What's Happening?

So I used to be a M.Night Shyamalan fan.
This is my lil'ole review of his new film The Happening, in theaters now, and more so why I think M. Night is a hack as was expressed in my 1st Fight Club post.

BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER JUST BE AWARE THAT I AM GOING TO TOTALLY RUIN THIS ENTIRE MOVIE AND PROBABLY MAKE YOU FEEL BAD FOR EVEN WANTING TO SEE IT!

I have enough journalistic integrity to actually sit and watch a movie I know I won't like before critique it instead of writing something based on presumption and what I have heard from other people, but not enough journalistic integrity to actually pay for it.
When I started hearing about The Happening I do have to admit I was interested to a certain extent. The idea of mass suicides with no apparent explanation is admittedly a very scary thought, but it is not an original idea.
Jisatsu Saakuru (Suicide Club or Suicide Circle in English) is a film by Sion Sono, originally released in the US in 2002. A film that I stumbled upon in 2004 and immediately adored. Sharp, sadistic and in the end a real jewel of Japanese cinema, it was the first thought that popped in my head when I heard that M.Night was making a mass suicide based thriller.
So that is -10 points for unoriginality.
But I still admit I was curious.
Then the TV adds started coming out, most of them will the tag "His First R Rated Film".
I was sort of disgusted by this ploy to sensationalize his film by slapping on a R rating.
And the commercials obviously showed a lot of this mayhem and horror, people jumping off buildings, dead bodies in the streets, people about to stab themselves with blunt objects. Yeah ok so blunt objects, in the movie there is a woman who takes out of her hair one of those chopstick hair stick thingies with the intent of stabbing herself in the juggler, but when she takes it out of her hair it is like this steal spike stiletto thing. WTF lady? Why did you have that in your hair in the first place? I watched the entire movie, and I am telling you all, it did not need an R rating.
By today's film standards probably a PG-13, but no way an R. and maybe you think I am jaded or that because I have seen more graphic horror that I think this film is a light weight, but there seriously was nothing constituting an R rating by todays standards. I even tried to get a hold of the MPAA to ask if a director can ask for a more severe rating than needed. I do believe this is allowed, and really is the only explanation. None of the suicides shown were that horrific or gruesome. There was barely any blood. I cannot find any reason that this film should be categorized as R rated. The most bloody/graphic of all the suicides was actually more ridiculous and cartoonish than anything else.
In one scene a member of the group that Mark Wahlberg is in at the time gets a video message on their phone from someone they know at a zoo. The video shows a man in the lion den holding his arms out to a lioness presumably trying to get her to eat him. The loiness goes for the arm and rips it off at the shoulder. The man then offers the other arm to another lioness which then rips that arm off at the shoulder. Now my response to this scene? LIONS AND ARMS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!
A. lions don't rip limbs off of live prey. They would have jumped on the guy and chomped on his windpipe, but would not have torn his arms off.
B. What the hell was this guy made out of paper mache? For god sake people, the human body is a little bit stronger than that. His arms wouldn't have come off, he would have been pulled to the ground. And don't give me any bull about the lion ripping in one direction and the guy pulling his own body in another would have been enough to rip his arm clean off. It may have dislocated his shoulder but his freaking arm wouldn't have come off. I mean seriously people it looked like something from Monty Python.
Sorry I am skipping around a lot here. Anyway. So the movie starts off with the most pretentious 5 minutes of any movie I have ever seen, and I have watched a lot of Oliver Stone movies. Mark Wahlberg is a science teacher of some variety and is talking to his class about the recent phenomenon of disappearing bees.
So he asks his class to give their ideas as to why they think this could be happening. The first says disease, which Wahlberg basically shrugs off as not likely. The second student says pollution, to which Wahlberg responds with, "We're just pumping so much stuff into the environment that they are just keeling over." The third student offers up the obvious follow up of global warming which Wahlberg responds to with "Temperature goes up a fraction of a degree, they get disoriented, maybe." Then the final student comes up with this jem, "an act of nature and we'll never fully understand it." to which Wahlberg replies "Nice answer Jake" I hate Jake and his answer BTW, "He's right, I mean, science will come up with some reason to put in the books but in the end it will be just a theory. We will fail to acknowlage that there are forces at work beyond our understanding."
WHAT? What the hell kind of science class is this? The answer that isn't a real answer is the right answer? Come on now. M.Night fails at science.
My synopsis of the rest of the movie...
A lot of really one dimensional characters, which is admit idly very out of the ordinary for M.Night who usually makes his characters very believable. With this film I didn't believe anything coming out of any characters mouth, all the acting was total ham sandwich, most importantly I didn't care what happened to anyone.
One of the most important things to being a good writer, especially in film, is being able to show the story instead of tell the story. Don't have your characters come over to the camera and say "I am scared" or "I am angry" show their emotions through what is happening in the story.
There is one part in which Zooey Daschanel is trying to comfort John Leguizamo's daughter who is being very shy, and Zooey Daschanel says to the little girl "I don't like to show my emotions either." Ok, a few different problems with this. A. People who have problems showing their emotions don't just bluntly state that they have this problem, especially in large groups of people and even more especially not infront of their spouses of which they do not show their emotions to. It was just, as I said, telling instead of showing. M.Night wanted us to know this little fun fact about that character so he didn't have to take the time to actually show it in a more developed way. B. If an adult was going to say something like that to a child they would most likely use the word feelings instead of emotions. There was something going on in this film where the language just wasn't quite right. There were a lot of lines that just didn't seem very natural coming out of the actor's mouths. These sentences may have looked better on paper, but just didn't translate the same to actual speech.
Now going back for a moment to point A. about Shyamalan telling the audience over showing the audience, I think this plays into another issue he has as a writer which is underestimating the intelligence of the audience. All of his films have some element of this, but it seems to be getting worse as his career progresses. There are a lot of ideas in his films that he finds the need to shove in our face that he would be much better off subtlety hinting at, or even letting us as the audience come to our own conclusions with.
So now to the main reason I really disliked this movie, and of course it comes full circle to Shyamalan's whole environmentalist propaganda message.
The reason these people have been killing themselves without control?
Trees.
Well not just trees, but all plants. Plants that are somehow sentient enough to know that it is humanity that is causing the destruction of the environment and specifically target us with their evil suicide pheramones so that we will kill ourselves in horrible scary ways!!! OOOOOOOOOO...Spooky! Or maybe not.

Now I would just like to take a moment to state that I am definitely someone who believes that we are going through and even effecting a global climate change, however I think that it is kind of obnoxious and, excuse my French, up his own asshole or Shyamalan to put his opinions on the matter forth in this way. Honestly I think it even comes down to just being sloppy and obvious. I mean, yes, I understand that he is trying to make a statement about our effect on the environment in this film at large, the working title for the screenplay was even "The Green Effect" but there better ways of putting your personal opinions forth. I think, if not just hope, that most people who see this movie will be turned off at how obviously preachy about environmental issues it is.
But come on man, trees? really? is that the best you could come up with?
Suicide Club was so much better.

Crime Capers & Surfing Penguins

So I was bored last night and decided to watch some movies on OnDemand. I am going to start this out by saying that yeah these movies have been out for a while but I just wanted to give a few of my thoughts and comments on them today basically as a jumping off point.
I may even do two blogs today if I really get rolling...who knows.

So first I watched Ocean's 13. I had really enjoyed the other two in this snarky caper trilogy and I figured I should really watch the third, even though people had been giving me mixed reviews. I am not going to summarize the movie or anything but I am just gonna say that I really liked the fact that this time it was 110% about the caper and not mucking about with love interests or any of that mess. What I had been expecting was that since Clooney and Brad Pitt already had their character's matched up with females that this time around it would be Matt Damon's turn. In a way it was, he did get to seduce Ellen Barkin, but this was more about their little plot than forcing a love story in where it didn't belong. And I am not saying that The first and second movies had love stories that were totally forced, but I just don't think that the love interest formula that they had used in the first two movies could have been pulled off a third time. It's better that they didn't go there. I really loved the fact of how bare bones the plot of this movie was. They didn't take a lot of time to establish the characters or to round up the group again. Everyone was their quickly and the job was on from the get go. Everything fell into place quick and we were into the action within the first 15 minutes. I really think that was the best for the 3rd installment. They didn't try to up the stakes and force in too much story where it didn't belong, which a lot of 3rd installments seem to try to do. I know that it is a totally different genre and might be slightly off the topic, but take Spider-Man 3 and X-Men: The Last Stand. I think that both of these movies would have been a lot better if they had a little less going on. It seemed that they wanted to force way too much story into their two hour time frame and wound up with a lot of rushing through plot and not giving enough time or explanation to anything. Now I am not saying that things should be dwelt upon or that things should ever be over-explained in a film, but you need to give important plot points their time to naturally grow in a story. I don't think that they should have brought both Sandman and the Venom plot lines into one movie. What we got out of both of these ideas in one film was a very shmaltzy storyline for Sandman who weaves in and out too quickly from serious baddie to a Dad just trying to make things better for his sick little girl. It was all too tacked on and shoved together to seem sincere.
I am getting way off track.
My point is that a lot of Part 3 movies try to shove too much in to up the stakes. Ocean's 13 thankfully avoided that. So I give Ocean's 13 9.5 banana stickers. They lose a half a banana sticker for having Eddie Izzard there but not using him quite enough.

So the second movie I watched was Surf's Up. Great great great great little penguin surfing movie! I have to tell you I was expecting something really lame and half-assed but this was such an adorable little movie, fun for the whole family, and all that crap. I am an avid fan of cartoons and what would be considered kids movies and there are so many that try to be fun enough to reach the parents too and so many totally miss the mark. This one totally hit the mark, and hard! What makes me a little sad is that this movie came out after Happy Feet when it is absolutely the superior flick.
And by the way, what the hell is up with Happy Feet? When I saw the previews for that movie I was so excited to see it. It just looked like a wonderful happy-go-lucky, singin' and dancin', penguin fantastic movie. I was not expecting it to take that sharp left turn and become so political. And what was up with the part where Mumble was in the zoo, and that other penguin was calling him Dave and he was flinging the fish at the wall cause he saw his family in the mural? That was all way messed up and kind of creepy. Folks, don't put super political messages and environmentalist propaganda into your children's movies, please.
But I digress, Surf's Up was so much more entertaining in general. Also, in my opinion, far superior than the last two Shrek movies, if not all three.
But I know I will probably be hunted down and killed for such an opinion. I don't get the soft spot everyone has for Shrek. I mean it was ok, but I never thought it was anything so totally new or spectacular, or even all that tremendously funny. Those movies have a couple really good jokes padded by a lot of really lame bathroom humor and really immature nonsense. And yes I understand that they are kids movies and kids like immature nonsense, but I mean come on guys raise the bar a little or you are going to be developing an entire generation of kids who won't be able to laugh at anything more intelligent than Larry the Cable Guy. The one thing that gets me is the the Shrek movies and most of the other Dreamworks animation claim to be "Fun for the whole family," which yes there are things in Shrek that everyone in the family can laugh at, but it varies greatly from joke to joke. There aren't a lot of jokes in those movies that everyone can laugh at together. There are the lame immature kids jokes that the parents won't laugh at and the innuendo and double entendre type jokes that will go over the kid's heads. I think that Pixar is much better at writing comedy that is truly for everyone, because unlike Dreamworks, which seems to go for the easy cheap joke, Pixar's writers go for jokes that come from cleverness or more genuine situational humor. Surf's Up was actually a Sony Pictures Animation film, but was much more in the spirit of what Pixar always seems to do. They bridge the gap instead of splitting the jokes up, diving them, one for the kids one for the parents. Surf's Up gives a lot of jokes that are based on timing and execution, really sharp humor that isn't mean or gross, and each of these jokes I think can be truly enjoyed by every member of the family.
My real gripe with the Dreamworks animated movies is that I personally see a lot of their jokes as lazy, pulling things out of pop culture and parodying them in the same old ways we have seen a million times before, instead of constructing their own jokes.
But that's just me.
So I give Surf's Up 8.5 banana stickers, they lose a banana and a half just because it didn't really have to be penguins and I know that the fact that the characters were penguins was more to ride the penguin bandwagon. I really think if they were some other animal this movie would have done a lot better. I think the design of the penguins was a lot better than Happy Feet. They seemed to have gone for this almost photo realistic look in Happy Feet that just didn't look quite right. Because they looked too real, when they had the characters moving their flippers like arms or even when they moved their beaks to talk it just didn't look right, mostly because penguins beaks and flippers don't move that way naturally, and when you are basing the design of a character on the actual physicality of something, then have those physical features do something they wouldn't do naturally it just flat out looks wrong. Damn that was some run on sentence.
But I think you get what I am saying. I mean come on, its a cartoon, we know it is a cartoon, so get creative with it and don't make your characters awkward. By making the penguin's in Surf's Up less like real penguin they were able to move more naturally. Seriously guys, when you have a movie about singing dancing penguins it is ok to anthropomorphize them a bit.

In summation, Ocean's 13 and Surf's Up both give me a little hope for Hollywood.

Fight Club #1

So I one of my reasons for wanting a blog like this was to build up some different discussions about movies or music or other junk and stuff, lolcats, banana hands, etc. But what I really mean by discussions is arguments. I want some balls out geek fighting on this blog damn it! So this is going to be the first of many short posts where I leave a simple argument point based on my own personal opinions and where I would like you, the reader, to give your angry two-sense.

Topic 1: M.Night Shyamalan is a total hack!

...discuss

What is scary?

Mornin' Y'all
This is going to be my follow-up post to my blog about The Strangers that got really really off topic.
So the question was, does reality make a horror movie scarier?
I took a week to really think about this idea and I came across a few conundrums. I don't like deception and I didn't want to go around giving filmmakers permission to lie to their audiences, but the one movie I just couldn't stop thinking of was The Blair Witch Project. Now I have to start this out by saying that I was still in grade school when this movie came out, and admittedly a little gullible, but I wholeheartedly believed all of the pre-release hype. I really thought that these kids had disappeared in the woods never to be heard from again and even before I saw the movie I was just really freaked out by the notion. There was even a little documentary on the Sci-Fi channel with interviews with the families and I ate all that shit up. I really wanted to go and see the movie, but was also a little afraid of what I might see.
About a week before I saw it the curtain was torn away, and it was all revealed to be a hoax. It was that feeling of being the butt of a big practical joke, that feeling of "Oh wow they really got me." But there was something else. They really did have me fully taken in with this story, and though the movie still did totally freak the hell out of me at the time, I always wish I had seen it before I found out it wasn't real. Because I know for sure in that case it really would have heightened the whole experience.

With all of that said, I don't really think that another film maker could ever pull that off, nor do I think that modern horror movie makers should be tagging their movies with "Based On True Events" unless they actually are. And as I expressed in my previous blog, I don't mean loosely based on something that may have happened.

More importantly this whole idea got me into thinking about what makes something truly scary.
Why do some people need that label when others don't? Why do ghost stories bug some people out when others depend on a stalking killer? Or a horrible blood-thirsty monster?
Then I realized a very interesting correlation. Horror is a lot like comedy in the way it operates. It is always very subjective, in the same way comedy is. There cannot be a definitive scary because different things scare different people for different reasons. It is all about personal perspective. A lot of it is based on personal phobias or even straight from the persons experiences. At the time when Blair Witch came out I was very much into the idea of paranormal experiences. Ghosts, poltergeists, and any idea of a haunting mostly due to my discovery of Weird N.J. which I am hoping most of you are familiar with, if not look it up.
I wanted to go visit all of these spooky places basically in search of some ghoulie or ghostie. To walk backwards around Devil's Tower three times to see if Old Hob himself would show up. Or trek through the Pine Barrens in search of the Jersey Devil. So the thought of a group of kids going off in search of such a thing and never returning was personally distressing, and definitely made me hold off on any adventures. So I was bringing my own thoughts and paranoia into the theater with me.
My mother told me a story of when she and my aunt went to see The Exorcist when it was first released. My aunt apparently fainted in the theater due to the intensity of the film. Now I think we can all agree that The Exorcist still holds up as one of the scariest films of all time, but could this severe reaction be due to their Catholic school upbringing?
It is the same in comedy, we laugh harder when we can somehow relate to a circumstance. So wouldn't it make sense to think that if we can relate to something we would also scream more?
I am posing a lot more questions in this post than I am answering I know.
Ok lets go for an old standby, Freddie Kruger. Why so scary? Because we all have to sleep! We have all had really bad nightmares that made us not want to fall back to sleep, but sometimes sleep cannot be avoided. The simple idea of inescapability is scary.
But again I am sort of all over with this blog.
There are some things we consider universally scary just like there are things we consider universally funny, but there just can't be a definitive because of their subjective nature.
And back to the topic of "does reality make it scarier" in a way it does. We like the idea of truth and reality even in our obvious escapist pursuits such as film and television and literature. Unfortunately that is why reality TV exists. We all know full well that "reality TV" is not what real life is like and never could be simply because of the fact that constant surveillance on a desert island with strangers greatly changes the natural reactions any normal person would have. But we like the idea that they are just "real" people instead of actors. We like the fact that we can fool ourselves into thinking that these are "real" situations these people are being put in. We can even think "what would I do in such a situation".
But I am getting way off track again.
Things just seem to touch our hearts more when we believe they really happened. Look at the whole A Million Little Pieces Oprah nonsense. That was something people really believed in and connected with because they thought it was true. But the shit totally hit the fan when they found out a lot of it was not. Which again is why I don't think film makers should say "Based on true events" when the so called "events" were ridiculously exaggerated or just flat out didn't happen.
But for the most part, like I said, its all subjective. I don't really need to think something is real in order to be scared by it or amused by it or be in anyway emotionally effected by it. I just need it to be a good story, which I think is what a lot of these film makers are lacking, or at least insecure about. Maybe they feel that it isn't scary enough standing on its own two feet, but if people think that it really happened then they will be really scared.
Let me say this to you horror movie makers, just write something strong and scary enough instead of relying on some gimmick. If you think it isn't terrifying without the being "TRUE" then bring it in for another draft.

The Strangers - Go watch it!

Hello my freaky darlings!
Yesterday I went to see this groovy new horror flick you may have heard of called The Strangers.

Off the bat I want to tell you guys that I really liked this movie. I am really hoping that this Bryan Bertino fella who wrote and directed it will make more in this style and hopefully reinvigorate the entire genre.
Now I don't want to give anything major away, because the plot was so simplistic (and it was to its benefit) that it would be very easy to just give you the whole story.
Let me instead explain why this movie was so refreshing.
I'll start of by saying that I am sick and tired of the whole new movement in the horror genre of trying to replace tension and paranoia with blood and guts. I am not even really against blood and guts, they have their place. The issue is that being grossed out is not the same as being scared, and I think a lot of the directors now ::coughEliRothcough:: just don't get that.

The Strangers is all about atmosphere and tension in this wonderful old school 70s style. It made me hearken back to the the first time I saw Texas Chainsaw Massacre and John Carpenter's Halloween.
And as I explained in my previous post there was something really scary in the simplicity of those films. I was discussing what it is that makes a film like that so scary, and I don't just want to completely reiterate what I said in the other post, but the randomness of it is a big part of it. The lack of motive, the feeling of "I could be next." The reality of "This is not so far from reality that it couldn't happen to me." And yes I acknowlage that Michael Myers did have some motive and was also unrealistically superhuman, but I was talking more about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in that respect.
But getting back to my point.
Why is Jaws so scary? Why does it hold up as one of the most terrifying films of all time? Because it could really happen. It has happened. You could be swimming in the ocean and a shark could swim up and bite you in the ass. In the same way you could be attacked by an assailant who's only real motive is to terrorize and murder you. There is such insanity and instability in the world.
Now I am not saying that films like Hostel and Saw don't in some ways also work on that principle, but again are more concerned with being gruesome than being genuine to the emotions of such a situation, or at least in my opinion thats what they seem to do.

And quick side note, what the hell was up with Cary Elwes's performance in Saw? I have always liked him as an actor, and I recognize the fact that he is usually pretty smarmy, but there is just something way off about him in that movie. Severe overacting or something. Everything he said just sounded so soap opera. I dunno, maybe its just me, but let me know if any of you guys noticed that.

So anyway. The Strangers. Liv Tyler, oh my did she just make the most wonderful little scream queen, the perfect little victim. Again, reminiscing about the 70s style classic stalker horror genre. She was by herself for the majority of the movie, barefoot too I might add. She was teary eyed and panicked and her face just held every expression of fear you could imagine. Her reactions to each creak and rustle made for the most palpable tension I have seen in years.
And thats what this movie was really about, build up, tension, paranoia, atmosphere, sound, absence of sound. It wasn't some hack and slash, to be perfectly honest there were only 2 or 3 scenes of actual violence in the whole thing, depending on your definition. And of that violence it was nothing more gruesome than what you might see on CSI or Law and Order, which again is pretty tame by today's standards. But I am not saying tame in a derogatory sense. I absolutely appreciate that Bertino didn't go for gore over scare. And this film was legitimately scary. The idea that you think you are safe and its all torn away and you are in more danger than you can possibly handle.
One scene I do want to talk about is the first reveal of the Man in the Mask.
Liv Tyler is alone, her male having gone out for a drive. It's after 4:00A.M. There is a strange girl who keeps knocking on the door, "Is Tamra Here?" someone who doesn't live there. Liv(or Kristen in this case) becomes more and more paranoid. Her cell phone as well as the house phone don't seem to be working. She has a cigarette to calm down, and goes into the kitchen for a glass of water. As she is at the sink, we see a man in a white mask walk out from the shadows of the doorway far across the room. He is completely obscured from her line of sight, but WE know he is there, and he is watching her. He lingers for a moment then fades back into the shadows.
It was terrifying. The notion that he was standing there and she was being watched and didn't know it. That the horror had already begun and she didn't yet know.
It was eerie as all hell, but it was subtle. It set up the entire unease of the movie.
And the sound, OH GOD THE SOUND! It was the most amazing horror scoring. The Sound effects where impeccable. There was one point when Liv Tyler was hiding in the back yard and there was this sound like a metal garbage can being dragged across concrete, in that situation it was absolutely bone chilling.
I just don't think a lot of directors have the patience to write a horror movie like that anymore, mostly because I don't think a lot of audiences have the patience for horror like that anymore, which is sad.
One of the things that I actually didn't like about the movie, but was easy for me to overlook in the bigger picture was the fact that it starts off with a whole prologue about how it is"Based on true events". Now whatever, this may be true, this may not be true. There is no law against slapping on a "Based on true events" label when something isn't, but I haven't found any real evidence of this being a true story. A lot of people online say that it is loosely based on the Manson family murders, but that would sort of go against the point because people who really do know about those murders know that they weren't really as "random" as people think they were. And the prologue, as well as what is being shown in the commercials, claims that what this is based on happened in 2005.
But anywho. My real point is that there have been a lot of horror movies that have been tacking on a "Based on true events" label. Correct me if I am wrong but I believe even the remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills Have Eyes both have claimed to be true stories. And yes we obviously all know that Leatherface is loosely based on Ed Gein and the feral family in Hills is loosely based on the story of Sawney Bean and his clan, which is debatable as being true in of itself. But once again both of the remakes I recall claiming that such things happens much more recently than either of the incidents they are based on.
So why the deception? Why stretch the truth? Does tricking you into thinking it really happened make it more terrifying? Is it like I said before that the reality of the thing makes the fear greater?
I think I am going to leave this blog with that question for you guys and come back and do a follow up specifically on that topic. So gimme your opinions, is truth scarier than fiction?

P.S. I know I got way off track with this blog. My original point, go see The Strangers.

Farewell My Jedi

Hey guys.
Remember when Jedi used to be cool? Remember back in the day when we only knew of a handful of these wonderful, mystical, inexplicable beings. They broke into are world with their zen like understanding and their samurai like super skills. We all wanted to be one...shut up you know you did! We all wanted to go out in the swamps and start flipping around like some sort of magic rock-piling freak! What a life it would be! And back in the day we all respected and admired that dying religion...those sorcerers ways.
So what the hell happened? What went wrong? One simple word...Demystification.
All of a sudden its all about midi-chlorian counts, and there are thousands and thousands of jedi who all suck apparently. I mean seriously folks, Order 66 comes down and out of all of these people deeply connected to the force no one says "Hey you guys do you have a feeling we are all about to be slaughtered?" There is just no magic in it anymore. And I am obviously not the first to have made this observation or taken issue with any of this, I was just thinking about it and it all made me really sad. It feels that now the jedi are really gone now. Turned into some throw-away character. I mean how many jedi died on Geonosis alone? And against droids? Really? So jedi are the ass-kickin'est folk in the galaxy but can be defeated pretty easily by droids. Or is that only red-shirt jedi? But again if they are this elite order, which was always sort of implied in the originals, then why are there so freaking many of them? I mean there were swarms and swarms of them to be used as battle fodder in the prequels. Even Yoda and Obi-Wan seemed to be really dropping the ball when it came to anything and everything you would think a jedi would be able to sense.
I remember when I was little, going over my friends house to play Star Wars in her basement, with our little light up extend-o lightsabers, we just thought we were the coolest ever. We wanted to have the power to go against a remote with the blast shields down, and pull an entire x-wing out of a swamp.
Jedi used to be the ultimate in awesome in that galaxy far far away... now
not so much.
And don't even let me get started on Boba Fett.

But demystification seems to be the new trend in Hollywood. Anything mysterious or inexplicable has now been explained within an inch of its life. Take The Texas Chainsaw Massacre for instance. The original is dark, gritty, uncomfortably realistic, and flat out scary. There just wasn't much to it, basic 70's horror movie formula, but what I always loved about it was the supreme lack of explanation. We understand Jason Voorhees's story and why his mother had to punish all of those sex-maniac kids. We even generally understand Micheal Meyer's blood lust and his unfinished business with his long lost sister. Leatherface and his whole disgusting family are different though. No complicated motives, no obvious reasons for targeting one person over another, just a family of cannibals going about their daily lives, and that was enough. They didn't need any more explanation than that. Or so Tobe Hooper thought. But when the time rolled around for Hollywood to say "Hey lets do a remake" Scott Kosar decided that random inexplicable horror was just not enough. So he tacked on this really lame ass, in my opinion, back story/explanation as to why Leatherface is the way he is, when I was always under the impression that it is sometimes scarier not having a motive and that was part of the point of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the first place. You can also see this same technique of over explanation in the remake of The Hills Have Eyes.

And I am obviously not categorizing the Star Wars prequels as remakes. I am just making a comparison of the bastardization of beloved characters in order to make a quick buck.

GoS

I am not going to spend and entire post on this... mostly because I don't want to get sued. All I will tell you is that a friend of mine was playing World of Warcraft, as we both often do, when he was approached by someone else in the game asking if he'd like to join a guild... a Scientology guild.
They are recruiting through WoW now? Geek Cult alright.

Geek Geek Revolution!

I don't really know why I chose that for the title of this post. It just had a nice ring to it. So my geek moment of today was totally having my opinion of someone changed by someones taste in movies.
I was talking to this guy who I met on myspace who seemed pretty damn cool. Seemed to have generally awesome taste in movies, books and music. Had The Guyver on his movie list which I so totally appreciate. If you haven't seen that piece of amazingly terrible nonsense, and Mark Hamil's subsequent mustache you just don't know what you are missing. So I was chatting with this guy on AIM today and I asked him, as I usually ask when meeting new interesting people, what his top three movies of all time were. The three movies that if he only had three movies to pick as the only movies he could ever watch again, he would choose these three. So at first he told me that his number one would be Akira , and I thought that was a good choice. He had already expressed himself as a huge anime fan and Akira is the Citizen Kane of anime. So then I pushed for his other two and he said he just couldn't think of what the other two would be, because he just had too many favorite movies. Things would have been fine if he had left it at that because I too have trouble naming what my top three would be. Then he blurts out "Oh Little Nicky, that would definitely be in the top three." Little Nicky? Really? Come on guy...seriously? Now I want you guys to understand that this fella had movies on his myspace movie list like A Clockwork Orange, The City of Lost Children, Pan's Labyrinth, Stray Dog.... and so on, and Little Nicky is what he chooses to put on this list of the only films he can ever watch again??? And all I could think of is the episode of The Office (US version) when there was the fire in the office and everyone was standing outside playing different games one of them including the listing of top three movies and someone, I think it was Meredith, may have been Phillys, listed Legally Blond to the amusement and snickering of Jim and Pam. Then when Jim's girlfriend rolls up, that cute redhead chick from Enchanted (and no I didn't see Enchanted I just know she was in it), and Jim wants her to list her favorites and the first thing out of her mouth is "Well first, Legally Blond." The look on Jim's face was exactly what I was the exact expression of my feelings. I was just sort of dumbfounded and sort of didn't want to talk to the kid anymore. I just went "Oh.....yeah I gotta go."

And I know that it is unfair to judge someone for their like of a certain movie...but come one guys...Little Nicky? Really?
I am not even begrudging the guy for liking the movie...but top three movies? Seriously?
Just seems like someone who has their priorities all wrong.

Welcome My Freaky Darlings!

Hello All,
I just wanted to do a short post and explain basically what Geek Cult is and what I will be talking about on it.

Geek Cult is my little space to rant and rave and generally geek out with y'all.
I am just one little geek chick living in the big bad world and I need to reach out to all my geeky brethren. On this page I'll be talking about movies, tv, non-sense, conventions, writing, and a whole lot of other stuff and how it all effects my, and maybe your, day to day life.

We are legion We are geek!