2010: Week 34 Blots
BLOT: (29 Aug 2010 - 09:51:06 PM)
Autopsy (2008 Horror Film, After Dark Horrorfest III)
It is hospital horror, with all the standards of that genre. Moody hallways with poor lighting. Old equipment for rusty cutting pleasure. Strange utensils for removing delicate organs. Distant shadows stumbling in bloody hospital gowns. Midnight noises and clicks. Disorderly orderlies. Emergency room doors with antiseptic appeal. Squeaky wheeled gurneys. People moaning around some corner up ahead. About the closest we get to a switch up is lumbar puncture instead of a defibrillator.
This is not a complaint, altogether. Even though the two best bits of this movie, the cinematography and gore effects, are both heavily in the homage-cum-pastiche camps; several scenes are so clever as to be textbook worthy (especially the organ-mobile scene at the climax and in the trailers). They just they feel, outside of single shot or two, done before*. The acting mileage may vary, but the casting director did a good job with assigning those on-screen the most the better actors overall. With possibly the exception of the drugged out "bad boy" victim whose general impression of being too-high-to-die is like a Saturday Afternoon Special on Tourette's. Robert Patrick is in his "have you seen this boy" creepy best, and Jessica Lowndes plays the heartfelt opposite—the medical dropout who still cares versus the manipulative doctor who has crossed the line.
Where the movie screws up, and gratuitously, is in its either inability or its apathy toward making many of the medical scenes feel like anything other than disheveled set pieces. That, and the disjointed illogic behind most of the "better" scenes, which I started thinking of as creepyparsley (yes, a joke on "creepypasta"): garnish for the sake of color and not for flavor or plot. I am not expecting realistic fat cells interwoven through proper thickness intestines but this movie's concept of abdominal incisions was tearing through a thick or thin latex into a pouch of disconnected jelly guts surrounded in strawberry jam and corn syrup. The "fingerprint grinding" scene shows an attention to detail that most of the disemboweling scenes steered clear of. Having a scene where a unattached stomach comes out full and whole not immediately kicks the viewer into "its a prop", like watching a magician whip a stuffed bunny out of his hat. Worse as a latex-tummy scene is a post-experimental victim falling on top of one of our young-pretties and she reaches up to push him back and his skin tears like moist wax paper and bits fall out in the wrong order. I think "the wrong order" was the purpose, but still the creepyparsley set up to get her there was bits of weird and "oh no!" with little sense, much like the organs in that man's cheap condom of a midriff**. Had this movie been about ghosts, it might have worked.
All this is really a shame because there is lots of good to praise. Right after that scene, the newly blooded young-pretty is knocked out by a disaffected punch whose ironic contrast sets you off in a giggle. Later, a desperate flight ends in bad-break capture; a capture spoiled by a cute and drug-cultured bit of good luck. And the classic "Oh, officer, she's crazy and sorry she called" point point is twisted out of expectation by one of the gleeful orderlies walking a cart full of organs right past the cop they had just convinced to go on his way. Not kid-friendly humor, for sure, but all of those will bring good laughs to horror fans. Keep in mind that we are talking about a movie that starts out with a group of drunk young-pretties hitting a guy with their car...and then taking care of him. Except that turns out to be the wrong choice, too. It's not exactly
The sloppy organ handling does not cancel out the gore, and the questionable storyline (how exactly does four baddies deal with that many patients...and how come so many patients are allowed to walk around?) does not quite cancel out the more delightful scenes, but the movie is on the lower side of Fair (-0.3). Grab some drinks and some friends and just play along, and it might be even a good way to spend a Saturday night.
* The most notable of which is a possible
** According to an interview, the MPAA enforced a handful of cuts on the film. I don't know if the unrated DVD has the scenes back, or if some of the questionable shots were designed to lessen the impact on the rating.
TAGS: After Dark Horrorfest III
BY WEEK: 2010, Week 34
BY MONTH: August 2010
BLOT: (28 Aug 2010 - 08:33:22 AM)
Borked...for when things are broke real bad...
BY WEEK: 2010, Week 34
BY MONTH: August 2010
BLOT: (26 Aug 2010 - 11:31:50 PM)
Have you heard of Candle Cove? Like creepy things? You'll need to see this...
I am hugely indebted to my friend Niko for many things—who else would give me the time of day to talk about an RPG setting where elvish vampires fight dwarven werewolves using steam-punk ray guns?—but I added just a little more to my tab when he showed me this last night: Candle Cove (via Ichor Falls' "NetNostalgia forum"). If you don't know what it is, just read it. Ah, the glory of creepy, non-traditional story methods.
Then, if you are confused as to what I am showing you, maybe read the background of Candle Cove on /x/enopedia.
Then, once you are in the mood, watch this clip. Two caveats: a) it is creepy and b) it has some loud screams. It is not not safe for work, but then again, your coworkers are likely to stare. My favorite bit is about the :39 mark, but Sarah says that's a bad part.
TAGS: Horror
BY WEEK: 2010, Week 34
BY MONTH: August 2010
BLOT: (25 Aug 2010 - 03:15:44 PM)
Vanity Fair's article on Vampire Weekend's mystery cover girl's lawsuit
I like Vampire Weekend's
Today though, I read Vanity Fair's "Vampire Weekend's Mutinous Muse" and learned that the photo was a source of consternation for a number of people. Not just the band and the [at least claimed] photographer, but also the model in it. Because it was an actual model, and the shot may or may not have been a non-signed photo taken at an early photo shoot of hers, left on a back photo board and purchased for five thousand dollars by the band.
Kennis might have chosen to ignore the whole thing, if only that had been an option*. Parking her car on Columbus Avenue, in Manhattan, she saw a poster of the album cover pasted to a storefront's construction scaffolding; flipping through The New York Times, she saw a picture of the band using her photo as a giant concert backdrop; walking into the Gap, she heard Vampire Weekend playing over the speakers. Friends said they'd seen the cover in Montreal and even Finland.
The article is interesting, because it brings up a lot of questions. Did Ted Brody actually take it? If not, as the model—Ann Kirsten Kennis— says, how did he get an old Polaroid of her that a family member might have taken? And if this is all under the table and less than legit, how much is Vampire Weekend responsible for re-imbursing Kennis? It also brings up the fact that there is something of a generation gap going on here. While younger fans might not see what the big deal is, one has to keep in mind that hundreds and hundreds of digital photos being uploaded to Flickr and Deviant Art and Picasa is not, as it were, an old invention. Now we inundate our personal images across time and space, project it with feeble copyright notices into the great beyond. For most of the history of the photograph: quantity used to be a much more controlled thing.
In an age when photos are easily swapped around the Internet and everyone with a camera phone has become a photographer, this lawsuit is more than just a cautionary tale. It's a symptom of an increasingly treacherous generation gap. "You start to see interviews from fans of the band, and they are like, 'I would just be glad that my picture was on it.' Well, not really. They are using it for their gain," says Kennis, who came of age at a time when anyone whose image was used and distributed could expect to reap sizable financial rewards.
And while most of me thinks that Vampire Weekend (and all their associated peoples) should make this right as best they can (and maybe they should have talked to the model before assuming no one would care), I can't help but point out that she didn't seem to contact the band at all before pressing a two million dollar lawsuit. I guess that's just not the way these things are done.
TAGS: Music
* Or, your know, if the option of "not ignore" hadn't been monetarily viable.
BY WEEK: 2010, Week 34
BY MONTH: August 2010
BLOT: (25 Aug 2010 - 12:50:45 PM)
I like the bit about shredder blades being bad for baby's health...
BY WEEK: 2010, Week 34
BY MONTH: August 2010
BLOT: (23 Aug 2010 - 11:33:28 PM)
The song so catchy (and NSFW), you'll want it to get stuck in your head...
Cee Lo Green's new song, "F*ck You!" is ridiculously catchy, and very not safe for work. For real, though, if you can take the F-bomb, you'll hear one of the first songs ever that you want to get stuck in your head.
BY WEEK: 2010, Week 34
BY MONTH: August 2010
BLOT: (23 Aug 2010 - 12:15:47 PM)
"Roof"-springa, or how some bad luck is better than others...
Last week, I tweeted about our roof springing a leak. I forget the exact wording, not like it matters, but it went something like "Our ceiling decided we needed to share in the rain going on." I followed that with an update on the fact that the leak had gotten into the electrical systems in our walls and they had to shut down the power in the back half of our apartment. In fact, in order to lessen the damage, the maintenance man cut a fair sized (maybe 4" x 4") hole in our ceiling so that the water would gush through it in a controlled way rather than seek some other path to disperse. Well, it turns out that the Dog Days of Summer are partially to blame here. The great heat that has been going on has caused part of our roofing to warp and separate, which made some sort of large groove that allows water in. The loud noises, today, suggest they have been rebuilding our roof. I am not sure on the progress, though, but Saturday's storm* did not cause any further damage, so I think it is ok.
Sarah and I went out of town, so that I could go to classes. On the way down, a vibration that has been present in her car became worse and worse. Her car already had starting problems, most likely due to Dog Days' heat, again, and we had expected some degree of shaking because of an issue with a tire; but by the time we came back up on Sunday morning, it was shaking so hard to be undeniably a bad thing. We checked the tires later on Sunday, and all but one had started to split away from the inner tire. Had our trip been even thirty minutes longer, in that heat, there is a chance that it would have ended with one or more blow-outs. She is currently out in Grant getting her tires replaced, hopefully realigned, and her battery and other systems checked out since they had gotten so ill-responsive.
The final bit of bad luck? We got back on Sunday to find that our TV has died. No clue if it was due to the extra humidity in the apartment due to the leak, some sort of surge caused last week from the leak, or a lightning strike from the storm on Saturday. It has a very burnt smell, the one associated with dead picture tubes, so it might have just been its time.
All in all, though, for three bits of bad luck that at least touch up on the Dog Days, I have to say that the TV is the not-so-bad, the roof-springa is relatively ok (now...plus we have renter's insurance just in case crap comes to crap), and the car is the worst. Now, in a week or two with watching TV on our little scratchety box from the 80s that we had in our guest bedroom, maybe I'll change in my mind. That money spent on new tires might have helped by a nice little HDTV, you know...
* Being down at Gadsden on Saturday, I watched the storm through the Weather Channel's website. It is nerve wracking watching a bad storm come through knowing that a dice roll is all that stands between you and massive amounts of water damage if, say, the roof-leak decides to come out somewhere else.
TAGS: Me in 2010
BY WEEK: 2010, Week 34
BY MONTH: August 2010
Written by Doug Bolden
For those wishing to get in touch, you can contact me in a number of ways
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The longer, fuller version of this text can be found on my FAQ: "Can I Use Something I Found on the Site?".
"The hidden is greater than the seen."
