I thought the old eerie-but-not-revealing-anything trailer was better. I think the new one gives too much away. I want to go into a Shyamalan movie knowing as little as possible.
I saw the new Snakes on a Plane preview this weekend. The people behind us: "WHO ON EARTH would want to see THAT?!"
Christ, was it? I never actually see these films, just the trailers.
Becks, did you tell them that I would rape them in the face if they didn't see it?
Shyamalan.
A few months ago a friend had me watch "The Village", and about ten minutes in, I said, "When's this movie supposed to be set, anyway?" Something about the accents or costumes seemed off.
And the movie was so dull and absurd I kind of tuned out and just daydreamed through most of it, so that near the end, I was like, "wait...that girl is blind?"
I want to go into a Shyamalan movie
He's made one good movie (6th Sense), one passable movie (Unbreakable), and at least one bad movie (Signs). I don't understand why he is so popular. Is it just fun to say his name?
That trailer, which I also had to sit through before watching Superman, made me a little furious with rage, not only because Shyamalan keeps making terrible, terrible movies, but also because the Scary Preview Guy pronounces his name in a way that makes no sense, but also because of a larger issue:
Why can't they make actually scary movies anymore? This is a serious failing of American cinema. Maybe I have never really been scared by movies; I remember at sleepover parties as a child when we would watch some scary movies and all the other little girls would be all freaked out during and afterward, I would just pretend I was 'cause I didn't want to seem weird.
But the last thing I can remember being scared/creeped out by was that Japanese film Audition, which was mostly just disgusting.
4 - I sooo should have. They would have dropped their nachos.
Silvana: Have you seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre? The original, not the remake. Oh my god, is that scary.
I agree that most "scary" movies are not scary.
5: The girl is blind, the doggone girl is blind...
Silvana, you're like 23. Leave the "You kids get offa my lawn" stuff to the pros.
9: No. Maybe I shall. But it's also an environment problem. At home I just feel safe and so not-scary, and watching in the theatre I am like "wow! This is fun! All these people getting all scared!" and it's too exciting to actually be scary.
Weiner, I don't see how my comment was really you-kids-get-offa-my-lawn-y, but for the record, I'm twenty-four now.
I was easily scared by movies as a small child, and didn't watch them from middleschool to high-school years. After that point I wasn't easily scared at all, and the only two movies I've been scared by since then were The Blair Witch Project (you have to understand, I'm a very uncritical movie watcher, and can overlook even the biggest plot holes and production problems--seeing it a second time wasn't nearly as good,) and just recently, Silent Hill. That one was really scary.
I really liked Unbreakable. And Signs, while not perfect, did have at least one very powerful scene -- the one where they're trapped in the basement in the dark and not sure what to do.
24 is well within the bounds of like 23, but perhaps it was more back-in-my-day than you-kids-get-offa-my-lawn.
I was scared by some X-Files episodes before the overarching plot took over the show -- you may not remember that time -- and also by Seven. And by Hidden too, though that may be different. People tell me that the first Ring is scary too, in either language.
Basement scene or no, Signs had Mel Gibson in it.
Every time I look at that man's giant neck, I want to vomit a little bit.
I didn't like Signs at all. The Sixth Sense was pretty good. The Village was sort of OK, but I enoyed the sendup in Scary Movie 3 better than the original. But I don't think anything I can say anything I've seen from Shyamalan is good.
I really liked Unbreakable.
Are we disagreeing? I liked Unbreakable, too. But by the end of Signs, I was hoping the protagonists would die.
Actually, good call, I was really scared (and upset by), Seven. Of course, I was thirteen at the time.
You know what wasn't scary at all? Minority Report. Or was that just supposed to be an action movie?
A movie can just put on some creepy-sounding music and I'm gone. It can be infuriating, particularly if the movie doesn't deserve my adrenaline rush.
There is no way in hell I'm ever going to see Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No way.
20: I vote for action movie with a lame attempt at pseudo-philosophical spookiness a la (the terrible) Vanilla Sky.
Unbreakable started with potential, but then sank swiftly about halfway through. Not so bad that I'd have retitled it Unwatchable or anything. But The Village? Easily one of the stupidest fricking movies I had ever sat through, with the dumbest, least surprising twist in a decade. Shyamalan deserved a Zidane headbutt in the nuts for it. I'm still pissed off about that $7.
20: I think they were aiming for suspense, not fear.
Of course, I was thirteen at the time.
That would make it one or two years after the X-Files episodes I was thinking of.
(I would say, "See, this is how the back-in-my-day is done," but there are those around who could pwn me at it with one decade tied behind their backs.)
Before I moved recently, movies cost $5, and $2 for the afternoon matinee. Now they cost $8. What a ripoff. When I saw Superman the only seats available were about 15 feet from the screen. I think I might start watching movies at home more often.
You know, now that I think about it, I thought The Others was pretty scary, too, when I saw it in the theater. Any takers?
27: I never saw the movie, but otters are freaky animals. Or maybe I'm thinking of beavers.
The Ring was scary.
Also, I don't know if I should be ashamed that 4 made me laugh. But it did.
27: Spooky, but not disturbing. Not enough malignancy. Now, throw in a few people getting eaten by giant possesed venus fly-traps or torn in two by 8 foot helmeted sworded spooky dudes, and you've got yourself some scary.
A good scary movie needs both gore and derealization to maximize the impact of exposure to the numinous.
Seven is not only terrifying, it is the most horrible, nihilistic, disgusting movie I have ever seen. Torture as entertainment.
I saw it shortly after 9/11 and was plagued with nightmares about the Taliban cutting off my husband's hand and putting it in a jar of formaldahyde. For weeks afterward I could only watch movies like Babe, The Man With Two Brains, Caddyshack, etc.
Or maybe I'm thinking of beavers.
Tim, Tim, Tim....
33: Babe is a totally upsetting movie!
I'm thinking of beavers
This website is for cock jokes.
Also, in more "you kids get off my lawn" news, that trailer for the chick in the water movie came on during the World Cup game yesterday and I was Completely Outraged that they would show a scary movie trailer in the middle of the afternoon When Children Are Watching.
35: All I could think while watching Babe was, wow, those are the cutest fucking puppies I've ever seen. So I didn't notice if the movie was upsetting.
Btw, everyone, speaking of scary movies, Ogged needs blood.
Sixth Sense was a helluva good film. Unbreakable was trying. Signs was okay until the aliens showed up. Didn't see The Village.
38: You didn't cry when the farmer did his dance for the pig? Or when he said, "that'll do, pig" at the end? Are you made of stone?
Plus the "whole what happened to Babe's mother?" thing. Shudder.
Liked Sixth Sense, liked Unbreakable (mainly because SAmuel L Jackson's character has the same name (first and last) as my son, who had just been born), liked Signs (though it's very silly, but greatly enjoyed my kids 'watching' it under a quilt with their fingers in my ears). The Village was nonsense.
What I find creepiest about MNS is that he wrote the screenplay for Stuart Little.
38: Also, you people really need to stop sexualizing animals. Especially toddler animals. Sicko.
Also upsetting: Ice Age: The Meltdown, which I saw on the flight back. (The other movie I saw was Failure to Launch. If you're flying on Qantas, try to get one of the planes with movies on demand.) I wouldn't take a kid to see it, unless An Inconvenient Truth hadn't sunk in.
If I were a comp. lit. person I'd compare it to the Moomin books; the plot and arc is a lot like Comet and the bit with the squirrel was a lot like the bit with the squirrel in Midwinter. Including the slightly bogus attempt to get you not to cry over what happens to it.
I thought it was spelled Se7en. Also, I loved that movie.
Also upsetting: Ice Age: The Meltdown, which I saw on the flight back. (The other movie I saw was Failure to Launch. If you're flying on Qantas, try to get one of the planes with movies on demand.) I wouldn't take a kid to see it, unless An Inconvenient Truth hadn't sunk in.
If I were a comp. lit. person I'd compare it to the Moomin books; the plot and arc is a lot like Comet and the bit with the squirrel was a lot like the bit with the squirrel in Midwinter. Including the slightly bogus attempt to get you not to cry over what happens to it.
What blood type? I'm between right now but you can earmark, and my O+ is said to be almost universal.
Oops. Can we bring back the mecha-sheep filter?
41: See, all I remember was the "that'll do, pig" -- and yes, it was quite moving.
I am definitely not made of stone, though. I cried at the end of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Does he really need blood, or was that a joke?
you people really need to stop sexualizing animals.
We must draw a Lion in the Sand.
Even PK, who loves all things mouse-related, thinks Stuart Little isn't all that great.
Also, what happens to the little squirrel in the second movie? The squirrel was the only decent thing about the first movie--it's just wrong if they kill it off or something.
Follow the link, people. I'm sure they have blood on hand if he needs a transfusion. Though it's always good to replenish the supply, just on general principles.
This blood-count thing shouldn't make me crazy, right?
I'm supposing it would reveal me as a Person With Very Bad Taste if I admitted that I didn't like The Sixth Sense at all, but liked The Village?
Those are the only two of his movies I've seen.
Re: scary -- the original Poltergeist scared the shit out of me when I was a little kid. As did Halloween. Seven is disturbing but not really scary. I haven't seen a truly scary movie in a very long time.
Probably not. You could call him and cry on the phone, though. I'm sure he'd appreciate that.
Also, you're on a posting tear today. Is this how you deal with worry?
Has no one else seen Silent Hill?
57: I can imagine myself having not liked The Sixth Sense if I'd seen it under different circumstances or a different time. I no longer like it as much, and I thought the Village was actually OK, so I might actually like it better nowadays.
55: That's what I thought, but then I thought you knew something that wasn't it the post and I was getting all worried again.
Alright, I'll admit it. I've liked all the Shyamalan movies. Even The Village. I actually thought the monsters in that one were pretty damn cool.
Of course, I didn't see any of them in a theater, so wasn't paying anything other than my monthly satellite-TV bill to see them.
Also, my sense of disbelief has a built-in helium generator.
60: No, no. If I knew that O was slipping into a coma or something I would hit you all up for money.
The only movies I find scary are about serial killers. Supernatural stuff is a big yawn, not frightening at all.
Serial killer flicks just offend me. Those movies are so often either misogynist, or gratuitous voyeurism, or both.
For me, horror movies are fun, not scary. Requiem for a Dream was scary.
54: I didn't know that the squirrel was in the first movie. Basically, there's a running gag with the squirrel's attempts to chase an acorn, which actually made me feel very sorry for the squirrel (this may indicate that I was in an unusual susceptible state, what with having been awake for a while and the loss of blood flow to the head caused by the person in front of me putting her seat all the way back for the entirety of a thirteen-hour flight), and
spoilers
after the squirrel has caught up with the acorn in a bird's nest, the flood gushes into the valley, sweeping them both away. Then as the waters are rising around our trapped heroes, we see the squirrel at the top of one of the glaciers trying to catch an acorn; it hammers on it so much the glacier splits, causing the waters to run out of the valley (and saving the other animals), but squirrel and acorn are caught in the gush. In the last scene we see the squirrel floating into acorn heaven, but as he reaches the Big Acorn he is pulled back, despite his scrabbling; then his eyes open and we see Sid exulting, "I saved you, little buddy!" The squirrel then starts beating on Sid and chases him away.
Which makes you feel sorry for the squirrel two ways, both because he doesn't get the acorn and, let's face it, in real life that squirrel got wasted.
(non-gendered pronouns left un, as it were, fixed)
Oh fucking Christ that movie. I seem to recall I was in a funk for at least 24-48 hours after seeing that. Not scary exactly, but very very disturbing and depressing.
Helped that it had fucking fantastic music. Like JM said, it's really all about the music, but I'm terribly terribly picky.
66 was my first reaction to 7 (the comment, not the movie with a title properly pronounced sesevenen), but then I got distracted by otters.
I watched The Ring in Spanish on HBO Latino and I was terrified. And then I took a shower afterwards, and my shampoo bottle fell over, and it was reminiscent of one of the images from the movie, and I about lost my balance and cracked my head on the porcelain I was so freaked out.
I liked Seven, although it was more disgusting than exactly scary.
28 Days Later was scary.
I like that 68 comes right after my long comment about Ice Age: The Meltdown.
70 gives me an idea for a horror movie plot. It's about a movie that's so scary that if you see it you'll die in a week, because you'll see something IRL that reminds you of a scene in the movie that's so scary that you'll lose all ability to function and you'll DIE. The movie within a movie, of course, is about a movie that's so scary that if you see it you'll die in a week, because you'll IRL that reminds you of a scene in the movie...
Segmentation fault
Core dumped
I saw a Korean movie (subtitled) where if you visited this one website, and you were female, you would die within a week, and also look sort of pregnant right before you died, but not to cameras. Also, this one apartment, and the haunted picture, and the baby parts in a room only accessible through a catwalk you get to through the ceiling.
Also, it wasn't terribly coherent.
I thought The Ring was laughably bad. That's the English-language version, though I don't have a partciular desire to say the Japanese one.
I enjoyed The Ring, but then I also enjoyed The Grudge, which I'm told is not cool to admit. So perhaps I'm a poor barometer for these sorts of things.
I saw the Japanese Ring and was just sort of bored. The Japanese Dark Water, though, scared the bejeezus out of me. Ack, so many good touches in that movie.
I haven't seen the English version of either. (Sorry Sausagely Sr.)
Oooh, Shyamalan makes me so angry. It's all fine and well to have people like Gibson and Bruce Willis do trite melodrama, but when he forces really interesting character actors like Cherry Jones or, now, Paul Giamatti, to succumb to his "every single word you say is dripping with meaning" approach to directing, I just want to scream. Also, casting himself in the plum role in Signs? Gross.
Loved The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, but The Village made me feel cheated for having given a shit about the characters, like MNS was just somewhere laughing at me for meeting him halfway on the emotional investment aspect of suspension of disbelief. Fucker. And I was extremely pissed that the Big Twist was so obvious from the outset.
The Ring is, in my opinion, much better than Ringu. The Japanese version made me laugh. The American version actually made me scream at one point. (It didn't help that I insisted we pause it and take a break so I could relax for a few minutes and as soon as we paused the movie, the phone rang.)
Audition was the scariest movie I had seen in years, but in a good way, but I enjoyed Gozu much more.
Movies whose "horror" revolves around gore usually just make me laugh. So silly! I find it impossible to be scared by fountains of fake blood.
There are parts of some gory zombie movies that I find frightening.
yes, 28 days later! fast-moving zombies are much scarier than the original stumblebum variety.
Audition was incredibly scary to me. The Devil's Backbone is another scary movie I've seen that is fairly recent.
The Village was not so scary, mostly because I couldn't deal with the narrative convenience of the sometimes-blind, sometimes-not girl.
Also, although they're not really scary, I really love werewolves.
(Pause for everyone to make beastiality and Mineshaft jokes.)
Why are there no good werewolf movies made anymore?
Quriky. There doesn't seem to be any overlap between tastes, here. I liked Sixth Senseway back when I saw it, Unbreakable was just bland, I walked out of Signs because it was horrible, I saw the Village recently and liked it, but maybe I just liked the girl. I thought The Ring was somewhat funny and not at all scary. I could never understand what made the Blair Witch Project scary.
I could never understand what made the Blair Witch Project scary.
I saw it at a special midnight showing on Halloween night, stoned out of my mind, and then later that same night--still stoned as shit and tripping out a bit--I got lost in the woods, by myself. I'm not joking. That scared the living shit out of me.
I couldn't deal with the narrative convenience of the sometimes-blind, sometimes-not girl.
She was sometimes blind, sometimes not? No wonder I was confused. I just assumed I hadn't been paying close enough attention.
And zombies: not scary, funny! Shaun of the Dead.
Also scary, but perhaps more in an upsetting and gross way: Old Boy.
Sixth Sense was boring more than anything else. I see that Requiem for a Dream has already been mentioned - that's my benchmark for "disturbing" movies, and I've disturbed quite a few people with it.
On the other hand, I have no tolerance for characters experiencing awkwardness and embarassment on TV and movies. I can't even watch, say, Family Guy without having to leave the room a few times. The only movie I've ever walked out of was Welcome to the Dollhouse, for about that reason.
My problem with Shyamalan is that I have umpty years of experience editing and reading fiction, and I have a pretty good feel for where plots will go unless you've very good and original (Geoff Ryman, say).
"He's made one good movie (6th Sense), one passable movie (Unbreakable), and at least one bad movie (Signs)."
So, I have a different ranking. I liked Unbreakable quite a lot; it's one of the still relatively few good superhero films ever done.
I thought 6th Sense was well-executed, more or less, but found it unbelievably boring and tedious to sit through, because about ten minutes in I said, okay, so&so is dead, I get it. And sat through the rest of the film tapping my fingers, waiting for it to end. I did the equivalent with The Usual Suspects, which I found equally mind-numbingly boring, I'm afraid.
Trick-ending stories are one-trick ponies if they depend on the "twist ending" to work, and if you see the "twist" at the beginning of the movie, they're agonizing.
On this basis, I read the reviews for The Village, and figured out what the plot obviously was, which I confirmed a while later via googling. Never even bothered to see it.
Signs I also skipped until I finally had it on in the background on tv while reading, a couple of months ago when it was broadcast by a network. Gibson was okay, as were the other actors, but otherwise: eh -- so what? And the notion that the aliens would be driven off by water: jeebus, he wasn't around to watch everyone in the sf community laugh themselves sick at how moronic it was when the aliens in V were invading Earth because we had, gasp, water! Like, y'know, they couldn't just grab some of the most fucking common compound in the universe anywhere.
People who don't know squat about sf or science really shouldn't try to make science fiction. And you shouldn't try to make scary movies based on twist endings, as a rule; dude, do it at YouTube these days.
Have I mentioned that twenty years ago Tappan King offered me the job of Managing Editor for Twilight Zone Magazine and companion digest Night Cry, but that I turned him down to work in book publishing?
I certainly haven't seen anything about Lady in the Water to rouse my interest.
But Unbreakable was fun.
On scary movies, well, I don't like being scared; why would I? So I don't like scary movies, aka "horror." (Alternatively, I don't like gore.) Although I've worked professionally on a variety of horror fiction, and intellectually admire what a good writer can do in the genre. But personally, it's not really my cup of tea.
The Vanishing! Oh, my god, The Vanishing!
I've probably told this story before, but I saw Blair Witch Project as part of a special SXSW screening, well before it was released elsewhere, and it was billed as a documentary. I didn't know what was going on, going in, but I figured it out—still, it freaked me right the eff out.
I love and adore the Blair Witch Project because that "documentary" angle sucked in so many otherwise skeptical and intelligent people, and it therefore serves as an awesome touchstone when students say things like, "but surely no one really believed that Oroonoko/Robinson Crusoe/Pamela/etc. was a true story!
I saw The Sixth Sense in a crowded theatre, which my friends and I got to late and were correspondingly forced to sit separately. Being good, but not as good as Gary apparently, I didn't get it until about 10-15 minutes before the reveal. I got up to whisper my speculation to one of my friends who was sitting in the back row of the theatre, with only the wall behind them. As I start to whisper the stranger sitting next to my friend freaks the fuck out, like screams piercingly and starts hyperventilating freaks the fuck out. So I meekly whisper my guess and walk back to my seat, glad that I'd enhanced someone's enjoyment of the film.
I had the Sixth Sense spoiled for me. But I don't think I would have caught on. The scene in the restaurant is really well done.
Trick-ending stories are one-trick ponies if they depend on the "twist ending" to work, and if you see the "twist" at the beginning of the movie, they're agonizing.
This was somewhat true of The Machinist. The trick ending wasn't obvious to me from the outset, but about halfway through I figured it out. And it was a super-lame trick ending.
I have no tolerance for characters experiencing awkwardness and embarassment on TV and movies
That's too bad, because so much great modern comedy is based on this very principle. Sacha Baron Cohen's stuff is a prime example (I'm so excited for the Borat movie).
I liked Unbreakable quite a lot; it's one of the still relatively few good superhero films ever done.
A shameless ripoff of Fearless, the greatest film ever made.
I have no tolerance for characters experiencing awkwardness and embarassment on TV and movies
Me too, but it really only bothers me when it's supposed to be funny. Welcome to the Dollhouse is great.
I can't find that depend on the humilation of another person for their humor funny.
Sausagely reminded me of Arlington Road. I think it did a good job of ratcheting up the tension and it had the courage to follow through on its plot to the bitter end.
"...when students say things like, 'but surely no one really believed that Oroonoko/Robinson Crusoe/Pamela/etc. was a true story!'"
I've probably mentioned this here before, but if so, it was long enough ago that I've forgotten, but I was once a guest of an sf convention in Chicago (Windycon, if anyone cares), and the young woman they sent to drive me in from the airport was absolutely convinced that the intro by author William Goldman about how the book was written by S. Morgenstern, and found, etc., was absolutely true, and no matter what I said, I couldn't disabuse her of the notion.
"Being good, but not as good as Gary apparently...."
Well, in fairness, sometimes I guess wrong. I thought that West Wing was going to make Vinick Santos' Veep, for instance.
I liked The Machinist. Audition and Devil's Backbone are recommended. Watched both versions of Dark Water with hours of each other, which was interesting. The plot and characters were much better in the American version, but the Japanese had gorgeous visuals. The Japanese Grudge also had great visuals, I am not understanding why oriental filmakers can make a courtyard or apartment look great and Americans either don't or don't bother. Hell, ever since Blow-Up I have wondered what is wrong with American cinematography.
A Tale of Two Sisters. Oldboy and anything by that director. Sundance Sunday Nights midnight eastern. Have not been disappointed this year.
95: Fearless really was a good movie, and one that I can watch again and again. From Hell...not so much.
99: I thought, until it was announced that there would be no 8th season and then, later, that John Spencer had died (though the first should have changed my reasoning all by itself), that Vinick would die before the election, because his character had been created in such a way that I didn't see the writers letting him lose. And the existence of an 8th season was important because I didn't think they'd want to write all of the Democratic top level staffers, who'd they spent seven yeards developing, out of the show.
95: "A shameless ripoff of Fearless, the greatest film ever made."
I'm generally a fan of Weir, since Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, Gallipoli, and The Year of Living Dangerously (which really refutes those who think Mel Gibson can't act, I think), but I'm not sure I ever actually saw Fearless all the way through, as opposed to catching chunks of it on cable, back during a period I had cable. I don't think I ever did.
My therefore rather fragmentary, and obviously imperfect, memory and sense of the plot, though, suggests that although it starts off with a rather similar situation to Unbreakable, that it goes in a somewhat different direction. However, my impression could, because of said not-really-seeing the full film, be wrong. I suppose I should watch it sometime.
Huh, I hadn't realized Weir is slated to direct a movie of my old pal Bill Gibson's Pattern Recognition for release next year.
Yeah, I really like Fearless too. God, Rosie Perez made me sob. She also made me insist on always buying PK his own seat on airplanes and toting along the car seat--none of that lap baby shit. It was one of my very few hyperprotective mom things.
"Fearless really was a good movie, and one that I can watch again and again. From Hell...not so much."
I still haven't seen From Hell, but what's the connection between the two films?
"And the existence of an 8th season was important because I didn't think they'd want to write all of the Democratic top level staffers, who'd they spent seven yeards developing, out of the show."
I figured they could have a couple plausibly transition to Vinick, and others I figured they'd either let go, or maybe have a couple hang on in opposition. That is, when I was kinda hoping they'd have Vinick win, so as to have a take on how a liberal Republican fantasy would work.
"...I didn't think they'd want to write all of the Democratic top level staffers, who'd they spent seven yeards developing, out of the show."
See, I figured they would, because a) longlasting shows do this all the time -- see ER, NYPD Blue, Law & Order: Ad Infinitum, CSI, etc.; b) the main reason they do that is that it's cheaper to hire new actors, rather than people who have gotten a salary bump every year. Also because one can wring a character dry of all the twists available to their circumstances and personality, and of all the places you can take that character.
105: Click through the link in 95 and check out the screenwriter. Same guy.
104: "God, Rosie Perez made me sob. She also made me insist on always buying PK his own seat on airplanes and toting along the car seat--none of that lap baby shit. It was one of my very few hyperprotective mom things."
Rosie Perez sounds awfully bossy.
106: Ah. I guess you know who his son is. (I noticed a few years ago that the elder Mr. Y is only four years older than me, which bugged me for a while; but that was back when the younger Mr. Y still replied to e-mail from me.)
From Hell...not so much.
Well, I'd better not say anything.
104: She may be, but I was referring more to the fact that she's a hell of an actor.
dagger aleph - the girl was always supposed to be blind, but she quite frequently did things that you can't do if you can't see, and didn't do things you do if you can't.
The US Grudge scared me mostly because of that hideous sound the dead thing made.
Haunted with Kate Beckinsale is not such a bad scary movie.
Well, *I* enjoyed From Hell, but that might have a great deal to do with the presence of Johnny Depp, which tends to destroy my impartiality.
Also: I never read the Moore comic.
The frustrating thing about Shyamalan is that he really appears to be a pretty skilled director (at least within a limited range). I wish he'd dispense with the "twist" shtick, at least for a movie or two, to see what he could do.
And as for _The Blair Witch Project_, I say that if that movie didn't scare you, you don't take nearly enough pot along with you when camping/hiking.
Skippy aludes to people scaring the bejeezus out of each other while camping, which can be fun in its own way, but it's also one of the serious drawbacks to the get-your-drug(adrenaline)-fix-by-scaring-people thing. It rather destroys the simple enjoyment of backpacking until you can conquer the fear of those stupid stories. Personally, I think it's a bad tradeoff, though others might disagree. Of course, it's a second-hand smoke issue: monster stories can be hard to avoid, especially as a child.
This brings up something else I'm curious about. I think most of us transition a time when our irrational fear of monsters battles with our rational minds. It's one thing to walk through an abandoned house/old forest, whatever and to be saying over and over "there are no monsters", and another to just not worry about it. I'm almost entirely in the latter category. Some people I know about my age are firmly in the former. I tend to think that the fact that I rarely ever expose myself to fear-adrenaline-material (scary movies, TV), has something to do with it. But maybe it is just age. Anyone else have thoughts?
monster stories can be hard to avoid, especially as a child.
Not if you have enough pot through your childhood.
Of course I play to keep my chillens stoned most of the time, so that they don't annoy me, but how will that help them avoid scary stories?
This is on the cover of the book I'm reading. I've seen it translated variously as something like "the dream of reason produces monsters."
I think it's just that you lack imagination, Michael.
118: I'm guess it's referring to the common occurance of people who think reason produces limited and strict conclusions, which should be adhered to categorically, and therefore others lacking in reason must be forced for their own good, and, voila, monsters.
I think it's kind of difficult to predict how kids will react, Michael. I was the youngest of three, and sometimes my parents thought I was too young to understand (cue me running out of the room at four during a dramatic reading of The Fellowship of the Ring), or old enough to be okay (cue me freaking out at about the same age during Scooby-Doo), but then I was perfectly fine with a lot of other material. Even I knew my dad was kidding about the vampire owls who fed preferentially on little girls and garbage dumps.
115: I never worry about monsters.
I went camping in Zion National Park a few years ago, and when night fell I began to fret about serial killers.
109: Well, I'd better not say anything.
#101 was mostly to twit you. From what little I can glean from "Adventures in the Screen Trade," twixt the script and the screen is many a slip. But it's impossible to believe the screenwriter wasn't happier with Fearless, which is my second favorite Jeff Bridges movie (after Baker Boys, for JM-like reasons). It really was quite good.
I suspected you were joking. Crap.
It's all good if you replace "imagination" with "children" in 119.
Apo, I'm gonna steal your kids' lunch money pot.
If my kids were holding, I'd have stolen it already.
But they're not. So instead I made them watch Saw II and took the bulbs out of the night lights.
100: Devil's Backbone is a fab movie. It didn't really scare me, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. Also, I had to listen to someone masturbate through most of it. It was at a film festival, the theatre was packed, but somewhere in the middle of the room was a constant fap fap fap that in its own way added to the experience. (Two friends of mine also heard it and identified the sound, and other people in the showing were talking about it after, in the lobby, so I really don't think I'm just crazy.) I just try not to think about what part of the movie they found so exciting.
Blair Witch Project was scary as all get-out. I was utterly wigged by it. The shaky-cam thing just totally worked on me.
Blair Witch Project was good, but The Vanishing (the original, the remake was shit) has the scariest ending ever.
132: I was simultaneously frightened and annoyed by Blair Witch Project, until the person running through the woods stumbled on the terrifying freshman site-specific art project with the natural materials woven into shapes hanging from the trees and the music went eeh-ah! eeh-ah! and then it was just funny, and then I left.
134: That was the moment that made me feel safe, too.
Well, in fairness, sometimes I guess wrong. I thought that West Wing was going to make Vinick Santos' Veep, for instance.
My roommate and I thought so, too; the previews were really setting it up that way. And then we thought for a while that C.J. might get to be VP, but that didn't happen either.
135: So it's just a coincidence that it was also the moment when I put my arm around you and pulled you close, huh?
Awww...138 talks about Running on Empty. I loooooved that movie in high school.
130: A friend of mine, let's call him W.Dreyer, no wait, that's too obvious, WasherD. and his friends use to steal some of one of their father's (not WasherD's, who I doubt has ever smoked) stash. Your kids won't be the right age for a number of years yet, if I'm remembering correctly, but it's something to keep in mind.
I finally remembered the creepiest movie I've seen recently (for expansive definitions of recently): Repulsion.
Well, I thought it was a funny article.
