With Halloween fast approaching, seems everyone is getting into the scary spirit, and there's nothing better than turning off all the lights, curling up on the couch with a bowl of popcorn, and watching a good horror movie. But which one? With so many out there, including sequels, remakes, ripoffs, and just plain torture porn (Hostel, Saw sequels), it's easy to end up with the wrong one. With that in mind, here are my picks for the 13 greatest horror films of all time. While these may not be the absolute scariest, these are guaranteed to provide you with a good night and maybe a good fright.
Honorable mentions: Amityville Horror, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Fog, Scream, House of Wax (1953), Paranormal Activity.
13. Friday the 13th (1980)- Director Sean Cunningham
It is somewhat appropriate that we start this countdown off with the film that launched one of Hollywood's most notorious slashers, Jason Voorhees. Ironically, the hockey-masked fiend doesn't appear until part two; the mask comes a sequel later. The original follows our group of happy campers, including a young Kevin Bacon, as they are systematically killed off by an unknown assailant. Remember those great campfire stories we all heard during the summer about the unlikeable janitor/counselor/camper who was died there and now haunts the campground seeking vengeance? That mood is captured here perfectly. The sequels are campy and somewhat ridiculous (See Part 8: Jason Takes Manhattan), and although they deliver a few thrills, nothing beats the original. Not to mention, it did give us one other thing: the last-minute scare. You've been warned.
12. House on Haunted Hill (1959)- Director William Castle.
It is a general rule of thumb in horror movies that the remake is never as good as the original, and this is very true here. While the 1999 remake stars great actors like Famke Janssen and Geoffrey Rush, they don't make the film as good as the classic. Starring the incomparable Vincent Price, the film follows a group of strangers as they spend the night in a haunted house for the promise of $10,000. Is it cheesy? Yes. Does it have plenty of high-pitched black-and-white era screams? God, yes. Is Vincent Price creepy in it? This isn't The Ten Commandments, so of course he is. The movie still remains one of my personal favorites in and out of the Halloween season and gave us one of the first haunted house movies. Just be sure to look out for flying skeletons.
11. Poltergeist (1982)- Director Tobe Hooper
Where I grew up, there was hardly any major building that wasn't a) built on an old Indian burial ground or b) haunted. Combine the two and you get this gem about a family terrorized by the spirits living in their house. The film starts off with a bang and features such terrifying elements as killer trees, killer clowns, killer ghosts, and a pit full of real rotting corpses, not to mention the classic quotes ("Go into the light," "It knows what scares you," and "They're here.") While fans of the film remember the quirky Zelda Rubinstein as the psychic medium, the star of this film is sweet little Heather O'Rourke, who plays the youngest daughter and central target of the spirits, Carol Anne. The fact that she is so precious and innocent makes for a compelling story. People are also drawn to the film because of the legendary curse. Several actors in the film and its sequel died after production, including O'Rourke. The real life horror has drawn almost as many viewers as the simulated variety. Oh, I almost forgot. It was written by somebody named Steven Spielberg. You may have heard of him.
10. Night of the Living Dead (1968)- Director George Romero
A lot of people will remember this film as the first movie to feature zombies in it, but it's much more than that. First, it's not the first movie to have zombies in it; several older movies featured them as villains, but they were found in jungles and the tropics and were often controlled by some evil mastermind. These were different. The zombies introduced to us by the legendary George Romero are independent and only have one thing on their mind: kill. Night of the Living Dead gives us walking dead in the first five minutes and doesn't stop until the final frame. Exemplifying the idea of a movie on a budget, the rest of the film follows a group of strangers trapped in a farmhouse as they devise a plan to escape the growing horde of stumbling, undead cannibals outside their door. This movie belongs here for not only putting Romero on the map and inspiring zombie creators and sequels for decades to come, but also for creating one more fear for mankind to worry about: our loved ones who want nothing more than to eat us. Not to mention, the image of a zombified little girl chewing on a human leg is just flat-out disturbing.
9. Freaks (1932)- Director Tod Browning
After the success of his previous horror film, Dracula, Tod Browning was given a new project by his producers: come up with a film scarier than Frankenstein. What he came up with was one of the most disturbing and controversial films ever made. Freaks follows members of a circus sideshow, specifically a trapeze artist and her love for a dwarf. His fellow freaks do not trust her motives but accept her nonetheless. However, when she leaves him for the circus strongman, they decide to take their bloody revenge. The film so disturbed audiences that it was banned for decades in Australia and the UK and Browning soon fell out of the Hollywood loop. Browning had done his job, though; he did make a scary movie. While it is unsettling to see the "normal people" as the villains in the film, the real scary part is some of the freaks themselves. Browning takes great care not to ridicule them; the cast was composed of real circus freaks including half-men half-women, dwarfs, bearded ladies, bird people, a human skeleton, and Prince Randian, born without arms or legs. There is, however, nothing quite as frightening as the sight of all the freaks stalking the trapeze artist with the chant of "We will make you one of us."
8. Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)- Director Wes Craven
One of the main things people always complain about concerning horror movies is if the killer in the house, why not run away? Well, what if you couldn't? What if, no matter how hard you tried and how far you ran, that killer would hunt you down and kill you in your sleep? That's the premise of Craven's classic. A group of teenagers are haunted by the spirit of a child murderer, whom their parents burned alive, who attacks them in their dreams; die in a dream, die in real life. This movie breaks other slasher movie norms, as well. First, while many of our killers are silent, Freddy Krueger is a comedian, breaking out one-liners and taunting his victims. Secondly, while most of our killers are happy with a simple stab, slash, or broken neck, Krueger gets creative. In his first feature film, Johnny Depp is sucked into his bed and basically becomes a blood volcano. In the sequels, victims have their veins turned into marionette strings, are drowned in water beds, and have their heads smashed into televisions, among other gruesome means of demise. This is the one horror movie my mother won't watch, and I can't blame her. After seeing this, you may never sleep again.
7. Nosferatu (1922)- Director F.W. Murnau
Before Dracula, The Lost Boys, Interview with the Vampire, or any other vampire film, there was Nosferatu, the silent German classic that introduced the undead bloodsucker to film. The movie was the first full film adaptation of Bram Stoker's iconic novel Dracula, but the filmmakers were sued by Stoker's widow for copyright infringement. Since they did not have permission, writers changed the names of all the characters to more German names. While the plot is highly similar, there is one glaring difference. While the title character in other versions of the Dracula films is suave, seductive, and rather charming, Count Orlok/Nosferatu is quite the opposite. He is grotesque, with a bald head, pointed ears, razor-sharp teeth, and long, claw-like fingers. Max Shreck, the man behind the makeup, is almost comical trying to pass himself off as a reclusive yet normal European count; a scene involving Orlok in his nightcap and robe actually made me giggle. However, once he lets loose into his bloodthirsty alter ego, he is the definition of the word "scary," and the horror still echoes nearly 90 years later.
6. Frankenstein(1931)- Director James Whale
The story of Frankenstein is virtually embedded in all our minds. A mad scientist, trying to play God, resurrects a dead man with a rotten brain, and terror ensues. Colin Clive is brilliant as Dr. Frankenstein ("It's alive, It's alive,") but it's horror legend Boris Karloff as the monster that steals the show. Producers took great care not to let anyone see Karloff in his makeup before the movie premiered, giving the creature an air of mystery. Even in the opening credits, the monster is simply listed as "?." When he first appears on screen, he backs out of a doorway before slowly turning his face to the camera. Once he was looking straight ahead, the camera locked on his face with his dead, sunken eyes, scars, and green skin that seemed to transcend the fact the film was black and white. Audiences flipped out; many fainted or ran screaming out of the theater. Although the monster is terrifying, we also feel sympathy for him with his childlike manner, even as he commits his crimes. That complexity is what makes this a truly great film, but it's Karloff that makes it a great horror film.
5. The Shining (1980)- Director Stanley Kubrick
If horror writing is an art, Stephen King is its Leonardo Da Vinci, and his Mona Lisa, at least in terms of his film adaptations, is The Shining, directed by the master Stanley Kubrick. The plot, based on some of King's own experiences, follows a writer, played by the always entertaining Jack Nicholson, as he spends the winter in an empty mountain lodge with his wife and son. Of course, the hotel is haunted, and after they are snowed in, it slowly drives them all into madness. While critics dismissed the film at first, it has since become a horror classic, and it's easy to see why. Most people remember the classic lines "Redrum!" and "Here's Johnny," but there are so many inexplicably creepy moments in the film as well. Jack's manuscript. The bartender. The dead woman in the bathtub. The twins. The elevator. Tony. The hedge maze. Whatever the hell that guy in the bear suit is supposed to be. Each and every little moment will slowly make you feel unsettled as well. A word of warning: turn off all the lights on this one, and you may regret it.
4. Halloween (1978)- Director John Carpenter
Take a director in his youth, a cast of new faces with one established actor, and an incredibly low-budget, and what do you get? The highest-grossing independent film of the 1970s and one of the greatest horror films of all time, Halloween. Starring a young Jamie Lee Curtis, in her first film role, the movie follows a group of babysitters as they are stalked by masked maniac Michael Myers, who is, himself, being tracked down by his doctor, played impeccably by the late Donald Pleasence. Halloween sticks out from a lot of other slasher films of the era. It lacks the blood and gore of later films, which isn't a bad thing, and it actually gives us characters we care about. A low budget might doom some films, but in this case, it's part of the film's charm. While looking for the perfect mask for the killer, a crew member found a William Shatner mask. Painted white and its hair teased out, the mask was a blank slate far creepier than anything before or since. With no expense for someone to create a soundtrack, Carpenter wrote the music himself. What he created was one of the most haunting and recognizable themes in cinema history. The movie has plenty of jokes to couple with the screams, giving audiences a real treat. Not to mention, the ending is a real shock, leading to one of the few well-done sequels in horror. Fun fact: the film initially did very poorly in theaters and with critics, until one critic praised the film, comparing it to Psycho. The critic's name? Roger Ebert.
3. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)- Director Tobe Hooper
Unkillable zombie in a hockey mask terrorizing summer campers? Impossible. Ghost of a serial killer killing teenagers in their dreams? Implausible. Lunatics killing tourists in the middle of nowhere, Texas? Makes sense to me. And that is what makes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre so terrifying. The plot is simple: a group of young people traveling through the Texas countryside run afoul of a group of backwoods cannibals, most notably Leatherface, the chainsaw-wielding lunatic wearing a mask made of human skin. As gory as the name would have one believe, the film relies more on implied carnage than the actual impalement and slaughter. That's not to say there aren't a few gory bits. What really makes the film scary is Hooper's presentation of the film as real. The very beginning claims that this is all based on true case files, which isn't entirely untrue: Leatherface is based on the real-life serial killer Ed Gein, as is Norman Bates in Psycho and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. The lack of a real soundtrack and documentary-style shooting makes it seem all too real, and it's all brought together by the gritty look of the film itself. Ignore the sequels and the remakes; only the original is truly terrifying, something I know from personal experience. I once watched the film with a group of friends: of the 20 of us, all but one of us screamed, and that was only because I had seen the movie before.
2. Dracula (1931)- Director Tod Browning
Of all the classic Halloween monsters, none is more recognizable than Count Dracula, and it's all thanks to this 1931 classic. The story, based on the stage play rather than Bram Stoker's novel, sees the enigmatic vampire Dracula leaving his reclusive mountain castle for England and new blood. This tale has been told a hundred times, sometimes successfully, such as Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 version and the Spanish version that was shot at the same time and on the same set as this version. Both are excellent, but there is one major thing they lack: Bela Lugosi. Everything we associate with the stereotypical vampire comes from Bela's performance: the slicked back hair, the cape, the seductive nature, and that heavy Eastern European accent. Ironically, we never see any fangs, but the movie doesn't need them. Instead, we have the great dialogue ("Children of the night. What music they make." and "I don't drink...wine.") Most remastered versions include a soundtrack added by Philip Glass; the original had no soundtrack, and Glass's addition is equally as eerie as the silent background of the original. However, it's still Bela that brings the picture together, and it's all in his stare. With pen lights under his eyes, Lugosi's Dracula is as hypnotizing to audiences as he is to the other characters in the film, and it's guaranteed to give you chills. Theater owners in the 1930s were often dared by producers to show this film and Frankenstein on a double bill to see if audiences could handle it. Needless to say, many could not.
And the #1 horror movie is..........
The Exorcist (1973)- Director William Friedkin
What Citizen Kane is to American cinema, The Exorcist is to the horror genre. It is the film that all other serious horror films are compared to and the one that all of them should try to emulate in that it breaks the rules of horror films. 12-year-old Reagan MacNeil is possessed by a demon, and her only hope lies with two priests, one being played by the legendary Max Von Sydow. Think about most horror movies and who the victims are; they have usually brought the violence on themselves either through their actions or their loose morals. Kids in slasher films that get knocked off are usually drinking, smoking, doing drugs, having sex, or swearing that the killer is either dead or doesn't exist. The Exorcist lacks that element; Reagan is wholly innocent, and it is never fully explained why this demon chooses to possess the poor girl. Not to mention, the movie really is scary. The transformation this girl goes through, complete with the foul language, the head spinning, the vomiting, the creepy voices, and the levitating, are all truly terrifying. Grab the director's cut, and you'll get even more scares, including the infamous spiderwalking scene. Still not convinced? The movie won two Oscars in 1974 and was nominated for another eight. When was the last time you remember a horror movie winning an Oscar, let alone get nominated? Plus, the soundtrack is just plain haunting. If you need just one movie guaranteed to scare you, this is it. Happy Halloween everybody!
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
In Praise of Pepper
Today, I lost the best dog I ever had to cancer. Her name was Pepper, and she was 10 years old. I know it doesn't matter now, but I could not think of a better way to remember her than right here, right now.
My mother and I picked her out from our local humane shelter when she was only four months old. She was one of only two puppies from a litter to survive. Initially, we could not decide between her and her sister, but there was something special about her. Both puppies were brown, but Pepper's left front paw was completely white. She melted my heart, and we took her home. The shelter had named her Cupcake, but we decided she needed a different name. Don't ask me how, I still don't know, but we decided on the name Pepper.
For the next few months, we kept her on the patio under our deck. Ants were constantly trying to get into her food bowl, so we drew a chalk circle around it, because for some reason, that was supposed to work. At night, we would spread out a large blanket and let her inside to play. We would wrap her up and watch as she curiously poked her head back out. She loved to climb stairs, which was funny, simply because she never figured out how to get back down, so we would carry her down, only for her to scurry right back up.
When she got bigger, we let her roam free in our backyard, where she soon became queen of the mountain. She had a doghouse full of hay for the cold months and a pool (plastic trashcan lid) full of water for the summer. She would always sleep on her back, leaned up against the fence. For the longest time, she would not drink out of her water bowl. Instead, she would drink out of her pool, often with two or all four paws in it as well. She tried lying down in it once, but decided very quickly she did not like that. She did fall asleep on top of it once when it froze one December, which made me laugh for hours.
She loved to do three things: play, hunt, and sleep. If she got a baseball in her mouth, you might never see that ball again. We left her with my uncle while we went on vacation once and gave her a bag of baseballs to play with. When we returned a week later, those balls looked like they had been run through a woodchipper. We also got her a deflated basketball. She would take it in her mouth, throw it down the hill, go get it, bring it back to the top, and do it again. She would sleep the rest of the day, usually under the peach tree in the foxhole that she had dug. Whenever I would come home from school or my mother from the store, she would pop up and pretend to chase some invisible prey, trying to convince us she wasn't napping.
She became quite the hunter as well. In her life, she killed a bird, two squirrels, and at least 13 possums. She would shake them so hard they would die from shock, but the poor little thing didn't understand it. Instead, she would bury them and try to dig them to tussle with later. We never knew exactly what kind of dog she was. The best the vet could come up with was that she had terrier in her. To me, she was the best kind of dog: a mutt.
We nearly lost her a few years ago to a heat stroke. The vet told us after we got her in that if we had waited a few more minutes, she would have been a goner. After a night in the hospital with a little doggie IV in her leg, we got her home. We had to get her a haircut to keep it from happening again, and when she got back from the groomer, her thick brownish-red coat was gone. She was naked except for a star-spangled bandana tied around her neck. I'd never seen anything so pathetic and precious in my life.
Since around my junior year of high school, I have struggled with depression. At times when I was constantly sad or distant, when I didn't want to talk to my friends or my family, I only had one friend, and she had four legs and a tail. It didn't matter, though. She was always there for me, with her happy face and her soulful brown eyes. I don't think I would have made it through some of those tough days if it weren't for her.
Some of the best times in my young life have revolved around that dog. We played in the snow together, sat in swings together, played baseball, went on walks to the lake, and sat together for hours. She developed somewhat of an addiction to dog bones in her later years. Give her one, and she would devour it, then spend the next several minutes sniffing for more. For a short time, she would not take them from my mother, after she accidentally tossed one and hit the poor thing in the head. She loved them so much, we had to put her on a diet for a while,which did not sit particularly well with her. Even when she got old, and she could barely move due to her arthritis, she would perk up for a bone. Even at the very end, this last week, when she wouldn't eat anything else, she would occasionally eat a bone.
I feel no shame in telling you that I am crying as I write this. I'm going to miss my puppy. She has been with me for nearly half my life and during the most pivotal years. I'm going to miss her brown eyes, white paw, wagging tail, and happy face. I'm miss checking on her first thing every morning before school, and I'm going to miss seeing her bound up when I come home to visit. I'm going to miss hearing her bark at the neighbor's dog and scattering dog bones all over the yard for her to find. But most of all, I'm going to miss that constant love, the kind that never fades, fails, or questions, that is rare in people but always ready in the heart of an animal. If I have learned anything, it's that as painful as it may be to lose someone you love, it's well worth the joy they bring into your lives to let them in, whether they have two legs or four.
My mother and I picked her out from our local humane shelter when she was only four months old. She was one of only two puppies from a litter to survive. Initially, we could not decide between her and her sister, but there was something special about her. Both puppies were brown, but Pepper's left front paw was completely white. She melted my heart, and we took her home. The shelter had named her Cupcake, but we decided she needed a different name. Don't ask me how, I still don't know, but we decided on the name Pepper.
For the next few months, we kept her on the patio under our deck. Ants were constantly trying to get into her food bowl, so we drew a chalk circle around it, because for some reason, that was supposed to work. At night, we would spread out a large blanket and let her inside to play. We would wrap her up and watch as she curiously poked her head back out. She loved to climb stairs, which was funny, simply because she never figured out how to get back down, so we would carry her down, only for her to scurry right back up.
When she got bigger, we let her roam free in our backyard, where she soon became queen of the mountain. She had a doghouse full of hay for the cold months and a pool (plastic trashcan lid) full of water for the summer. She would always sleep on her back, leaned up against the fence. For the longest time, she would not drink out of her water bowl. Instead, she would drink out of her pool, often with two or all four paws in it as well. She tried lying down in it once, but decided very quickly she did not like that. She did fall asleep on top of it once when it froze one December, which made me laugh for hours.
She loved to do three things: play, hunt, and sleep. If she got a baseball in her mouth, you might never see that ball again. We left her with my uncle while we went on vacation once and gave her a bag of baseballs to play with. When we returned a week later, those balls looked like they had been run through a woodchipper. We also got her a deflated basketball. She would take it in her mouth, throw it down the hill, go get it, bring it back to the top, and do it again. She would sleep the rest of the day, usually under the peach tree in the foxhole that she had dug. Whenever I would come home from school or my mother from the store, she would pop up and pretend to chase some invisible prey, trying to convince us she wasn't napping.
She became quite the hunter as well. In her life, she killed a bird, two squirrels, and at least 13 possums. She would shake them so hard they would die from shock, but the poor little thing didn't understand it. Instead, she would bury them and try to dig them to tussle with later. We never knew exactly what kind of dog she was. The best the vet could come up with was that she had terrier in her. To me, she was the best kind of dog: a mutt.
We nearly lost her a few years ago to a heat stroke. The vet told us after we got her in that if we had waited a few more minutes, she would have been a goner. After a night in the hospital with a little doggie IV in her leg, we got her home. We had to get her a haircut to keep it from happening again, and when she got back from the groomer, her thick brownish-red coat was gone. She was naked except for a star-spangled bandana tied around her neck. I'd never seen anything so pathetic and precious in my life.
Since around my junior year of high school, I have struggled with depression. At times when I was constantly sad or distant, when I didn't want to talk to my friends or my family, I only had one friend, and she had four legs and a tail. It didn't matter, though. She was always there for me, with her happy face and her soulful brown eyes. I don't think I would have made it through some of those tough days if it weren't for her.
Some of the best times in my young life have revolved around that dog. We played in the snow together, sat in swings together, played baseball, went on walks to the lake, and sat together for hours. She developed somewhat of an addiction to dog bones in her later years. Give her one, and she would devour it, then spend the next several minutes sniffing for more. For a short time, she would not take them from my mother, after she accidentally tossed one and hit the poor thing in the head. She loved them so much, we had to put her on a diet for a while,which did not sit particularly well with her. Even when she got old, and she could barely move due to her arthritis, she would perk up for a bone. Even at the very end, this last week, when she wouldn't eat anything else, she would occasionally eat a bone.
I feel no shame in telling you that I am crying as I write this. I'm going to miss my puppy. She has been with me for nearly half my life and during the most pivotal years. I'm going to miss her brown eyes, white paw, wagging tail, and happy face. I'm miss checking on her first thing every morning before school, and I'm going to miss seeing her bound up when I come home to visit. I'm going to miss hearing her bark at the neighbor's dog and scattering dog bones all over the yard for her to find. But most of all, I'm going to miss that constant love, the kind that never fades, fails, or questions, that is rare in people but always ready in the heart of an animal. If I have learned anything, it's that as painful as it may be to lose someone you love, it's well worth the joy they bring into your lives to let them in, whether they have two legs or four.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Blade Ruinner
As many of you have probably heard by now, Ridley Scott is going back to one of his greatest masterpieces and royally screwing it up. That's right, Blade Runner is coming into the era of pointless remakes and sequels, drawing the ire of every fan who ever saw the original. Literally, I have yet to see one post, comment, or article where anyone, apart from Scott himself, that says "Oh goodie, they're making a an unnecessary sequel/prequel to a sci-fi classic 30 years after the fact!"
Let's face it. Hollywood has run out of ideas. I know, big news, huh? You all know that; we've all known it for years, but that doesn't change the fact that it still hurts. A vast majority of current and future projects are either sequels or remakes of perfectly good films (see Ghostbusters 3, Men in Black 3, Jurassic Park 4, etc). There is a method to their madness besides lack of creativity. One, it does bring in a new audience, a younger generation that might otherwise have dismissed it as their square parents' piece of crap. Take Star Wars, for instance. I know a lot of people who had never even heard of the original trilogy until the prequels came out. Unfortunately, these reboots offer a lot more Jar Jar Binkses than Darth Mauls, which brings me to my second point.
They are out there. Everywhere. You work with them, go to school with them, may even live with them, and you may not even know it. They are...the fanboys. When filmmakers decide to redo a movie or revive a movie series, I know what a lot of them are thinking. They are thinking about how much they loved the movie when they were a kid, but now they've got a billion dollars and want to do it their way. The problem is there are other people out there who love those movies as well, so much, in fact, that they don't want people screwing with the original or its legacy. When news hits of a remake/sequel/prequel, the first question asked by the general public is "Will this live up to the original?" The first question from fanboys is "Why the &@#$ are they doing this? There was nothing wrong with the original!" The problem with a lot of directors is that you can't just use the same title and pretend its just as good. There's more to a beloved movie than just good acting or special effects. Take the recent Clash of the Titans remake, for instance. I enjoyed it for what it was, which was a pretty action film. However, it lacked the camp of the original. Yes, the first was cheesy with the claymation effects, but that's what made it so enjoyable. You could totally redo The Ten Commandments and add an actual river of blood instead of painting the scene, but it would never be the same.
Now don't get me wrong. Sometimes the remakes do work. The original Piranha was dismissed as just another Jaws ripoff, which it was, but the remake set up for the dvd release and did fairly well at the box office. Rob Zombie's Halloween is another good example, or even the new Fright Night. Both take relatively tame, slightly cheesy movie classics and give them that sexier, more violent new millennium shine. But all of these are horror movies. Horror franchises can put out films until kingdom come because people go to see them to either be scared, to see terrible people ripped in half, or to see gratuitous nudity. Nobody goes to a horror movie for story and characters, which are the backbone of good movies like Blade Runner and can't be replicated, no matter how much money they pour into it. Maybe it will be good, maybe it won't. I'm not holding my breath, but I will withhold final judgment until its release in 2014. At least Ridley Scott is toying with his own movie. The Dirty Dancing remake, on the other hand? That guy can go fuck himself. RIP Patrick Swayze.
Let's face it. Hollywood has run out of ideas. I know, big news, huh? You all know that; we've all known it for years, but that doesn't change the fact that it still hurts. A vast majority of current and future projects are either sequels or remakes of perfectly good films (see Ghostbusters 3, Men in Black 3, Jurassic Park 4, etc). There is a method to their madness besides lack of creativity. One, it does bring in a new audience, a younger generation that might otherwise have dismissed it as their square parents' piece of crap. Take Star Wars, for instance. I know a lot of people who had never even heard of the original trilogy until the prequels came out. Unfortunately, these reboots offer a lot more Jar Jar Binkses than Darth Mauls, which brings me to my second point.
They are out there. Everywhere. You work with them, go to school with them, may even live with them, and you may not even know it. They are...the fanboys. When filmmakers decide to redo a movie or revive a movie series, I know what a lot of them are thinking. They are thinking about how much they loved the movie when they were a kid, but now they've got a billion dollars and want to do it their way. The problem is there are other people out there who love those movies as well, so much, in fact, that they don't want people screwing with the original or its legacy. When news hits of a remake/sequel/prequel, the first question asked by the general public is "Will this live up to the original?" The first question from fanboys is "Why the &@#$ are they doing this? There was nothing wrong with the original!" The problem with a lot of directors is that you can't just use the same title and pretend its just as good. There's more to a beloved movie than just good acting or special effects. Take the recent Clash of the Titans remake, for instance. I enjoyed it for what it was, which was a pretty action film. However, it lacked the camp of the original. Yes, the first was cheesy with the claymation effects, but that's what made it so enjoyable. You could totally redo The Ten Commandments and add an actual river of blood instead of painting the scene, but it would never be the same.
Now don't get me wrong. Sometimes the remakes do work. The original Piranha was dismissed as just another Jaws ripoff, which it was, but the remake set up for the dvd release and did fairly well at the box office. Rob Zombie's Halloween is another good example, or even the new Fright Night. Both take relatively tame, slightly cheesy movie classics and give them that sexier, more violent new millennium shine. But all of these are horror movies. Horror franchises can put out films until kingdom come because people go to see them to either be scared, to see terrible people ripped in half, or to see gratuitous nudity. Nobody goes to a horror movie for story and characters, which are the backbone of good movies like Blade Runner and can't be replicated, no matter how much money they pour into it. Maybe it will be good, maybe it won't. I'm not holding my breath, but I will withhold final judgment until its release in 2014. At least Ridley Scott is toying with his own movie. The Dirty Dancing remake, on the other hand? That guy can go fuck himself. RIP Patrick Swayze.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Thoughts on Raw at 3 am
Consider this an introduction. I'm a huge wrestling fan in the sense that I like good wrestling, good stories, and unexpected plot twists. With TNA sinking faster than the Titanic these days, I stick to my good old WWE. So naturally, when I have my Monday nights off, I like to plop down on the couch, Turn on Raw, and turn up the volume. In more recent years, I have come to realize that I have a somewhat insane/masochistic relationship with my wrestling, insanity here being defined as doing the same action over and over expecting different results and masochism as doing something you know will hurt, whether physically or mentally, whilst grinning like an idiot. I watch Raw and Smackdown when I can, knowing full well that the show will probably suck. I can predict the outcome of every bit in the show, and my brain hurts from doing it. Each week, I tune in hoping that maybe, just maybe, tonight's show will be a little less sucky, and it rarely is. I watch to see talented guys put on an entertaining show that keeps the audience glued to the action, not get put in stupid bits and cheesy movies while an interchangeable group of impractically dressed skanks pull hair and fake bulldogs for the tenth week in a row. However, in spite of all that, I was generally pleased with the results of the show from 8/15. Rey Mysterio and Alberto Del Rio put on a great match. It was a fitting ending to the show, and I was all ready to flip over to catch the second half of Jon Stewart until who should arrive like an unwanted Superman but John Cena. Heaven forbid they have one show without this overhyped army-wannabe. He pummels Del Rio and decides that he's pissed off at him. Not at CM Punk, who beat him down, or at Triple H who made the controversial 3-count, or even the guy that directed 12 rounds(because God knows after I saw it, I wanted to bash someone in the head), but Del Rio. Why? Because Alberto cashed in his Money in the Bank briefcase on a weakened champion, which was for whatever reason terrible. This coming from the same guy who commended both The Miz and Edge for doing the same, "sensible" thing, the latter against.....Cena himself. Yes, I know it's scripted. I don't hate John Cena on a personal level; I respect the work he's done for charity and such. But the writers and the guys organizing these shows need a real wake-up call. First of all, do they even pay attention to old storylines? It doesn't really work when you just magically change a guy's attitude towards another for no apparent reason (see Undertaker/Kane we're brothers/I hate you gimmick that gets rehashed every few years). The wrestling audience, for at least some part, is smarter than that. Want proof? Watch the shows, read the tweets and the facebook posts, read the magazine articles. Pay attention to each fan and who they're favorite wrestler is. See the kid whose first show this is, who's not quite old enough to realize that it's not all real, who's decked out in the shirt and the hat with the fake belt his parents got to enhance the experience? Chances are he's screaming for John Cena. Same goes for the preteen girl who thinks he's just so dreamy, or the middle-aged trailerwife who "knows" it's real(this comes from personal experience). Now find the real wrestling fans, the ones who know real names, failed gimmicks, win-loss records, and are virtually walking wrestling encyclopedias. Chances are, they're the ones responding to every "Let's go Cena" chant with a heartfelt "Cena sucks!" Just because you're in the main event week in and week out does not mean you're the best wrestler or even the best entertainer. It just means that you're going along with what you're supposed to do. I have seen plenty of very talented guys and girls who could outperform the best of them get stuck with bad gimmicks and get relegated to 5 minute time fillers or the unemployment line. The more I think about it all, I am taken back to the mid-90s. They tried to tell us that Bret Hart and Rocky Maivia were the good guys, while Steve Austin and DX were villains, but the audience didn't go with it. The bad guys became the most popular superstars, while Rocky's career really took off after his heel turn. The guys at the top need to realize that their audience does not consist entirely of children and simpletons who have to be told who is good and who isn't. Until then, I will just sit back and wait until next Monday so I can watch two hours of the same thing again. Or maybe not.....
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