This vicious critique of 28 Weeks Later and the entire brutal-horror enterprise by Reverse Shot’s Andrew Tracy strikes me as a very important piece in terms of the genre’s future. I say this even though it’s so diametrically opposed to my own take on horror that it’s like it was written by Bizarro Sean, as evidenced by passages like these:

Much early praise has been showered upon this sequel to 28 Days Later for its “relentlessness,” “bleakness,” “darkness,” “ferocity,” et cetera and ad nauseam. That these are merely descriptions rather than values in and of themselves does not seem to register.

There’s not a whole lot for me to say here by way of refutation or response that I haven’t already said (for a long time). I mean, yeah, I disagree, duh. I will, however, point out that the essay’s conclusion perhaps contains the key to unlocking the problem with Tracy’s approach:

The unnerving and terrifying cinematic power of the original Chainsaws and Living Deads transcended their generic packaging and filtered into the world at large; their inheritors package an unnerving and terrifying world and serve it back in consumable portions. 28 Weeks Later and its ilk do not make one reflect on the ugliness of the world, but on the needless ugliness of the far narrower film world. To look away from this garbage is not to refuse to face reality, but to look towards more rewarding films.

Oh dear, the dreaded “transcending the genre” rears its ugly head! I’m so, so tempted to allow the use of that phrase to make me ignore the piece entirely, as that is the right and good response to the deployment of T.T.G. in nearly all cases. But the real problem is the distinction Tracy’s attempting to draw, because, simply put, I’m not sure that it’s based on anything other than which cinematic values cause Tracy to wrinkle his nose. To listen to the likes of George Romero and Tobe Hooper talk about their work, “packag[ing] an unnerving and terrifying world and serv[ing] it back in consumable portions” is exactly what they were doing. Are we to ignore them? (To be fair, we probably should: They’ve clearly learned what mainstream film critics and scholars will eat, and they’ve trained themselves to serve it.) I think what Tracy’s saying is that the filmmaking in the earlier films is more sophisticated, to which I can only reply that he should watch those two movies and then Hostel and 28 Weeks Later again; none of them is really self-evidently superior, in purely cinematic terms, to the others. It seems like what it ultimately comes down for Tracy is a beef with a perceived “slickness” in the recent films, coupled with an aversion to out-and-out gore. Fine–even admirable in belief it demonstrates that style is substance–but, well, wrong. I’m not sure how the fact the more recent movies had the luxury of decades of erosion of censorship of gore going for them and weren’t shot on 16mm for whatever disqualifies them from “mak[ing] reflect on the ugliness of the world [as opposed to] the needless ugliness of the far narrower film world.” They certainly made me reflect on the former much more than the latter.

Overall I think Tracy’s piece is a part of a wave of “cynicism fatigue” that’s starting to crest (cf. responses to this season of The Sopranos). All I can really say is that driving into work this morning, I saw the remains of a black and white cat whose head had been so completely destroyed by the car that ran it over that but for the paws and the tail you wouldn’t even know what it was, and I honest to god thought “that about sums it all up, doesn’t it?”, so the cinema has a long way to go before it can hit bottom with me.

Sorry to be a downer. Anyway, read the whole thing, then check out the comment thread at the House Next Door post where I initially found this link, which contains this gem from Matt Zoller Seitz:

28 Weeks Later” is filled with images of people doing the right thing and being killed almost immediately. But not for a second does the film suggest they should have behaved selfishly. The subtext is, doing the right thing is its own reward, and observance of the golden rule, especially when it costs us personally, is what truly makes us human.

Add “and that cost is what makes life tragic” and yep, there you go.

In an annual experience nearly as enjoyable and insane as the con itself, the Spurge has posted his absurdly massive guide to attending the San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest gathering of nerddom in the Western Hemisphere. Ironically, I haven’t attended since I got a job in the industry, a fact that makes me cry silently to myself every summer. Each SDCC I attended ranks in my top comics-related memories ever; if you’re a general-purpose geek like I am, it’s heaven on Earth, and Tom’s guide will make you miss it so much if you’re not going, which you should. If you’re NOT a general-purpose geek–like Tom–it’s a more complicated experience, which is part of the fun of reading his guide, as is the sense you get that writing it is in some small way an act of self-injury, like cutting or laxative abuse, or perhaps like those monks who flagellate themselves.

Coincidence?

By the time we arrived at the Museum of Natural History at around 2pm, the Mythic Creatures exhibition was entirely sold out for the rest of the day. I didn’t even know museum exhibits COULD sell out. But apparently it’s one of those timed-tour deals that starts every half hour, not just a walk-through kinda thing. Oh well, it’s there through December.

This week’s Horror Roundtable is the inverse (or the converse? I fucking hated math) of last week’s: The challenge this time is to name a horror movie you liked that everyone despises. I had to stretch a bit with mine; if you had said “whose DIRECTOR everyone despises,” it’d have been a better fit, for certain obvious reasons.

The Smoking Gun has an large assortment of lovingly drawn depictions of different methods of torture, discovered in an al Qaeda “safe house” in Iraq.

To the Mythic Creatures exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History! There’s a whole segment dedicated to water monsters! Mint!

Read more in this New York Times article and this Live Science article. Thank you, Loren Coleman at Cryptomundo!

“This iron ball was found in the boar’s body. This is what hurt him so. It shattered his bones and burned its way deep inside him. This is what turned him into a demon.”

-from Princess Mononoke

(Found here–thanks, Matt Wiegle)

Well, I think that people loved Grindhouse. Everyone who saw it loved it. The critics loved it, the fans loved it. I just think that the length scared people away, and a lot of their audience now has kids. I talked to my friends who love those movies but didn’t go see it, and I said, ‘Why wouldn’t you go and see it?’ And they’re like, ‘Well, it’s three and a half hours and then you’ve got to get dinner and plus we get a baby sitter for five hours. There’s that extra money’ and you think ‘Oh wow. There’s a whole – you can’t take your kids to it. You have to get a baby-sitter. It’s like a whole extra expenses.’ It actually pushed people into the territory of ‘Well, I want to see it, but I’ll see it on DVD.’

—Eli Roth, in an interview at Dark Horizons (via JA)

The animal below lived for three hours after being shot eight times with a .50-caliber revolver before it was finally chased down and killed at point-blank range. I’m sure those were a wonderful three hours for it.

“This is the state of the beast,” it said, “to eat and be eaten.”

—Clive Barker

(photo source)

I talk about the latest issues of Criminal, Captain America, Countdown, Final Girl, Gutsville, Snake Woman, and X-Men at this week’s Thursday Morning Quarterback over at Wizard.

…click here.

Because the comments work now.

“There are no homosexuals in Korea. We don’t like them.”

–North Korean press escort to reporter Christian Caryl, “Curiouser and Curiouser: There’s pomp, propaganda–and even a fake Chanel purse or two. NEWSWEEK’s Tokyo Bureau Chief discovers that touring North Korea has some unexpected moments,” Newsweek

In honor of Monday season-ender for Heroes (which I don’t watch) and tonight’s for Lost (religiously!), here’s a new, working link to Wizard’s big “Heroes vs. Lost” joint interview with Heroes creator Tim Kring and Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof. It’s pretty sweet.

It’s funny–I didn’t HATE Pirates 3, and I usually either like movies or HATE them, or at the very least I leave feeling angry that I wasted my time. I simply didn’t like this. It wasn’t pretentious and it wasn’t insulting, which are the things that really piss me off about movies. It was really good-natured and easy to go along with, even root for. It’s just that GOD, ENOUGH with the deals and double-deals and double-crosses and triple-crosses already! It’s 2 1/2 hours of negotiating and 15 minutes of fighting. There are other things that I could pick apart too (including some major, major problems with structure and motivation and failing to meet consciously constructed audience expectations) but I won’t do that until more people get the chance to see the movie–the main thing is just, HOLY MOSES, SHUT UP WITH THE NEGOTIATING ALREADY!

That’s where the movie’s massive length hurts it the most. To At World’s End‘s credit it’s not BORING per se–it’s always lovely to look at, and every single actor seems to be having the time of their lives. But scene after scene after scene, I sat there thinking, “Why do we need to see this? And for that matter, why do we need to see it for so LONG?” There are so many shots of characters doing takes as they watch something else happen, it’s like they’re modeling what the audience is supposed to be doing or something. To be fair, it’s not in the standard slack-jawed whispered-“wowwwww!” Chris Columbus with Danny Elfman tinklings beneath it Harry Potter standing there and gaping mode that filmmakers employ like the wide-eyed-awe equivalent of a sitcom laugh track–it’s more like every character is reenacting a message board post consisting solely of the phrase “WTF?” all the time–but still. Imagine a whole movie of the part in The Thing where they stand there watching the spider-head and going “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me” and you’re almost there.

Washington Redskins players Clinton Portis and Chris Samuels defended Michael Vick on Monday by ridiculing the notion that dog fighting is considered a crime.

[…]

“I don’t know if he was fighting dogs or not,” Portis said. “But it’s his property; it’s his dogs. If that’s what he wants to do, do it.”

[…]

Hours after making light of the possible crime in the television interview, Portis issued a statement late Monday through the Redskins.

“In the recent interview I gave concerning dog fighting, I want to make it clear I do not take part in dog fighting or condone dog fighting in any manner,” the statement said.

—“Supporting Vick: Skins Portis, Samuels ridicule dog fighting as crime,” AP, SportsIllustrated.com

Aside from the utterly loathsome and contemptible animal abuse, for which these miserable bastards deserve to truly suffer, allow me to paraphrase the aspect of this story that bothers me the most:

“Except for that part where I explicitly condoned dog fighting, I do not condone dog fighting.”

He DID condone dog fighting. That’s EXACTLY what he did! He’s NOT ALLOWED to say he doesn’t. He does! He did! We all saw it happen!

The degree to which celebrities feel entitled to rewrite history to suit whatever their current preferred narrative happens to be is very, very disturbing. (To say nothing of politicians; at this point, though, I think celebrities-in-trouble are more boldfaced about it while the politicians are still at least slightly subtle.) You don’t need to look any further than the behavior of, say, the idiots on The Real World every season to see the extent to which people believe they can do any number of horrible, amoral, immoral things, then convince themselves it’s okay simply by saying so. It’s not. And this stupid punk is not entitled to say he didn’t do something he absolutely, unequivocally did.

(Via Bloody Disgusting.)

Missed this somehow, but Lloyd Alexander, author of the Prydain Chronicles, died Friday at the age of 83. This lovely Washington Post obituary for Alexander emphasizes the seriousness of spirit beneath the humor and fancifulness of his work:

“I used the imaginary kingdom not as a sentimentalized fairyland, but as an opening wedge to express what I hoped would be some very hard truths,” he once told an interviewer. “I never saw fairy tales as an escape or a cop-out. . . . On the contrary, speaking for myself, it is the way to understand reality.”

I very fondly remember reading his Prydain and Westmark books as a kid, and what I take away most from them is an increasing sense of world-weary, almost angry melancholy as the volumes progressed. The heroes of those books were changed by their adventures, and not always for the better. Receiving that message made me feel like I’d grown up a little bit. (You know what else had that vibe? Stanley Keisel’s The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and the Splendid Kids. Am I the only person who read that?)

Anyway, I wonder how long it will be before Alexander’s work gets the live-action film treatment.