I got a shitload of work done today, finishing the tedious measurements on the last of the projects and beginning the actual graphing. At the rate I’m going I may easily have these done by Friday, which would be great timing.I listened to more stuff on the iPod, including the last couple of Dead Lantern Splattercasts and last week’s Night Of The Living Podcast.
One of the Splattercasts had a discussion of the current debate among fans regarding the slew of R-Rated horror films that have performed poorly at the box office and the PG-13 films of the same genre that do well. The concern is that the industry will stop financing horror films with a hard R in favor of the PG-13 fare that will entice in the teen set and the more casual viewer. The party line of the horror fan contingent seems to be that if the R rating disappears from things we’ll be left with watered down, tame fare. The biggest problem with this arguement seems to be that it presupposes that just because the director has the freedom to throw in more gore, violence or nudity that the film is inherently scarier or better than one without this bag of tricks. I blame Eli Roth for this in a lot of ways, as well as the Saw franchise and Rob Zombie’s approach to genre film-making.
As a genre fan, I should mention that I come to this with the following biases on the particular artists/projects in question: I can take or leave Roth, his constant banter is a bit on the obnoxious side for me, and his work has been hit or miss; I enjoyed the Saw films, though they weren’t any sort of revelation for me, and Rob Zombie is cool in my book, I’ve enjoyed both his films so far.
My problem with this idea is that there’s a hell of a lot you can do to build suspense and actually make someone tense, uncomfortable and actually scare them that you don’t need an R-Rating to achieve. There’s a big difference in grossing me out and actually scaring me. I honestly don’t think Roth gives a shit either way on this, he’s having too much fun reveling in the excesses that are afforded him by the R-Rating, I don’t think he has any real interest in making a scary film, but is more interested in showing you horrible images meant to shock you or induce your gag reflex.
I feel weird writing about this in a negative connotation simply because I want the directors to have the free reign to make whatever type of film they want to make, and not be hamstring by a rating that takes the life out of their film, but I think they should have the creativity to make something more substantial than what they’re giving us and insisting that it’s edgey. I loved both of Rob Zombie’s films, but I have to say that some of the writing in The Devil’s Rejects really got on my nerves, the incessant profanity for example, little touches like that just seemed like a child with a new word trying to be shocking rather than how people actually talk to one another, regardless of the stress of the situation. I enjoyed Cabin Fever, but Hostel left me cold, and I have to agree with Mark Kermode’s assessment of things, saying that he should grow up and let go of these childish, misogynistic fantasies he’s playing out on film, and in reference to the leering, lurid, sleazy tone that Roth’s films have of late: “It’s like the seventies never happened!”
It just feels like Roth should be shooting higher than simply throwing blood and tits at the viewer until we just don’t care anymore.
Imagine my surprise to hear (via a Myspace bulletin, and yes, I’m two-faced enough to be the guy’s friend on Myspace yet call his directing into question here) that Roth would be a guest judge on the Fox show On The Lot this evening, which featured a series of six horror shorts. The shorts were all very average, which I found surprising; hell, I’ve seen any number of things on the web that were every but as good as what they were showing this evening. Roth name-checked as many films as possible during his critique of each film, which I find as frustrating with him as I do with Tarantino, and generally didn’t seem to care for many of the shorts. I did get a giggle when he made a comment about using shocking images simply for shock value, a statement rife with pot/kettle/black comparisons, but the show was pretty boring overall, and I was eventually wondering why I bothered to watch.
We also watched the film Pulse this evening since it’s been on cable in the last few weeks and I wondered if I’d hate it as much as I did Kairo, the Japanese film on which it’s based.
This was a mistake as well, particularly when you consider that I was expecting to not like it from the get go. This film seemed to be filmed in the same gloomy, dark city that hosted the film-shoots for The Ring, Dark Water and any number of other re-makes. The kind of place where every scene indoors is shot in this crazy deep green/blue gloom that makes you consider suicide just because there’s no point in going on in a world that bleak. I want to hold back on most of my beefs with the film since I want to write something for the old Big Suck Loser later in the week, but Pulse was every bit as disappointing to me as the film it was based on, and this one at least tried to add more detail or explanation to the ghosts returning via technology and still came up short.
I should also mention that I’m apparently one of the only people on the face of the planet that didn’t like Kurosawa’s original film Kairo. There were no real scares, and the vagueness of the entire situation with the ghosts in the film just left me wondering why this film was as acclaimed as I’d heard. Perhaps one day I’ll give it another day in court, but for now I’m still wondering what the big deal is.
Be seeing you.
Tag, you’re it, Baggy Eyes! iPod, Dead Lantern Splattercast, Night Of The Living Podcast, Eli Roth, Saw Film Franchise, Rob Zombie, On The Lot, Movies, Pulse, Kairo, Big Suck Loser
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