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Sadly, Freud is dead this week...
2002-01-19 00:46:58
Line above is from Goats: www.goats.com
A weirdly brilliant (at times) online comic. I might get around to doing a review of it some time.
EK: Sorry to hear of all your trials and trevails, and thought I could offer a bit of practical advice on the cat-carrier event. The best way my family has ever found for getting a cat into a carrier by oneself is to set the carrier on end with the open end pointing upward in a room out of sight of the cat. Then pick up the cat and carry it into the room. Holding the cat just behind his/her front legs, lower the cat back-legs first into the carrier. This position will keep the cat from getting more than two legs wedged against the opening of the carrier (watch out for the tail, though) and won't be able to push away until it's already halfway into the carrier. We learned this after YEARS of having to get the cat in the hard way. (There's nothing sharper than a Siamese with good claws.) In the worst cases, wrap the cat in a towel first. It'll keep their claws away from your hands when you pick 'em up.
GreyDuck: Thanks for the kind word. I'm probably going to compile all of these at some point on my website, as this journal is providing the majority of my motivation for writing practice for right now. It's not likely that I'd limit myself with a themed concept like movie rewiews, though, as I'd like to leave it open to review books, comics, and the like. Also, any official website like that would have to be tended to regularly, whereas here I can talk about whatever the hell I want, whenever I want, reviews or otherwise. I also might feel an obligation to go see films I know I'm going to hate in order to review films that other people might actually care about.
Lord Rae: Glad you liked it. Be sure to tell us all of the sufferings of anyone else you get to watch it.
KZ: Tell us how you like DK2, I'm curious about everyone's perspectives. Your comment on MSTing the movies brought to mind the only time I've ever really MSTied at a theater. During Godzilla 2000 (when the Japanese had to come back and show us Americans how to make a REAL Godzilla movie) the theater got a little rowdy, mostly because of the HILARIOUS dubbing (not bad, just surprisingly funny and crass at times) and...well the fact it was a Godzilla movie. I didn't comment too much during the film, but couldn't resist a few lines. Right at the end I just had one of those "perfect comedy moments." Godzilla has just finished off the UFO after it tried to swallow him whole. The corpse is disintigrating into goo. There's a reaction shot looking straight up at Gozilla towering over his opponent. In a voice no louder than ordinary speech, I said "Nice Try Asshole." (The line came from earlier in the movie.) The theater ERUPTED in laughter. We continue to quote that to this day, but it was completely a "you had to be there" event. Perhaps my only shining comedy moment.
Quu, iserlohn, Phade, Lord Rae: As tempted as I may be to comment, I'm keeping my council to myself for the moment unless called upon. In any case, I think you can guess which side I'll be weighing in on...
As promised previously, another review of a horror film. This time I prove that I do not unconditionally like all horror films, or even all horror films starring the true classic actors of the genre.
OK, now, think hard. Every time you've ever seen a documentary on witchcraft, or the Salem witch trials, or any television program on the preconcieved notions regarding Wiccans, you've seen this one film clip. Two official-looking men viewed from about mid-chest up restrain and pull into the light a somewhat bedraggled looking woman with strong features and a thick nose who struggles briefly and then slowly looks downward toward the camera with an officious and contemptuous air. Cut to a slow, close pan of a closely-packed crowd, motionless and silent in almost comical-looking puritan period dress, until we center on a somewhat elderly-looking woman at the bottom left in one of those white bonnet-things. She goes "Wwwwwwwwwiitch!" Cut back to restrained woman who spits at her and is dragged off-screen. Remember that video clip? It turns out it's from "Horror Hotel," a film I got just after christmas on a double-bill DVD for about six bucks.
You know all those groups that claim that horror films are mysogynistic? Encourage belief in dark magic or are somehow anti-Christian and encourage worship of the Devil? They're thinking of this film. And it isn't even very good.
The basic plot involves a young co-ed student studying witchcraft at college as part of a history course of study. The girl is quite impressionable and, showing an entirely improper and unfeminine interest in such morbid subjects as the burning of witches, talks her professor into directing her to a local where she might conduct some firsthand research into the history of witchcraft in New England over her summer vacation. Despite the fact that she is unable to convince either her brother or boyfriend to accompany her on this over-intellectualized outing, she succeeds in getting them to let her go alone to the ramshackle, backwoods town of Whitewood. There she encounters a real, living coven and events proceed as one might expect.
The rather chauvanistic tone of the above paragraph should give you an idea of how the film views the young girl's intellectual interests. I'm always willing to view a film in relation to the time in which it was produced, but the attitude it takes towards "schooled women" is rather, well, uncomplimentary. Halfway through the film "Nan" (the student), drawn deeper and deeper into the clutches of the people of Whitewood, somehow without noticing ANYTHING, pokes her nose just far enough into trouble to get dragged off and eviscerated on a Satanic altar. Of course, being 1960, nothing is actually shown, and we cut instantly to a birthday party that "Nan" was supposed to be attending. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but the implication I walked away with was that if she hadn't been so "distracted by all those intellecutal subjects that girls ought not worry about and had properly known her place" then she'd still be alive...and eating cake even! I certianly don't object to the occasional damsel in distress, and I readily accept that the heros in early horror films are going to be the strong all-american type guys, but rarely have I seen a film so directly antagonistic to the idea of educated women.
This isn't the reason that the film is bad, though. Hell, Nan's part in the story only runs for the first half. The remainder involves her brother's and boyfriend's search for Nan, and the emperilment of yet another young woman. Actually, that is what's wrong. The film commits the sin from which no horror film can recover. It is predictable and boring because this film is repetitive. I understand the motivation in setting up patterns to apply suspense, to establish that "uh oh, this happened to that other girl, and we know where she ended up!" but really, there are a few scenes in the film that you could have spliced between and you wouldn't have noticed the difference. There was also some of the most blatant misuse of foreshadowing I've seen in quite a while. It made me wonder exactly who the foreshadowing was for, as the audience had already been directly TOLD what to expect.
Let me give you a "for instance." As Nan approaches Whitewood, she picks up a mysterious stranger at the crossroads and gives him a ride into town, where he promptly disappears. (This was the high point in the film for me, as I thought something really neat was coming. All superstitions say that the crossroads are really BAD places at night. Murderers are hung and buried there so that their spirits cannot find their way back home. Hecate would only come to a worshipper waiting at the crossroads. etc.) There she stays at "The Raven Inn" (suggested by her professor) whose proprietess looks identical to the witch burned by the Puritans. When Nan is settled in, the stranger has a familar conversation with the proprietess speaking of "festivities" "preparations" and "visitors" etc. Nan then tours the town and uses up the entire six month supply of dry ice for Hollywood, (I'm serious! There's so much fog on this set that I can't understand why no one suffocated in all the CO2!) and the pastor at the deserted church issues one of the most direct and clear "warnings from the crazy old man" I've ever heard. There's a mute servant who tries to warn her away, and later Nan reads the script to the next scene out loud to the proprietess. (She reads an account of the events of witchcraft that are then followed to the letter five minutes later.) "'...the witch then called the sacrifice to her by stealing something precious to the girl'...oh, by the way, my locket is missing." The chanting under the floorboards isn't enough to scare her away. The witchcraft symbols aren't enough to deter her going down the mysterious passage. No wonder she got carved up.
As if this wasn't enough, EVERY STEP (hitchiker, missing item, witchcraft symbol, chanting, crazy old man, mute servant) is then repeated by the NEXT girl who visits the town. Except this time the crazy old man tells us how to kill the witches. And so we do. It's that spelled out. There's also some plot holes in the story, but it would take too long to explain them.
The big "surprise" of the film comes when we find out that Nan's teacher is CHRISTOPHER LEE! I mean, it's obvious that he's Christopher Lee, but not that he's CHRISTOPHER LEE and thus EVIL! For those of you who aren't familiar with him, Christopher Lee has a LONG history in horror and suspense films, most notably playing Dracula in all of the Hammer Horror films from the late 60's to the mid 70's, his name being associated with the role almost as universally as Bella Lugosi. Thus, having him play a secretly evil character in a horror film is almost as telegraphed a move as having him play a secretly evil wizard in a fantasy epic...(For those of you still drawing a blank, his most recent role is as Saruman the Wise in LotR.) Make no mistake, he does a very good job in the role, but as soon as you recognize him, you know he's gonna be doing someone some ill. (I have a great deal of respect for Lee because his career was quite diverse, but he never turned his back on the rather unprestegious world of horror-film acting.)
Finally, I have to confess a personal bias. I've just never found the 60's presentation of witches scary. I mean, they're just vindictive, fairly stern-faced people who spend the movie walking around in black cloaks waving crudely-made props and calling out crude injunctions to "the Dark Master." They never do anything directly other than drag someone off for sacrifice or put a hex or two on someone. They aren't ever presented as scary because of the terrible magics they do, but rather they're supposed to be scary because of what they'll do to GET terrible dark magics. Frankly, this film made witchcraft about as interesting or entertaining as Battlefield Earth made Scientology. I've never really found the artistic presentation of witches in these films very interesting either. Magical thought is terribly complicated and fascinatingly interweaved when you look at it (examine the Kabala for a good example), but the interpretation of witches' magic in these movies is always stupefyingly simple. Sell your soul off-camera, and kill random things to get in good with the Devil. Once he likes you, you...uh...get stuff. Kill people to really get in good with him, and maybe you'll get to wear the sparkly robe. Boring.
I really am harshing on this film. It honestly doesn't deserve too much critisism, it's just very mediocre in plotline and dialogue. On the good side, it is one of the first films I've ever seen where someone actually says "Dig that crazy beat," it contains a terribly hassled gas station attendant (NO ONE can find their way to the town without stopping there, but no one ever buys any gas), and it contains an entire coven of witches wearing haulocaust cloaks (much to their apparent surprise). It really isn't worth the time to get through the movie, though, unless you're really in to broiling it for its anti-progressive views.
Whew. Long one. I had some trouble writing this, and then even more compacting it. Not really sure what I plan to write on next time. Maybe a movie, maybe not. - The year was 1990. The woman - a friend of mine - skimmed the folder’s contents, while her contact slurped up black coffee and trembled like a wet whippet... 2002-01-16 09:53:46 You know, about 4/5 of the way through that last post I decided to look up the actual character's names and insert them instead of referring to them as "Ben" "Luke" and "Gwyneth". Now I notice that I missed about half of the replacements for Gwyneth. Bleh. We really need an "edit" function for past entries.
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I don't feel / no pain no more....
2002-01-15 23:11:29
Kusoyaro: Don't worry about spotting my note late. Didn't spot your response until today anyway. Your critique sounds a bit too close to my problems with Gamian's other book "Stardust." It's a high-fantasy book with some excellent ideas and a few brilliant mind's-eye pictures (my personal favorite being the young prince accompanied by the specters of his murdered siblings), but the story was just too simple and trite in execution. The characters weren't very deep, the suspense wasn't suspenseful, and once you got past the fascinating construction of the characters involved, it just wasn't entertaining to watch them. 'Course I'd just gotten through reading the Gormenghast trilogy, which is masterful in its construction of simple themes laid out extravagantly (like the castle itself), so nearly anything would have suffered in comparison. I hate to say it, but "Stardust" would have made a much better comic than book. I think Gamian is used to letting the artist partially develop the characters through visual interpretation.
Spent the whole day today teaching new labmates what I do every day. Then my boss comes by and piles another load of completely extraneous work on me. "I know, instead of actually doing your work, how about you come up with two presentations on the same day to explain to us how far you've gotten in your work?" Gahh. Wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that I haven't been able to get much of anything done recently because I've been sorting out stupid paperwork errors made by someone other than me, involving crawling around behind all of our equipment looking for the GT sticker with the special ownership code numbers.
Anyway. Yeah, another long entry.
The Royal Tannenbaums. Since I'm reviewing a film that's actually out in theaters, I figure I should say that there are spoilers here. The first thing to point out is that the film is not about royalty. The male head of the household is named "Royal" (Gene Hackman), and thus the entire family is referred to as "The Royal Tannenbaums" like "the Bill Smiths". This is something of an irony because, despite never formalizing a divorce, Royal hasn't bothered to keep up with his family for nearly two decades. Royal is an asshole of an unique breed. He never hit his wife or abused his kids, he was just strangely socially antagonistic towards them. His almost entire absence after the children reached the age of 8 or 12 resulted in screwing them up in the head so throughly that two decades later they are just as nutty as actual royalty, only without the celebrity...or rather without the same kind of celebrity. You see, each of the kids reach heights of genius in their father's absence, from which they all aquire world-reknown status, and from which they all crashe to their respective neruosies and burn-outs. The resulting family is just completely fucked in the head. Then the movie starts.
This is a very British film. I really don't know where I'm getting this from, as I don't know anything of the influences on the screenplay, but it just feels very British. Look at the kids. One is an eminent scientist and businessman, one is a tennis prodigy, and one is a celebrated playwright. Would anyone but the British put genius in those three fields on an equal footing? The story also has the feel of a "Great British Novel," one involved in looking at the great and unique problems of the very intelligent and the very rich wherein everyone acts exceedly proper and nonplussed, except, of course, when they don't. Where you place all concerned parties in the family home and just let the story devleop at a meandering pace while the audience waits. They even have an Indian manservant named "Pagoda." I'm not sure if that's supposed to be a joke or not. Finally, and most condemmingly British, is the utterly dry wit with which the film is conducted.
I should state now that I like dry British comedies. I'm not really sure I can recommend this one, however. I'll put up my interpretation and let you decide. Pro: The characters are the real stars of the film. (Duh) Ben Stiller plays the businessman son (Chas). After discovering as a child that his father has been embezzling money from their joint company, he brings legal action against his father. As an adult, he burns out after his wife's death and becomes hyper-paranoid about family safety. Stiller has been handed perhaps the least-likeable character in the story. I acclimated by not liking him, which is probably unfair. He's excessively whiny, his paranoia is really more sad than funny, and he becomes the character I would most like the plot to avoid. His brother (Richie) the tennis-pro (Luke Wilson), won Wimbelton at age 16, burned out entirely by age 22 (I may remember the ages wrong) has spent the past few years on an ocean liner, and has finally admitted that he's in love with his sister. (This is given away in his first line, so don't think I'm spoiling it for you.) He has worn the same style sweatband since he was 12, and his silent stare and manner of fading into the background makes you think of either George Harrison or a complete psychotic waiting to snap. (Even when he does snap, it's in a silent, brooding manner...like when Pink shaved his eyebrows.) Gene Hackman does as good a job as he can with his character, but....well I'll get to that.
The real favorite for me was Gwyneth Paltrow (Margot). (Yeah, OK, I admit my bias here.) She plays the genius playwright of the family, and it appears that the arid humor has managed to entirely mummify her character. This is a little hard to describe, but here goes. You know the stereotypical beat poet that sits in darkened cafes in a fog of cigarette smoke whose only sign of life is the occasional sip of straight black coffee, and tries to exude the impression that their nonplussed nature is due to their having seen strange and terribly artistic things the like of which you will never experience? Now make that even more expressionless and not at all affected. That's Margot. She even manages to look nonplussed when being affectionately mauled by one of her many lovers. The mask slips only twice, and once was to look somewhat surprised when she looses 3/4 of a finger to an Amish man with an axe. She has short, straight blond hair and always wears BLACK eyeliner that makes her eyes look like they're sinking through the other side of her head. In order to do proper flashbacks, three children were cast to play the younger versions of the Tannenbaums, and the one they picked for Gwyneth looks more like her than she does. Hackman's best scene was working with these kids. At Margot's 12th birthday party, after the performance of her first play, he talks with his three children. (Lines approximated.)
Ben: So did you like the play?
Royal: Nah, not really. I mean, how can you call it a play? It's just a bunch of kids messing around onstage. No real plot, no real motivation.
Luke: Did you at least think that the characters were well developed?
Royal: Pff. What characters?
Gwyneth: I'm going to bed.
Royal: Well don't take it so hard honey. After all, it's just one man's opinion.
Humor: Dry dry dry. I love this kind of humor, but if you don't, stay far away from this film, as there is no other kind present. Two jokes follow. If you don't think they are funny, don't see this film.
#1
Gwyneth's current lover: I'm not in love with you anymore.
Gwyneth: I didn't know you ever were.
Gwyneth's current lover: Don't make this any harder than it already is.
#2
(Margot has been smoking secretly since age 12)
Mother: So you're smoking now? How long have you been smoking?
Margot: About 22 years.
Mother: .......Well, I think you should stop.
Plot: Sucks. This film had the plot of a much worse movie. As should be evident from EVERYTHING ABOVE, there is a whole lot of interesting, ludicrous set-up before we get to the movie proper. Frankly, the 10 min intro has a better plot than the rest of the film (and hilariously presented as well). At first I thought it was going to have a "classic novel plot" like I described above, but suddenly a handful of old, bad movie cliques move in and ruin the effect. (The clique being a faked illness on the part of Royal to gain sympathy.) Like an immune system reacting to a bad transplant, all the material surrounding this clique dies and begins to fester, peeling away from the graft site.
Uh. Sorry.
Despite the fact that the clique is the central event of the story and absolutely essential to the movement of the plot, the rest of the movie doesn't mesh with it at all and it just feels forced and melodramatic. Hackman manages to pull it back from being a complete disaster, but can't save it entirely. It really isn't even clear what Royal's motivation is in the first 3/4 of the film, although it changes to something cheesily evident in the denouement. Other aspects are similarly at odds. Bill Murray, who plays Margot's husband, has a kid who follows him around incessantly for no good reason. In truth, a couple of plots are going on in the film, and some are better, but detailing any would take too damn long.
Critics think we SHOULD like this film, not that we will. It's not family-friendly enough to attract the parents-with-kids crowd, there's not nearly enough action to draw most of the mainstream in, and the comedy isn't raucous enough to make effective ads. Critics think that this is the kind of comedy we, the filmgoing audience, should be required to see, so that we understand the nuances of smart humor. In that respect, they may be right. I really liked the humor in this film. I would like more humor like it. However, I think many of the plot problems cancel out the enjoyment of the film and partially nullify the available stockpile of funny.
Summary (finally): Well written, funny-talking characters in a badly written film.
Next time: One classic horror film attempts to build suspense by telling us about every event before it happens! -
Time keeps on slipping...into the future...
2002-01-14 10:29:58
Hey, EK, does your "page of the day" today have some sort of automatic function to dectect where you're accessing from, or does it just happen to be in my time zone? (In other words, do YOU see the correct time in it?)
Just curious. -
See my King all dressed in red / Iko Iko I-nay / Betcha' five bucks he'll knock you Dead / Iko Iko I-nay
2002-01-13 22:22:18
Let me ask you all a hypothetical question. Let's say you work with a friend who's one of those people who will never see a movie alone. They happened to be out of the country for several weeks when a REALLY BIG hypothetical movie gets released that she wanted to see, and everyone she knows has already seen the film once or twice. Although it is a very good movie, it is also very long, so no one really wants to see it a second or third time. Now let's say that you decide to do this friend a favor and arrange to see the movie with them on the following sunday at 4:00, despite the fact that you have already seen said movie twice. Since it is a long movie, and you have significant amounts of work to do on sunday, you skip out of a pretty good party on Saturday night in order to get home in time to go to bed early, so you can get up early and get all the work done before leaving for the movie. Also on Saturday, let's say you run into a new aquaintence who also has not seen the movie, so you invite him along as well. Now let's say, hypothetically, that at 1:00 on Sunday she calls you up and backs completely out, saying she has too much work. You cannot just forget the whole thing since you invited the other friend along, so, despite the fact you really wanted to see another movie originally and were only going to this movie as a favor to her, you get to sit through this 3 hour movie a third time.
Now let's say that this is somewhere around the sixth or seventh time she has pulled this stunt, not just with movies but things like club meetings and the like. Each time the only reason for her invitation was as a favor from you in the direction of something she insists she is interested in, and each time canceled at the last minute.
My question is, would you, theoretically, be out of line being a LITTLE BIT MIFFED at this friend of yours?
*Growl*
GreyDuck: Thanks for the suggestion, I may give that a shot. Frankly, my biggest solution is to just stay away from geocities pages.
No progress on the AMV front. Haven't even started watching the Urusei Yatsura DVDs yet. I'll be doing a bit of work on the AWA submission rules tonight since I now have a hold of the old rules to work from. One of the biggest changes I'm contemplating is limiting the Pro entries to one submission per maker. It may be necessicary just to keep the judging tapes under six hours. Really don't want to do that though.
As promised, a list of reasons why "Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things." This is one of those horror movies that your average movie watcher wouldn't go near with a ten-foot pole. Cheesy title, obviously low-budget, somewhat overacted, small scooby-group of characters, and lots of fake blood. The cover has a dripping font overlayed on an excessively-busy film still of a zombie crawling out of its grave. This is actually rather unfortunate, as all of this puts it in the same category as the original "Evil Dead" film (and, to a lesser degree "Evil Dead II") and we all know how that trilogy eventually became a kitch cult classic (deservedly so). Let's see. Plot Summary: six college-age students (three girls, three guys) travel to a strange cemetary-laden island in an attempt to raise the dead by wearing the LOUDEST CLOTHING EVER MADE BY MAN. Seriously, the clothing here plants this film so firmly in the seventies (1972) you couldn't remove it with a crowbar. The leader of the little band is wearing white bell-bottoms with vertical black and red stripes, a BRIGHT orange silk shirt with a patterned red scarf, and later dons a NEON BLUE wizard's robe. They really do try to raise the dead by performing a ritual involving digging up a corpse. When that doesn't work, they spend about 15 minutes alternately insulting and making fun of the devil. When THAT doesn't work, they cart the corpse home and make fun of it for another couple of hours. When the rest of the dead, incensed by this assault on their civil rights, DO rise from their graves in a desperate attempt to stop the film, the troup acts all surprised. All of this qualifies them for the most "MAN they're going to get it" group of late teens/early twentiers in a horror film EVER.
I get the impression that the early 70's installed the institution of archetypes for victims in horror films. You know, in most horror films where a group of young people are off alone somewhere being all victim-like, there's always a couple of characters accounted for. Sorta a Scooby-gang or "force five" of schlock. This film's got them all. There's our leader, (Mr. Orange shirt) the one who's REALLY asking for it, the guy who always has to poke the monster with a stick. Then there's the cute couple, made up of Ms. "I really didn't want to be here, but I wanted to be cool" and Mr. muscle-bound Jock. Ms. embittered disbeliever and ridiculer gets paired loosely with Mr. Orange shirt. Ms. spiritualist and generally-out-of-it-girl rounds out the women. Finally, there's Mr. left-out, the guy without a date, here played by a fat (naturally) punster in a FLORAL PINK SHIRT. No, he's not gay. We can tell, because this is the early seventies, and two of the other kids are FLAMINGLY stage-gay. (The clever readers will note that this adds up to eight.....muwahahaha.)
Anyway, it takes a surprising amount of time for the dead to actually get up and moving, but I really didn't mind. For once, dialog meant to fill space and develop characters actually manages to do just that, and the constant string of "get the characters in deep shit with the dead" one-liners are actually funny. (The kids are in an acting troup and some are suitably melodramatic.) There's even a false-start that caught me off guard (no mean feat for this jaded viewer). No, it ain't Shakespeare or the Shining, but it's good low-budget schlock with a chill or two. The characters even fight back convincingly and usually flee when appropriate. (Although it's totally ineffective...I think the dead are tracking them by their clothing.) None of that "Oh....No!! He's....Coming....this....way! I...better....run!"
For the interested, this was one of the first films of Benjamin Clark's career. From this he went on to direct "Porky's" and "A Christmas Story."
Next time, I look at the film "The Royal Tannenbaums," which includes a performance by Gwenneth Paltrow during which she does not actually move.
JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)
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