that was between Milanoo and FedEx. I paid an extra $12 to get my order and I wanted it back. I didn't want to continue doing business with Milanoo. I flat out refused the discount in my response (which is probably best that I can't reprint here because their final response makes me feel a little bad that I commented on the syntax of their responses). I also commented that I thought they were being dismissive of me, especially when I was told, "do not worry about it, they will delivery your package later." On the plus side, I love that they referred to it as "the Halloween" and may start doing that regularly.

Third Response:
OK, we apologize to you for the dismissive attitude and the syntax for we are not the native English speaker so we have no idea that the words has offended you .
We apologize to you and will refund you 11.74 USD for the shipping fee.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Thank you again for your support

With best regards

Maybe it's just me, but it really does feel like I insulted them. However, I was getting increasingly annoyed with them and since the customer service phone number was from the UK, I didn't want to have to call it to get my point across. I am greatly amused that from "Please feel free..." to "With best regards" is clearly a form closing and written by someone with command of the language. It's a little jarring reading their response and continuing through to the end. Like when people start speaking English in a foreign language film: "Hey, I understand that!"

Finally, a propos of nothing because I didn't ever want to experience Milanoo again, I got the following:

Thank you for shopping with Milanoo.com.
I am following up regarding case number 00079349 of your inquiry.
It's been 48 hours since our last email and we have not heard back from you yet.
Please kindly reply to us if your problem has not been solved.
The case will be closed after 24 hours if with your kind confirmation for no further feedback or response taking on.
A survey may send to you for your precious suggestions and how we act in the service after the closing of case.

Sorry to bother you!

Many Thanks and Best Regards!

I don't know why they felt the need to send this as I got what I wanted. Why would I respond to them after that? I do like that they may send me a survey for my "precious suggestions," though.

Incidentally, this is what I got:

October Horror Roundup

2011-10-31T14:38:00.000-07:00

As a helpful aid to my month of watching horror movies, I thought I'd break things down into categories to help guide you if you're ever looking for something to watch. Plus, there are a lot of movies here and maybe you missed a write-up or two. Now it'll be easy to tell. Sadly, I didn't discover any new (to me) classics and I wouldn't say anything I watched is essential viewing, but that's OK. There was still plenty of good stuff. It's possible that my write-ups don't mesh with their category here. If that's the case, the movie has not sat well in my mind and I've grown hostile towards it since writing.

Highly Recommended
Cronos
Lake Placid
Frenzy
Shiver

The Beyond
Madhouse

Well Worth Your Time
Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural
Pitfall
Corridors of Blood
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Raw Meat

Flawed but Interesting
Deathdream (aka Dead of Night)

The Dunwich Horror

Dead Snow
Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Witch's Mirror

The Bad Seed
Arang
Lifeforce
Sugar Hill

Better Than You'd Think
Uncle Sam

Wasted Concepts
Bloody Pit of Horror
Dreamaniac
The Keep
The Horde
100 Feet
The Prophecy
Squirm

Some to Avoid
The Burrowers
The Gore Gore Girls
Seventh Moon
Island of the Fishmen
Special Effects

The Email of Doom: Arang

2011-10-30T22:59:00.000-07:00

So, I went off a bit about ghost stories not long ago and feel the need to make amends because I actually do like the genre. Many have flawed endings, but few other horror subgenres can get under your skin like a ghost story. The one thing these stories do better than any other horror stories is play with the limitations of human vision. Because ghosts are supernatural and basically ephemeral, they can pop up at any moment in any degree. The classic trope is the bathroom mirror. Whether a character opens it for a moment or ducks down to spit water into the the sink, said character loses sight of what's in the mirror and instantaneously a vision can appear in the reflection without a sound. The same holds true for a character who hears a noise and instinctively moves to search for it. Each turn of the head, each peak around a corner leaves open a whole world of unseen space in which the ghost could inhabit. Ghosts live in our periphery until they choose to be seen. It makes the viewing experience unpredictable, suspenseful, and best of all, scary.

Arang is a Korean horror movie that follows the "Asian-girls-are-terrifying-if-you-comb-their-long-hair-in-front-of-their-faces" guideline for effective ghosts (see this and this for more examples) and it's really hard to go wrong with that. Even the ghosts in the otherwise awful The Grudge 2 stayed with more for a few days. There's lots of creepy ghostly stalkings that stop short of being actually scary. The problem is that we know the ghost is getting revenge on a group of people that wronged her in some way, so the ghost isn't that threatening of a force since no one else feels at risk. Going back to The Grudge, just going into the house is enough to doom you to a terrifying existence no matter how good and innocent you are. There are some really cool devices used to spook the audience though many are slightly listless or the camera cuts away before tension builds to a breaking point. Director Sang-hoon Ahn clearly isn't in the same league as the big three of Korean filmmaking (Joon-ho Bong, Jee-woon Kim, and Chan-wook Park), But he's still able to ring some nice moments out of the movie which prevents it from being a waste of time.

Calling the rest of the film a waste of time may seem harsh, but the moment it tries to explain itself, the film falls to pieces. There's flashbacks and twists and plot points that don't make any sense. It's like they were just throwing in everything to see what would stick around the hauntings. Even the hauntings start off ridiculously with the victims getting an email about an old salt shack (the email of doom). That's when you know their time has come, because ghosts like to telegraph it through modern technology. In fact, Asians have a weird relationship with technology in their ghost films. Shutter features mysterious images in photographs. In One Missed Call, characters get phone calls of their deaths. The Ring has the video that starts the countdown to your demise. It's like they don't trust technology. I actually really like that they tie a lot of the supernatural folk tales in with these modern devices. It's a nice juxtaposition.

Still, this is one of the few horror movies that I watched with someone else this month and it was fun watching the other person (my fiancee) hiding her eyes and getting spooked. There's a lot we miss when we watch movies that are best served in a group by ourselves. In some ways, I'm sad that watching movies has changed to an individual/small group activity. I can't imagine what it must have been like to go to a movie with 1500 people (the old capacity of my theater before the balcony was turned into two smaller theaters) and experience the highs and lows collectively. I bet it was marvelous.

Netflix tangent: Once again, Netflix Instant View drops the ball. the subtitles for Arang are cut off at the bottom of the screen and there's no way to fix it. You can still read them all, but it shouldn't even be an issue. Just another example of why they should have waited to roll out their new pricing plan.

Whither Nick Cave?: The Bad Seed

2011-10-30T02:09:00.002-07:00

Once again we enter into that unfortunate scenario where the reputation of a movie precedes it so much that it removes much of the suspense. In The Bad Seed, we're meant to wonder if a little girl is a killer or just a liar that no one believes when she actually tells the truth. Even the gardener never really believed that she killed a little boy for his writing award. But because it's infamous as one of the "evil child" movies, we never really doubt the truth. With that suspense removed, we have to fall back on performances and plotting. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't be paying attention to those anyway, but for me at least, if I'm tense during a suspenseful movie (or scared during a horror movie), then it's done half of its job right there, regardless of the quality of the rest.

Fortunately, Patty McCormick owns The Bad Seed as Rhoda, the child without a conscience. Every scene she's in is creepy and intense and she switches from sweet to rage in a heartbeat. It's a marvelous performance and her Oscar nomination was totally justified. The rest of the cast is rounded out by people reprising their roles from the Broadway show (much like McCormick) and they're all good, but they pale in comparison to the little girl. Nancy Kelly as the mom, Christine, is really the lead of the film and a lot of time is spent on her anguish a deteriorating mental state. Unfortunately, that sort of high melodrama is not my sort of thing and they really slow the film down. I got tired of hearing her worry and fret about Rhoda. However, I can just as easily see people digging the performance, so I won't be too hard on the film for it.

For everything the The Bad Seed does well, there's an equal but opposite scene of annoyance. I really dig Christine's husband, is away for everything that happens here. He still thinks the same of Rhoda and it puts added pressure on the mom. However, there's a ridiculous adoption subplot that is wholly unnecessary except to offer some kind of explanation for Rhoda. Then there's an amazing interrogation scene between mother and daughter, but that's off-set by the false endings and then the absurd (and altered due to the Hays Code) ending. Additionally, people in the movie talk about how sweet Rhoda is a few too many times for it to have any meaning. We get it, she's got everyone fooled. You don't need to keep telling us.

But like I said, this movie is about McCormick and worth watching for her blazing performance. I kind of wish that McCormick had gone on to play Lolita in Kubrick's film. She is only a year older than Sue Lyons and I think it's a fun world where "Rhoda" grew up to be "Lolita." There's a similar sort of pathology going on there.

Finally, The Bad Seed ends with a narrator reading out the cast as they appear in a doorway of the house featured. It makes sense that they'd be announced this way since it's the Broadway cast getting a curtain call. But then it ends with Kelly grabbing McCormick and jokingly spanking the bejesus out of her, which doesn't fit the tone of the film at all. Very bizarre. The narrator also tells us not to reveal the ending, but the ending isn't a shock like the one in Psycho. There's no twist. It's just a bit silly. But what are you going to do?

In the Mood for Some Raw Meat

2011-10-29T10:38:00.000-07:00

Raw Meat has been sitting on my Netflix queue for a while now but it took Edgar Wright to inspire me to finally watch it (because, let's face it, I'd do anything Edgar Wright told me to do). I've got sort of a psychological aversion to movies about cannibalism which is weird because isn't that essentially what zombie movies are? My mind creates this absolute and grotesque image of the most real special effects you can possibly imagine. Every cannibalism movie I see I build up to a documentary-like vision where I'm going to get sick watching it even if the film shows nothing or is highly stylized. Of course, like with any other movie, the build up is never as bad as I expected it to be, but this particular genre gives me more anticipatory creeps than any other. So thank you, Mr. Wright, for pushing me to watching Raw Meat.

And the Trailers from Hell version:

The trailer actually gives more backstory to the subterranean flesh eaters (can we call them C.H.U.D.s?) than actually exists in the movie, though some of it is implied. The "Man" (Hugh Armstrong), as he's billed, doesn't make an appearance for quite a ways into Raw Meat. Unfortunately, since all advertising about the movie talks about the family of cannibals in the subway, there's not much surprise when the first victim is taken even though it should be shrouded in mystery. Alex and Patricia (David Ladd and Sharon Gurney, respectively) find a man passed out in the subway station and go to find the police. When they return, the man is gone and an investigation is started except the viewer already knows what took them man. It's an issue with hooking the audience with cannibalism at the sacrifice of the film and may have been unavoidable in this case (though I can certainly think of some approaches).

Donald Pleasance plays Inspector Calhoun who has the lead on the case. He plays the part with an amazing dark, dry humor and it's great to see him in a role that isn't too serious (like Sam Loomis in Halloween who is always running around warning and lecturing people about Michael Myers). He has a knack for it and if anyone has any other recommendations for great Donald Pleasance roles, please tell me. Christopher Lee pops up randomly in a scene that may be essential for the film, but is certainly not in need of Lee. He basically stands in one place with an umbrella and he and Pleasance argue over who should have the case. I like Lee, but this feels like a gimmick to get a few more butts in the seats.

In Edgar Wright's 24-hour horror marathon write-up linked above, he mentions that Raw Meat feels like they ran out of footage and were padding the running time. I agree with that to an extent, but I really like the way that the pacing of the movie changes every time we go underground. There are long, deliberate takes that track around to give the viewer a sense of the space and just a general sense of lingering. It's much like I would expect having to live in an abandoned subway stop would feel like. Slow and dark.

Something I find very admirable about Raw Meat is that it doesn't vilify the cannibals. They are essentially feral humans who know little of etiquette or even malice. They kill to survive, sure, but the "man" clearly loves the "woman" and is heartbroken when she dies. Later, when he gets a hold of Patricia, he really tries to make a connection to her, but can't speak more than just a single phrase (Armstrong does remarkable work conveying meaning with various tones of that phrase). He's a sick (as in ill), inbred cannibal, but he's no monster.

There's not a ton of focus on the cannibalism aspects, even though the title conjured horrific images in my mind, and it's a lot talkier than I expected it to be, but Raw Meat is a solid movie with good acting and direction. It won't explode you mind with terror and gore, but it's got a lot to offer, including a subway line that will take you all the way to "Cockfosters." And, once again, being an American International release, it's got an amazing (if misleading) poster:

The Stuff of My Little Sister's Nightmares: Squirm

2011-10-27T23:50:00.000-07:00

Great poster or greatest poster?

There was a time, not so long ago, that my family was sitting around the dinner table having a nice conversation when it came out that my little sister has an irrational fear of worms. Much gentle prodding and needling of this revelation commenced and while the rest of us were having a grand old time, my sister was getting increasingly anxious and unhappy. This wasn't like the time we found out she didn't like the sound of coughing and everyone (including my young niece) started consciously coughing. No. That ended up in laughter. The worm fun ended with me joking about what would happen if I went out into the yard and dug up some worms and brought them inside. My sister, clearly nervous and touchy, proclaimed in all earnestness that she would leave immediately and get a hotel for the night. It would have been funny if she wasn't so adamant (OK, it's still funny because she's afraid of worms!).

I was really hoping I'd be able to sit her down to watch Squirm (or at least try to trick her into watching it) had it been a good movie, but it's just not. I admire the filmmakers for trying a slow burn approach and letting the characters and town establish themselves. The pacing reminded me a lot of Tremors, actually, just without the charismatic performances. Weird stuff is happening, people are discovered missing, the odd worm pops up now an then and does something unusual like biting an arm. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Ron Underwood and his Tremor team used this film a bit for inspiration.

There's a giant red flag that writer/director Jeff Lieberman isn't very confident in his threat and that is the presence of a human danger. Clearly Lieberman doesn't trust that the audience will be sufficiently creeped out by the crawling menace so he added something that can deliver faster, more "exciting" scares. The threat's presence doesn't really make sense, either. Did the worms take him over? Why didn't they eat him like the rest? In the end, it's exactly the type of movie that makes a better trailer than a film. At least I won't have to sit my sister down for an hour and a half to terrify her.

This Sugar Hill Gang Is Made Up of Zombies

2011-10-27T14:20:00.000-07:00

I don't have a ton of experience with the Blaxploitation genre. A Rudy Ray Moore movie here, Pam Grier movies there, and Superfly. I'm slowly trying to remedy this, but it takes time and other movies keep taking precedence. Perhaps most surprising is that I haven't even seen Blacula! I love horror, so even though I'm not well versed in Blaxploitation, I should have at least seen that, right? In time, friends. In time.

So it was by divine willing that the theater in which I work was screening a pristine (seriously, it looked amazing) 35mm print of Sugar Hill, a film of which I'd never heard but sounded amazing. Sugar Hill (Marki Bey) takes revenge against a group of toughs and their employer for killing her man. But it's not ordinary revenge. It's voodoo style. The dead are risen and sent to do her dirty work.

Sadly, the film is rated PG so the kills are all pretty tame and the zombies aren't the "hungry-for-flesh" kind, so there wasn't much need for the kills to be that visceral. Still, it's hard not to be disappointed when confronted with those realisations during the movie. Even though there's only four men responsible for killing Sugar's man, she decides to off a few more henchmen which is a few too many. The set pieces all have the same structure and without any fun or interesting gore, it feels redundant.

Sugar Hill is still pretty fun, though. I amused myself wondering how her hair got so different from day to night. Sugar has a killing costume complete with afro that there is no possibility her daytime hair could achieve. It got to the point where I suspected that maybe these killings were all in her head or just a dream fantasy she was having believing she was some kind of superhero. Then I started wondering if it was a wig or if they shot all of her 'fro scenes first then cut it. Don't mistake these thoughts for boredom. I just found it amusing. It's also funny that Sugar becomes pretty witty once she decides on vengeance. It's like everyone needs a zinger if they're going to kill.

Then there is Sir Laughs-a-Lot, Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley) who, you guessed it, laughs. A lot. And smiles big, toothy, gold smiles. He's amusing to watch, but upon his first entrance, I wished Isaac Hayes had been cast instead and the feeling never left. It's not that Colley is bad. Just that Hayes could have been epic.

I would be remiss if I didn't bring up Robert Quarry, as this is an American International picture (who also did Madhouse, which also features Quarry) and is Quarry's last film with the company. He is a great bad guy, but mostly the way he treats his "girlfriend." He shows her no respect at all while becoming infatuated with Sugar. His girlfriend is nothing to him and even though I should probably feel bad about the way he treats her, I can't help but laugh (and neither could the audience). It's just a great way to make your villain that much more heinous (even though his girlfriend is a full-blooded racist thus making it OK for the viewer to laugh at her treatment [right?]).

Sugar Hill isn't a great movie and it's got some pacing issues, but it's pretty fun over all. I really like the idea of someone controlling a heard of the undead to do their bidding and the zombies are simple, but highly effective.

This Is One Prophecy You Can't Count On

2011-10-27T03:34:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've been cautioning against a lot of movies lately. It's to be expected that most of the movies one watches will be subpar, especially when veering from the "classic movies" path. But I was hoping the bad would be spread out a bit more. I've really hit the doldrums. Looking back, I had quite a streak of good to great movies, so it's only fitting to hit a slump. Such is the case and I've got to power through and (hopefully) finish out this month on a high note.

Of all the movies I've watched recently, my hopes were the highest for The Prophecy. Christopher Walken plays Gabriel who is looking to fuck shit up. He's unhappy with God's favor of humans and refers to the species as "talking monkeys."

If it was just about Walken (and hey, we'll through in his "I want to be dead" sidekick Jerry [Adam Goldberg]), the movie would rule. Instead we spend most of our time with a cop who was going to be a priest but had a little incident at his priest-ening (whatever it's called when someone graduates to priesthood). Thomas Dagget (Elias Koteas) is looking to solve a bizarre murder of a man with no eye, the body chemistry of an aborted fetus, and male and female sex organs. Dagget's search gets him wrapped up in Gabriel's quest for a particular soul and Simon's (Eric Stoltz, and sorry for the next word) quest to hide it. I generally like Koteas and generally dislike Stoltz, so I'm sad the while the status quo remains for the latter, Koteas just isn't very good in The Prophecy. The problem is that he isn't much of a character. He lost his faith and, aside from the police work, that's about all that happens to him until the very end. I guess he's rediscovering his faith throughout, but it's not that interesting.

My biggest issue with The Prophecy is that, like many movies before and since, a child gets caught in the middle. I think people like going the easy route for drama by ensnaring innocence or something, but unless the kid is going to kick some ass or fuck shit up (or have that stuff happen to them), I'm not interested. At least not in my R-rated horror movies. This goes beyond being a lame plot device. Most of these kids can't act worth a damn. They kill any momentum the movie has. And featuring little Mary (Moriah Shining Dove Snyder) makes it necessary to bring in other mostly pointless people and plots. Virginia Madsen may as well not exist and I don't really get the Native American mysticism aspect since we're clearly in a world where the Catholic belief is the correct one.

There are a few saving graces to keep The Prophecy from being a complete waste of time. It may take 22 minutes to introduce Walken, but the man owns the screen. He just can't be awesome. Steve Hytner (better known as Kenny Bania from Seinfeld) has a good role as the guy doing the autopsy of the first angel (what is the word for that job?). It's funny in a very naturalistic way. Not over-the-top with dialogue that's too clever for the movie. Just breezy and organic (unlike Masuka in Dexter). Even though the movie has that weird '90s sheen to it, it also has some cool '90s special effects that mix awesome matte's with models in a way that looks fake, but awesome and a million times better than crappy CG. Finally, I kind of dig that The Prophecy is essentially a crime movie with souls at stake instead of a large some of money. You've got the cop chasing down the criminal, the shakedowns, the hiding of the "treasure" in an unknown location, etc. It's pretty nifty couching that in a religious thriller kind of movie.

Dogma feels like it took quite a great deal from The Prophecy even if it plays the material differently. There are several sequels and even though I didn't care for this movie, I'm intrigued by the others with Walken. Maybe they'll feature him more. I'm definitely curious as to how he is in them since he meets a fairly definitive end. I somehow doubt they can be much worse, but don't know if they'll be much better either. Finally, it's weird seeing Viggo Mortensen in movies before The Lord of the Rings films. It always seemed like he sprouted up just for those movies and just kept on acting when they ended. Who knew he'd been working so long before them?

As Exciting As Watching Someone Fish: Island of the Fishmen

2011-10-25T23:00:00.001-07:00

I was planning on writing a big introduction about how through the '60s and '70s, classic actors were taking roles in genre movies that at an earlier point in their career would seem beneath them. But the research aspect of the project was becoming daunting. Certainly for something relatively few will read. Sure, Donald Pleasance was in The Great Escape, but he'd also been playing genre roles for much of his career. Bela Legosi started in the classic Universal world and ended his career with Ed Wood. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford seemed to discover that the only place aging actresses fit in anymore was in horror movies. There are the types like Betsy Russell who dismissed the horror movies they were in, but needed the paycheck. But the problem I faced was that I couldn't think of that many movies that reflected Island of the Fishmen, and Italian production, that featured Joseph Cotten even though I know the scenario was common (Cotten, if you'll remember, stars in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons as well as Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt). I know there were loads of these type of actors who were in some of the all-time classics popping up in relative schlock but I just can't think of any off the top of my head. Please enlighten me in the comments if you have more examples (I also wanted to draw parallels to the way so many actors today got their starts in horror movies from the '70s and '80s, but this whole project was way to ambitious for a simple horror write-up).

My main reason for wanting to do all that here is that I don't have much to say about Island of the Fishmen. It's a pretty unremarkable movie with little style or interest. The main influence appears to be The Island of Dr. Moreau but without the interest. There's some bullshit about Atlantis and gold. A blandly villainous bad guy who is basically a caricature of wealthy bad guys (though the part is acted pretty well by Richard Johnson). Barbara Bach looks nice with little to do and Joseph Cotten looks old with even less to do. There's a volcano erupting, voodoo rituals, some fun miniatures and a cool cave set, and men in fish-like costumes. I wish there was more to discuss, but Island of the Fishmen is basically a bland genre outing.

Here's the Italian trailer:

And the American release featuring zero footage from the actual movie:

Stay 100 Feet Away From This Movie

2011-10-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

There's plenty of people who think it's silly to over-think entertainment based around the supernatural. To them, it's ridiculous to argue say, why slow zombies are more realistic than fast zombies since both are made up and can react however their creator wants them to. The rules for entirely fictional creatures, planets, characters, etc. don't have to be set in stone from one narrative to the next. I'm not one of these people. I believe that rules should be created for fictional things and followed. It enhances the realism and the tension. If you know that their are no boundaries to what something can do, then there is really no surprise when it does anything.

I've been thinking about these supernatural "rules" a lot lately because, starting with the House series, I've been watching my share of ghost/haunting movies. The more I watch, the less I understand about how ghosts work and the more unrealistic the scenarios become. I'll try my best to explain, but there are many different kinds of hauntings, so I hope this doesn't all become confused.

The first issue is do the deceased get to decide to come back as a ghost? There are enough horror movies that have someone vowing revenge as their executed (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Shocker, The Horror Show) that it seems willful. And if they are allowed to come back, what does that say about the afterlife? Surely God wouldn't allow these criminals (and they're always criminals) to kill innocent people or even the people responsible for there demise. The first time I heard about "unfinished business" was from the movie adaptation of Caspar, but I hardly think this falls under that category. It's just vengeance against the people who most recently did them "wrong." The inference of this type of haunting is that they decided to forego that afterlife to kill (generally), but what happens to them when they are vanquished (if they are vanquished)? Limbo? Hell? Heaven? God did let them go back, after all.

As far as "unfinished business" goes, what happens if they can't finish their business? Can they decide to give up and return to heaven or wherever they go or are the doomed to haunt the earth just because they never told their sweetheart that they love her? Being a ghost is forever, in theory, so time will pass and the ability to complete the unfinished business is gone. What then? Is there a degree of importance to unfinished business? Is never learning to play guitar enough to come back or does it have to be something big and "meaningful."

And I really don't like the idea of people being haunted and the spirit follows them around. First, it ties in with my first concern where it was a conscious decision to be a ghost, but doesn't make much sense, either. Haunting a place where you were murdered or abused makes sense to me because that was a severe trauma and maybe you can't help but relive it. But following someone around indicates decision and basically everything above I already spoke of.

Finally, what are the rules of touching? If a ghost can move furniture around, what doesn't it just grab the person it's pissed at? Why do they spend so much time screwing with the haunted and not just finish the job right there? Do they get off on being a ghost (well... I guess the spirit in The Entity does)? This is a bigger problem for the ghosts seeking revenge because they must be filled with rage to seek it so badly they become a ghost.

As it stands, I can only really get behind the "unfinished business" ghosts (to an extent) or the "reliving past trauma" ghosts. There's at least some semblance of logic based around their existence and that suits me fine. All of which brings me to 100 Feet.

The premise is pretty amazing. A woman is under house arrest in a haunted house. That takes care of the "why don't they just leave the house" crowd as the alternative is going back to jail. The rest of the movie is crap. Eric Red wrote and directed 100 Feet and I had high expectations. This is the man responsible for writing The Hitcher! But instead of playing the movie for suspense, he plays it for "scares." The ghost is shown very early in a "boo" scare so there's not mystery as to what's happening. Red doesn't even try to infer that Marnie (Famke Janssen) is going insane being trapped inside all the time.

Of course, if the ghost wasn't shown so early, then we wouldn't have as much of that ghost-kicking-the-shit-out-of-a-woman action. You see, the ghost is Marnie's abusive husband who she killed in self-defense. Her husband was a cop and none of her abuse complaints were taken seriously leaving her no recourse and apparently a very bad lawyer. For some reason, he gets to come back to her and abuse her even in death and there's nothing she can do about it (except one thing, but that's the climax and I won't spoil it for you in all of it's terrible ridiculous-ity).

100 Feet is guilty of nearly all of my complaints above and it's incredibly frustrating to watch. The clear answer to many of my issues is "there would be no movie," but is there anything more frustrating that a movie that exists just because? I there isn't a convincing reason for making something and hour and a half, don't do it! Maybe it wouldn't be as big of a deal if every character wasn't so obnoxious and Janssen didn't speak with a terrible New York accent, but we'll never know.

There is some affective action if you can fight off the voice in your head saying, "this is stupid." and Red plays with the mirror trope (though not as well as House). There's also a neat parallel between no one believing that she was being abused by her husband to the fact that no one would ever believe she was being believe by the ghost of her husband, either. Other than that, 100 Feet is a hunk of disposable garbage. A massive

A Beautiful Naked Woman Only Gets You So Far: Lifeforce

2011-10-23T22:45:00.000-07:00

I never think much about what goes in to casting a movie. Usually one only notices the stars and the bit players all fade to the background (by design, I guess). It's easy to forget that there are rounds and rounds of auditions that people have to go through just to get considered seriously for a role and even then they might not get it (Samm Levine comes to mind simply due to his stories from Sad Sad Conversation). I bring this up now because a beautiful woman walks around nearly all of her scenes stark naked. All I could think about was how many women had to go into the casting office and get naked (and subsequently get rejected because their bodies weren't quite right. And it was their bodies because there is very little acting involved in the role). IMDB tells us that over 1000 actresses were considered for the role. That's a whole lot of naked ladies for one movie. I'd imagine the only other person who looks at that many naked people for one movie is Tinto Brass.

There's a lot going for Lifeforce. Directed by Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Poltergeist). Written by Dan O'Bannon (Alien, Return of the Living Dead), though apparently Hooper made changes that O'Bannon didn't approve. An awesome score by Henry Mancini. But after a stellar first act (pun slightly intended), Lifeforce falls apart.

The film opens in space with a crew investigating Halley's Comet and the come across desiccated bat corpses and three humanoid bodies in clear coffins made of an unknown substance. They bring the space coffins on board and we flash to thirty days later and contact is lost with the space ship. Another is sent up to find out what happens. The whole scene plays out much like the similar scene in Sunshine where the crew enters the other ship only to find everyone dead and burnt to death except without the crazy burned man fucking things up. I can't help but think Danny Boyle was a little inspired by Lifeforce. While the space scenes (and those soon after) are the best in Lifeforce, the special effects in space are pretty shoddy, though I do like the matte paintings.

The coffined bodies are brought back to earth and we get some fun nakedness, soul sucking, and pretty cool animatronics. For a while, Lifeforce feels like it's going to be a perfect melding of O'Bannon's Alien and Return of the Living Dead. But once Space Girl (Mathilda May) gets loose from the compound, the movie becomes weird, confusing, and complicated.

Apparently, not everyone on the first space ship died. Colonel Carlsen (Steve Railsback, who I'm not really familiar with but is horrible in this) found his way to an escape pod and was recovered on earth. Now he's connected to Space Girl and she can get in his thoughts and he can see hers. It's a cheap gimmick gets even worse when hypnotism is also thrown in their. Now they can know where Space Girl is at all times even though she can change bodies. I'm not going to go much further into detail because it would be a garbled mess of words. Even though the space humanoids are referred to as vampires, somehow everyone gets turned into zombies. Patrick Stewart pops up and disappears without having done much. I don't even know what to make of the climax.

There are several key issues that prevent Lifeforce from being anything more than a mildly entertaining movie. First, we spend a lot of time with the first crew without getting to know any of them, then they are all killed. We enter act two by getting introduced to new characters. This approach leaves the viewer with no stake in what happens because we don't give a rat's ass what happens to these people and don't even know what it is they want (except maybe to get the naked woman back). Then there's the fact that the first act features a lot of nudity and cool special effects that disappear for a large part of the rest of Lifeforce. Just like the head explosions, you don't want to shoot your wad early. Additionally, the movie needed a better lead. I couldn't help but picture Jeffrey Combs owning as the lead in Lifeforce. He can play slightly insane better than anyone I've ever seen (and we'll throw insane in there, too).

Lifeforce crumbles when it introduces hypnotism and mind-connections as major plot points and never recovers. I'd like to read O'Bannon's original script just to see how much was his story. I like his work so much I struggle believing he crafted something so absurd. One thing I'll say for Lifeforce, though, is that I didn't see the ending coming at all.

Dr. Death Will See You Now: Madhouse

2011-10-23T01:36:00.000-07:00

This may be old news as I've spoken to many friends about this, but I love Vincent Price. For basically my entire life up until about a year ago, he was a caricature. I knew him from Thriller:

Vincent:

Edward Scissorhands:

and The Simpsons:

After reading part one of a massive Orson Welles biography, I learned that Price was in the Mercury Theatre with Welles and it set me on a mission to discover the man for myself (that and Josh Becker speaks fairly highly of him when the subject comes up on his "Ask the Director" page).

Over the past year I've been systematically watching as much Price as possible and I've learned that far from being a caricature, the man can flat out act! He brings sincerity, melancholy, menace, joy, and humor to his roles and always when necessary. I'd say I felt bad for him that he went from "serious" acting to starring in nothing but horror films, but genre cinema is all the better for it (and since I'm lauding a St. Louis boy at the same time the St. Louis Cardinals are in the World Series, I'll throw my hat in the ring for the Cards).

Madhouse gives Price quite a lot to do. He is at the center of a series of murders and his mental state is such that he may be committing the murders and not even know it.

OK, so Price gets a little cartoony with that scream at the beginning of the trailer.

Price plays Paul Toombes, a man famous for playing the killer Dr. Death. The writer of these films is Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing). After an incident years before, Toombes spends some time in a mental institution but is now out and going to lay the part again for TV as a favor to Flay. That is, until everyone around him starts dying. There's kind of a lot going on around the heart of Madhouse and not all of it feels organic or even makes much sense, but it allows for bodies to pile up, so no complaints here!

Probably my favorite aspect of the film is that it shows a number of Toombes old films, some of which were made specifically for Madhouse and feature Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff, and some are old films or Vincent Price like The Pit and the Pendulum. That brings a level of authenticity to the film even if the latter of which suggests an alternate universes in which there is no Vincent Price, or no Paul Toombes, or they are the same person). There's also a lot of jabs at the filmmaking process and the nature of the industry. In regards to someone living a part, the response is "Actors don't get carried away like that." There really is no room for method in horror movies, anyway... And even though everyone around the TV show production is dying, the show must go on at all costs! There's plenty more, but I didn't start picking up on the mockery until about halfway through the movie.

The reveal can be seen coming a mile away and I was probably more surprised that it was that obvious. Dare I give Madhouse credit for trying to trick the viewer by not trying to trick the viewer? There are lots of scenes of people discovering bodies and screaming which is more amusing than anything else. Overall, though, I totally dig Madhouse. It's weird, but classy and offers a few surprises even if the ending isn't one of them. And the last line is pretty boss: "It's your favorite, Paul. Sour cream and red herrings."

Post-script: Madhouse is rated PG but is decidedly not a kids movie. This brings to light the relative pointlessness of the PG-13 rating. PG meant parental guidance suggested, but it doesn't mean that kids can't see the movie alone. By making a PG-13 rating, it's saying something that's already being said. The issue gets confused once one starts comparing movies released after PG-13 was instituted. PG came to mean kids films. But when you look at movies with PG ratings before 1984, you find Jaws, Poltergeist, and Barbarella in mix. By today's standards, there is no way they get a PG, but there is no retroactive rating. I don't really care about ratings much at all and plan on watching all sorts of movies with my kid(s?). After all, that's what PG stands for and even R requires a parent/guardian to be present. What a world...

How to Lose Good Will: The Horde

2011-10-21T19:01:00.000-07:00

I'm not here to spark age old debates. I think we've all had enough of them. You haven't? Me either, but I'm not going to get into it again (but you can read someone else's zombie thoughts if you like). Just to acknowledge the fact: yes, The Horde features fast zombies and no, I'm not OK with that. So what else does The Horde have for us?

I am a huge fan of the idea that starts off The Horde that there is a narrative completely unrelated to the zombie genre (or horror at all) that gets disrupted by the outside undead force. I almost wish that I could experience a movie in which I didn't know it was a zombie movie until the first zombies showed up 20 minutes in. Can you imagine watching a heist movie where the crew has spent the entire movie planning the heist to the most minute detail only to have zombies screw everything up just as they crack the safe? It sounds amazing! So The Horde had a lot of good will early even in spite of the fact that the hints of the imminent zombie invasion pointed to fast zombies. There are a group of cops who are going to rescue a colleague/friend from the people who killed another one of their own. Opposing sides meet. Some people get killed. Zombies show up.

The plot isn't unlike John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13. The two sides must try to put aside their differences if they hope to survive. Through the first 30 minutes, I was totally on board. I loved the set up, had no idea where the movie was going, the movie was looking good, and I totally dug that the zombie menace was unexplained and that the recently killed were rising even though they weren't infected (something that I feel gets lost in some other zombie movies). Then the first zombie attack happens. It's like the directors, Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher, totally lost confidence in their abilities. It looks like they removed frames to make the action quicker and jerky but it looks terrible. Any time something exciting happens, this aesthetic returns to the point where I actively starting disliking the movie. I want my zombie carnage smooth, dammit!

Then there are the characters... I mostly like the lead criminal, Adewale (Eriq Ebouaney), and the lead cop, Ouessem (Jean-Pierre Martins). Actually, the criminals in general get on my nerves the least, but that's not to say I like them. But the female cop, Aurore (Claude Perron) is totally ridiculous. She's just there to be angry and contrary. And being basically the only female in the movie, she has to be pregnant (but not too pregnant so she's still super-thin). I get what they were trying to do, but I don't understand why she's only looking out for herself. The comic relief from Rene (Yves Pignot) starts as mildly amusing and becomes tiresome. Maybe you don't want likable characters in your zombie movie because inevitably, everyone is going to die (or if there is a hopeful ending, the zombie threat is rarely eradicated). Yeah. I don't buy that either.

By the time The Horde is ramping up to the climax, it's just an endless stream of people doing stupid things. A grenade is ignored, people struggle to close a door that zombies are blocking but don't think to shoot at them, unnecessary sacrifices are made, and NO ONE FIGURES OUT THAT HEAD SHOTS KILL THE ZOMBIES EVEN THOUGH THEY'VE ALREADY DETERMINED THAT THAT WORKS. Seriously. They don't even try to aim for the head in most cases. It's so aggravating to watch.

When I was still enjoying The Horde, I was going to talk about the themes running through it and examine if there was any commentary on violence or crime. Instead, I got angry. I thought the film was going to blow me away, fast zombies and everything, but it's a shit sandwich.

The Kitchen Sink Approach: The Witch's Mirror

2011-10-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

The Witch's Mirror hits about every horror bullet point established up to the time of it's release. I'm not sure that I've ever seen a movie that tries to cover the bases so fully. This is going to be spoiler heavy because The Witch's Mirror is ridiculous.

The movie starts off with narration about what it is to be a witch over images of witchy illustrations. We're really set up for a lot of classic, Halloween-style witchery. Instead, we get a mirror that predicts the future in and acts as a manner to speak to the dead (I always thought the witch's mirror was something concocted in Snow White and never really thought it might be a part of the folklore). Elena (Dina de Marco) learns that her husband is going to kill her and her witch friend/servant, Sara (Isabela Corona), asks Lucifer (Satan) for help but is told that she'd be punished for interfering with fate. I was actually really hoping for a Minority Report-esque plot point about preventing future crimes. Alas...

So the husband Eduardo (Armando Calvo) poisons Elena's milk because all castles have poison and Elena, even though she knows her husband is going to try to kill her drinks the milk with slight reluctance and dies. That's how fate works? She couldn't have "accidentally" dropped the glass to buy herself some time? Sara vows to avenge Elena's death, as one does.

Instead of immediately avenging Elena's death in a witch-like way, Sara waits for Eduardo to return home from a voyage with his former mistress/now wife, Deborah (Rosa Arenas) who (and this is important) didn't know that Eduardo was married to Elena at the time of their relationship and Sara knows this because the mirror told her. Instead of back at Eduardo, Sara's plan ends with Deborah horribly burned and considers this mission accomplished. However, Deborah is an innocent in all of this and is punished pretty horribly while Eduardo gets off pretty scott free. I almost thought the movie was going to end right there, but it didn't. Bizarrely, Sara's plan isn't so much witchy as it is a haunting. In fact, it feels more like Elena just came back from the dead on her own and started fucking with the lovebirds until they began yelling at each other (something about terror tears a couple apart) and freaking out.

But, what started as a witch movie and turned into a haunted house movie once again shifts into the mad scientist approach. Eduardo is obsessed with restoring his new brides skin to her so she doesn't have to be ashamed and embarks on a quest not unlike the one in Eyes Without a Face. Suddenly, Eduardo is a doctor (which has not been mentioned until now) and has a young man in his employ (whom we are just meeting) and there are police on the case (what case?). An entirely different movie starts halfway through The Witch's Mirror. Not only that, but they dig up a woman who is actually alive (a very common theme in the macabre) and has hands exactly like Elena's that Eduardo wants to put on Deborah. Why? Because... they're pretty? But he's tricked! And Sara hands removed from the still living corpse into the fire (because why save them to see if they can't be reattached to the original owner who could wake up at any moment with no hands) and has the undead Elena leave her hands instead. With these hands attached to Deborah, Elena can exact her own revenge. What the hell?

And you know, it's not a bad movie and not really confusing. But a million things happen in 75 minutes. I'm almost in awe of the accomplishments of director Chano Urueta. Anything related to witchery is totally superflous and it would take very little to have the film make sense just being a ghost story, but I kind of dug this little Mexican horror story.

Quivering Like a Shaky Cam: Seventh Moon

2011-10-20T01:34:00.000-07:00

Apparently director Eduardo Sanchez only knows one way to shoot a movie. It worked out fine for him with The Blair Witch Project. Of course the found footage for that is going to be shaky and rough and hard to make out details. It's just a couple kids going into the woods getting freaked the fuck out. However, with a third person camera, there is no need for the entire film to be handheld. The constantly moving image makes it hard to focus on what's happening and it makes for really jarring editing since there is no flow between images. Any time I see a film shot entirely handheld, my reaction is that the filmmaker has no idea how to make a movie since there appears to be no grasp of the basics. Shaky cam is a tool and should be used appropriately, like filters, lenses, slow-motion, zooms, pans, and everything else that goes into making a movie. I often wonder if actors watch the completed movie and think about how terrible it all looks and are disappointed about how the final product doesn't meet what they read in the script.

Seventh Moon starts with a quote about the fifteenth day of the seventh moon the dead walk the earth. The quote is attributed to ancient Chinese wisdom and I have no reason to doubt it, but with stuff like that, filmmakers could totally be fucking with me and I wouldn't know the difference (by the way... it checks out). The handheld photography actually works during the opening credits because it gives the film a documentary feel like we're following this newlywed couple (Amy Smart and Dennis Chan) around a Chinese city. There's also the suspicion that the shots were done without permits and that they were sneaking around with a camera (something I can't verify).

Then the aesthetic continues and I got the feeling that I wasn't going to be a fan of Seventh Moon. I wasn't wrong. The handheld camera isn't the only problem though I repeatedly noted that the cuts are jarring and how hard it is to see anything (also due to the near absence of light throughout the movie). Seventh Moon is simply rife with cliches and feels like it was culled from a million other movies. The honeymoon couple turn on each other the moment things start turning south (Amy Smart's anger about going to China for her honeymoon is one of the more absurd things I've heard), the car gets stuck in the mud, the tour guide goes missing after driving them out to the middle of nowhere, dreams that play as reality for no reason, and a deus ex machina ending.

Truthfully, I wouldn't care so much about those if the movie was actually scary, but it's impossible to create tension with that damn camerawork! How am I supposed to sense these creatures creeping if the camera doesn't hold still long enough for me to focus on them? At least use a wider lens or a steadicam to help things out. Hell, I might have even started to get invested in the story of the doomed relationship and what it would be like to lose someone who you've just dedicated your life to. As it stands, Seventh Moon is a waste of time.

Top 12 Horror Films of the '90s

2011-10-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

In light of the brief discussion from a previous post about horror in the '80s compared to the '90s and spurred on by comments from another post, I had to look deeper into horror films of the '90s to get a larger sense of the quality. Verdict: what a terrible decade for horror. My initial list of just "good" horror films came to about eighteen and I whittled it down to twelve that I would consider great. It's not even like every year is represented. From '96 to '99, horror was essentially a dead genre. Some things that surprised me or are at least of note:

-- Wes Craven had a pretty solid output through the decade. It's a shame that he's fallen apart in the aughts.

-- There were a ton of shitty remakes and sequels made in the decade. That's still the case now, but at least more people are able to make their own movies even if they're low-budget and direct-to-DVD (and generally not good).

-- With one or two exceptions, my list of films is dominated by well-established genre directors, either of the time or today.

The list is in no order except by release year. As always, if I miss any, let me know!

1990

Gremlins 2: The New Batch -- Joe Dante

Everything is amped up in this sequel. I can see why some wouldn't like it because it's totally different from the original. It's as close to a live action cartoon as one is likely to see and the gremlins are the main attraction. They run amok in a skyscraper that houses seemingly everything imaginable. It's pure, unadulterated chaos that Dante has complete control over. I almost can't believe Gremlins 2 ever got made. It's totally meta (Leonard Maltin is attacked while reviewing the first film) and ridiculous and I love every second of it.

Tremors -- Ron Underwood

My dad is the biggest fan of this series I've ever met. I can't remember if I showed it to him or we rented it together, but he owns all four movies plus the TV series. I'm nowhere near his level of fandom, but the first Tremors is definitely worth it. Horror comedy is tough to pull off, especially when it's basically a special effects heavy monster movie in which realism is key to the success of the movie. Tremors gets great performances from Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon and their chemistry is so good that it's sad Bacon didn't come back at least for the second one. One would be remiss if Michael Gross isn't mentioned as he carries much of the remaining series. It's amazing how far away from Family Ties he is as gun nut Burt Gummer.

1992

Dead/Alive (aka Braindead)

For the longest time, this was the only movie I would never force anyone to watch. Generally, I'd invite friends over to watch a certain horror movie or series of movies whether they are fans of the genre or not. They don't mind much because it's in a group and spirits are high. But Dead/Alive was a no go. It's incredibly gross and weird and I didn't think the novices would be able to take it. After seeing it playing on a TV in a bar recently, I've changed my mind. Everyone has to see it. In fact, it's impossible to look away from Dead/Alive. It's over-the-top and hilarious with great gore and puppeteering. I dare you to watch this movie and figure out how Peter Jackson went from this to being trusted with one of the biggest motion picture franchises ever (AND shooting all three of those movies back to back to back). It boggles the mind.

1993

Army of Darkness -- Sam Raimi

I almost eliminated this from my list because I don't believe it's nearly as good as Evil Dead I or II and I've seen it so many times (and so many versions of it) that I feel like it's losing its luster (kind of like The Big Lebowski). However, it's brought me so much joy and I still find myself watching it even though I think I don't need to anymore. Great one-liners, tons of awesome gags, and it's nice to see so many old school effects even if many of them are terrible. The shoot may have been horrible, but it doesn't show on screen. As amazing as Bruce Campbell is in the first two, watching him in this is like watching an entirely different actor. The man commands the screen. It's like we watched him grow up and learn how to act through each film in the trilogy.

Cronos -- Guillermo del Toro

This has been covered in much more detail.

1994

In the Mouth of Madness -- John Carpenter

The first time I watched In the Mouth of Madness, I didn't care much for it. I mean, I liked it enough to buy the DVD for $5, but it didn't impress me like The Thing did. However, it won out on the voting amongst friends for a movie to watch and I was blown away. I'm not sure what I missed out on the first time, but it's creepy and sinister and Sam Neill owns the screen. It's Carpenter's homage to the Lovecraft-ian world (the title is taken from two Lovecraft stories) and it packs an amazing, apocalyptic punch. And just to show that I'm not alone, a coworker went through the exact same experience as me. The movie is practically begging to be rewatched.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare -- Wes Craven

Before Craven would get really meta on us with Scream, he towed the water with New Nightmare. Freddy got a new look and lost the elaborate set pieces and quippiness that took over the series in the years since A Nightmare on Elm Street. There's a fair amount of bad acting as studio execs play themselves, but it's nice to see Heather Langenkamp back as well as Robert Englund out of the make-up. Much like In the Mouth of Madness, I only realized how good this film was upon rewatching it, which really makes me insecure about my opinions of things. Those who know me know that I'm not known for an unwillingness to share opinions, so this is potentially earth-shattering for me.

1996

The Frighteners -- Peter Jackson

I'll always associate The Frighteners with Christmas because I saw it for the first time at a Christmas party I had with my friends. We rented it and though I probably a little young (I was terrified of utility knives for a while after), I still loved it. There were funny ghosts and Michael J. Fox was in it! What's not to like? Jeffrey Combs gives what might be his most unhinged performance in a career full of them. What's notable about this film on this list is that it's the first to feature CG heavily. It's almost amazing how great the movie looks given the year it was made (Toy Story was only released the year before) and it still holds up admirably. Given the leaps in technology that Weta had to make to get this movie made, you can draw a straight line from The Frighteners to Lord of the Rings. Also, it's kind of cute the way Jackson tried to pass off the New Zealand locations for an American city.

Scream -- Wes Craven

While Scream may be responsible for 90% of the bad horror films that came out in the five to ten years after it, there's no denying it's a great movie. The characters are well-developed, the script is solid and self-referential, the cast is perfect, and the killer is terrifying. The Ghostface mask was responsible for many sleepless nights for me and even though Scream scared the bejesus out of me (I was in seventh grade when it came out and I couldn't believe that a classmate of mine wanted to see it in theaters, I still read the script to the sequel before it's release (the only movie script I ever read until I had to read one for my screenwriting class) and I saw Scream 2 on opening night. Now that my knowledge of the genre is so much greater than it was at the time, it's fun to go back and watch the various references/homages I didn't get (truth be told, I like the whole series and though I haven't seen 4, I expect to like it too).

1999

Lake Placid -- Steve Miner

Once again, covered ground.

Sleepy Hollow -- Tim Burton

For sheer joy, Sleepy Hollow ranks as one of my favorite movies ever. It's rare to have a movie live up to one's expectations so fully, but I was running along with the horseman in the theater. I couldn't help it. My legs were moving on their own accord. Once again, I saw this relatively early in my horror education so I didn't realize the importance of Christopher Lee or Michael Gough to the genre. I don't mind the changes from the original story since Johnny Depp keeps the spirit of Ichabod alive and well in his squeamishness (and doesn't Burton gleefully bloody Depp at every turn?). Sleepy Hollow may be the last truly great Tim Burton movie (how sad that the '90s signaled the end of quality output from so many good directors [yes, I know Burton is making tons of money for Disney, but the movies suck]).

A Light-Hearted Take on Gruesomely Murdering Strippers: The Gore Gore Girls

2011-10-18T17:37:00.000-07:00

Most are probably familiar with Herschell Gordon Lewis from the scene in Juno where Ellen Page and Jason Bateman argue over who the master of horror is. I know that was the first time I'd heard the name and I'd been a massive horror fan since my junior year of high school (about seven-ish years). It took another four years for me to finally check out one of Lewis' films and, if The Gore Gore Girls is any indication, I have little desire to check out more.

Lewis doesn't waste any time getting to the gore. Before there is any indication that the movie has started, a stripper is seen repeatedly getting her face smashed into a mirror. Some mildly interesting credits role and we meet Abraham Gentry (Frank Kress). Gentry is not unlike Sherlock Holmes in that he is apparently a very fine independent investigator (though Holmes always seems to do it for the fun whereas Gentry will take the cash). At least everyone seems to be impressed when they find out who he is. In action, Gentry is more Oscar Wilde than Sherlock Holmes. He's always ready with a quip and a dismissive barb. It's one of the more irritating aspects in a film full of them. However, like Holmes, he's not above using his compatriots as bait.

There's not much plot. Gentry is trying to solve the case of the mutilated strippers. Probably my biggest issue with The Gore Gore Girls is that it wants to be a comedy with intense gore (lord knows it's not a sexy movie even though there's plenty of stripping). There are scenes of pulverized heads and gouged eyes playing next Gentry acting like he's entertaining at a cocktail party. Lewis tries to have it both ways in one scene that features death by butt tenderizing. I can see how some might find the antics amusing, but it plays as hackneyed and "shocking" for lack of ideas. There's a few interesting things in the gory scenes: a bubble filled with blood and some queasy nipple play, but even that stuff lingers too long.

Basically, the movie boils down to strippers stripping, strippers being murdered (often by bludgeoning), and insensitive quips. I mentioned above how unsexy the stripping is and, aside from it taking up so much screen time as to become dull, the dancing is terrible. The art of stripping has come a long way since 1972, apparently, because all I could think about watching these girls was Andy Kaufman:

Stay Off the Moor at Night: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

2011-10-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

I remember in 7th grade my English teacher talking about how nearly all novels have many unanswered questions in the end (in retrospect, I really don't know what that means because of course they do, but maybe he meant mystery novels). However, he said that The Hound of the Baskervilles has only one. This sent me straight to the book to find out what that was (this was probably better than assigning the book to read because I never really got into the habit of reading for my classes as I like to read for pleasure whereas reading for classes feels like a race against the clock). I still don't know what that remaining question is, though I'm certain I had more than one when I finished it. That also marks the last time I spent any time with The Hound of the Baskervilles... until now.

I feel as though it's hard to screw up a Sherlock Holmes story as long as one sticks fairly close to the source material. There's something far more satisfying to watching Holmes work as opposed to anyone on CSI or something like that. Perhaps it's the fact that Holmes doesn't have to use high tech machinery and crazy forensic analysis. He goes by his wits and his gut and we feel as though we can figure the mystery out if we pay close enough attention without having to wait for results to get back from the lab. And Hammer does a damn fine job here. Sadly, audiences weren't ready for non-monster Hammer films and the planned series of Peter Cushing starring Sherlock Holmes movies was abandoned.

Cushing strikes me as the perfect Holmes. He basically plays the know-it-all authority in every movie he's in for Hammer. He's a master of exposition only here the exposition is more interesting because it's how he solved a case instead of the history of Dracula (which he's given at least five times) or something similar. I particularly like portrayals of Holmes where he's a bit of a prickly pear. He doesn't have time for nonsense and doesn't put up with foolishness. Holmes is even a jerk to his host, Sir Henry Baskerville (Christopher Lee), when he knows it will benefit in the long run. It's very enjoyable and more than a little amusing. Cushing also does a masterful job of looking like he's always observing. His eyes wander and his head darts around to everything. One gets the sense that this is a man who can't help but obsess over minutiae.

I like to think that the Hammer Holmes series would have featured Cushing and Lee in every film with Lee playing a different character all the time. It's nice to watch a movie where he's not a bad guy and is actually normal. Due to his most famous role as Dracula, he always carries a sinister air about him, but he does a pretty good job a keeping it to a minimum. I can definitely see why he wanted to avoid being pigeonholed as Dracula.

There are a few red herrings floating around, but I don't think there's any real surprise as to who the guilty party is even if you haven't read the book. There's also some silliness with a Tarantula that is explained away fairly reasonably, but remains silly nonetheless. Sherlock is absent for most of the first act, as well, which is a little disappointing. But it's Sherlock Holmes! In color! By Hammer! Fun times are had by all.

Now, if I can just get someone to write a mash-up of The Hound of the Baskervilles and An American Werewolf in London. American Werewolf of the Baskervilles... I like that.

Uncle Sam Wants Us Dead

2011-10-15T23:00:00.000-07:00

I'm fairly certain everyone saw this box when they went to the video store (remember those?):

I know I do. I still remember where it was situated in the store. Back wall, about a third of the way in (going left to right), just below eye level. It had a holographic cover that changed from regular Uncle Sam to evil Uncle Sam, (not unlike the Jack Frost box). The tag line always struck me as amusing (because I'm a sucker for those things), but everything else about the movie looked terrible. How perspectives change once one gains a little more knowledge...

For instance, did you know that the film was written by Larry Cohen? Even though Special Effects was terrible, the man tries to make horror movies with something to say. All right, Uncle Sam. I'm listening. Also, did you know that William Lustig directed it? The man is responsible for one of the more unsettling horror movies I've ever seen: Maniac. Additionally, Uncle Sam has a cast featuring appearances by Robert Forster, P.J. Soles (*sigh*), Timothy Bottoms, and Isaac Hayes. OK, Uncle Sam. Let's do this.

Sam Harper returns form Operation Desert Storm in a coffin, killed by friendly fire. He spent his living years preaching patriotism to his young nephew who exalts his Uncle Sam as a hero (see, it's a clever title because Uncle Sam is the name of the character AND the icon) even though most know him as something other than that. But, for some reason, Sam returns from the dead (shades of Deathdream?) to punish the unpatriotic. In a way, it's the perfect movie for our current political environment and it was released in 1997. Doesn't it feel like there's a growing sense of "kill the unpatriotic" in this country, what with the whole, "let people without health insurance die" crowd. Uncle Sam works pretty well as a satire about blind patriotism. With the young nephew as the protagonist, it helps the film drive home the point that blind patriotism isn't just ridiculous, but it's a childlike and naive view of the world.

Cohen and Lustig don't do much to hide their distain for modern warfare. Isaac Hayes' character yells at the nephew to keep out of the army (the nephew still has about eight years to go) and that there are no heroes, only crazy people lucky enough not to get killed being crazy, get medals, then are told to go home and not be crazy anymore. There are lines that hint at the complexities of Vietnam and why draft-dodging wasn't necessarily cowardice and more lines about how war used to be about fighting something tangible. And the obvious, having your uber-patriotic soldier come back to life and kill people at an Independence Day celebration because they are less than perfect Americans.

I spoke of the difference between movies made in the '90s versus those made earlier and Uncle Sam is a decent example of that. Not so much in the aesthetic, but in the way the violence is portrayed. Through the '80s, horror filmmakers were getting away with all sorts of bloody mayhem even with many of the films getting severe cuts from censors. Into the '90s, though, horror movies pulled back and the violence largely happens off-screen with the end result being shown. Instead of having Tom Savini (for example) make a prosthetic body to shove a spike through, they cut away only to show someone with a bloody spike in them. Given that Lustig is responsible for one of the greatest head explosions in cinema history (supplied by Savini, of course), it's a little disappointing that Uncle Sam doesn't deliver the goods (this trend starts in the late-80s and is readily apparent in both Sleepaway Camp sequels which could really use some good gore because Bruce Springsteen's sister only gets a movie so far...).

Uncle Sam falls apart a bit in the third act, but considering what I was expecting, I'm more than happy with the experience. Even though it cuts short on some gore, it's nice to see someone actually lit on fire (as opposed to someone pretending and having a shitty CG fire added after) and the satire is pretty good. Netflix lists Uncle Sam as a comedy, which baffles me because there really isn't much that's funny in the film and I don't think the filmmakers intended it to be funny. I get the feeling that, much like my gut reaction above, the fine people at Netflix didn't watch the film but just assumed it was going to be in the "so-bad-it's-good" category. No. It's just good (but not great).

Not to Be Confused with Tremors 4: The Burrowers

2011-10-14T23:49:00.000-07:00

I've been waiting to encounter a movie that I didn't really have much to say about. The Burrowers is a fine movie and I would never tell anyone not to watch it, but it just didn't give me much to think about story-wise or message-wise. It's an hour and half horror Western. Think The Searchers but instead of the Comanche killing the family and taking the girl, our protagonists assume Indians were responsible for the massacre and pursue them (I believe it's the Utes in The Burrowers) instead of the creatures that live underground. Maybe the moral of The Burrowers is "Never assume because it makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and 'me.'"

Lost fans will be happy to see William Mapother in a major role. Genre fans will be excited to see Clancy Brown because Clancy Brown is awesome in everything and should be a huge star (and was also on Lost, come to think of it). There are times when The Burrowers does feel like an epic Western with impressive shots of people riding horses across the prairies and appropriately sweeping music playing. The movie loses that a bit towards the end, but it was nice to look at, though the whole look of the movie suffers from post-production tampering (why can't people just get the lighting right when they shoot it? This post-production color alteration must stop). Along similar lines, it may be easier to create CG monsters and use CG gore, but it looks terrible! Doesn't anyone care about the craft? There are methods that have been in place for 30 years that yield better results than crappy CG.

Even at 96 minutes, The Burrowers feels long. I attribute it to the fact that Clancy Brown leaves the film about halfway through and we're left without his awesome presence for the rest. There's a a sense that we're just running over the same old ground. Perhaps if the viewer was kept in the dark about what was really going on so we're trying to figure things out while the characters are the film would have had a stronger hook. As it stands... meh.

Gore Reigns Supreme: The Beyond

2011-10-14T23:48:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a pretty short write-up. It's not that there's not a lot to say about The Beyond but that it's so visceral and the story matters so little that it's hard to get much across without just saying, "you just have to watch the movie." It's the second film in Lucio Fulci's "Gates of Hell" trilogy, the others being City of the Living Dead and The House by the Cemetery (the latter of which I enjoyed far more the second time I saw it). The Beyond is easily my favorite of the trilogy even though there's little that makes sense in the film (which is kind of the case with the whole trilogy).

Roughly, The Beyond deals with a woman who inherits an old hotel in Louisiana and is trying to prep it for reopening. The problem is, this hotel is one of the seven gates of hell. That's all you really need to know. Just strap yourself in for a steady flow of plasma, eyes getting mutilated, stabbings, and a head explosion (The Beyond gets the formula for that right, unlike some other film I know). The scene that fucked me up the most is when the tarantulas attack. Fulci lingers on them walking and something about watching all eight of their legs move at different times gave me the willies.

The Beyond is loaded with great, stylish shots and awesome gore effects. There's an annoying blind woman and when the doctor is shooting at zombies at the end, you'd think he was a moron, but those are just about my only complaints for the movie. It's perfect to watch with a crowd as there's lots to elicit vocal responses. Seriously... you just have to watch the movie.

You Can Forget About Atari: Pitfall

2011-10-13T22:19:00.000-07:00

Pitfall is a movie with ghosts but no haunting. It has more in common with a police procedural than a horror movie. I thought about not including it with the other write-ups but I figured that there has to be room for a supernatural drama in October at some point. Plus, I've already covered other thrillers and this one isn't so different. In fact, more people are killed in this than in Special Effects. And like Special Effects, Pitfall features doppelgangers, though much more effectively.

There is a startling amount going in in the 97 minutes of Pitfall. I hesitate to even try to write a synopsis. Briefly, a migrant miner is working for work and is killed. A reporter examine follows up on some leads and discovers that there is a head of a union that broke off from the main union who looks exactly like the murdered man. The reporter, the deceased, and the look-a-like are all trying to get to the bottom of what's happening for their own reasons. It's damn near remarkable that the film isn't a garbled mess by the end and wraps up quite nicely (some might say too nicely).

Pitfall loses steam when it tells the back story of the two unions, but then I've never been much for union talk. It's essential to set up what's to come, but very dialogue heavy and some interesting staging does little to pep the scene up. However, the rest of the film is cracking; steeped in dramatic irony. It's very easy to empathize with the characters and you almost want to shout out at the screen to explain what they can't (because they are dead and all). Having so many people with an interest in the murder really helps to keep the pitfalls of procedurals at bay. Pitfall also does some pretty ingenious things with the doppelganger (I particularly like when the dead man returns to the woman's store late in the film).

The music is terrific and interesting and the film is beautiful to look at with lots of really neat tracking shots of people moving through reeds and ghost towns and the like. Director Hiroshi Teshigahara has a masterful eye and I only wish that they'd spent more time cleaning the lens before shooting. Pitfall feels like it takes place in another time as it starts and the mention of a bus early on was very jarring. As the film progresses, we move into more modern spaces of industrialization. It's a little bit like moving through the evolution of mining. There's even some documentary footage of mining incidents in there for good measure.

At one point, a (dead) character says to our dead man, "The more you know, the worse it'll be" (no wonder NBC dropped the last half for their PSAs). And of course, that appears to be true for everyone by the end of the film. The ultimate irony is that no one really knows anything at the end of Pitfall for all of their efforts. Save for one person who knows everything but never says a word during the film.

So, it's not scary, the ghosts don't haunt, and it's heavy on union politics. But it's beautiful, and involving, with great music and solid direction. Yeah there's definitely room in October for supernatural dramas.

When Good Girls Go Vampire: Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural

2011-10-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

There's something about horror films from the '80s and before that proclaim authenticity. Not that the events depicted are more realistic than their more current counterparts, but that the viewer is going to get a fun or scary experience (or both). When I see that a horror film was made in the '90s, I hold a low opinion of it instantly because I grew up during that time and associate so many bad movies with the era. I don't know if it was the film stock or what, but movies in the '90s have a sheen to them that makes them feel artificial that coincides with bad storytelling. It's an era caught between the big ass blockbusters of the '80s, changing technologies, and corporatization. As for the Aughts, there is a slickness to the image that gives the feeling that they are trying really hard to distract from the fact that their movie sucks. This goes from the Platinum Dunes productions all the way down to independent movies. Post-production effects are starting to ruin movies for me.

Even though I know most of the older horror movies are going to be bad as well, I'd still rather stick with them given the chance. I love the murky image (and as far as Instant View goes, many of these more obscure movies are taken from VHS copies). I love the good and crappy practical effects. I love that, for the most part, it feels like people are making the movie for fun and not necessarily as a job. They feel personal instead of clinical (one of the top reasons many of the remakes aren't any good. There's little investment in the subject, just the Brand).

So, I'm more than happy to watch Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural which, depending on your source, was either made in '73 or '75. On Instant View, it's very clearly a VHS copy as it has the Samuel Goldwyn Productions logo tagged onto the beginning. Another aspect that hooked me is that Netflix describes it as "weirdly erotic" yet it has a PG rating. The Catholic Film Board even banned it for its pedophilic and lesbian content. Sounds like a go for me!

The plot is very simple. Thirteen year old Lila, (Cheryl Smith), the daughter of a gangster who's on the run, is adopted by the church and lives a good Christian life (for some reason, the congregation is all women though the pastor is a man). She gets a letter from Lemora (Lesley Gilb) saying her father is hurt and wants to see her so Lila takes off on a terrifying journey. Here's a clip as I can't find any trailers:

Lemora is like an even creepier version of Jan Svankmajer's Alice. For a while, all Lila does (can do) is react to the terror around her. She's like Alice drifting through Horrorland encountering ghouls and creepy kids around every corner. Even the "normal" people she encounters are lecherous animals. When Lila finally sees what Lemora really is, it's not unlike the Queen of Hearts and her minions chasing after Alice shouting "Off with her head" except that instead of decapitation, Lemora wants to sink her fangs into Lila's neck. This final chase is actually quite terrifying, too. Lila is always one step ahead, but the torches are never far behind. The camera angles and the set are intricate and framed to maximize the hunt. Per the discussion above, I can only imagine if Lemora was made today, the chase would be filled with hyper-cutting and camera moves galore. The approach here gives the viewer a chance to get a sense of the surroundings an just how confusing running away from someone (somethings?) can be.

Lemora is far from solid. apparently about 30 minutes were cut from its original release to its DVD release in 2004. In that light, it's easy to see why there are a fair amount of incomprehensible moments, especially during the final fight in the church. Nonetheless, I am surprised at how effective the film is. It takes a little while to get where it's going, but when it gets there, it's pretty relentless.

When Nazis Aren't the Only Bad Guys: The Keep

2011-10-12T01:03:00.000-07:00

Conventional wisdom is that the book is better than the movie. Always. But can a movie be so inept and poorly conceived that it makes one want to avoid the book at all cost? Surely the odds are in the books favor that it will be better. But here I was, wondering how bad the book has to be to yield a movie so uninteresting. There was no benefit of the doubt even though I've seen Will Smith version I Am Legend and it's a travesty of an adaptation that totally misses the point of the novella. Yes, people screw up adaptations all the time. Why was I already hating on the novel? It does my mind good and makes me curious about source material that the writer, F. Paul Wilson found the film to be incomprehensible (in it's theatrical release. Allegedly, the first cut was 3.5 hours[!]).

The plot, as near as I can tell, is that Nazi soldiers are stationed at a deserted citadel in which no one has ever died, but no one has ever lasted spending the night either. Some greedy treasure-hunting soldiers dig out a silver cross and unlock something from within that seems only set on killing Nazis. There's a Jewish historian brought in from a death camp to help figure out what's going on. A guy with glowing eyes has sex with the historian's daughter. Smoke billows, heads explode, one man is healed... it's a mess.

There's a surprising pedigree involved with The Keep, or I should say much of the cast and the director would go on to much bigger things or at least consistent work: Michael Mann, Ian McKellen, Gabriel Byrne, Jurgen Prochnow, Scott Glenn. And the acting is mostly good (though Ian McKellen somehow looks like he's dressed in his father's clothes even though he was in his 40's when this film was made). The directing his accomplished and there are some Michael Mann flourishes. The sets are pretty cool and there's a number of sweet mattes (and an awesome laser show at the end).

But as I said, the story is a mess. Nothing makes sense and not in the good way when something supernatural is happening. There really is no specific place to begin. You just have to watch the movie, but I don't recommend it. It's a movie that takes the bold step of making the Nazis the bad guys. It's got some pretty bad dubbing even though everyone is speaking English and it was shot on a set. There's a go-nowhere love story and the final duel is anticlimactic, laser show or no. And it breaks one of the cardinal rules of the movies: never explode a head before the finale. Everything that comes after that moment is just a letdown. It happens in Scanners and it happens here.

Still... awesome poster.

The Life Smugglers

2011-10-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

For a change of pace, I'm taking a break from the horror write-ups (only momentarily) and writing up a short film I recently watched: The Life Smugglers.

The Life Smugglers follows an elderly man, Arnold (Ken Bridges), and his attempts to care for his ailing wife. The exist in the "[Medicare] donut hole" that doesn't offer them coverage and he's too old to be taken seriously for any job. As a means of paying for medical expenses (and getting the medication he needs for his wife), Arnold has taken to running pills across the border from Mexico into Arizona. Along for the ride is his buddy and conscience, Rocky (Jim McLeroy). On their most recent run, they unknowingly transport and illegal immigrant named, after some prodding from Rocky to get the information, Jorge (Martin Gonzalez).

At the core of The Life Smugglers is the story of two men, Arnold and Jorge, willing to do anything to support the people they love most, even if it means breaking the law. It's damn near heartbreaking to see Arnold treat Jorge so callously even though they are in the same predicament. Fortunately, Rocky is able to look past Jorge's illegal alien status and see that he is a human as well even though he doesn't know the nature of Jorge's struggle (for all of his strengths as a human, Rocky has never learned Spanish which tends to leave him in the dark).

Unfortunately for Jorge, his timing to come to America couldn't be worse. America is deep in recession and not only is there now work for immigrants, there's little work for anyone else. The Life Smugglers is subtly a blistering commentary on America's treatment of those at the bottom of the food chain. Little time is spent to understand why these groups of people need help. Few bother to ask. Lucky for Arnold (and Jorge), he has Rocky to help see through the fog. There are those who'd be just as happy to blindly let the struggle continue. The Life Smugglers ends on a note of near hopelessness. Even Rocky is beaten. He doesn't care what Jorge had to say. No need for translation. Except he does. Even though we think we've been beaten, that there's no hope, we keep going.

I don't want to make The Life Smugglers sound too political. The elements are there, but the characters are what makes it work. Screenwriter Wes Ford packs a lot of story and detail into 25 minutes. He has a fine touch with the way people interact with each other and a great sense of when humor is needed and when to let the drama take over. It helps to have actors who can own the material and I'm always a little surprised when I watch a short film the features such impressive acting. I tend to associate short films with a bunch of friends casting each other in roles that may or may not be appropriate and hamming it up, but everyone here is top-notch.

Finally, Dave Wells direction is understated and classy. He lets the material do the work and it feels distinctly of the Sidney Lumet-style (which really hearkens back even further) of direction disappearing into and aiding the story and not taking it over. He punctuates the action with gorgeous photography of setting suns and stark Arizona landscape (we'll give some credit there to Cinematographer Patrick Ruth, as well). The Life Smugglers has been showing and receiving accolades at film festivals across the country, so keep you eyes open for new developments on its Facebook page.

Stay Out of the Woods: Shiver

2011-10-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

There's something exciting about watching movies. Those of us who seem to be ceaselessly, obsessively watching movie after movie, squeezing every last dime out of our Netflix subscription are hunters. We watch a lot of bad movies. Come up empty-handed and a little depressed that our enthusiasm yielded less than stellar results. But when you do find a movie that touches you; that you didn't have any expectation for (aside from what the description read and let's face it, the Netflix descriptions are often misleading), it's like a revelation. While watching horror movies, I feel that the hunt is amplified because not only are there so many terrible horror movies but the viewer is actively seeking something out that will thrill and terrify them.

Shiver isn't the best horror film I've ever seen, but it's easily the tensest and scariest one I've watched this month. There are aspects of the story that aren't very tight and the resolution is a bit disappointing in light of the rest of the film. Minor complaints as those don't detract from the experience at all.

Santi (Junio Valverde) has an unfortunate condition. He's sensitive to sunlight and his canines are distinctly larger than they should be. This makes him an outcast at his school in the city. After some skin lesions are removed, the doctor suggests that he and his mother (Mar Sodupe) move to an area that gets less sun. Santi is more than happy to go along with this plan. They move into a small community in the valley and bad things start to happen almost immediately. Sheep are getting killed and eventually, humans. The townsfolk blame the new kid and his bad luck doesn't help his case.

I wish Shiver had done more with the anger and paranoia of the townsfolk and waited a little longer to reveal that Santi isn't responsible for anything. As it stands, the community just sort of flows in and out of the movie at random so that when we get to the big chase at the end, there isn't much sense at how scared the people are. It's also not clear why whatever is killing people started right when the new people showed up or why it kills those that it does.

Actually, if you read my notes on the film, you'd probably think I hated it since they are filled with questions about (possible) plot holes and dumb character decisions, but I really like it a lot. There's a strong sense of terror. It's shot incredibly well with a few stunning images and lots of cool time-lapse inserts of the clouds passing through the mountains. The acting is very good and there's no cheap scares. Nearly all of the films I've watched so far this month I've known very little about. I don't even bother watching the trailers since I'm going to watch the movie anyway. Shiver is easily the most rewarding viewing experience I've had so far even if it's not the best movie.