Another Take on Paranormal Activity: What Evil Stoops to Pushing Your Keys on to the Floor?
Since I’ve spent the last two weeks contemplating various avenues of suicide from the depressing children’s book adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, I found myself deciding to hit Paranormal Activity as it went wide release this weekend. After a rather well thought out review from Zabaduba HERE, I hadn’t planned on seeing it, but the choices have been pretty slim and since our occasional co-writer here is really the one that introduced me to modern horror film appreciation 20 years or so ago, I figured I better pay attention at even a moderately good review from him.
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Where the Wild Things Are is a Unique Visit to a Children’s Classic That Defies Classification.
Over the last couple of years, the soap opera that lead to the final release of Where the Wild Things Are has caused a lot of people like me, who love film, to instinctually take the side of Spike Jonze and bemoan the evil Warner Bros. studio for keeping his vision down. Maybe I’m not quite as anti-studio as some, but I did have to ask in the middle of the sordid, probably over-inflated stories that what the heck Warner thought they were going to get when they hired Jonze? If they didn’t want his vision of the material, why hire him? Well, assuming there was some truth to the alleged “war” between Warner and Jonze, I don’t think I could take either side very well after seeing it.
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Paranormal Activity: Honey, Put the Camera Down
Paranormal Activity is something of a rarity in the horror world these days. When most films just offer up deformed inbred mutants torturing Midwestern teenagers to death and calls it good, Paranormal Activity actually tries to scare you. It plays on those fears we all have, of waking up to a strange noise in the middle of the night, and lying there, heart hammering, wondering, What the hell is in my house? It bypasses the “torture porn” approach of most modern horror films and actually sets out to create a mood and an atmosphere of fear.
And it does a pretty good job of it.
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Zombieland: I Thought the Apocalypse Would Be More Fun Than This
Let me get the nitpick out of the way up front: Zombies do not run. There. I said it. They don’t run. They shamble. They stagger. They lurch. But they do not run. They’re reanimated corpses without the brain power or muscle tone to do anything more athletic than slowly come at you with the single-minded purpose of turning you into a casserole. To be fair, the zombies in Zombieland are not reanimated dead (or at least not all of them; some of them might be; kind of fuzzy on that) but are instead infected with some form of Mad Cow Disease. So I guess it’s okay that they run. But they’re not zombies.
Okay, nitpick over. On to the movie.
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Zombieland: Too Much Fun to be a Horror Film
I admit it. I was sucked in completely by the trailers for Zombieland just like virtually every other male who’s even remotely in my demographic group. Heading at warp speed toward middle-age, though, I immediately temper any expectations I have when I see a trailer that looks that funny and hip. Ultimately, the last conscious thought I had as I walked into the theater with my kid was “no matter how good or funny this might end up being, it’s not going to touch ‘Shaun of the Dead.’” Now I know whether I was right or not.
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Surrogates Has Bruce Willis Break Type-Casting by Playing a Law Enforcement Agent.
I knew from the first trailers that Surrogates looked so incredibly cool that it had to have high probability of sucking. In a stunning turn of a events, Bruce Willis is playing a cop–well, an F.B.I agent this time. However, I’m happy to report that it’s not that bad, but it is a fairly unspectacular sci-fi thriller that was brimming over with a high concept and not whole heck of a lot more in terms of plot or action. I’m sure this is one of those films that will have its niche cult following in the coming years, But I think we’re looking at high concept, low box-office gross film.
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Heroes Season 4 Limps to the Starting Gate: It is Loathsome and Offensive, Yet I Can’t Look Away
I waffled on whether I was going to give up Heroes after the end the season 3 finale. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it actually went out pretty strong relative to how all of season 2 and the first three quarters of season 3 went, but it was still light years behind how incredible of a show this was during it’s first year. I make no bones about the fact that I honestly believe that Heroes demonstrates the most rapid and inexplicable drop in quality I’ve ever seen in any television drama of any type I’ve ever seen. As much as I tried not to give up hope that this thing was repairable, I’ve pretty much lost hope. I may continue watching, but I long ago quite caring. The best thing I can say about the season 4 two-episode opener Orientation and Jump, Push, Fall is that it was relatively dull, which is a heck of a lot better than outlandish, ridiculous, inconsistent and sloppy, which describes the bulk of last two seasons.
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The Informant!: A Fat Matt Damon and Director Soderbergh Will Leave You Kicking Yourself–In a Good Way.
While it’s not always the earmark of a great movie by any means, I love it when a film forces me to dwell on it intermittently the next day. I saw The Informant! last night and I walked out swimming in thoughts about the movie, mainly the character of Mark Whitacre, expertly brought to life by Matt Damon who packed on the pounds to take this part that’s well outside of his standard roles. Quite frankly, I’m not sure how good Damon’s performance is in this because it took me an entire 24 hours after the film to sort out the complexities of the character. I guess that means it was pretty darned “Okay.”
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9: Classic Tim Burton. Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That. Or Maybe There Is.
I can’t tell you how many times over the last 17 years I’ve gotten all excited seeing an incredibly cool trailer for a film only to have my expectations shattered to see Tim Burton’s name attached to the movie. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Tim Burton. He’s been responsible for some films I love, but I do generally consider his involvement with a movie as a curse rather than a benefit. I can pinpoint the exact day that I came to this decision about about Tim Burton. It was the evening of June 19th, 1992.
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DragonCon 2009: Costumes and General Weirdness
One of the most phenomenal things about any Con is the vast amount of weirdness that comes out of the woodwork. Seemingly normal people use the occasion to costume themselves as their favorite fictional–or in some cases non-fictional– characters. In my years of going to cons I’ve noticed a distinct turn in this trend. As with this picture of the Flash and Superman, this supports my life long research into whether ANY human being actually looks good in tights.
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