fine whine

My DVD player hasn't gotten much rest lately, but first this:

I'm finding it less difficult than I expected to not go watch the just-released trailer for the upcoming Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film. It isn't that I don't want to see it, but rather that I'd like to be more surprised when I see the film in the theater. Much like the way I approached the recent Star Wars prequels (and I continue to do so with the next one), seeing promotional stuff only when forced to do so.

After all, when Darth Vader's dark helmet looms in front of you, thirty feet tall, and his voice booms out of speakers surrounding you, there's little you can do to ignore it.

Speaking of things to ignore, it has come to my attention that there are remakes in the works for both The Poseidon Adventure and Logan's Run. Tonight I threw in Soylent Green to watch while I wash the dishes and I'm distracted trying to think of the ways it would be remade (and it likely will be in the next couple years, mark my words). I'm drawing a blank, but that probably won't stop somebody else from trying it.

A week ago I watched the original Texas chainsaw massacre, by Tobe Hooper from 1974. It was horrid. The more horror movies I watch the less I understand their appeal. It is said that this is a classic of the genre, for being all the more creepy for having the majority of the violence appear off screen. As such, the film is disturbing and creepy without being altogether frightening, or so they say.

Well, I say they're full of crap. This movie is crap. It has a little bit going for it in the way that it fleshes out the characters (at least the ones who aren't the killers) but all of that goes out the window as soon as the first victim opens the screen door of the ersatz slaughterhouse. Perhaps it happens even before, once the strange hitchhiker starts to go crazy in the van. Throw in some violence onscreen and off, mix with a trippy art-movie/bad-drug-trip montage and bam! instant horror classic. One can only wonder with which sensibilities they remade it a couple years ago. Hell, the original had spawned more than a couple of sequels, one starring Renee Zellweger before she could land better roles, but then again so did Critters (sans Renee, that is). I found myself needing to toss in Monsters, inc. to get the metaphoric bad taste out of my mouth, as it were.

Incidently, there are rumors on imdb (and probably elsewhere) about a prequel being made for release in 2006. Mark your calendars now, I guess.

Another horrible movie I watched recently was The Master of Disguise. If this is what is supposed to entertain our children then the future is bleak indeed. Dana Carvey has apparently learned the wrong lessons from fellow SNL alum Adam Sandler about making centered around dim-witted characters with stupid accents. Brent Spiner's character looks embarrassed every time he farts (and he does it many times) and it's patently obvious that he isn't exactly acting. The revolving door of elebrity cameos is unremarkable other than it includes Jesse Ventura, showing that it is possible, after all, for him to appear in a movie and live to tell the tale. Skip this movie.

Within days of surviving The Master of disguise I found myself steeled for another SNL graduate's film, Elf starring Will Ferrell. Director Jon Favreau's had his own share of hits and misses, but I was pleasantly surprised with how this ended up turning out (and I'm sure he was too). Though it was eminently predictable and syrupy-sweetly sentimental, it wasn't offensive and I found myself really liking the characters. I didn't have any children around to test their reactions, but I'd think this movie would be far better for them than that evil Master of disguise. Oddly enough The Polar express this last Christmas season tackled much of the smae ideas, about belief and whatnot, but I don't recall churches (and PR firms) trying to pack Elf's theaters full of people. Probably because they were already there, actually wanting to see that movie for what it is, not for some tenuously allegorical connection tacked on later after a bad box office turnout.

Speaking of being bad at the box office, I get the impression that audiences didn't quite know what to do with Sam Raimi's commissioned remake of The Grudge whereby he had hired the original crew, director and all, and merely swapped out some of the actors with Folger's crystals. No wait, he slipped in Bill Paxton and Sarah Michelle Gellar, who surprisingly does quite well. This is what a horror film should be, a rising sense of dread coupled with ordinary objects taking on an air of supernatural malice. Overall it shows just about the same amount of the 'villain' as did Tobe Hooper's movie, but so much more was made of so little. The back cover of the DVD found the need to mention The Ring (which I took to mean the remake) and while stylistically there are some similarities there are no more between these two movies and The Grudge and any other movie with a house and some people in it. Check it out, sometime. I think it might still be running in the dollar theaters, trying to get somebody to realize that it's far better than any other horror movie churned out lately.

Somewhere along the line I watched Kurt Russell and Halle Barry take down a plane full of terrorists in Executive decision, but overall it seemed just a bit too stylized and seemed to be trying too hard to be smart to be taken seriously or look stylish. This was a movie made with a formula and an assembly-line mentality, unlike The Grudge which broke with many conventions and had an efficient film crew that nevertheless turned out a very individualistic film. I link the two only because this paragraph is about one and the previous about the other. They don't deserve to be in the same sentence otherwise, and not just because Steven Seagal's in Executive decision. That's just another strike against a movie that isn't worthy of being at the plate in the first place.