why do i bother with horror films?

i know im going to be disappointed. i am consistently heartbroken by everything in american horror films. the giant plot holes, the horrible acting, the anti-scares, and the overall mehdome associated with it. i didnt know that MIRRORS was based on a K-horror film. if i did, i never would have watched it in the first place as i have no strict no remakes policy.

this lump of crap was directed by alexandre aja, who did haute tension, a movie i couldnt stand and the 2006 remake of the hills have eyes, the only film that was bad enough to give me a migraine.

what was wrong with this? besides keifer sutherland's interesting take on 'acting'...

horror film set up the scares. we all know when something scary is going to happen. what i like about asian films is that they dont do it as much. something spooky and creepy will happen and you will be like, 'holy crap! that was scary! whoa!' american films will go, 'ok...here it comes...this is going to be freaky...wait for it...BAM! oh yeah. bet youre pretty scared now!' by the end, no one is shocked and im just a little dead inside.

also, in asian cinema, the ghosts are usually just misunderstood beings crying out and they get turned into crazy blood machines in american versions. in mirrors, said machine is a schitzophrenic girl who communicates through mirrors and other stuff happens. bleh.

yeah, i DVRd this and even a brief nude scene from amy smart couldnt make this not a total waste of time.

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

a short blog entry about killing

thats a kieslowski reference bitches!

two films to discuss in this one. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and The Honeymoon Killers. i think the link between is obvious (serial killers natch) and of course IMHO neither of them were very good. in fact, they both sucked...pretty hard.

Henry is a tale of a couple white trash serial killers and their innocent and unknowing sister/lover and Honeymoon is about a fat chick and a swarthy italian swindling people out of money and occasionally killing them.

Henry is a prime example of the poorly acted early 90s low budget independent film genre and Honeymoon is a prime example the poorly acted early 70s low budget independent film genre. and both films were directed by people who didnt really have much of a career afterwards though honeymoon had the distinct honor or NOT being scorsese's first feature length film. he was fired after spending too much time filming master shots (shots of the whole scene which are usually shot before close ups). of what could have been.

the early 90s and early 70s both marked returns to independent cinema. with cassavettes in the 70s and soderbergh/hartley in the 9s0, there was definetely a solid movement back to simpler character driven films. unfortunately, these were not the best of the genre

victor/victoria: why did i watch this?

...because it was on the new york times top 1000 films of all time list. on my flixster reviews, one of the phrases i most uttered was 'yet another question choice on the MYT top 1000' and by questionable i mean, 'why the crap is this on here?' VICTOR/VICTORIA is definetely one of those head scratchers. why would anyone think this should be on any definitive film list? its not even that daring sexualwise for 1982. maybe it was 10 years earlier it would have been contraversial but it just seems a pedantic for the time and right now, it seems horribly dated.

this film was almost a total waste of time. lesley anne warren was very entertaining and was underused.

1/5

this is one of those rare days where i spent the entire day watching movies. this happens maybe once or twice a month. i love these days. get up, watch movies, exercise, watch more movies. seeing as this week i was out seeing concerts past midnight and then waking up for work i think i needed a day of decompression. the concerts? phoenix (AWESOME!) matt and kim (good but ive seen better shows by them)