tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post7160195853501120166..comments2024-03-12T12:38:23.542-04:00Comments on The Kind of Face You Hate: The State of Fear - Part Onebill r.http://www.blogger.com/profile/17748572205731857892noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-71306111959991436892008-08-29T15:04:00.000-04:002008-08-29T15:04:00.000-04:00Hey, guys ... it's my day off right now ...Hey, guys ... it's my day off right now ...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-55411104992211289352008-08-29T12:09:00.000-04:002008-08-29T12:09:00.000-04:00I AM CALM!Seriously, I'm going to beg off this dis...I AM CALM!<BR/><BR/>Seriously, I'm going to beg off this discussion right now, because if I don't I'll make all the points I'm holding for my next post in the comments section. And you know how hard it is for me to come up with shit to post about.bill r.https://www.blogger.com/profile/17748572205731857892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-67605346499481905002008-08-29T11:35:00.000-04:002008-08-29T11:35:00.000-04:00Looks like somebody finally knows what it's like t...Looks like somebody finally knows what it's like to be on the other side of the blog huh? <BR/><BR/>Mwahhahahahahaha!!!<BR/><BR/>Oh Bill, I'm not disagreeing with you entirely, calm down. It's more of a "splitting hairs" thing. I agree horror requires some form of caring for the characters to make it horrifying rather than just shocking. In Henry, you manage to care for the family being attacked without knowing anything about them because they make it seem real. In Friday the 13th movies you don't care for them and it's shocking instead. <BR/><BR/>I don't think those movies are particularly well made myself on a basic technical level much less as exemplars of great horror. But my original splitting hairs beef was that you asked what was the point and the point was providing gore/blood/shock. And I was simply trying to say that even if the 13th movies do it badly, that doesn't eliminate pure visceral response as a valid aim for a movie. <BR/><BR/>Okay enough hair-splitting. As for taking off days from work I've always favored Wednesdays. Seriously. You're off two days, work two days, off one, work two, off two... you never get burned out. I had that schedule with a job years ago and it was one of the best schedules I ever had. The four day a week thing only lasted about a month and they made us go back to five days but while it lasted it was sweet.Greghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05730146625671701859noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-68083559657012209402008-08-29T11:10:00.000-04:002008-08-29T11:10:00.000-04:00What, are you trying to make me paranoid about my ...What, are you trying to make me paranoid about my job? I hardly ever take time off: I don't take week-long vacations, but instead take a day off here and there, and a few Fridays ago I was sick. Big deal! And if I'm going to use my vacation time in one day increments, what day of the week should I choose? Tuesday? What the hell, Jonathan!?<BR/><BR/><I>Anyway</I>...so, yes, movies set out to get an emotional response. Since this discussion is building off that scene in the <I>Friday the 13th</I> film, I'll ask you: have you seen it? If not, do you think you have a pretty good idea from what I described of how the scene plays out? If the answer is yes, what response were the filmmakers going for? My main point -- and maybe I didn't make it very well -- is that the response the filmmakers wanted had very little to do with horror. The response they were shooting for was somewhere in the "thrill" category. For horror to have been an element, the filmmakers would have needed to ask the audience to care. These movies don't ask that. All they do is set up pins and then knock them down in increasingly elaborate ways.bill r.https://www.blogger.com/profile/17748572205731857892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-54290082986515606402008-08-29T10:26:00.000-04:002008-08-29T10:26:00.000-04:00every movie that gets a response is somehow succes...<I>every movie that gets a response is somehow successful, even if the response is boredom.</I> I don't agree I was arguing this. <BR/><BR/>I said, "Isn't one of the aims of cinema, even if not always used or endorsed, to produce an emotional response it the viewer?" <BR/><BR/>That doesn't state that doing so makes it a success, just that it makes it cinema. It is the aim of a comedy to make the viewer laugh. Stating that that is the aim does not mean that said comedy will be successful and <I>actually</I> make people laugh. It could fail miserably or it could succeed greatly but the aim of the particular film does not empirically tie it to it's subsequent failure or success. <BR/><BR/><BR/>And watch taking off too many Friday's - employers look for that kind of thing. It is their aim to make our lives miserable, and they are often very successful.Greghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05730146625671701859noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-44523759943620066802008-08-29T09:25:00.000-04:002008-08-29T09:25:00.000-04:00I'll be getting to some of this in later posts (no...I'll be getting to some of this in later posts (note the "Part One" at the beginning), but as far as your "what's the point" point: by that argument, every movie that gets a response is somehow successful, even if the response is boredom.<BR/><BR/>I just remember being very bothered by that "Friday the 13th" movie at the time. If any horror film was ever catering to the bad element in its audience, it was that one. But that's not really my point (forgive me, but I'm off work today, and slept very little last night, so I'm not at my best right now). The main point is that graphic violence has become one of the sole objectives in horror. How many times have you heard people complain that a horror film was rated PG-13 instead of R? What they're upset about is not the possibility that the rating indicates that it will be less frightening. They're complaining that it won't be violent enough (or that it won't have enough nudity, but mainly violence). I'll stop now before I get too deeply into material for my next post, but that's basically the mentality of the people who both make and patronize horror films.<BR/><BR/>And I'll be talking about "Henry", "The Descent", "28 Days Later", all that. Not necessarily in depth, but I'll get into it. But first I have to rest and eat and watch movies and stuff.bill r.https://www.blogger.com/profile/17748572205731857892noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2856547151523423474.post-83193447350134095082008-08-29T09:06:00.000-04:002008-08-29T09:06:00.000-04:00What's the point of Un Chien Andalou or Wavelength...What's the point of <B>Un Chien Andalou</B> or <B>Wavelength</B>? Isn't one of the aims of cinema, even if not always used or endorsed, to produce an emotional response it the viewer? The emotional response can be overt where we care about a character and his relationships or illness or death. Or it can be a visceral emotional response, a chilled or shocked reaction to chaotic violence on the screen before us. <BR/><BR/>It's true that a big part of the horror genre was taken over by this type of film, especially in the early eighties, but serial killers also received more thorough treatment in <B>Henry, American Psycho, Silence of the Lambs,</B> etc and monster or zombie horror has been completely re-invigorated with movies like <B>Descent</B> or <B>28 Days Later</B>. And if you look at box office numbers, these movies generally do better than the slasher flicks (for instance <B>Lambs</B> and <B>The Ring</B> are on the US All Time Box Office list but <B>Saw</B> and <B>Hostel</B> are not).<BR/><BR/>And I think with few exceptions, the gore slasher flicks now present not only more in depth characters (relatively speaking) but much more competent filmmaking on the purely technical level. Pulling clips from <B>Hostel 2</B> for my horror trailer presented me with some difficult choices because the film had several very interesting well composed shots to pull from. <BR/><BR/>None of this is to say I disagree with, it's more of a devil's advocate presentation of questions I have whenever someone decries the cinema going for the visceral response over a more formally expected one. And I'm not saying <I>you're</I> decrying the cinema for that, simply that it is the point of my comment. <BR/><BR/>There is no doubt that <B>Chainsaw Massacre</B> took on the rep it did due to it's low budget shoddy appearance. <B>Black Christmas</B> and <B>Suspiria</B> were far too formal to whip up a firestorm like <B>Chainsaw</B>. It's grainy, "made in the basement" look gave viewers the feel that they were watching real people, not actors, even if the bad acting immediately betrayed that they were actors. It was also the right time, with movies like <B>Chainsaw</B> able to get wider releases than <B>Dementia 13</B> a few years earlier.Greghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05730146625671701859noreply@blogger.com