A Perfectly Cromulent Blog

Eli Roth: Super Genius

You don't win friends with salad:

The posters arriving in theaters nationwide are advertisements for Hostel II, a horror movie due in the summer from Lionsgate Entertainment. The film's director, gore merchant Eli Roth, conceded last week that he was "pleasantly surprised" that the extreme image was approved by the Motion Picture Association of America; every inch of the poster is packed with splayed organs and moist tissue.

"My jaw was on the ground when I first saw the poster," Roth said. "It's unbelievably beautiful. It's one of the most beautiful posters I've ever seen."

Beauty, clearly, is in the eye of the beholder on this one.

On the Web site hubs of horror and genre fans, debate is under way about the poster and Hostel II; several postings on the Harry Knowles site Ain't It Cool News dismissed the movie as "torture porn" and railed against the poster as a sick display. Others wondered what exactly their peers were so upset about.

"You guys," one fan wrote, "must hate walking down the meat aisle in the grocery store."

No, what we hate is seeing some self-appointed standard bearer for the so-called New Wave of Horror get all giddy like a schoolboy over a piece of marketing that does nothing to advance the genre except for seeing how much Lucio Fulci it can rip off. Roth's self-righteous defenders miss the point: I don't care that he's trying to gross me out, or that he's "pushing the envelope" of gore, I care that his idea of modern horror consists of little more than exsanguinating attractive teens.

Understand something, I'm not "offended" or "distressed" by a girl peeling her skin off in a bathtub (Cabin Fever) or a guy getting his Achilles tendon sliced (Hostel). I've seen Dead Alive, Cannibal Holocaust, August Underground, and several of the Guinea Pig series. I'm familiar with the output of the so-called "Splat Pack" and, with the exception of Neil Marshall, they're all pretty one note. Splatter is one thing, but horror - real horror - is psychological as well as physical. Simply heaping guts on tops of guts isn't frightening as much as it is...nauseating.

The image gave pause to the advertising reviewers at the MPAA, where the image was given "more consideration and review than most posters," Palen said. (MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards said Friday she did not have any direct knowledge of the Hostel II images.) For what it's worth, Roth said he believes the photo is such a close-up (and so bloodless) that the tissue image is abstract enough to stay within MPAA taste guidelines.

"That's the beauty of it," he said. "It tells you everything you need to know about this movie, but it doesn't give away anything about the story. When you add the words Hostel II, it becomes extremely disturbing. You know those poor girls are in for it."

The "poor girls" would be the on-screen victims in Hostel II, which is now in postproduction in Los Angeles. The sequel carries on from the 2005 movie that presented an Eastern European hot spot for the bored rich who pay to torture and snuff tourists; both films are produced by Quentin Tarantino.

Scared yet? Yeah, me neither. It's funny, I re-watched The Exorcist last night and was struck with how much more frightening it was than shit nowadays that seems to equate horror with amount of blood spilled. Certainly, violence is an adjunct of horror, but not horror itself.

Roth claims his meaty movie poster is a public service, in a way. "This makes it very clear what my movie is. Nobody is going to think they are walking into Happy Feet: Part II. Not after they see that poster."

Much as I'd like to mock Roth for his idiocy, it isn't like making the poster more graphic makes that much difference. I've lost count of the number of R-rated movies I've been to that have enjoyed the attentions of parents with their toddlers. If Moms and Dads can't be arsed to pay attention to the ratings of the movies they attend with their kids, I don't know that having some ground chuck on the poster is going to make a lot of difference.

Posted by pete | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Take that, space banana!

Space banana?

GEOSTATIONARY BANANA OVER TEXAS is an art intervention that involves placing a gigantic banana over the Texas sky. This object will float between the high atmosphere & Earth's low orbit, being visible only from the state of Texas & its surroundings. From the ground, the banana will be clearly recognizable and visible day & night; it will stay up for approximately one month.

Basically, the banana will be constructed like a blimp. Filled with helium, it will float between 30 and 50 km up in the sky. It will have a semi-rigid structure made of bamboo and a skin made with synthetic paper. Thanks to an extra load in gas and a valve system, it will keep its shape at all times. The final size of the piece will be 300 meters in length. The expected launching date is August 2008 from around Baja or Sonora, north-west of Mexico. The total cost of this project is roughly estimated at one million dollars.

I'd hate to see the tailpipe.

Adequate
Forgettable
Occasionally regrettable

I know I've been out of town for a while, but imagine my surprise to return to a world where the late Gerald Ford is being lauded as a great president.

Speaking from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Mr Bush remembered President Ford as a "gentleman who reflected the best in America's character".

Mr Ford was never elected president but took office after Richard Nixon quit over the Watergate scandal in 1974.

Obviously Bush found some kinship with Ford over one aspect of his presidency.

In a televised address, Mr Bush said Americans "came to know President Ford as a man of complete integrity". Gerald Ford, he said, "came along when we needed him most".

Mr Bush said Mr Ford "stepped into the presidency without ever having sought the office" and helped restore confidence in the White House.

His words were echoed by the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, who was Gerald Ford's Chief-of-Staff.

In a statement, Mr Cheney said that President Ford gave the country the strength, wisdom and good judgement it needed as it faced its greatest constitutional crisis since the civil war.

The culture of hagiography in this country is such that even a "caretaker president" can get lauded like he was the greatest statesman since Benjamin Disraeli. Certainly, he was a competent Congressman and - by all accounts - a decent guy, but come on. He freaking pardoned Nixon and gave people buttons to help combat 7% inflation. To his credit, he survived two assassination attempts and appointed John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court, even though I'm pretty sure that didn't turn out quite as he'd hoped.

Besides, our national mourning period for James Brown hasn't ended yet.

Season's beatings

That most wonderful time of the year has arrived, when people from across the world put aside their petty differences and get together to celebrate that which is most important in our lives.

Of course I'm talking about bowl season.

Out of respect for the many wagers I've laid on various games this weekend (beat that spread, Colts), I'll be offline until post-Independence Bowl (Wednesday), at least. Here's hoping everyone has a safe and happy holiday. Or in the words of Herschel Shmoikel Krustofsky:

So, have a merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, kwaaazy Kwanza, a tip-top Tet, and a solemn, dignified Ramadan.

Robots in disguise

2006 was, in my estimation, a pretty lousy year for movies. The overall box office may have been up, and you had the usual handful of critically acclaimed flicks, but as far as blockbuster tentpole releases went, we were left with the stalker-iffic Superman Returns, the Ratner-tastic X-Men: The Last Stand, and the just plain bad Cars. There were new entries in the Pirates of the Caribbean and Mission: Impossible franchises, but overall we spent most of the year idling; waiting for next year's slate. And with Spider-Man 3, Shrek the Third, Live Free or Die Hard, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Simpsons Movie, and I Am Legend - to say nothing of the final Pirates movie - waiting in the wings, 2007 looks pretty formidable.

Okay, maybe not I Am Legend.

Anyway, the trailer campaigns have begun with another of next year's Big Honking Movies: The Transformers.

Yes, Michael Bay is responsible for two of the worst movies of the last ten years; and yes, the robots themselves look a little...spiny; and yes, this could be nothing more than a 120-minute commercial for General Motors. But...Optimus Prime, dude.

I must confess, I used to go home from high school every day and watch Transformers. Freaking high school. And I never warmed to the new generation that took over after the 1986 movie ("Rodimus Prime?" Sounds like a porno mathemetician). Plus, with Peter Cullen returning to provide his voice...well, I'm not going to say that Transformers is my most anticipated movie of 2007, except that it is.

Assemble and roll out.

All awards shows are bullshit

I may be guilty of paying inordinate attention to the Oscars, but only because movies are my life. Well, that and I'm always trying to find an outlet for my inner homosexual. Even if I'm self-aware enough to admit that they're rarely a true indicator of cinematic quality (Chicago? Crash?), I still enjoy the history and the dazzling sense self-importance on display.

However, I have no such attachment to other award shows. Which is why last week's announcements from the Writer's Guild of American and the Hollywood Foreign Press regarding their 2006 nominees were particularly aggravating:

Golden Globes - Best TV Drama
24
Big Love
Grey's Anatomy
Heroes
Lost

Writer's Guild Awards - Dramatic Series
24
Deadwood
Grey's Anatomy
Lost
The Sopranos

24 is a Sean Hannity wet dream, which doesn't say anything about the quality of its writing. What does is the laughable quality of the lines the writers put in Keifer Sutherland's mouth each season ("You are going to face justice?"). Lost has rapidly succumbed to the Chris Carter Effect, in which the show's creators are starting to realize the folly of not planning the show out beyond a season or so. Heroes is pretty decent. So far. And Deadwood - sheer tonnage of "cocksuckers" aside - is a good show. The Sopranos is coasting on former greatness, though it's still better than 80-85% of other TV.

I haven't seen Big Love, but I've already made a case for why at least three of the shows nominated by either organization don't belong there, and I haven't even gotten to the main offender: Grey's Anatomy.

As The Wife is one of the many unsuspecting citizens of this once great country apparently afflicted with alien brain parasites compelling them to watch ABC on Sunday nights, I saw a good chunk of Grey's' first season, and aside from the joy brought on by seeing Katherine Heigl in a bra, I'm at an utter loss to understand what the fuck the fuss is about.

I'm usually out of the loop in such matters, and whether this is due to my being out of touch with popular tastes or because I'm a contrarian asshole (as certain other members of my household have maintained), that's for history to decide. But I do know this: when a manipulative, simplistic pap smear of a TV program like Grey's Anatomy can be nominated by two separate bodies for best TV series in place of The Wire - a show virtually all media outlets (some three years after this blog, as it turns out) have trumpeted as "the best of all time" - it only proves my opening statement. No one who honestly valued "quality" over "ratings" or "key demographic market" could ever say with a straight face that Grey's was the better show. But then, nobody watching the Golden Globes, be they housewives tipsy on half a bottle of white zinfandel who use words like "McDreamy" without irony or nerds who continue to delude themselves that "4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42" will ever mean anything, care about the best show on TV getting any awards love. They just want to see what Katherine Heigl will be wearing.

And at least in that respect, I'll be right there with them.

Uncanny

Courtesy of award-winning filmmaker Don Lewis comes this clip of esteemed thespian Matt Damon presenting his imitation of Matthew McConaughey on The Late Show with David Letterman.

If you've ever heard The McConaughey speak in person, this will be doubly hilarious.

Charity Bowl '06

It should be common knowledge to anyone who reads APCB with middling frequency (which is about the only kind anyone does read this blog with anymore) that I attended the University of Texas. What might be less well-known is that The Wife went to that Other school, Texas A&M, which never fails to make Thanksgiving weekend an interesting affair at the Vonder Haar compound.

Of late, things have been pretty good for my side. It doesn't matter that Texas is 73-35-5 all time against the Aggies, as with all rivalries, records and rakings go out the window on game day (just ask USC this year), just like it didn't matter that the Longhorns were masters of their own destiny in the Big 12 at kickoff. By the time the final whistle had blown, A&M had won 12-7.

Disappointing? Perhaps, but the Aggies have been suffering since 1999. That was the year, you may recall, that the bonfire fell, killing 12 students. I maintained then, and still do to this day, that the '72 Dolphins wouldn't have had it in them that day to beat A&M, much less the (at the time) #5 ranked Longhorns. Hence, our second most recent loss.

So rather than concentrate on Texas' lack of motivation following the loss to Kansas State, or the disquieting feeling that Colt McCoy might be more Peter Gardere than Bobby Layne, I prefer to think that this year's loss was yet another in a fine tradition of granting pity wins to the Aggies. Sure, you can choose to believe that Fran will stick around to see out his contract, and Jorvorskie Lane won't drop dead of a heart attack in five years, and the Aggies won a game that meant an equal amount to each team. Whatever. Just enjoy it, because it'll be back to business as usual next year.

But wow did McCoy look bad.

Do you spell "quack" with two 'A's?

All I want for Christmas is a little schadenfreude:

Hoosier Edward Bruce Tinsley, creator of the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, was arrested in Columbus Dec. 4 and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence -- his second alcohol-related arrest in less that four months, according to the Bartholomew County Sheriff's Department.

Tinsley, 48, who lives in Columbus, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 -- almost twice the level at which an Indiana driver is considered intoxicated. He posted $755 bond.

On Aug. 26, Tinsley was arrested for public intoxication, according to the sheriff's department.

Mallard Fillmore, about a conservative duck, appears in almost 400 newspapers nationwide, including The Indianapolis Star.

And from the "About the Comic" section on the King Features homepage:

Tinsley created Mallard for what he saw as the conservative underdog. The strip is for "the average person out there: the forgotten American taxpayer who's sick of the liberal media and cultural establishments that act like he or she doesn't exist," he says.

Evidently Tinsley's alcohol problems stemmed from the Herculean amounts he needed to imbibe in order to silence the endless keening of his monstrous victimhood complex.

And it makes today's strip seem like something of a bad choice.

It was a short trip

Like, to the end of the driveway:

Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph laments in a series of letters to a newspaper that the maximum-security federal prison where he is spending the rest of his life is designed to drive him insane.

"It is a closed-off world designed to isolate inmates from social and environmental stimuli, with the ultimate purpose of causing mental illness and chronic physical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis," he wrote in one letter to The Gazette of Colorado Springs.

Rudolph wrote that he spends 23 hours a day in his 7-by-12-foot cell, his only exercise confined to an enclosed area he described as a "large empty swimming pool" divided into "dog-kennel style cages."

"Using solitary confinement, Supermax is designed to inflict as much misery and pain as is constitutionally permissible," he wrote in a letter.

Between this and the news about Pinochet's death, I don't think my tear ducts have ever been drier.

Weekend reading

Out of town this weekend. To tide you over, here are a couple movie reviews:

The Nativity Story - **
Turistas - 1/2*

Reviews for Apocalypto (***1/2) and Blood Diamond (***) should be up Friday.

Subjects not worthy of individual entries

Like most bloggers, I have a constantly rotating list of subjects I could expound upon further, but choose not to. To wit:

1. I have an irrational attraction to the cuckolded wife in the Dairy Queen Jalitos Ranch Hungerbuster commercial. I can't decide if it's the burger itself (doubtful) or the fact that she's a brunette in bed wearing lingerie. Guess Bill Hicks was right.

Though no one will ever replace Clara Peller.

2. Unlike some shows (The X-Files and Lost come to mind), Heroes actually looks like the writers have an idea of where the story's going to go. Ask me again in Season 3.

3. A musical act's lameness can be measured in direct proportion to the number of times they use the word "baby" in their songs. From Amy "Baby Baby" Grant to "Baby" by Ashanti, my theory holds up.

The exception that proves the rule? Led Zeppelin.

4. Dear Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center,

I'm a Commit For Life blood donor, meaning I donate four times a year (or red blood cells twice). Considering I've been doing this for several years, I hardly think it's necessary to e-mail me three times and call me twice the week of each donation. I understand the need to keep supplies up, but I'm more than capable of managing my calendar. Thanks.

5. I hope no thoughtful parents put Re-Animator in their Netflix queue, thinking it's somehow related to Cartoon Network's Re-Animated. Things could get...traumatic.

Especially during the "head" scene.

Might as well jump

This post recycled from Blog 9 From Outer Space, because my birthday was this weekend and I'm old and lazy.

Over at Eat My Brains!, which all right-thinking folks should have bookmarked by now, they do a fair number of top ten lists. The concept is hardly unique (Letterman's doing them for, what, 20 years?), but they manage put a new spin on an old idea with lists like the Top Ten Dogs in Horror (Personally, I would've ranked the half wolf/half husky in The Thing higher than #7...he was a better actor than any of the humans) and the Top Ten Head Explosions (Scanners is #1, of course, but no love for Raiders of the Lost Ark or - that pinnacle of bad horror sequels - Howling II?).

However, my favorite has to be the Top Ten Jump / Scare Moments, though. The "jump" is an unfortunate staple of modern so-called "horror" movies, which has really diluted its usefulness. There's nothing especially horrific about a cat running across the screen accompanied by a sudden explosion of off-key violins, but it gets a jolt, which is all most of current crop of horror directors seem to care about.

Anyway, we have many of these particular old school moments to blame for that. (Spoiler warnings apply, though only two of the movies on the list (The Eye and The Descent) have been released in the llast ten years. List (and my superfluous comments) after the jump:

10. The Eye (2002) - Ghost at the calligraphy school

If you're going to include any Asian horror moment, it's a run-off between this and Sadako coming out of the TV in Ringu, as they mention. The scene in question moves the protagonist's situation from curious to sinister in a nanosecond.

9. The Thing (1982) - Life-taking operation

A great scene from one of the greatest horror movies ever made, remake or not. Having said that, I might rank the "wire in the alien blood" scene higher.

8. The Descent (2005) - Creepy crawlers

Neil Marshall is one of the only directors out there doing original and effective horror, and The Descent was one of the best movies of '05, period. Not to be confused with The Cave.

7. Don't Look Now (1973) - Little Red Riding Hood

Ugh. I've heard for most of my adult life how Don't Look Now is one of the scariest movies of all time, and I still don't buy it. The "surprise" ending may be somewhat unexpected, but I actually laughed out loud. Typical of my annoying jaded generation, I guess.

6. An American Werewolf in London (1981) - Double dream shocker

This scene has it all; undead Nazis, the Muppet Show, and Jessica 6 herself, Jenny Agutter.

5. Alien (1979) - Chestburster!

Often imitated/parodied, never duplicated. None of the cast aside from John Hurt knew what was coming, making their reactions (especially Veronica Cartwright's) that much more convincing.

4. Exorcist III (1990) - Head nurse in the hallway

What is it with hospitals? I admit, I can't even remember what this scene has to do with the overall story, but it'd be a good idea to go to empty one's bladder before hitting play on the DVD.

3. Carrie (1976) - From beyond the grave

I don't know that I agree that this beats Friday the 13th as the best ending jump, but it's pretty effective in a "gee, wasn't it nice when every horror movie released didn't copy this?" kind of way.

2. Se7en (1995) - Sloth coughs

The scene itself is less scary than the knowledge that the "sloth victim" was actually played by a skinny human being (Michael Reid Mackay) and not a dummy, as many have suspected.

1. Jaws (1975) - The head in the boat

Shot post-production in editor Verna Fields' swimming pool when Spielberg decided he wanted more screams from the audience, this might be the granddaddy of all jump scenes. I never actually got to see the movie until 1979 (my history with Jaws is for another post), and even after having the movie described in exhaustive detail for me, Ben Gardner's head popping out still gets me.

"Now that’s a danish. Where'd you get it?"
"I stole it from Kent Brockman."
"Great. Uh, he didn't touch it, did he?"

Here in Houston we have cameras to catch you running a red light, but nothing besides the tired old cop with his radar gun to deter speeders. Luckily, those clever Danes have shown us the way (NSFW):

Truly, speeding is for boobs.

(via MetaFilter)