The Saw/Applebee's Mystique

Whenever I think of the Saw movies, I think of Applebees. It's just the whole "Capitalism at it's best" idea. And just let me put it out there, I have nothing against the whole torture porn movement in cinema. Hell, I'm a horror junkie myself, and I embraced the movement back during the days of Videodrome. But I hate the Saw movies so much for the same reason I hate Applebees.

I'm sure Applebees started out as a nice little neighborhood bar and grill in some small quaint Midwestern town, as all soon-to-be-fucked-up-psychologically things do. And I'm almost positive that there food was pretty good. So good in fact that after a couple years, Grandpa and Grandma Applebee opened another Applebees in the town over. And then there were five Applebees. And then ten. Then a hundred. Then a thousand. Now there are over eighteen-hundred Applebees choking our collective arteries. And if everything goes to plan, there should be three thousand Applebees by the year 2020. Awesome! Wait no, Applebees sucks, nevermind. The reason Applebees sucks, and the reason why all franchise/chain restaurants suck, is because they cut corners on the things that matter.

When a company expanse like that, they have to save money by using sub-par ingredients and storage devices and so on. So how does this relate to Saw? It's the same process.

The first Saw movie was okay, not unlike the first Applebees. It had an interesting premise but the novelty of it wore thin, on me at least, especially from the horrendous acting. But it made a lot of money, so they made more. A lot more. And just like Applebees, the quality diminishes as the franchise grows and reason is because they cut corners on things to save money. It would be more expensive to actually hire a guy write a "plot"and "characters" for the Saw movies. So they just said to hell with that and just thought up really elaborate ways to torture, maim, and kill human beings. Congratu-fucking-lations.

But this is only "Capitalism at it's BEST". Imagine "Capitalism RUN RAMPANT". You'd have Saw resturants and theme parks. You'd have a Saw-Ville, with spurious torture devices placed in every home. Oh the money to be had! The best though, would be a Saw holiday where people would be guilt-tripped into buying torture devices for friends and families, like during Christmas. Everyone would gather around the "Face-Ripper-Off-er" that's lit with little lights and they'd sing made-up songs of flogging and pain and everything would be right with the world. Everything except for the whole sanctioning of torture and death part.

How the EMOs Stole Christmas

Well it's Halloween and the studios have decided to re-release The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D. They've done this before, last year I think, but this year I saw something online that I did not before. This movie is the only one that I can think of that people hate solely based on the nature of the fanbase. On IMDb, the site I love so much, has a thread on the movie entitled, "Emo kids ruin everything...". Apparently this guy hates this movie solely because of the emo kids who obsess over it. And he's got followers too, he's not alone.
But that just made me think. I thought of all the stupid fanboys in the world and I realized that I can't really say that they make me hate whatever medium they devote thier lives too. Trekkies and Star Wars fanatics were the first ones to come to mind. And while they are equally annoying, I can't really pull myself to hate Star Trek or Star Wars because of them. Moreover, even including my hatred for George Lucas, I still like the Star Wars franchise.
And this once again proves my theory that most people on IMDb are morons.

IMDb: The Scum of the Internet finds a Graceland

I love movies so much. People sometimes get irriated with me because of my love for film. I remember watching Straw Dogs with someone and asking them questions about it. I was just trying to spark a conversation using the old Socratic method. They didn't really care about it but I wanted them to. I'd seen that movie so many times and it means a lot to me but they just said it was "wierd". Whatever, it's okay, I'm just not like other people.
So being a cinephile, I browse IMDb until the wee hours of the night. And one thing that I'm drawn to by some mysterious force is the message boards. Sometimes, there can be rich discussion to be had among the users of IMDb. But most of the time, you run into hate-filled anti-movie people. Cinephobes. They hate movies. Everything that spews out of thier rotten mouths is only in reference to why they hated something or why something was a horrible movie.
That's fine. I don't expect everyone to love every movie they see, I know I don't. But when I watch a movie and don't like it, I think of the reasons why I don't like it. Then I think of examples of those reasons. This may seem like the most logical thought process to use when discussing anything really. You have an opinion, you support it. Well that little fantasy doesn't exist on IMDb. You need only state that a movie sucks and you are immediately more knowledgable or sophisticated in filmmaking. And it works in vice-versa. People to go on and on about how great a movie is can't explain why. And it pisses me off.
And so the vast majority of IMDb consists of those individuals yelling about how a movie sucked or about how a movie was the best ever. They are so absolute. They're like those fanatic religious fundamentalists who strap ten pounds of plastique to themselves.
So discussions about movies are reduced to shouting matches and name calling and stupid pointless banter that makes me want to stick my head in front of a subway train.

A Fine Look at Fascism

Disgusted is the only word I can use to describe what I saw on CNN.com yesterday. Anyone who is reading this blog, which probably is no one, I just want you to look at the picture to the right. The young man being accosted is Andrew Meyer, a 21-year-old journalism student from the University of Florida. Campus police are arresting him. And yes, that's a book in his hand. Not a gun or a knife or a bomb. A goddamn book. After they arrested him, they tasered him. In any other case, that would have made me laugh but again, I'm filled with nothing but contempt and disgust having seen what happened.

It all started in Florida a few days ago when Senator John Kerry was having one of his "town hall meetings". At the end, Andrew stepped up to the mic for the Q&A session. After a quick precursor to his question, Andrew asked Kerry about reports of disenfranchised black voters and fraudulent voting machines during the 2004 election. He was then told his time was up after about 30 seconds. Then his mic was cut. Then he wanted to know why his mic was cut. Then he was arrested. Why the fuck was he arrested? Seriously there was no reason. He wasn't a threat to anyone. He had a legitamate question, albeit on the abrasive side, but he a had a solid question none the less. And he resisted arrest, which I can't quite condone, but I do believe in fighting against fascism which is what I think he was doing. They were arresting him for asking a question. That's fucked up beyond words. So after he resisted arrest, he was pinned to the ground and tasered. And he screamed in agonizing pain and it was one of the most shocking things I've ever witnessed. A young man, voicing his opinion, and being arrested and tasered for it. And everyone in the room is yelling, "Why are you doing that! Stop!" It was horrifying.

And the Fox News reports stressed Andrew as being a "prankster" like that matters. Like a young man brandishing a book instead of a firearm can be tasered and that is justified because he "likes to pulls pranks". Are you fucking kidding me, Fox News?

And Meyer's lawyers are worried that the video of this kid being taser will inevitabley hurt his case because, in a juror's eyes, "the kid had it coming". Are you fucking serious? So next time I ask a question about the integrity of a political leader, I should watch my ass from getting tasered. And the police are trying to charge the kid with disrupting the public. Now that is interesting because I guarantee you if the cops hadn't arrested him, there wouldn't have been a disturbance. The kid would have asked the question and Kerry would have answered. OH MY FUCKING CHRIST IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CHAOS!!!!

The lack of civil liberties being displayed here staggers me.

The Controversial Abortion Entry

Don't worry, I'm still going to talk about idiots on the internet. I just watched like ten videos on youtube about abortion, both pro-life and pro-choice. I'm not even going to tell you what I think of the issue because, well, to be honest I don't even have one. I'm a guy so I could never make the decision. So two of the videos that really stood out, see the issue from both sides. The first you'll get that right away but it is ineffective, which I'll explain later, and the other appears to be something else until the very end.

The first video is from Rosary Films and is frankly titled, "Medical Science Abortion is Killing of Human Beings". Grammar aside, the video really is inept in proving anything. The video poses the question, "Is this a human being?" as it shows various stages of pregnacy. After each stage, the question is posed and the answer, "Yes, this is a human being". Thanks for that well-researched, articulated, and elaborate analysis and explaination. Praise Allah. This is another sad attempt to guilt trip people into not getting abortions. Though they forget that guilt is the last thing on the mind of a rape victim. The truth of the matter is, that question is of theological nature and can never be answered using empirical evidence because there is no evidence. No one really "knows" when life starts because for life to "start", that means it has to not exist and life is constantly in existance. The cells involved in the fertilization process are alive, so does that mean every time I jack off, am I killing thousands of possible babies?

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PPamlX4HQ0

The second video is pro-choice and has a "cool, ironic, witty, way to prove to conservatives that liberals are smarter then them". But in reality, the guy who shot this was an idiot and made the pro-life protestors look like saints. Basically, this guy walks around a protest and interviews people, asking them what the punishment should be if abortions were made illegal. To this, they all said that they didn't know. They didn't know what the punishment should be. They know that abortion should be illegal and why but they didn't know what the punishment should be. Many said that there shouldn't really be a punishment because either a) they didn't know the judicial system adequately, or b) it was between them and God. So the guy at the very end asks, "Well why should it be illegal if there should be no punishment?" and "What crime is illegal that doesn't have a punishment?"

So what does this guy accomplish: two things. First, that pro-life individuals are not crazy Bible totting hypocrits who think that any woman who gets an abortion be hanged. Instead, he reveals these people to be genuinely compassionate towards these women who recieve abortions. The second thing he accomplishes is that these people are dedicated to the protest. They really only care about these babies that are being killed, as they say. It really enlightened me to the whole situation. These people just care about life. Who gives a shit if they don't know what should happen to the women if abortions were illegal. The guy wanted to make them out to be idiots, like they didn't really know what they were doing out there, but really he made them out to be saints.

Here's the link to this callous nit-wit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk6t_tdOkwo

Why I hate Carlos Mencia

First of all, I don't think he's funny. So tonight, I put away my personal feelings toward him and tried to watch the show.

I couldn't do it.

A lot of people think that he's a racist and just pulls the race card (which he does) but I don't think he's a full-fledged hate monger. I mean, he tells jokes that are controverisal but I don't think he thinks that hispanics are superior to other races. But he does pull the race card, in fact, 99% of his jokes are about race. The other 1% of his jokes are divided between midgets and old people. Mind of Mencia is the most uncreative and banal TV program on the air.

This is how the show works, which looks like it's being made up as they go along. First they start out with a sketch, which is not funny, about something stupid. The episode I tortured myself through was about two penguins that he takes care of, one of which has sex with a duck. The sketch inspired no response from me. I just sat there.

And as the show continues, they eventually run out of "good" ideas and hit the streets where Carlos performs numberous stereotypes. After that, they head back to the studio for more stereotypes. And that's it. END OF SHOW.

Now if some aspect of race was enlightened or he said something insightful, you know, point out an irony or something, I would accept that and appreciate the show even if it was still just as unfunny as it is now. But it doesn't. He just presents the stereotypes. This is my impression:

BLACK PEOPLE LIKE FRIED CHICKEN! OMG YOU"RE FUCKING HILARIOUS!

WHITE PEOPLE CAN NOT DANCE!! OMG LET"S GIVE YOU YOUR OWN SHOW!

CHINESE PEOPLE CAN NOT DRIVE AUTOMOBILES!! OMG LETS MAKE A 50 FT STATUE OF YOU OUT OF PLATINUM AND FORCE PEOPLE TO PRAY TO IT!

ARAB PEOPLE ARE NOT ALL TERRORISTS BUT WE PEG THEM AS SUCH!! OMG I WANT TO SUCK YOUR DICK!

There is no redeeming quality to Carlos Mencia or his goddamn show. I've seen sketches from YouTube comedy troupes that are wildly funnier than him and they don't get his bloated paychecks. It just boggles my mind how one could find anything he does funny.

In short, I hate Carlos Mencia because he reduces comedy to just stating over-generalizations of entire peoples.

Zombies: A History of Allegory and Kick-assery

Zombies are never bigger than the movie. They are too humble and modest for that. At least the filmmakers and authors who know what they are doing know this. Because let's face it: zombies themselves are not scary. It's what they do to us that's scary. And no, I'm not talking about turning us into undead, for the most part at least. No, I'm talking about something much more complex. For this entry I'm going to dig deeper into this cultural icon known as the modern zombie and perhaps enlighten those who simply see this creature as a reanimated corpse fuel by instinct.

I'm going to begin with my second favorite zombie franchise, Resident Evil. Like I said, good zombie flicks never place the undead as the forefront of the movie. Resident Evil is about a huge pharmaceutical corporation, called Umbrella, whose main profit comes from viral weaponry and defense research. Umbrella is so focused on military implications of their products that they even have an elite security force whose job requires them to "clean up the mess". So Umbrella synthesizes an agent called the T-Virus which under certain conditions reanimates dead tissue ie makes zombies! And the fictional mid-western metropolis of Raccoon City soon becomes choked with an army of undead. I think this is a great idea. Whenever I think about Resident Evil, I think of like Microsoft or like GlaxoSmithKline doing the same shit Umbrella does. Like there are paramilitary soldiers with a "GSK" patch on their flack jackets running down some street to cover up a mess that they made. Or the Microsoft Special Forces gunning down a witness in cold blood and burning the body in a dumpster in Hell's Kitchen. Resident Evil affects me so much because it could actually, if it hasn't already, come to that. The dominant ideology must be kept safe and that is that these corporations actually care about us. They can't let us know that while we are buying anti-depressants and birth control and band-aids from them that they are also making nuclear warheads and viral weaponry and pills that will make your head explode. And the video games and movies and books have always been about people against the corporate machine, not against the zombies. Sure the zombies are in their way and they have to fight them off but the plot is never, "We have to kill every zombie here before they infect us all".

Now I'm going to get into my favorite zombie franchise, the one that started it all: Romero's Dead series. The great thing about Romero's movies are that they are each about something different. Some aspect of culture or society is dismantled, examined, and eventually reproached. In NIGHT, violence was examined and shown to be destructive even to those dealing it out. In DAWN, consumerism fetishes reflected the rotting corpses that filled the world in the zombie apocalypse. DAY showed us that when in a crisis, logic becomes skewed. And finally LAND said that money can only give illusions of class and power. But the common bond in all of his films, the thing that really sets it apart from other horror films, is the nature of the zombies. The zombies in the Dead series are not the antagonist. They aren't the monsters. And it's strange to think, two of the greatest horror films to ever be release came out in the same year, 1978. Those films are Halloween and Dawn of the Dead. Both films were remarkable in their portrayal of the antagonist. Halloween's antagonist is Michael Myers, of course, but he was different because he was completely vapid and emotionless. There was nothing there. He was simply put - an autonomous killing machine. He nearly isn't even human. And it's all in the mask too - plain, white, unremarkable. Nothingness is the only way I can describe it and that's why I think he's so terrifying. He represents a void. So if this is true, then Romero's Dead series does the opposite. If Michael Meyers represented a hollow nothingness devoid of humanity, Romero's zombies represented a strangely human entity yet so very unhuman. Like Peter from Dawn of the Dead says, "They're us, that's all." Night and Dawn and the rest of the Dead series changed the face of antagonists by making the human characters the villains whilst surrounded by creatures that could have easily been handed that role. It's so easy to make a zombie a villain because it wants to eat people. Romero completely subverted the horror genre because now instead of being afraid of the monster, we are afraid of the people around us.

The strange thing is, this subversion of the genre almost nulls it. Dawn of the Dead isn't really a horror film. It's more of a dark comedy/human drama. The psychological subplot takes precedence over the main plot. The crux of the film is about a group of people losing their humanity to a stale life of luxury, not zombies.

This analysis only applies to traditional Romero zombies who walk. The running zombies is a whole new can of worms. Running zombies present a bigger threat than walking zombies and therefore are usually given the role of antagonist. And let's face it, running zombies are pretty fucking scary. And those movies are good but I think they serve to slake the appetite of MTV-addicted, onanist, Ritalin- fueled thirteen year old males across the country.