all the guys think you’re really spaced

you know this is frog week

so invaders from mars (1986) is a remake of invaders from mars (1953) but there’s this great et (1982) scene early in the movie.  david goes to school to slice up frogs but ends up getting sliced himself.  “i hope you need a tetanus shot,” is his teachers reply.  like the basic theme of et: never trust adults (maybe authority figures is a better word choice (to lessen/heighten slippage)).

the beginning: david wakes up one night to see a giant spaceship landing just beyond his house.  no one believes him.  his dad goes out to check out the site, finds nothing, but returns strange.  funny, maybe.  with a scar on the back of his neck.

you gotta be shittin me about that spaceship

the tv shows in the movie are great.  people on fire.  then the cops show up.  they dont believe the stories of ufos, but they’ll have a look around.  “i haven’t been up here since i was a kid.”  (turns out the cop in the remake actually played david, the kid, in the original.  not only that, the remake literally remade the set of the fenced pathway leading to where the spaceship landed from the original.  this means, of course, that the cop is telling a kind of truth that’s only true outside of the movie itself.)  the cops come back with that same glossed-look over look and neck scars david’s parents have.  so obviously all these authority figures have been taken over by martians.  the big problem for the martian-possessed humans is acting human (which may be a problem for normal humans if subjectivity is a performative act); things like who does the dishes, where you’re supposed to go to work and whether or not to cook meat (the martians usually opt for not cooking which gives them away every time).

david convinces the nurse that his parents and teachers are aliens.  now she’s hiding them from everyone.  the parents come to confront her in this great scene where the parents backs are to the camera with the nurse explaining that the kid need psychological help in a continuous jaws-shot (or vertigo-shot, if you prefer).

they can move tunnels!

bud cort is a seti scientist so excited to finally see extra-terrestrial intelligent life.  he thinks that if we just talk with the aliens, we can work out all our differences.  he approaches to martins asking something like “how are you boys doing?”   “how does he know they’re boys?” one of the marines asks.  that’s a fantastic question.   i mean, who’s to say how martian reproduction works?  maybe they only have on sex; maybe 100.  unfortunately, before bud cort can answer that question, he’s disintegrated by the martians zap-gun.

it turns out, just like the wizard of oz, that the whole thing was just a dream.  david wakes up and his parents aren’t controlled by martians.  they’re controlled, like all of us, by money (capital).

or was it just a dream?  a question mark ending.

12 Hours of Horror

This started off as an idea to do 24 hours of hour. Yes, you’re right, that would have been badass, but Scott and I both realized that with my fascination with the genre and these past two Octobers of 31 Days of Horror, we’re quickly running out of decent movies to watch. That’s not to say that we don’t have a million non-decent movies to watch, or a million re-watches, but 24 hours worth of movies is not something you want to fuck around with. Aaron and I could barely do 24 hours of 24, which – as we all know – is jam-packed with awesome Jack Bauer action. Try watching the first disco-packed hour of Prom Night at the end of a straight day of movies. Not going to happen.

At any rate. What I’m getting at is that we’ve decided to do 12 hours worth. I don’t know what Scott’s planning, but here are my three picks:

1. Ju-on – I’m not a huge supporter of Japanese Horror lately, but this is, supposedly, one of the scarier examples. Obviously I’m going to want to stay away from the Sarah Michelle Gellar version. And maybe I’m wrong, but wasn’t this one of the first wet-haired-Asian-kids movies? I’m kind of excited to finally see it.

2. I Bury the Living – I’m so stoked to see this. A 1958 movie starring Richard Boone in a cemetery? Sign me up.

3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 – This one’s supposed to be just chalk full of phallic imagery. And we all know how much I like yapping it up about phallic imagery. I’ve read so much about this and avoided it because of Dennis Hopper (that neo-nazi scares me), but now seems like the perfect time, surrounded by friends and family, to brave the horror.

So mostly this post is serving as an invitation to Brian, and whoever else might read this, to join us sometime on Halloween and watch movies with us. We’re going to need the company.

Month of Terror Update

This has been my favorite month. Probably of all time. The weather is nice, the leaves are changing, haunted houses are beckoning, my costume is almost ready (the bees that killed Thomas J.), and – most importantly of all – the movies have been totally fucking awesome. You can check out Scott’s blog for more detailed (and hilarious) reviews, but here are the highlights:

1. Ravenous – a movie about cannibalism in Mexican-American War times. What more could you want? Did you know that if you eat humans, you get a little more powerful with every bite? Unfortunately, you also develop an insatiable hunger that can never be stifled by anything but more human flesh. Guy Pierce, that one Scottish guy, and that one child pornographer star in this movie that should have had more Jeremy Davies.

2. The Changeling – What a freaky film this is. The Changeling was one adults told me was okay to watch when I was a kid since it was a PG rated horror film. Those adults are so fucked up! If I had watched this when I was a kid I would have had nightmares for years. Just more proof that the rating system does not determine age-appropriateness. The slightest movements in this movie provoke terror. A piano key sounds on its own and I pee my pants. Let’s not even talk about when the wheelchair moves. Let’s just say it was time for a shower. (poo!)

3. Bride of Frankenstein – So many more iconic images come from this sequel than the original Frankenstein. While I don’t think it’s the “better” film, like I’ve heard it said, I do think this is the funnier/funner film. “They warned me to beware my wedding night!”

4. Paranormal Activity – Maybe this one deserves its own post since it’s so controversial lately. People either love it or absolutely hate it and have devoted their lives to taking it down. I was on the love it side. I know I’m pretty easy on newer horror films, but if you take a look back over the last few years, the genre really has pretty much sucked. Take A Haunting in Connecticut, for example, a haunted house story that’s pretty typical: constant blood spatters from unknown sources, very ultra-visible ghosts, and lots of loud noises – including soundtracks. Paranormal Activity avoids the stereotypes and scared me so much. So when people say they don’t like it, I just figure they don’t really like goofy horror movies, and also they’re idiots.

5. Carnival of Souls – Considering that this movie was filmed at the infinitely creepy Saltair just outside of Salt Lake City, it really took me an unreasonable amount of time to watch it. I’ve even owned it for years and years but just never got around to it. Too bad, because I could have spent those years knowing how great Utah horror film can be. Released in 1962, this one has just the right amount of Mormon jokes and a sincerely frightening cast of ghouls. Not to be confused with the 1998 West Craven Presents Carnival of Souls, which is – of course – about a raping clown.

6. Dracula v. Nosferatu – Todd Browning’s Dracula is a joke – in a good and bad way. On the one hand, it’s not really what the guy who made Freaks wanted from his serious horror movie (poor drunk). It comes across as more than campy as Bela Legosi stares at the camera with his Evil Eyes for probably a straight 45 minutes. But that’s ok, because if you’re looking for the best, scariest vampire movie you can find, it’s not too far away. About three years earlier. Nosferatu is the superior movie in every way: acting, lighting, plot, and rats.

So that kind of covers it. We’ve been watching a lot of good ones, but some of them have been repeats for me (Eraserhead, Re-animator, Misery, Hellraiser, Candyman, Evil Dead II, etc).

song + video

if you love high sierra, or if you dont, or if you’ve never seen it, check out this promo video made by my friend gael summers-gavin:

high sierra

(you have to scroll down a bit to get to the video.)

custom made for freshness tm (trademark or trade-mark)

a new geometry

last friday, i attended a lecture by the guy who stole the moon rocks from nasa and tried to sell them on the black market.  during his five-plus years in prison, he invented a new theoretical frame-work for understanding both space and the space between space using an eleven dimensional reference points.

this is what i remember:

so these scientists fed the equations for the four forces (gravitational, electro-magnetic, strong and weak nuclear) into a SUPERCOMPUTER asking for a symmetrical equation (unified theory) and the SUPERCOMPUTER was like “i cannot answer this question given the parameters”.  so the scientists changed the parameters—they made the number of dimensions a variable.  years later, the SUPERCOMPUTER came back with a symmetrical answer.  it was a billion-trillion plus characters long and contained eleven dimensions.  to check the answer, the scientists asked some other SUPERCOMPUTERs.  they said the first SUPERCOMPUTER was right.

in earth v(s) the flying-saucer(s), the aliens send a message:

PEOPLE OF EARTH, ATTENTION; PEOPLE OF EARTH, ATTENTION
THIS MESSAGE IS COMING FROM SPACE, THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY; THIS MESSAGE IS COMING FROM SPACE, THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY
LOOK TO YOUR SUN FOR A SIGN; LOOK TO YOUR SUN FOR A SIGN

the sign is maybe a massive solar-flare.  eight days of catastrophe follow—earthquakes, typhoons, volcanoes.  all electronic communication fails.  then the aliens attack.

it’s too nice of day for it to happen today

the military found that the aliens wore a synthetic, protective outer-layer complete with a heightened sense perception and an automatic translator.  they, the military, interpreted this as a sign of weakness (something like, if these aliens need additions to their biological (god-given?) bodies to wage war, we humans don’t need to worry), then went back to building a sonic weapon capable of knocking those flying-saucers out of orbit.

many civilians died that day, some even smashed by the crumbling washington monument.  after the sonic gun finally crashed five of their flying-saucers, the aliens (apparently) retreated.

palm beach vacation!

a SUPERCOMPUTER learns to write (in cursive)

did i mention that the aliens came correct with an automatic translator built into their cyborg-suits?  when military-scientists got a hold of the suits, they tried reverse engineering the translation process by reading every word from the (english) dictionary into the suit and recording the alien-equivalent responses.  now they (or maybe i should say we, since this film is likely only shown to earthlings, even though, like bladerunner, i identified more with the non-humans in the film) have an alien word for every english word in the dictionary (which means, since it’s like 1956 or something,  slang word equivalents were not included; however, this doesn’t mean the aliens can’t understand slang).  the obvious problem with this solution (past the more obvious problem that even word-for-word translations of different human languages are terrible at conveying the actual meaning of sentences) is it presupposes that alien language is structurally related to human language.

but, whatever.

the military then intercepts (and records) an inter-alien message.  the audio recording is then fed into a(n analog) SUPERCOMPUTER (whose real life name is GE DIFFERENTIAL ANALYZER) which then relays the message in english–not in a type-written message, but in cursive using a mechanical arm and a no. 2 pencil.

punchline

in both incidents, when facing a crisis (whether facing extinction from an invasive species or searching for the origins of the universe), we turn to computers for our answer.  too bad they only answer in code.

Month of Terror: Splinter

I’ve seen my fair share of B-horror films. In fact, I might say there is nothing I like better than a good B-horror film. And Splinter was a pretty good one.

It has everything a good indie horror movie should have: hott babe(s), escaped convict(s), confined spaces, icky-blood-spattering villian/entity, and amputation. The story is simple: girl and boy go camping in the woods, they are hijacked by convicts, car starts falling apart and they stop at a gas station: Gross Parasitical Fungus!! The gang is caught inside the gas station as they fight for their lives against something that looks like a malformed porcupine.

It also doesn’t fail on the thematic side of horror. Though she shares the spotlight, there is a clear and kickass final girl who has to take over everything popularly deemed “manly” as her boyfriend is a book-reading nerd. The nerd, of course, redeems some of his manliness at the end (while also using his brain!) and the two walk into the sunset as equals. Then there is the convict who, obviously, turns out to have a heart of gold, proving, once again, that things aren’t always as they seem.

But, while using many of the same familiar tropes of horror, Splinter excels in its visuals, effects, and acting: three things that can really kill an indie-horror. I was especially impressed with Shea Whigham (All the Real Girls) who took a pretty conventional character and made him far less obvious. Shea, for example, is not disgusted by boyfriend’s sissiness, and is, instead, impressed by girlfriend’s strength of character. Visually, the movie takes an interesting angle to zombie imagery, and made even me squirm.

Month of Terror: The Fly

It’s back! Thank God for October. I was on a George Cukor kick, and with all that charming banter, those adorable outcomes, and those encouraging representations of gender, I was getting pretty blood-thirsty.

So, to recap: the rules of the game are simple. Scott and I watch at least one horror film every day in the month of October. It sounds easy, but trust me, when the only horror movie you have on hand is Poltergeist 3, it’s 2:00 a.m., and you just got back from the Dr. Dog/Jolie Holland show, you’re going to be regretting that Month of Terror commitment. Big time.

Luxurious hair.

We started off the month with Cronenberg’s The Fly: A movie so good, we watched it twice. Or, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”

For me, The Fly has to be one of the most tragic, sympathetic horror films out there. Seth Brundle starts as a geeky-but-slightly-handsome physicist just trying to change the world. And get laid. Unfortunately, Brudle can’t really deal with the pressures of a relationship (not with his baboons, but with an actual human being) and accidently turns himself into BrundleFly.

Stage One: Fly Acne.

It turns out there are some good things associated with being genetically spliced with a housefly. For one thing, you can walk on walls. Yes, your fingernails all fall off, but you also can have marathon sex with Geena Davis. You have immense strength, a sweet tooth that sustains you, and you think at a mile a minute. Unfortunately, you completely deteriorate until you become unable to express your emotions, including your love for Ms. Davis.

Largely regarded as a metaphor for the horror of AIDS (Brundle “contracts” his “disease” only after finally finding a sexual partner), Cronenberg denies this claim and insists that the film is about dying and disease in general. As his girlfriend watches on, Brundle is wasting away from disease, and the two – as a couple – have to learn to with all the stages (both physiological and psychological) of that disease.

Stage Two: Regurgitation Digestion. Delicious.

Like all Cronenberg films, The Fly incorporates a delightful amount of disgust with the male body. The admiration Cronenberg has for Goldblum’s body is evident in the film, but is also made abundantly clear in his commentary. Goldblum was able to perform many of his stunts himself, and his shiny muscles are often on display. But that seems to make it all the more for fun Cronenberg to slowly deteriorate that body, turning Goldblum into a mass of sticky flesh. It is the “excitation of the flesh” that finally does Brundle in.

Stage Three: BrundleFly.

“You’re afraid to dive into the plasma pool, aren’t you? You’re afraid to be destroyed and recreated, aren’t you? I’ll bet you think that you woke me up about the flesh, don’t you? But you only know society’s straight line about the flesh. You can’t penetrate beyond society’s sick, gray, fear of the flesh. Drink deep, or taste not, the plasma spring! Y’see what I’m saying? And I’m not just talking about sex and penetration. I’m talking about penetration beyond the veil of the flesh! A deep penetrating dive into the plasma pool!”

Penetrating the flesh (with a phallus, presumably) is exactly what Seth has done when he merges his DNA with a fly, and his God-like use of the phallus turns his own flesh…wrong. When Brundle penetrates further (literally. sex.) Geena Davis is infected by his masculinity with her pregnancy.

Stage Four: BrundleFly spliced with a teleporter.

It’s also interesting to me that the males in her life are entirely ineffectual against the disease. Her ex-boyfriend/boss is acid-barfed on and barely manages to save her, her doctor fails to give her the abortion she wants/needs, and Brundlefly…well, he’s just a hot mess. In the end, Davis is the only one who successfully wields the phallus in the form of a gun blowing off Brundleflyteleporter’s head.

Anyway…those are just some ideas. I need to go back and read up on my Cronenberg criticism. That guy’s nuts.

And Goldblum the way he might want to be remembered.

all she thinks about is ham

i saw ponyo with my 3 year old niece who has  (up until three weeks ago) only lived in japan.  my sister told me that it costs like 40 (american) dollars to go to the movie theater in japan, so not only was this her (my niece not my sister) first time in an american movie theater, but her first time in a movie theater ever.

and the experience was too much for her:

-the previews start with disney pitching their movie for change we can believe in titled the princess and the frog or something like that (we finally got a black president so now we can finally have a major animated disney movie feature black characters in leading roles; it’s also strange the way the movie was previewed with words about the great disney animation tradition spanning 70 plus years but all the visual references showed in the preview were from disney movies produced in the last 20 years — the past as a series of pop images) and already my niece can’t stand the noise.  the previews (with their swelling music and bravado) are just too loud.

-movie theaters have a lof of features in common with pyschological torture techniques — extremes of sensory deprivation and sensory overload.  one minute it’s dark and quite, the next you’re brain is bombarded with so many sound and light waves it can’t possibly process them all and you’re left traumatized.  since i’ve been going to movies for almost 30 years, i’m use to the (self)-torture, but it almost killed my niece.

even though my niece didnt like it, i thought ponyo was amazing.

Ebert’s Not the Only Idiot

I don’t know why I torture myself like this, but lately I’ve been reading a lot of film reviews online. I’ve also been reading a lot of scholarly-like film criticism, which is a whole different beast. Even though I didn’t end up agreeing with a lot of what Robin Wood said in his book (Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan), he was at least critically engaged with the material. He took what other, more popular critics wrote into account, and then actually took the time to think it all through and formulate his own theories on separate genres/works/directors. Besides Jonathan Rosenbaum, I can’t think of any popular film critic writing today that comes close to this kind of writing – at least consistently.

Part of that is the nature of the beast, and I get that. Obviously Wood had a little bit more time planning out and re-editing the articles for his book, whereas a film critic generally has to write her review the next day or sooner. It’s a hard job, especially when you’re in the film festival environment, seeing five or six movies a day. So my complaint is more along the lines of…what’s the point? Most of us already know what we’re going to like anyway…I mean, are our choices of which films to go see really dictated by what the critics are saying about a specific film, or are we just going to go see Transformers 2 because we like big, awesome robots? And then, if we’re inclined to read the reviews after watching the movie, is this just a way to validate our own opinions that we’ve already started to form? Cement them in our minds so we can be closed off to any alternative criticism? Convince us that Inglourious Basterds was, indeed, “boring” and we can just throw it away like every other piece of pointless entertainment?

There were a few articles I read lately that inspired an even deeper hatred of popular film reviews than I already had. Ebert’s review of A Clockwork Orange has to be one of the worst pieces of criticism I’ve read. At least it’s the worst piece from someone who is considered respectable. (He is considered that, right? He has a lot of books…) In summary, Ebert feels that A Clockwork Orange is a “right-wing film” that “celebrates violence”  by claiming that the “hero,” whom “Kubrick likes very much” and thinks is “normal,” is not created by a violent society but is created by a violent society where he might as well be violent, too. What an idiot. The guy doesn’t even take the time and energy to think into some of the imagery Kubrick has put into his film, and instead passes it off as “cute” and “cheap.” The only pseudo-analysis he is willing to go into completely ignores content in favor of form. Not that any of this matters, because in the end the most important thing to Ebert is that the movie was “boring.”

“Boring” is a word that keeps cropping up in every negative review I read lately. This has especially annoyed me in reference to Antichrist. Now, I haven’t seen the movie, but can graphic sex, violence, and a full-on vagina shot really be considered “boring”? Ok, maybe it can, but in a Von Trier movie??? Maybe we should reevaluate the use of the word! 

It’s the quickness and stubbornness of the opinions in popular film criticism that is really ridiculous. Why must we be so unwavering in our opinions on what can always be complicated works of art? Yes, some of that art is shit, but isn’t it always saying something? Someone put a lot of time into that shit, maybe we shouldn’t bash it/praise it so quickly in a three-hundred word review.

That said, I do it all the time. On this blog, on Facebook, and especially when I’m writing for Film Threat. Being outraged or overjoyed is fun. I’m about to write a really engaging review of The Final Destination in 3D, so who am I to judge?

Glourious Terds

I’m struggling with Inglourious Basterds. I have a feeling that it’s a lot smarter and a a lot dumber than I’m willing to admit right now. There are problems with pacing – as many have pointed out. There are caricatures that become uncomfortable in their unevenness. It is certainly sadistic and immoral and all that other stuff Tarantino fans (I count myself among these) thirst for, but it’s also less snarky, less smart-ass, less film-school than any of his other films (with the awful scene involving Mike Myers being an exception). For the most part, I tend to lean towards films that are a little more honest and sincere in their style. (Kill Bill Vol. II was a far better film, in my opinion, than Vol. I for this reason.) But there is also something about the glossy violence of a Tarantino film that gets to me. The sound, for example, in Inglourious Basterds is superb. And you know me: I’m not one to use the term “superb” lightly. But there are so many mistakes in such a careful movie. I just don’t get it, yet.

So this one’s going to take me a while to hash out. Right now all I can do is respond to the polarizing reviews coming out from all the biggest sources. Ebert’s madly in love (he better be after his initial embarrassing rejection of Pulp Fiction, right?) and Armond White, as usual, is upset. The most intelligent review I’ve come across so far is Karina Longworth’s at Spout. I think she’s generally understated and incredibly smart about movies, but here she admits to something few critics are willing to do: changing her mind. After writing for Film Threat thinking no one read it, then getting feedback on some of my reviews, I wish I could go back and change some things I wrote every once in a while. Luckily we get far fewer hits here and I can say whatever the fuck I want. Hurray!

In that vein, there is something I would like to point out. For those complaining about Inglourious Basterds being “Jewish revenge porn” I would point you in the direction of the Dirty Harry films, Vigilante, Death Wish, and even The Brave One. We have a lot of Caucasian revenge porn; can’t we even the score a little? It’s crazy to me that the same critics are complaining about the brutality of the film and the boring action-devoid scenes.There’s also the debate of who had the “good” caricatured performances and who had the bad ones. I’ll solve that issue right here: Mike Myers was atrocious, Brad Pitt was funny, and Eli Roth was totally neutral – like all the other barely-seen Basterds. So I hope that eases everyone’s mind a bit. Not that it really matters at all.

Anyway, this is a little stream of consciousness. More on this one later, I hope.