Monday, June 23, 2003

 

WIGFIELD


Starting in 1999, Comedy Central put out a totally insane show called Strangers with Candy. It was about a 48 year old former hooker and drug addict, Jerri Blank, who decides to start over and go back to high school. The premise is crazy, but the execution of the idea was even weirder. Starring Amy Sedaris (sister of writer David Sedaris) as Jerri, the show was a surreal, un-PC romp through some kind of alternate universe’s high school hell. Like "ABC's Afterschool Special" on crack! The cast was what made this show so amazing. Sedaris, Paul Dinello (as sensitive art teacher Mr. Jellyneck) Stephen Colbert (as Mr. Noblet, the teacher who yelled at everyone) were the heart of the show.


When it ended, after three terrific seasons, I really felt that a great moment had passed in television comedy. This show was an acquired taste, sure. It was too challenging and strange to be a hit. But it had “cult show” written all over it.


In the meantime, Sedaris, Dinello and Colbert have been working on other projects. Amy has been writing and performing plays with her brother and appearing in guest roles on such shows as Just Shoot Me and Sex and the City), and Colbert is a regular corresponded on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show.


But recently, the three of them reuinited to write a book, WIGFIELD: The Can-Do Town that May Just Not. It’s about the denizens of a small town who campaign to keep the state from opening a dam and flooding their homes. The citizens are some of the weirdest people you’ll ever meet. A sordid assortment of strippers, mental defectives and derelicts who might just bring a smile to your face. The book is also full of photographs of the characters (Sedaris, Dinello and Colbert with lots of make-up effects.).


In support of the book, the three have been touring. But it’s not the kind of reading you’ve seen before. Instead, it’s more like a play, as the various characters are projected on a screen and then the actor who posed as them recites their stories. Some of it is pretty hilarious.


If you know these performers, then you know what you’re in for. And if they come to a town near you, check them out. I’m sure you’ve never seen anything quite like this.


After the performance, they also sign copies of their book. So it was a mixture of a book reading and performance art. At the book signing I joked with Amy that I’d had a crush on her character Jerri Blank and she made sure to write “Pee on Me” under her signature (her catch phrase from the Strangers with Candy web page when it appeared on Comedy Central).


And for other fans of Stranger With Candy – the first season just came out on DVD! 10 episodes of bonafide weirdness. And funny as all hell. Give it a try!


Sunday, June 22, 2003

 

THE HULK


Well, I saw HULK on Saturday. I went with some friends and it was funny how varied the reactions were. From "it was too boring and slow" to "it was great." The latter was me. I actually dug it a lot. But I see most critics either slammed it or pronounced it a mixed bag.


I thought the cast was great. I know Eric Bana had a pretty thankless job as Banner, but I think he did an okay job. Of course, nobody wants to see Banner, they want to see the Hulk. I thought Jennifer Connolly was good too, considering. Sure she could have had more to do, but hell, I'm happy when she's just standing around! I've been a fan of hers from way back in stuff in Argento's CREEPERS, and she can definitely act, because I thought she was amazing in REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. I thought she brought a touch of class to the flick. Kinda weird how this was almost a "monster" version of A Beautiful Mind with both Connelly and Josh Lucas (Glenn Talbot) in it. If Russell Crowe had played Banner, it would have been a real case of deja vu.


I thought Sam Elliot did a good job as General “Thunderbolt” Ross. Hell, he even gave him some humanizing touches in a few scenes, instead of just making him a gung-ho military zealot. And Nick Nolte pretty much stole every scene he was in as Banner’s father (nice “homeless bum” hairdo, Nick!).


I thought CGI Hulk was the way to go, only because a weightlifter in green paint just doesn't cut it anymore. That would have been a cheat in a big movie. I was actually happy with most of the effects. Sure, he looked fake at times, but this was some of the best CGI effects I've seen. Not sure if they were better than Gollum in The Two Towers, but considering the level CGI is at right now (and I think it has a long way to go before it looks truly realistic), I thought it was probably as good as it was gonna get. And for the big scenes, he looked cool enough for me to really get into the movie. Especially the dog fight scene - that was terrific!


Funny how similar to King Kong the Hulk seemed too. Especially his scenes with Betty.


The movie is about two and a half hours, and it tends to move at a slow pace. But this is actually pretty normal for an Ang Lee movie. The guy is an artist, and this just happens to be the pace normally he works at. I think a big part of the success of the movie is whether or not you dig the character. If you're a Hulk fan, and you know the characters, chances are good you'll get into the movie and the slowness won't bother you that much. But if you're not a fan, I can see how it could get tedious at times.


Also, the visual effects like split screens, boxes, etc. were totally intentional and was Lee's homage to the source material, trying to capture the feel of comic books. I thought it worked for the most part. I also thought a lot of Lee's imagery and riffs on the color green were visually fascinating.


They took a lot of liberties with the Hulk’s story. No gamma bomb blast this time. And I think a stronger villain would have made it even better. Hell, if I wrote the script I would have done a lot of things differently. Either The Leader or the Abomination (probably the Hulk's two best villains) would have been a nice touch. I hope one of them appears in the sequel. But this was an “Origin” story, and in this version of the tale, Bruce's issues with his father took center stage.


But, judging it based on what was actually on the screen, I enjoyed it. I actually thought it might be a lot hokier. But Ang Lee got the dark edge of the character just right. I never considered Hulk a superhero. He's a monster. He's rage personified. That's why he's more interesting than most of the guys in tights we see in these summer blockbusters.


I think Ang Lee understood that.


***SPOILER***


At one point, Nolte's character undergoes a metamorphosis and becomes The Absorbing Man! What the fuck?? I guess this means Crusher Creel (the real Absorbing Man from the comics) won’t be making an appearance in the sequels. Nolte’s character wasn’t even a particular good Absorbing Man. Rats! I hate when they combine characters this way (Mastermind was similarly ruined in X-Men 2, when he was a totally different (and cooler) character in the comics, he was thrown away in the movie by them making him the son of Stryker). As a fan of the original Absorbing Man, I thought this was a total cheat. It would have been cool if he had a whole movie to himself. Crusher Creel is a great character.


Speaking of cheats, I totally got cheated out of The Punisher trailer, which was supposed to be shown before The Hulk. Instead, they showed about 10 trailers for mostly kids' films (like Spy Kids 3). I kept hoping the next one would be the Punisher, but I got robbed!! On second thought, from what I've seen of Thomas Jane (who has been cast as Frank Castle) so far, maybe my not seeing the trailer is a good thing after all….


Friday, June 20, 2003

 

STRANGE LITTLE GIRL


There’s a lot to like about the new movie, MAY. It’s about a lonely girl who never really learned how to behave normally in the outside world, and her attempts to make friends. Unfortunately, she has a real problem maintaining relationships.


Angela Bettis is great in the title role, and it’s to her credit that she keeps May Canady likeable throughout, even when she’s doing nasty stuff with scissors and scalpels. You really grow to care about her and want things to work out well for her. But you just know they won’t. This is being billed as a horror movie, after all.


May works as a veterinary assistant at an animal hospital. While on her lunch break, May spots a mechanic, Adam, who works across the street (played by Jeremy Sisto, who’s been poking up a lot lately, between playing Billy on Six Feet Under and also appearing recently in Wrong Turn). She notices that Adam has beautiful hands, and finds him very attractive. But she’s not at all sure how to make contact with him, so she starts to follow him around.


In her attempt to get Adam’s attention, she also undergoes a makeover. She gets contact lenses; she puts on make-up. Slowly she builds up her confidence level. But her first contact with Adam comes in an awkward scene in a restaurant. When he falls asleep at his table, May sneaks over and rubs her face against his hands. (Oh, she also has this fetish about people touching her face – a desperate need for human contact).


He wakes up and is not fully sure what happened, but he finds her attractive, and this leads to a few dates, which get progressively weirder. In fact, early on, she asks Adam if he finds her weird, and he says “Yeah, I do. But I like weird. A lot.”


This guy has no fucking idea what he’s getting into.


He thinks she means she has dark tastes like he does, with his Argento obsession (he has to leave after they have lunch one afternoon to go see Argento’s Trauma playing at a local theater, and he has a photo of the girl with needles taped to her eyes from Argento’s masterpiece Opera). In one touching scene, they use a stage knife to take turns pretending to stab one another, and it’s actually an effective form of foreplay.


But things get much weirder from there, too much so for poor Adam, who bails (and proves that he isn’t half as “into weird” as he claimed to be). Outside her door, in the hallway, he then hears her shouting at Suzie.


Oh yeah, Suzie. Suzie is a porcelain doll who, for many years, is May’s only friend. Her mother gave her the doll when she was a child, and to make things even more twisted, she’s not allowed to ever take it out of the glass case it comes in. You could tell her mother was strange when, in flashback, the mother winces and gets angry when May opens her birthday gift (Suzie) and doesn’t open the wrapping paper the right way, thus “ruining” it. May’s mother was probably the kind of woman who puts plastic covers on all the furniture, too. The connection between May and Suzie is very strong, obviously because May sees Suzie as another version of herself, always unable to really touch another person.


So, May wants Adam back but doesn’t know how about getting him. At the same time, Polly (wonderfully played by Anna Farris of Scary Movie), the new receptionist at the animal hospital where May works, starts to come on to May after working hours. Being so hungry for love, she starts up a relationship with her, too, but this runs into problems when she catches Polly with other women. Suddenly, May doesn’t feel so special anymore.


It’s at this point that May kind of snaps and she sets about “finding” a friend that won’t hurt her anymore.


The funny thing is, the May we see early on, the one who is awkward and has glasses, is the good May. She’s odd but sweet. It isn’t until later on, when May undergoes her makeover and becomes more attractive and self-confident (and therefore “normal”) that she shows her dark side off.


Her first victim is a punk played by James Duval (from Greg Araki’s movies), and he has a tattoo that tells us exactly where things are going. In fact, while I found the ending a bit predictable, but it worked. And it’s an interesting variation on 70’s/80’s horror films like Maniac and Don’t Go in the House.


There’s also a strange interlude where May volunteers to help with a class of blind children. At first, it seems totally unnecessary, but in retrospect, it does have imagery that resonates within the rest of the film, especially the scene where May brings Suzie in for “show and tell” and her glass case finally gets shattered.


Bettis also played Carrie in the recent television version of Stephen King’s classic. While I wasn’t a big fan of TV movie – I thought Brian DePalma’s original film was just fine and didn’t need a remake - I thought Bettis did a convincing and sympathetic job in the role, and she shines in much the same way here, playing another damaged girl who’s capable of being quite dangerous.


Director Lucky McKee did a fine job on this, his feature film debut. To say I liked May would be an understatement. I thought this was a solid, well-acted horror movie, and one that tried to do things a little differently. For some reason it reminded me most of another story of angst-ridden girls, Ginger Snaps, and like that movie, this one delivers the goods and is definitely worth checking out.


Thursday, June 12, 2003

 

Laura and I went to the Stoker Awards (hosted by the Horror Writers' Association) this past weekend. It was a good time in NYC, but it went by way too fast. Got to spend time hanging out with lots of cool people like Brian Keene, Jack Ketchum, Linda Addison, Gerard Houarner, Jack Haringa, Nick Kaufmann, Roger Range and Meghan Fatras, just to name a few. And it was great to see Tom Piccirilli win two Stokers: one for his short story "The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair" (from the Darker Side anthology) - this was one of my favorite short stories of last year and I was really happy to see it win - and then he also took the award for Best Novel for The Night Class. Pic is a really nice guy and a great writer, and he definitely deserved the awards.


Everything went smoothly and even the seminars were pretty good (one seminar about book contracts, given by two lawyers, was especially interesting). A big shout out to Monica O'Rourke and Gina Osnovich for making the event such a success! It was a good weekend.


*****************


Been getting pretty good feedback so far about my new website - especially the "entrance" photo. If you've navigated around my site, you know what I'm talking about (LOL). It feels good to finally get the whole site up and running.


In a little more than a week, The Hulk finally opens in theaters, and I have to admit, I'm still very psyched about this one. There was an article in this week's Newsweek, about how Ang Lee was very demanding of the CGI effects (particularly the Hulk himself), and how he had the effects redone when he thought they weren't realistic enough. That sounds very positive to me. It means Ang Lee wants this movie to kick ass. It also means that the scenes in the commercial so far are probably inferior to the finished product, which sounds great. This might just be the one movie I want to see most this year, so I hope it lives up to expectations. It won't be long now!


Wednesday, June 04, 2003

 

I FINALLY HAVE MY OWN WEBSITE!


After years of talking about it, I finally took the plunge and created my own website. This blog is already linked to it, but if you'd like the check out the whole thing, just go HERE. I wasn't sure if I was going to announce this yet, because it's still a work in progress, and I still have to finish work on a few pages (which I probably won't have time to do until after the Stokers). But it's mostly done, and I was just too excited to wait. Check it out!



Sunday, June 01, 2003

 

Well, I went to see Wrong Turn today, and it was a decent flick. I thought that it dragged at times, especially at the beginning when we were getting "character development" about the potential victims. The thing is, I didn't like most of the characters and didn't really care to spend much time with them (such as the character of Carly, who could be pretty damned annoying). The leads were okay though. Eliza Dushku – who always seems to me to be on the cusp between being good and being annoying, was mostly good in her role here, because she can be believable as a tough girl, and by the end she really shined. And Desmond Harrington (he sounds like a character from the show Dynasty - lol) was okay as the strong/quiet hero. And it was nice to see Jeremy Sisto from Six Feet Under in a pretty thankless role.


Stan Winston's makeup effects were okay - the "inbred cannibals" looked a little fake from certain angles, but looked cool most of the time. Things really got good once these hillbilly monsters showed up and the story finally got into high gear.


Definitely a big improvement over the murder-by-numbers slasher films of the past (the various Friday the 13th and Halloween sequels come to mind); at least there was some amount of suspense. And it was a nice antidote to those awful Scream-type teen horror shitfests.


But it was derivative as hell. For some reason House of 1,000 Corpses worked better for me. I wasn't sure why, then I realized that what I originally thought were weaknesses in Rob Zombie's film - the smirk and wink beneath the scares, the almost-pretentious use of style, etc., were actually strengths in a way. Both House and Wrong Turn are ripoffs of the 70's horror classics, but Zombie's movie at least did something different style-wise. It was so over-the-top that it was like a non-stop rollercoaster ride.


Wrong Turn was more serious, which could have been a plus, but it didn't add anything new to the idea of crazy cannibals living in the woods. It didn’t break nay new ground, and it has nothing “extra” to offer, so I found it a little less satisfying.


I noticed the movie critics didn't review this one until today (Saturday) and they pretty much universally slammed it. But I also notice that most critics are pretty heavy-handed when it comes to "derivative" horror movies, but they give other kinds of derivative films a pass, like the multitude of cliche heist movies lately, or the plethora of derivative romantic comedies. For some reason they can get away with being unoriginal, while horror movies just get shit on for the same thing. Let's face it, most movie critics probably hate horror movies anyway.


Which isn't to say derivative is necessarily a good thing. But if done right, it can be fun at least. And I thought Wrong Turn was an enjoyable enough way to spend 90 minutes. I saw it at a matinee showing, and I can think of a lot worse ways to spend $7. If you're into this kind of movie - you should check it out.


What I'm really waiting for is a movie with the energy and sensibility of movies like Chainsaw, but that gives us something new. There are novels by writers like Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon and Ed Lee (I'm really looking forward to the Header movie- heh heh), that are just begging to be made into movies. Maybe someone will finally catch on and take this trend of "harder" horror in a much more exciting direction.


*******************


Speaking of Friday the 13th movies (I mentioned them briefly above), I caught Jason X on cable. I can't say I thought it was terrific, but it was above-average for a Jason movie, just because they tried to do something new. Instead of yet another installment of "Horror on Crystal Lake," and the murder-by-numbers formula of most Jason sequels, this one was a bit more ambitious - this time it was "murder-by-numbers aboard a spaceship." Jason Vorhees, the guy in the hockey mask who can't die (ever notice how he's kind of skinny in the first movie or two in the series, and then got progressively bigger and more muscular? Death loves this guy!), gets frozen in our time (or is it 2010?) and then is thawed out in the year 2422 or something. And he starts killing all over again. A doctor from our time (a hot chick - big surprise!) who was frozen the same time Jason was, is revived too and gets to fill in the future people (almost all young and attractive - even the surgeon doing the autopsy on Jason is a hot chick in a belly shirt!) on who Jason is and what he's capable of. Of course, no one believes her until the body count starts going through the roof.


SPOILERS*** The movie turns into just another slasher film in an interesting setting, though, until toward the end when Jason fights Kay-Em 14 - a hot andriod chick who kicks Jason's ass and shoots off some of his limbs (and half his head) in the process. Lisa Ryder is a lot of fun as Kay-Em, and there's not enough of her in the film. In fact, she pretty much disappears in the middle and you almost forget about her by the time she is back and upgraded to kill monsters. After he's shot to pieces by Kay-Em, Jason gets regenerated thanks to some nanotechnology, and reappears as Cyber-Jason. He even looks kinda cool in a new futuristic mask and a body that's half metal. But this happens too late, too. The android/Cyber-Jason stuff were the most interesting parts of the film and should have happened sooner. All in all, a better-than-average entry in a series that really needed a kick in the ass. The thing is, this wasn't a big enough kick. Good try, though.


And, finally, speaking of kicks and Jason, when I went to see Wrong Turn, I saw a trailer beforehand for Freddy v.s. Jason, the long-awaited movie battle between Jason & Freddy Krueger. And I have to say, I thought the trailer looked pretty cool! Might just be the kick in the ass both series need at this point. But there's a high probability it will be a letdown. I hope not. It would be nice if this one lived up to its trailer, for once. I guess it all depends on the script. Keep your claws crossed.


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