Thursday, July 16, 2009

file under: why did i watch this?

its been a few days since my last blog and i wanted to post something. i am working on a retrospective piece of bergman for the 2 year anniversary of his death. i am going to discuss ingmar bergman makes a movie, bergman island, and sven nykvist: light keeps me company so basically, 3 docs related to his filmmaking. i am also working on a 'i am shilling for criterion piece' as part of my continuing quest to see the entire collection. also, im going to look at some recent early godard releases and pontificate away. BUT first,

The Happening. i watched it. i watched it a couple days ago. i started it at 1030 when i should have been sleeping but no, i stayed up and watched the fucking happening. from about 5 minutes in, i knew that not only would i dislike this movie but i would hate it. i felt embarassed for everyone involved: marky mark, mrs ben gibbard, and luigi from super mario bros: the movie (mark wahlberg, zoey deschanel, john leguizamo). no one had any convinction in their characters and seemed to have a paycheck on their mind which isnt a bad thing. the bad thing is virtually everything with this crappy crap of a film.

m night shamaylan, whats going on? you had me until lady at the water. i liked the village! you directorial style is pretty good and you created some tense moments in this but your villian was the wind!? a gust of wind!? WTF!!!!!!

yeah, the most tense moments of the film (supposedly) were the gusts of wind carrying a plant toxin that makes people want to kill themselves. um...yeah. this would have made an awesome farce a la lost skeleton of cadavra or the screaming forehead (yay larry blamaire!) but done absolutely straight, this film is total shite.

what else am i supposed to say? ooooh. the wind. spooky. the last time the wind was used as a character was in 1917 in the victor sjostrom/lillian gish film appropriately called the wind. but then again, it wasnt used to scare, it was used as a metaphorical device to trap mizz gish in her marriage. now THAT is a tangent. from m night to lillian gish all in a simple paragraph. that is the art of the blog right there peeps @mpathy on twitter for more silly goodness