I Am Superfluous

It's October 26th and to say, quite honestly, I'm disappointed in myself. This month was devoted to horror films, nothing but. Somehow, I've lost control and have become addicted to watching The Office. But fuck you, I'm going to review the movies I have seen, and by review, I mean give a very futile summary and some sort of clever joke that only Marshall McLuhan will get.

First on the list we have:

Rosemary's Bab(a)y

I give this movie :
///

(three slashes- because this is a horror movie,kind of, so I rate in slashes. I came up with this idea entirely on my own, but someone stole it from me, check out:www.yellowbarrel.blogspot.com to see what I mean)

The film starts out like any other: character exposition and John Cassavette's getting laid by Mia Farrow. I don't really know how to classify this movie, it is a sub-genre in the horror realm, I can tell you that much. But it fits in that category of which the Exorcist and the Omen belong in. According to Netflix, it is a "Supernatural Horror" film. I guess this makes sense...

The thing I liked about this movie, besides Polanski's direction, was the fact that we're never really sure if Rosemary is right about her suspicions of the "satanic" neighbors. Speaking of which, the neighbors were my favorite part of the film. As we all love quirky, interesting characters; the old couple next door were just as entertaining as the thought of Bill O'Reilly getting a vasectomy.

This movie would be a 4 slash movie, but the final scene made me frown twice at the same time. It's like spending 2 hours talking to a girl, falling in love with her, and after the two hours she tells you that she is a lesbian and thought you were a girl the whole time. Such a disappointment.

But I did like the fact that Roman doesn't show us the baby. ss

The People Under the Stairs

x

This movie was so stupid, it made me want to go back into the womb and accidentally choke myself with the umbilical cord. Or go back in time and convince my mother to take lots of psychotrophic drugs while she's pregnant with me so I have some sort of brain defect and then maybe I'll appreciate this movie.
The best part of this movie: Ving Rhames being a bad ass, as always.
The worst part: Everything else. Especially the use of members from Motley Crue and Guns & Roses as the "people under the stairs" (see photo above)

I could say more about this movie but I don't want any death threats. So just watch this clip instead and then cut out your eyeballs, burn them, and then bury them in your backyard.

The Exorcist
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This movie is super cool. Cooler than a penguin's butthole.
One day William Friedkin made The French Connection. Then two years later he said to himself: "Fuck Gene Hackman, Satan is better". And the result was one of the best horror films ever made.

Cheers to Selma Blair being creepier, or just as creepy, as John McCain's wife. She was 15 years old when this movie was made, and when it was finished, she was a demon. So many things about this movie make it creepy: its soundtrack, the special effects, Ellyn Burstyn being the most convincing stressed out mother ever.

There are so many wonderful shots in the movie, my favorite being in the opening moments of the movie. But one of the best, by far, is the famous "taxi arrival" shot (seen above). It's an homage to a painting called "Empire of Light":

You learn something new every day....

The Omen

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Although very similar to the Exorcist in my opinion, this movie was still just as good. Gregory Peck was kind of strange to watch in this role, because it seemed that he was a little too cold towards his son (Damien) even from the beginning. The opening scene was creepy, thats for damn sure. I kept wondering to myself why anyone would listen to a priest, yet alone one that is telling a new father to get rid of his first born child.

But I liked the pace of the film, because it totally shifts after the nanny hangs herself on the roof at Damien's birthday party. I am working on compiling a list of the top 10 "best deaths" in horror films. Two will be coming from this movie; the nanny hanging herself, and the plate glass window beheading the photographer. I am not a sadist, I'm just aesthetically incorrect.

(my biggest beef with this movie was the fact that the shot shown above, of Damien, was not in the movie. This picture is awesome. I would know, I am a photojournalist)

Black Sunday

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This movie was hands down more transcendent than Jesus Christ himself. If you like horror movies, or appreciate good filmmaking, then rent this movie...twice. This was my first Mario Bava picture, and it definitely won't be my last. The opening scene had me transfixed, I refused to stop watching, at any cost. Unless the Bulls went to the superbowl. There are so many great shots in this movie, that if you took a shot of rum for ever beautiful shot, you'd die of love.

Now, the movie had its "scary" moments, but I don't think it was that kind of movie. Movies dealing with satan and witches aren't all that scary, especially if they take place in the 19th century. But there were scenes that were pretty good at making me wish I were back in 1960 when this movie premiered, maybe then I would've gotten a bit scared. God damn CGI...

If you've seen Sleepy Hollow, you must definitely see this film. Tim Burton has even admitted to having been largely influenced by Bava, especially Black Sunday. There is one particular scene, towards the end, where the witch is taking over the princess. Now, we get a close up of the princess' face, which slowly turns into an old, wrinkled looking face. I was utterly perplexed at how this was done; I mean, come on, it was 1960. So I began thinking of how this could be done. There were no visible cuts in the film, no changes in lighting whatsoever, no prosthetics at all because this effect fades in and fades back out.

I couldn't figure it out, so I watched this scene with audio commentary. I learned, quite to my suprise, that Bava lit this film with color gels, as one would if they were shooting on color film. But Bava did this to achieve the effect of the "face morph". He painted Barbara Steele's (what a babe) face with red lines, and used a red light, so they would not show up on the film. But then he faded into a green light while fading out the red, so the lines slowly appeared.

THIS IS INGENIOUS. (not to be confused with indigenous)

Fuck 'em

So I'm in my kitchen, getting ready to make a plate of angel-hair pasta. Boy I can' wait, it's so delicious it makes Kwanzaa look like a record release party for Coldplay. I'm already starting my nonsensical rambling...basically I dropped the angel-hair pasta before I got to boil it. And all this pasta was laying on the kitchen floor and I started thinking to myself: "would John McCain pick up this pasta?". Hell no, he'd pay someone else to do it.and I realized, for the first time, why I'm voting for Obama....

Norman ain't so Normal

What cost $800,000 in 1960 would cost $2,229,890.92 in 1980. Why the hell should you care about that?

I don't know, but look at the picture on the right. Any film connoisseur could tell which movies those stills are taken from. One is a well respected, "low budget"($800,000) thriller movie made by Alfred Hitchcock, the other is a campy 1980's slasher film (also a low-budget, $550,000) with tits and Kevin Bacon having an arrowhead shoved through his throat. What people seem to miss is that there is a connection between these two movies more obvious than Condoleeza Rice's adam's apple.

Let's start with the obvious. Both films are about a boy's (or a man if you consider Norman Bates an adult) mother committing murders. But the catch is, in Psycho, it is not the mother committing these murders (or is it?), but it is her son, Norman, doing the killing "in her name", taking on the personality of his mother while doing these crimes. As well with Friday the 13th, there isn't any real clues as to who the killer is in the film, with the exception of the town crazy, Ralph, and his warnings. As well as the man who gives the Annie a ride to Camp Crystal Lake (well, halfway there). He warns that there have been murders there, and the place is "jinxed" and tells of the boy who drowned in the lake who was given the name Jason by his loving mother.


We find out in the end of these two films that we have been deceived, that the killer is not the mother/son but the other way around. In Psycho, Norman takes on the persona of his mother and kills vicariously through her. As well as Mrs.Voorhees (what a great way of introducing this character I may say) killing through the memory of her child, Jason, who drowned because the camp counselors were too busy playing "hide the salami" to keep an eye on this boy who was a poor swimmer (so what was he doing swimming alone in the first place?).

(listen to the score in the video above,Psycho anyone?)"Kill her mommy, kill her" Mrs. Voorhees keeps repeating throughout the painstakingly long cat-mouse chase sequence that takes up the last 15-20 minutes of Friday the 13th. Now, in Psycho, Norman basically "becomes" his mother, by having this split-personality going on, with the mother eventually taking over his brain. In Friday the 13th, it seems more of the mother killing in vengeance of what happened to her child, something she obviously can't get over. But then again, when we first are introduced to Mrs. Voorhees, she seems completely ignorant to what is going on at the camp. There's no explanation as to why she is there, but she doesn't seem to know why she is there either. So it might be possible that she has this same complex as Norman Bates does, and she just becomes Mrs.Voorhees. Like when she first enters the house and sees the dead body in the kitchen, she says " Oh, good Lord! So young. So pretty. Oh, what monster could have done this?". But after a few moments of talking with Alice, Mrs. Voorhees snaps and then goes on a rant about Jason and teenage fornication. Which then sparks the almost gratuitous chase scene.

I am done writing this for now, I forgot what point I was trying to make. I'll get back to you next year.

The Infallible Kubrick

I've never even thought about having my own blog, but then again, I'm a sell out. I have nothing interesting to say, nor any ideas that are my own, so my first post is going to be an essay I wrote my freshman year of college on the Stanley Kubrick film (aka movie) Full Metal Jacket....

The world famous film director Stanley Kubrick once said: "I would not think of quarreling with your interpretation nor offering any other, as I have found it always the best policy to allow the film to speak for itself." Not every film is self-explanatory in the sense that it doesn’t leave you with any questions when it concludes, but mostly every Stanley Kubrick film is this way. For the average filmgoer, they prefer their movies to be interpreted and explained for them; Stanley Kubrick believes that should not be so. If you have ever watched some of his films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey or A Clockwork Orange, you will understand that Kubrick lets the film’s pictures rather than words explain what is going on. Film critic Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, doesn’t appear to be a big fan of some of Kubrick’s best works and he shows it in his review of Full Metal Jacket. Ebert clearly states in his review that Full Metal Jacket “is more like a book of short stories than a novel….This is a completely shapeless film from the man whose work usually imposes a ferociously consistent vision on his material” (Ebert 1). I feel that Roger Ebert is completely missing what Full Metal Jacket is trying to say. The movie is making a bold statement about the military and the way in conducts itself with its training to make young men into emotionless killers.

The first time I watched the movie Full Metal Jacket I wasn’t too impressed. I actually would have agreed with most of what Roger Ebert had to say about the film. I especially would’ve agreed that “It’s one of the best looking war movies made on sets and stages, but that’s not good enough when compared to the awesome reality of Platoon…” (Ebert 1).There is hardly any dialogue for the first half hour of the film. It starts out with a platoon of new army recruits in training at Boot Camp. Their drill instructor, Sergeant Hartman, played by R. Lee Ermey, is one of the most memorable characters that has ever been in a war movie. He basically does 90% of the talking during the first 20 or 30 minutes of the film. To the layperson watching this film, it would be pretty annoying to have barely any dialogue for such an amount of time, but if you put thought into it you’ll realize that Kubrick is trying not to give any of the soldiers a personality. Then we are introduced to Privater “Joker”, who is the comical relief within the platoon, and Private “Pyle”, who seems to be the innocent and weak person in the platoon. These are the only 3 characters that are given any substance throughout the movie.

Roger Ebert’s review almost entirely leaves out Private Joker. He doesn’t find him as a memorable character as the drill instructor or Private Pyle as he implies when he says: “After the departure of his two most memorable characters, the sergeant and the tubby kid, he is left with no charactors (or actors) that we really care much about.” (Ebert 2).I couldn’t disagree more with Roger Ebert on this. Kubrick portrays Private Joker as one of the only humane characters besides Pyle. Joker is the only one out of the Platoon that helps Pyle out in becoming a better soldier, even though he is told to by Sergeant Hartman. Ebert then decides to concentrate more on the connection between sex and war, but he does not try to tell why this connection exists. In one scene the soldiers sleep with their rifles, but before they go to bed they chant: “This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my rifle is useless. Without my rifle I am useless.” The fact that these men are being told that without a gun, they are useless just seems absurd, but this is what really happens in military training. These soldiers are even told to give their rifles a name, making more of a bond between them and their killing contraption. I think that because if he did tell of why this connection existed, it would shed a whole new light upon the film that would make you think a lot more deeply of why things are how they are. This connection should be more of a parallel between “Love and War” not “Sex and War”. This would then unmask the main theme and moral argument of the film that the Military trains the average man to become an inhumane killing machine.

Roger Ebert only somewhat mentions the film’s actual theme only once in his analysis and that is “Kubrick seems to want to tell us the story of characters to show how the war affected them, but it has been long since he allowed spontaneous human nature into his films that he no longer knows how.”(Ebert 2). Now it is a well known fact in the movie business that Stanley Kubrick’s movies almost always have to do with the dehumanization of certain characters. It is the exception that is it every character in this movie that goes through the process. The movie starts with a group of “runts” scared and lost in boot camp and the movie ends with the same group of men, with the exception of a few new characters, who are now “born to kill” soldiers with no remorse for their fellow man. Private Joke is deviation from this group: he is wearing a peace symbol on his chest, but has “Born to Kill” written on his helmet. One of the generals in the movie points it out but Joker never explains why it is there. I believe Kubrick put the pin on his chest to show that Joker has peace in his heart, but his head has been tampered with by the United States Military. Now he is a machine that has been re-"Born to Kill" and has one purpose, and that is to kill.Roger Ebert insists on comparing this movie to other war movies, but I believe this movie is beyond other war movies. It is not a movie about the war itself, it is a movie about the dehumanizing of our fellow Americans who enlist into the marines and lose their respect for the life of others.

I have yet to see a Stanley Kubrick film that is not just pleasing for the eyes, but also unsettling for the mind. Every movie he makes is very thought provoking and almost always brings up some moral argument. Full Metal Jacket is probably the greatest example of this, but Roger Ebert would prefer a movie such as Platoon to show that "war is hell". Full Metal Jacket is not necessarily a war movie, but more like a behind-the-scenes of what has to happen for wars to happen. I think it would take a true artist to make a movie that sends a powerful message about war that only has less than an hour of actual war and gun fights than a movie like Platoon where its 2 hours of straight combat and special effects. This is not a violent movie, but more of a movie about violence and how the military numbs its soldiers to violence. When you watch a movie like Platoon you aren’t left with any questions, no thoughts linger in your mind, nothing is left up to you to interpret but this is not how Stanley Kubrick would ever make a film.