Death in Vegas – Dirt
December 11, 2008 — strangeink
On the flipside, this video is still pure awesome.
Death in Vegas w/ Iggy Pop – Aisha
December 11, 2008 — strangeink
OK, so this isn’t my favorite version of this song (it’s really missing that awesome build-up to Iggy’s spasmodic seazure at the end of the extended cut) and I’m not sure I’m feelin’ the video, but whateva’. Still worth hittin’.
Picturebox – Wednesday, Dec 10
December 10, 2008 — strangeink
Cinema Strange – [REC]
December 10, 2008 — strangeink
I know, I know. They already Yankee-Go-Homed this. Oh well. I never show up to parties on time. It’s just not how I roll.
Minimal spoilers of the spoilery kind, but you know how these things go.
[REC]
Whereas Cloverfield approximated the effect of being on a multi-million dollar theme park ride of the sort you find at Universal Studios, for the bulk of its running time [REC] delivers something far closer to the jump scares of a local haunted house attraction run by batshit crazy locals who don’t have to answer to anybody or anything but their own sadistic sense of glee. The first person limited view of the camera helps directors Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza force our perspective into claustrophobic living spaces and narrow hallways, keeping the momentum moving forward at all times. When nasties bolt from the shadows, the effect is not unlike having a rubber-knife-wielding frat boy in pancake make-up pop out from behind a screen of ripped Hefty Bags and scream in your grill.
Being familiar with the survival horror genre of video games, I found most of [REC] to be a somewhat effective replication of the experience, albeit one highly beholden to the genre’s more recognizable conventions. Anyone who has played Resident Evil 4 will no doubt find themselves itching to whip out their Striker and spray the brains of some of the rushing hordes, or at the very least flashing back to that awesome moment when they took out all those crazy monks in the castle with the Infinite Launcher. Yeah, that was rad.
However, after watching [REC], I’m becoming increasingly unconvinced you can even achieve the sense of panic and hypertension of facing down a village full of nutjobs wielding chainsaws and pitchforks in a less-participatory narrative like film. For example, take a look at this trailer for Resident Evil 5.
Looks pretty cool huh? Now, unless you’re a gamer who has played this shit before, I doubt seeing that did more than convince you it might be a fun game. But for anyone who has actually played one these things can tell you, watching that crowd of raging crazies makes you break out in a sweat and gets your fingers twitching.
In short, just seeing that trailer goads my Fight-Or-Flight response.
It’s the same rush of adreniline you get in the aforementioned haunted house attraction, a truly primal gut-wrenching reaction that makes you want to take physical action.
I’m not arguing films can’t be involving or tense – far from it. I’m merely suggesting that trying to evoke that Fight-Or-Flight response in film may be an exercise in futility. By virtue of the passive nature of watching a film, even one where the camera’s eye is meant to simulate a first-person, YOU ARE THERE effect within the construction of the story, the viewer is still not required to do anything other than observe – they lack the control and therefore any responsibility for what may happen if they screw the pooch. This may seem like I’m coming down on cinema, but I feel that sense of helplessness and hopelessness is one of the cornerstones of many a great horror film (and [REC] actually manages to do just that at the end, which I’ll get to in a second). Again, hate to keep throwing this out there, but see the Blair Witch Project for just how effective the “don’t go down in the basement” paralysis can be.
Foxy Lady, I'm comin' to getcha...
Now, [REC] comes about as close to achieving the Fight-Or-Flight effect on film as any I’ve seen, including Cloverfield, but it still fell short of being the kind of rush it seemed to want to be. The biggest problem with playing the film as a mounting sequence of jolts is that you become conditioned to be nervous all the time. Again, I compare it to the haunted house where the constant jolts put you in a constant state of anticipation and leave you feeling more exhausted than scared by the end.
By contrast, the most effective scares in [REC] come in the moments more interested in chilling the blood that getting it racing. The sequence involving the little girl standing in the apartment hallway loses none of its impact for having been featured in the film’s trailer, for example. In this way, I’d liken the film more to the Silent Hill series, in which grotesque and hideous horrors in the distance that shamble and moan like old women who need help getting out of the tub are, by far, the greater source of anxiety. These sorts of things just feel wrong, and that is something film can do as well as, if not better than, just about any other medium.
God, this is turning into a long post
In fact, the closing ten minutes of [REC] were, without question, the most interesting and genuinely exhilarating part of the entire movie for me. By taking the horror from the kinetic into the realm of the oblique and uncanny, the filmmakers shove us into the realm of pure nightmarish surrealism. While [REC] does give you some explanation for the madness in its proceeding hour, it is not the explanation I expected and I found it all the more satisfying because of its out-of-left-fieldness. And again, it’s the use of the first person narrative device that permits the film to weave that particular spell as effectively as it does. When Angela and Pablo start to explore the penthouse, I became completely and utter mesmerized and had forgotten the inherent absurdity of the whole “Here, run up these stairs while looking through the view finder of a video camera while crazy shit jumps out at you” device.
In the closing moments of the film, [REC] we join the characters in uncharted territory facing something that is wholly and completely repellent to our reason – something visceral and real that our mind tells us shouldn’t be. This is something the eye-of-the-camera conceit does extremely well. It captures a sense of the extraordinary amidst the ordinary, and it violates our sense of reality. I got the same feeling during the best parts of Cloverfield, when the camera would pan around and look up only to catch a glimpse of something completely out of our world walking in our world. That’s something film can do that videogames just haven’t quite mastered; by contrasting real people and real locations with some single element of the uncanny, film can achieve a disorienting sense of wrongness in the viewer. It may not be as gut-clenching as the Fight-Or-Flight response, but it’s something just as powerful – the terror of coming face-to-face with the alien. And there, in that penthouse, in the darkness, Angela and Pablo meet that alien and [REC] manages to transcend its inspirations and become something primal and something altogether horrifying.
WE3 snatches Panda director
December 9, 2008 — strangeink
John Stevenson (“Kung Fu Panda”) is attached to helm “We3″ based on the mini-series by Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly. “We3″ is one of my favorite comics, point blank. I really enjoyed “Kung Fu Panda,” too – so here’s to keeping the faith this will be a match made in heaven. Morrison penned the last draft of the film’s script.
