Post by obliv326 on Jun 26, 2007 12:23:43 GMT -5
and one thing that is unrelated that i just think everyone should see....
go to this link:
www.imdb.com/title/tt0811106/trailers-screenplay-E33044-10-2
it is the trailer for a movie called 'the ten'. it is a movie w/10 short films based on the 10 commandments. if that sounds familiar its b/c it has been done before...specifically, krzstof kieslowski (sp?) made a film called the decalogue that is the same premise, although this one seems a lot funnier, at least in conception (it is supposed to be a comedy. the decalogue was not funny at all, and in fact was very dark and heavy) and even if it is not funny, it is most certainly shorter (the decalogue was, i think, 10 hours long...i own it on dvd and havent watched all of it, which is not to say it is bad or boring. i just do that...buy things, knowing i will eventually watch them, while i have the means to do so)
at any rate, the end of this trailer is one of the funniest things i have ever seen. i dont know if all versions do this, so watch the one i linked above. if you dont find that funny, then you and i have completely opposite senses of humor. i hope, then, that you enjoyed norbit, the nutty professor remakes, and ace ventura...you can have them
i wanted to weigh in quickly on a couple horror movies i have seen....very briefly, as i have other, pressing engagements that popped up aftger i began writing this post...
hostel 2 - i think it is a love letter to the fans of the first hostel, and nothing wrong with that. they will love it, as it will give them everything they could have wanted, and not just gore by the bucket, although it does give them that, but characters and in jokes from the 1st film, not to mention a plot that does little more than simply extend the 1st film. i would actually think that this would make a rather fine double feature with the 1st film...when it comes on dvd, just pop them in one after the other, and you will have a good 3 bours seamless block olf continuous story. this film does little to add to the first, which, while most will bemoan this as a weakness in the writing, lets be hionest...how many franchises have been ruined because a second act has to be added to a perfectly solid forst film...characters who we cheered and rooted for in one film are put through the same wringer again and again. a perfect example would be aliens. they did a sterling job of coming up with a reason for the ripley character, who, in the first film was less a 'hero' than a member of an ensemble, to go back to that situation. but once we sat and cheered and gripped our armrests and felt the victory that this woman fought foor, completing not only her story with the aliens but getting baCK part of her life that they cost her, namely her lost daughter in the form of newt.
therefore, i think putting her back through that wringer is not only cruel, but aa logical stretch. i mean, how many times does this one operson hapen to be in the proximity of these things...i personally thought the 3rd film was unfairly derided, and much of that was simply b/c we didnt want ripley to9 lose after all she had been through. it was a bad move o the part of the studio, but thats the inherent weakness of the sequel format...for some reason, they erroneously think you cant have an alien movie w/o ripley. you can. people are going to these films to see the al;iens, not the character who fights them. i dont know why studios cant get this, but they dont...(ahem...did anyone go to godzilla to see a matyhew broderick romantic comedy? no...but thats what we got, wasnt it...along wi/raptors instead of godzilla...)
anyway, why not just show the same situation w/new characters, just dont rehash everything. assume we know what is going on, and show someone else's story in the situation.
maybe eli rooth was freed from that constraint (although not completely, as you will see if you see the film) because the stars of hostel werent big stars, and were not considered the reason for the films success. so what weget is just that, a second groups story, another way that people are tricked into the hostel, and a bit of background. not enough to demystify it. a bit cruel in one respect., which you will see if you see the film, and kkne i would have preferred they handled differently, or merely brushed past, w/regards to the 1st film. nonetheless, i liked it, found it interesting. one thing i like about these films ios the way roth handles the 'non horror' elements. in the 1st film, he c reated 3 really apealling guys who you wanted to see win. personally, after watching his idol, quentin tarantino, create 6 of the most unappealling, annoying, straight up grating. hateable, rooting-for-them-to-die characters in the history of film in his segment of grindhouse, roth could teach the master a few things. he does the same here, making a group of likeable girls who we want to see win...again, the comparisons w/grindhouse are painful, as i have not wanted to see a non villain character killed as badly as all of the women in grindhouse since 'joey' from friday the 13th pt 5, or the yeardley smith character in 'maximum overdrive'...and i think those 2 were supposed to be annoyiong. i think tarantino thought he was maing fun, appealling, cool characters, and boy, was he wrong...
anyway, i liked hostel 2, found it strecthing just enough, and i hope eli roth has the sense to keep it in the dark in the future sequels. the scariest thing about the hostel is the fact that it is so secretive and shadowy. it makes you wonder...do these places exist all over the world? surely, with so many young people, esp from places like america, where they will be missed, someone in high places must be protecting them. i hope he has to good sense not to show us how deep the tunnel goes, and we will continue to be creeped out by it.
which brings me to 28 days later, and another way to do a sequel. you could have done it in a few different ways. you could have followed another character through the events o the 1st movie...a perfectly legit way to go, although people might be a bit annoyed as there would be a lot of retread. y0ou could cover the 1st 28 days from the breakout up the point where the 1st began, or you can go into the future.
unlike our gracious host, you will notice i do not recap the plot. thats b/c im lazy, and i dont like typing. it is easy to find it, so i will give you that homework assigment...come back to me when you know what you think you need to to move on...or just keeep goiing. i dont think i am giving away anything you dont get from the trailers...
one thing i like about this film is that it does not allow the whole thing to happen over again, which, in hollywood, would have been the easy way out...they would have maybe gone somewhere where it hadnt happened, and it would strike that country, and we get the same movie over again, with guys w/adifferent accent running from the infected.
this one actually starts in the heat of the infection, and man, does it take off like a bullet. you get a real sense of the threat of these things, how fast they move and how very quickly they can become a problem, then we move to latr, after it has been sort of contained.
it has a few real gems of dramatic tension, i meanm real solid dramatic possibilities, that it fails to use, which is a shame, but it never once lags or slows down or retreads its old ground. what it does do is show how frail the idea we have of 'civilizations' and 'control' we have. it is difficult ot to see this as an allegory for iraq. we were told, after all, that the missio was accopmplished...and how quickly was that illusion shattered.
we as humans are not in control of a damn thing except our baser instincts, and the minute we stop being civil, whether it is insurgents fighting an occupying military force, or some dickhead swerving in and out of traffic, the flimsy rules we have set out fall apart VERY f^%*ing fast!
i have to say, like a lot of people, i was a bit disappointed at the last act, but i cant say why exactly, and i think it may be that it just doesnt measure up to what we have seen in the first 2/3 of this film,...for awhile it promises something truly splendid, and then it becomes an action film, albeit an interesting and more than average one...but the promise of that first 70 minutes is a difficult task to match.
still, this film manages to create some truly thrilling set pieces and one particularly creepy scehne that, if i stop to think about, actually chills me to the top of my spine...its not one that gets any mention, and i think it doesnt even register for most people, but it was something i have actually thought about myself, and one of those original images i have feared since childhoood, and they hot on it for just a second, and i vefry nearly screamed out loud.
also, i was not helped at all by the pair of old women who wandered in accidentally and talked among themselves loudly, thinking they were entering a theatre between shows, and, i think, they didnt see anyone or understand that a moivie playing on tne screen meantg that a show was in progress. they ruined several minutes as they talked loudly, asked what this movie was, realizing (gasp) they had never even heard about it. when one of them came to my aisle (i sit very close, as i love being swallowed up by the images and sound, but also b/.c peopole seem to be afraid to sit so close, and so i usu have the section to myself, and , being 6'4", i can strect out into the seat in front of us) and announced that there were seats in that aisle, i very nearly beat them to death. they proceeded to sit down and begin, apparently, to create several dozen wadded balls of plastic. i actually shouted for them to be uiet, and they were generally shocked to realize other people were in the theatre...i guess they thought that theatres just randomly show movies in theatres waiting for them to show up.
i was going to admonuish them for their selfish behaviour when i left, but by the time the fil mended, both of them, incidentally, they were those kind of middle aged women who actually look about 20-30 years older than they are, and they had those bloated misshapen bodies and at least one, i believe, walked with a cane, preferring the cane to losing any of her 400 lbs. you see them in malls waddling through the crwods and slowing up entire halves of walkways as they gab incessantly about s0omething passe that everyone else has already managed to figure out and solve for themselves, but that simnply fascinates their tv soaked little gerbil sized brains.
am i being mean? i dont know...but i do know that a couple of these goblins walked into the climax of a movie i was in and proceeded to act like they were the only ones in there, which is selfish and stupid. selfish because they were acting w/o regard for anyone else who happened to be there, stupid b/c even if they couldnt have seen anyone else, there was a MOVIE PLAYING ON THE SCREEN! these things dont happen randomly, and they should have realized that maybe there was a movie playing for customers. stupid also b/c they had clearly walked into the wrong theatre. now, i know this as probably the first movie they saw since the 1950s, when only one theatre showed on a screen, and honestly, who among us has NOT been fool,ed by the incredibly confusing, byzantine system of movie theatre numbering...i mean, being told what number your show is in, and having that infor mation on a ticket as well, is hard enough for such a small mind to understand...but to then have to match it up tp the number above the theatre marquee...who could possibly manage? i mean, we cant be expected to ALL have engneering degrees, can we?
as i said, they were both dead asleep when i left, no doubt exhausted from their treacherous 200 yard walk from the parking lot to their theatre. seriously, how many weeks worth of trips from the refrigerator to her chair do you think this trip was? 300? 400? that is a months worth of exercise for these two, combined!
i was going to say somthing, but then i realized...whatever movie they were coming to see, it was most certainly NOT 28 weeks later. most likely, it was whatever was playing in theatre 28...and i realized that, rather than get up and waddle their fat asses to whatever fcilm they were trying to see, they would stay planted right there in those seats. they might be asleep for a while...but it would wake them up everyonce in a while, with some terrifying image. and they would sit there...and then go tell both of their friends about how awful that 'evan almighty' was! i just couldnt believe it!
theres no way they will put that mystery together, ni matter hiw many mary patterson abridged mystery nooks on tape they borruh from the lie-berry...
sometimes, the universe doles out just the right amount of justice, doesnt it?
go to this link:
www.imdb.com/title/tt0811106/trailers-screenplay-E33044-10-2
it is the trailer for a movie called 'the ten'. it is a movie w/10 short films based on the 10 commandments. if that sounds familiar its b/c it has been done before...specifically, krzstof kieslowski (sp?) made a film called the decalogue that is the same premise, although this one seems a lot funnier, at least in conception (it is supposed to be a comedy. the decalogue was not funny at all, and in fact was very dark and heavy) and even if it is not funny, it is most certainly shorter (the decalogue was, i think, 10 hours long...i own it on dvd and havent watched all of it, which is not to say it is bad or boring. i just do that...buy things, knowing i will eventually watch them, while i have the means to do so)
at any rate, the end of this trailer is one of the funniest things i have ever seen. i dont know if all versions do this, so watch the one i linked above. if you dont find that funny, then you and i have completely opposite senses of humor. i hope, then, that you enjoyed norbit, the nutty professor remakes, and ace ventura...you can have them
i wanted to weigh in quickly on a couple horror movies i have seen....very briefly, as i have other, pressing engagements that popped up aftger i began writing this post...
hostel 2 - i think it is a love letter to the fans of the first hostel, and nothing wrong with that. they will love it, as it will give them everything they could have wanted, and not just gore by the bucket, although it does give them that, but characters and in jokes from the 1st film, not to mention a plot that does little more than simply extend the 1st film. i would actually think that this would make a rather fine double feature with the 1st film...when it comes on dvd, just pop them in one after the other, and you will have a good 3 bours seamless block olf continuous story. this film does little to add to the first, which, while most will bemoan this as a weakness in the writing, lets be hionest...how many franchises have been ruined because a second act has to be added to a perfectly solid forst film...characters who we cheered and rooted for in one film are put through the same wringer again and again. a perfect example would be aliens. they did a sterling job of coming up with a reason for the ripley character, who, in the first film was less a 'hero' than a member of an ensemble, to go back to that situation. but once we sat and cheered and gripped our armrests and felt the victory that this woman fought foor, completing not only her story with the aliens but getting baCK part of her life that they cost her, namely her lost daughter in the form of newt.
therefore, i think putting her back through that wringer is not only cruel, but aa logical stretch. i mean, how many times does this one operson hapen to be in the proximity of these things...i personally thought the 3rd film was unfairly derided, and much of that was simply b/c we didnt want ripley to9 lose after all she had been through. it was a bad move o the part of the studio, but thats the inherent weakness of the sequel format...for some reason, they erroneously think you cant have an alien movie w/o ripley. you can. people are going to these films to see the al;iens, not the character who fights them. i dont know why studios cant get this, but they dont...(ahem...did anyone go to godzilla to see a matyhew broderick romantic comedy? no...but thats what we got, wasnt it...along wi/raptors instead of godzilla...)
anyway, why not just show the same situation w/new characters, just dont rehash everything. assume we know what is going on, and show someone else's story in the situation.
maybe eli rooth was freed from that constraint (although not completely, as you will see if you see the film) because the stars of hostel werent big stars, and were not considered the reason for the films success. so what weget is just that, a second groups story, another way that people are tricked into the hostel, and a bit of background. not enough to demystify it. a bit cruel in one respect., which you will see if you see the film, and kkne i would have preferred they handled differently, or merely brushed past, w/regards to the 1st film. nonetheless, i liked it, found it interesting. one thing i like about these films ios the way roth handles the 'non horror' elements. in the 1st film, he c reated 3 really apealling guys who you wanted to see win. personally, after watching his idol, quentin tarantino, create 6 of the most unappealling, annoying, straight up grating. hateable, rooting-for-them-to-die characters in the history of film in his segment of grindhouse, roth could teach the master a few things. he does the same here, making a group of likeable girls who we want to see win...again, the comparisons w/grindhouse are painful, as i have not wanted to see a non villain character killed as badly as all of the women in grindhouse since 'joey' from friday the 13th pt 5, or the yeardley smith character in 'maximum overdrive'...and i think those 2 were supposed to be annoyiong. i think tarantino thought he was maing fun, appealling, cool characters, and boy, was he wrong...
anyway, i liked hostel 2, found it strecthing just enough, and i hope eli roth has the sense to keep it in the dark in the future sequels. the scariest thing about the hostel is the fact that it is so secretive and shadowy. it makes you wonder...do these places exist all over the world? surely, with so many young people, esp from places like america, where they will be missed, someone in high places must be protecting them. i hope he has to good sense not to show us how deep the tunnel goes, and we will continue to be creeped out by it.
which brings me to 28 days later, and another way to do a sequel. you could have done it in a few different ways. you could have followed another character through the events o the 1st movie...a perfectly legit way to go, although people might be a bit annoyed as there would be a lot of retread. y0ou could cover the 1st 28 days from the breakout up the point where the 1st began, or you can go into the future.
unlike our gracious host, you will notice i do not recap the plot. thats b/c im lazy, and i dont like typing. it is easy to find it, so i will give you that homework assigment...come back to me when you know what you think you need to to move on...or just keeep goiing. i dont think i am giving away anything you dont get from the trailers...
one thing i like about this film is that it does not allow the whole thing to happen over again, which, in hollywood, would have been the easy way out...they would have maybe gone somewhere where it hadnt happened, and it would strike that country, and we get the same movie over again, with guys w/adifferent accent running from the infected.
this one actually starts in the heat of the infection, and man, does it take off like a bullet. you get a real sense of the threat of these things, how fast they move and how very quickly they can become a problem, then we move to latr, after it has been sort of contained.
it has a few real gems of dramatic tension, i meanm real solid dramatic possibilities, that it fails to use, which is a shame, but it never once lags or slows down or retreads its old ground. what it does do is show how frail the idea we have of 'civilizations' and 'control' we have. it is difficult ot to see this as an allegory for iraq. we were told, after all, that the missio was accopmplished...and how quickly was that illusion shattered.
we as humans are not in control of a damn thing except our baser instincts, and the minute we stop being civil, whether it is insurgents fighting an occupying military force, or some dickhead swerving in and out of traffic, the flimsy rules we have set out fall apart VERY f^%*ing fast!
i have to say, like a lot of people, i was a bit disappointed at the last act, but i cant say why exactly, and i think it may be that it just doesnt measure up to what we have seen in the first 2/3 of this film,...for awhile it promises something truly splendid, and then it becomes an action film, albeit an interesting and more than average one...but the promise of that first 70 minutes is a difficult task to match.
still, this film manages to create some truly thrilling set pieces and one particularly creepy scehne that, if i stop to think about, actually chills me to the top of my spine...its not one that gets any mention, and i think it doesnt even register for most people, but it was something i have actually thought about myself, and one of those original images i have feared since childhoood, and they hot on it for just a second, and i vefry nearly screamed out loud.
also, i was not helped at all by the pair of old women who wandered in accidentally and talked among themselves loudly, thinking they were entering a theatre between shows, and, i think, they didnt see anyone or understand that a moivie playing on tne screen meantg that a show was in progress. they ruined several minutes as they talked loudly, asked what this movie was, realizing (gasp) they had never even heard about it. when one of them came to my aisle (i sit very close, as i love being swallowed up by the images and sound, but also b/.c peopole seem to be afraid to sit so close, and so i usu have the section to myself, and , being 6'4", i can strect out into the seat in front of us) and announced that there were seats in that aisle, i very nearly beat them to death. they proceeded to sit down and begin, apparently, to create several dozen wadded balls of plastic. i actually shouted for them to be uiet, and they were generally shocked to realize other people were in the theatre...i guess they thought that theatres just randomly show movies in theatres waiting for them to show up.
i was going to admonuish them for their selfish behaviour when i left, but by the time the fil mended, both of them, incidentally, they were those kind of middle aged women who actually look about 20-30 years older than they are, and they had those bloated misshapen bodies and at least one, i believe, walked with a cane, preferring the cane to losing any of her 400 lbs. you see them in malls waddling through the crwods and slowing up entire halves of walkways as they gab incessantly about s0omething passe that everyone else has already managed to figure out and solve for themselves, but that simnply fascinates their tv soaked little gerbil sized brains.
am i being mean? i dont know...but i do know that a couple of these goblins walked into the climax of a movie i was in and proceeded to act like they were the only ones in there, which is selfish and stupid. selfish because they were acting w/o regard for anyone else who happened to be there, stupid b/c even if they couldnt have seen anyone else, there was a MOVIE PLAYING ON THE SCREEN! these things dont happen randomly, and they should have realized that maybe there was a movie playing for customers. stupid also b/c they had clearly walked into the wrong theatre. now, i know this as probably the first movie they saw since the 1950s, when only one theatre showed on a screen, and honestly, who among us has NOT been fool,ed by the incredibly confusing, byzantine system of movie theatre numbering...i mean, being told what number your show is in, and having that infor mation on a ticket as well, is hard enough for such a small mind to understand...but to then have to match it up tp the number above the theatre marquee...who could possibly manage? i mean, we cant be expected to ALL have engneering degrees, can we?
as i said, they were both dead asleep when i left, no doubt exhausted from their treacherous 200 yard walk from the parking lot to their theatre. seriously, how many weeks worth of trips from the refrigerator to her chair do you think this trip was? 300? 400? that is a months worth of exercise for these two, combined!
i was going to say somthing, but then i realized...whatever movie they were coming to see, it was most certainly NOT 28 weeks later. most likely, it was whatever was playing in theatre 28...and i realized that, rather than get up and waddle their fat asses to whatever fcilm they were trying to see, they would stay planted right there in those seats. they might be asleep for a while...but it would wake them up everyonce in a while, with some terrifying image. and they would sit there...and then go tell both of their friends about how awful that 'evan almighty' was! i just couldnt believe it!
theres no way they will put that mystery together, ni matter hiw many mary patterson abridged mystery nooks on tape they borruh from the lie-berry...
sometimes, the universe doles out just the right amount of justice, doesnt it?