The horror, the horror, the goddamn horror.

Is it conceited to be in love with my own handwriting? I don't think so. My Sharpiemanship is incredibly sexy to the eye.

So in preparation for Halloween (a holiday I usually only celebrate by getting incredibly, explosively drunk) I've been watching horror movies. I watched three new (to me) horror movies in the last three nights and I plan to keep that streak up at least through Friday night, when I'll show my favorite of them my friends at our semi-annual Halloween party. Hopefully being exposed to a great, unsung horror flick will make them forgive me for throwing up and general drunken assholery.

My little horrorthon is inspired by two things. Firstly, idiot customers. Not a week goes by without a group of idiot teenagers, asshole 20-somethings or tactless 30s-people (if you can think of a better word/non-word for that, let me know) asking me for "the scariest movie ever," and during October it's a daily barrage. There are a few things that bother me about the question, not the least of which is the idea of an objective "scariest." The movies that scared me more than any others are La Moustache and 2001, yet I doubt my customers would appreciate me sending them home with a so-called horror movie that trades bloody scares for existential ones.

Of course, it doesn't really matter what I recommend to them. I've spent twenty minutes talking people's ears off, trying to put quality horror flicks in their hands. I can shill John Carpenter classics like The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness all goddamn day long, but the second I tell somebody that the movie's more than two or three years old (heaven forbid from the 80s), their nominal interest vanishes. With most people my age and younger, if a movie didn't come out in the last five minutes, it isn't of interest; if it's older than they are, it's just old.

The biggest issue I have with these supposed horror fans is that they don't like being scared! The horror genre to many has come to be defined not by scares, but by gore. Saw, for all its gruesome cruelty, is not a scary movie - the number of people who get excited for each of its many sequels, however, is fucking terrifying. My issue with these people isn't so much that they like crap, but that they dislike quality. I can't imagine anybody not being scared by The Descent, yet I'm frequently surprised by customers coming back telling me it "sucked." I feel like they're put off by the two most interesting things about the movie: its slow-burn start and challenging conclusion. Of course, that's the central issue: the majority of people coming into my store (and I suspect the majority of horror fans) aren't interested in being entertained any level higher than the basest, titillation via an excess of splatter.*

In spite of these Saw-Girls and Idiot Kids - as two of my regular gore fiends have been monickered - I'm dedicating a few hours a night this week watching movies that do more than just throw viscera around the screen for 90 minutes (though they do that, too, and oh so well).

The second impetus for my private horror fest is that, for as much of a genre geek as I am, I'm not very well versed in this particular one. As a kid I was never shown any scary movies, and wisely so: I practically shit myself in the theater during Jurassic Park. As I got older, most of the horror movies that I saw neither scared nor interested me. Of course there were exceptions: I still remember being completely freaked out watching The Shining for the first time, and conquering my fear of Alien and its sequel by watching them to death and back**. Still, horror movies were mostly left out of my voracious consumption of movies, ignored while I wolfed down the typical teenage male film menu (post-Tarantino crime, ultra-dark pseudo-indie twist-filled thrillers, and Fight Club).

Then, in my nineteenth year upon this grey Earth, I was introduced to Bob and CHUD. Bob's the guy that hired me to work for Soulless Corporate Video Chain so many, many years ago, and his love of schlock, horror and 80s action was (and is) freakishly infectious. He exposed me to Carpenter, showed me a guilty affection for direct-to-video shit, and gave me the greatest gift one film fan can give another: Frankenhooker. He also directed me to a little site called CHUD.com, where the writers had compiled a list (read its glory HERE) of "100 Movies That Deserve More Love." I absorbed the list and fell in love with CHUD in a bad way; five years later I still visit the site (at least twice daily) for news, reviews and smart-mouthed bitchery without equal on these here internets. CHUD and Bob showed me that people who are serious about movies should love all kinds of them, from the indiest of the art house to the trashiest of the grindhouse.

Wow, okay... bit of a huge sidetrack there. Me thinks most people who were duped into reading this by its sexy and amusing title*** might feel betrayed by this soft-hearted autobiographical wank. (Skip to the end...) Aside from privately spiting my dimwitted customers, I'm having this "Halloweek of Terror!"**** because, despite years of awesome Bob and CHUD recommendations, I still haven't seen that many horror movies (for gods' sake, I've never seen any of the Halloween or Friday the 13th movies, though I imagine seeing the first of each should be enough to appease my guilt).

So, every night this week I'm going to watch one horror flick new to me, and post mini-reviews here - at least, ideally mini; anyone who made it to the end my epic Indiana Jones review is either a saint or a glutton for punishment. Since Friday I've watched The Blob ('88), Teeth, and Event Horizon; expect write-ups on them soon, and more on others shortly after.

*I'm obviously leaving out the other half of modern horror movies, the PG-13 remake of a Japanese ghost movie; it's omission is simply because I can't qualify what it is people find scary about grey-skinned Asian children with eye-makeup.

**And yes, I do think there's something wrong with having two sentences in a row pivot on colons, but I also don't care that much.

***In retrospect, my titles is barely amusing and not at all sexy, unless you're turned on by fat-Brando.

****My alternate title was "My Own Private Idahorror." And yes, I know I'm out of control with the footnotes.

SoderberOMgWTFh?!

Sometimes I think that the manatees who write for FAMILY GUY have a side-gig during that show's hiatus picking projects for Hollywood.  It's really the same job and requires no transition for them: instead of picking colored balls with random nouns, verbs and 80s pop culture icons, they pick colored balls with random actors, directors, topics, stock plots and exhausted genres, pop 'em in the hopper and a standard format screenplay pops out.  It's cheap, it's easy and it guarantees more of the same cliche drivel that movie-going audiences love to shovel down their gullets.  For example, this weekend's PRIDE AND GLORY was a manatee-developed amalgamation of:

CAST: Edward Norton and Collin Farrell

GENRE: Cop drama

PLOT ELEMENTS: Police family, opposing brothers, dirty cops.

SETTING: New York

Mix ingredients well, release in October, hope no one notices.

We all saw the same trailer, right?  I feel like I've already seen this movie three or four times, and it was only good the first time (maybe).  This is typical of the manatee-system at work in Hollywood script factories - familiar, trite, comfortable.  But once in a while, the manatees stumble upon something so unique, so special, so fantastically, outlandishly, unfathomably retarded in it's glory that we must concede to their brilliance.  Here's their most recent achievement:

DIRECTOR: Steven Soderbergh

CAST: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Hugh Jackman

GENRE: Musical; 3-D

PLOT: Cleopatra and Marc Antony

I swear to gods, I did not make that up.  In my wildest imagination could I not have conjured something so absurd as a Soderbergh-directed 3-D musical about Cleopatra entitled (wait for it) CLEO.  I'm beyond excited for this movie.  It can't possibly be good, but it sure as shit will be interesting.  Bless you, manatees of Hollywood!  

Read the CHUD story here.

REVIEW: INDIANA JONES AND THE PRAIRIE DOG APOCALYPSE

NOTE: This was posted elsewhere previously, but until I bullshit up some new content, my regurgitated word-hate will have to do.

Nostalgia alone can’t save a bad sequel (if it could, intelligent people older than ten would enjoy the Star Wars prequels), but it sure does go a long way.  Watching Crystal Skull again, with all the disappointment of the opening night screening out of the way, I couldn’t help but grin whenever the man in the hat was on screen.  There’s something immortal and indivisible about Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones that brings out childish glee in most people that grew up with these movies.  Unfortunately, that indelible visual only goes so far.

There isn’t one area that can be pointed to as the cause of the movie’s failure.  There’s a systemic blandness throughout, demonstrated in the script, the acting, the action and the direction.  I was told by someone who liked the movie that if I viewed it as fan fiction and not cannon, I’d enjoy it more.  My problem with that logic is that the movie already feels like fan fiction, which isn’t a quality one should seek in anything, especially not a direct sequel from most of the principles responsible for the originals.  It looks an awful lot like Indy, it sounds an awful lot like Indy, and sometimes it even (briefly) feels like Indy, but just ain’t so. Despite all the efforts to convince us otherwise, this is a grade-A imitation that just happens to feature the genuine article.

The Harrison Ford that stars in this movie isn’t the one who last donned the famed hat (which is bizarrely a character itself) in 1989.  Instead, the movie is anchored by the tired and disinterested Ford of the last ten years or so.  In his defense, the lines he’s forced to deliver are dull at best, cringe-inducing the rest of the time.  You can tell that Ford remembers every tick and gesture of Dr. Jones, but he’s not given too many moments to show it.  Every once in a while he’ll throw in a smirk or a growl or a flinch the way Indy used to, with that trademark exasperation, and all the movie’s faults are forgiven… for a moment.  He even makes a few terrible scenes work, like when he’s tossed the snake in the quicksand; while Shia and Karen Allen fumble their lines, Ford sells his part so well.  When the guy is trying, he’s the best damn movie star alive.  Here he just seems bored, and I honestly can’t blame him. 

The Lucas-Nathanson-Koepp script is just god-awful.  Ignoring the central premise, which I actually like despite the much-maligned aliens, the plot lacks any real dramatic thrust.  Events and set pieces just seem to happen, and they’re conveniently sequential, but there’s no logical progression of events.  The big action sequences are there because the movie needed big action sequences, not because they’re necessary courses of action for the characters to take.  In the space of five minutes, Indy & Co. escape from Russian hands twice – the second of which results in a car-chase (the movie’s third) so long and so complex, yet still completely inconsequential (but I’ll get to that later). 

Beyond the complete lack of narrative tension, the script fails to capture that Indy wit.  While I’m under no illusion that any of the original three movies were Woody Allen, there was still an intelligent, adult banter and cadence to the dialogue.  There’s nothing even close to that here.  Crystal Skull’s dialogue falls flat throughout.  Indy’s rarely ever given more to say that long-winded expository monologues, except for the occasional (bad) one-liner.  David Koepp isn’t anyone’s idea of a great screenwriter, but he’s damn good at structure and his previous Spielberg collaborations (Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds) have had genuinely funny lines throughout.  This time he displays a serious tin-ear for comedy; if this is his idea of what an Indy movie should sound like… I don’t even know how to finish that sentence.  Anyone who’s seen any of the original three Indy films, even the weak Last Crusade, knows that they’re smarter, sharper and funnier than this.  I just can’t understand how this script could’ve come about.  Let there be no uncertainty: it’s a terrible, terrible screenplay.

Where uncertainty enters the picture is in the form of the director.  His name was the only thing keeping my hopes for this movie afloat.  Despite Lucas, months of bad buzz, Lucas, Harrison Ford’s recent output, Lucas and Lucas, Indy was still being directed by Steven Goddamn Spielberg, the greatest director of action set-pieces in movie history.  While his narrative choices have moved further away from his populist adventure beginnings, he’s only gotten better as an action director (just look at Minority Report, Munich and War of the Worlds).  So behold my surprise to witness a Spielberg Indy movie without a single great action beat.  The action isn’t bad, it’s just dull.  Not only do the action scenes lack any of the spontaneity and ingenuity of the previous pictures, but (to judge them on their own) they aren’t very interesting.  I don’t know how many times Indy jumps from one car to another, but it was just as blasé the last time as it was the first.  Between the gaping disparity of performance between the ambling Ford and his younger stunt doubles and less-than-convincing effects work, the car chases (all three of them) lack any thrills whatsoever.  The only good beat in the whole damn movie is when Indy gets yanked off the motorcycle into the KGB car, and then hops out the other side back onto Mutt’s bike.  That moment works because its real.  It’s a real stunt shot outdoors in a real street.  Of course the other cars and hazards were digitally added, there is still that tangible quality to natural sunlight that can’t be duplicated on a soundstage or in post-production.  After that one fleeting moment, the rest of the movie looks like a greenscreen adventure, which is not Indiana Jones.

The look of the film is also a huge problem for me.  The original Indy movies were all shot by Dougie Slocombe, who brought a rich, timeless look to each.  Spielberg’s recent collaborator Janusz Kaminski lights much, much differently and it just doesn’t fit with the character, the time period or the mood.  I’ll quote CHUD.com’s Nick Nunziata, who does a better job explaining this problem than I ever could: 

“It certainly doesn't look the same. Though occasionally bathed in the warmth and glory of the original films, Janusz Kaminski's cinematography lends a much colder and synthetic look to the proceedings. In the film's introduction to the now grayed Indiana Jones, the look is so oversaturated and laden with glare it nearly overrides the content. Never before has a film in the series felt as much pieced together as here - almost as if the audience is seeing a high budget fan film or some connective Indiana Jones content for a DVD-ROM or online presentation rather than the genuine article. Never should one be reminded of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow when watching an Indiana Jones film.”  (Read the rest of Nick’s review here: http://chud.com/articles/articles/16463/1/DVD-REVIEW-INDIANA-JONES-AND-THE-KINGDOM-OF-THE-CRYSTAL-SKULL/Page1.html)

I wonder if the insanely elaborate camera work in the chases is what necessitated so much soundstage work.  Spielberg and Kaminski have wild cranes and tracking shots in, above and all around the action, but that kind of control comes at the cost of believability.  Nicely choreographed (though numbingly repetitive) car-to-car stunts are ruined by bad CGI backgrounds and shoddy mattes. 

Which brings to mind ILM’s piss-poor work: does Lucas intentionally save his company’s worst work for his own movies?  Starting with the atrocious (both visually and conceptually) prairie dog “gag” that opens the movie, Crystal Skull is a parade of mostly sub-par special effects.  It isn’t all bad, but for every mushroom cloud and finale-temple, there’s a patchwork jungle truck chase, a laughably bad flying saucer, and another goddamn prairie dog. 

The prairie dogs, like the monkeys that teach Shia to swing like Tarzan, are the handiwork of the real auteur behind Crystal Skull, George Lucas.  The man’s life dream has got to be making the most juvenile $200 million movies ever.  Somehow he’s devolved as a writer, sinking to a low that makes me long for Jar Jar.  The easiest way to lose my interest in an already uninteresting car chase?  Have somebody straddle the void between two cars and get pounded in the balls over and over again.  By plants.  And when your instincts as a storyteller insist that you cut away to motherfucking CGI prairie dogs for a reaction shot three times, you have no instincts as a storyteller. 

This wasn’t a Steven Spielberg film.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying he’s off the hook; the man directed a shockingly dull Indiana Jones-in-name-only movie.  But it’s Lucas’ baby.  George conceived the story (something he should take no pride in), engineered the screenplay and obviously forced his childlike sensibilities into the mix.  Spielberg was along for the ride, calling the shots and saying “cut” when the day was done.  I never thought I’d see a Spielberg movie where I felt like he didn’t care.  Even in his least-interesting movies (Hook and The Lost World), there was a sense of fun.  Here, Steven seems bored.  Well so was I.