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I have the day off and have yet to do anything productive with it. I think returning my videos to the store will be a good kickstart. Surely I won't find any more procrastinating things to do after being outside!
I got three other movies besides Adaptation.
The Italian Job
Nothing happens in this movie. More accurately, nothing happens when I put this DVD into my computer. Shall suggest refund when I get to the store.
Since Lost in Translation was sold out, I went for a movie with a similar title, Lost Weekend. I'm not quite sure what to say about it. It's interesting watching a 1940's movie about alcoholism. The performances were great. My favorite character was probably Bim, the aggressive alkie-ward male nurse who likes to taunt new-guy residen Ray Milland with stories of all the little animals who are going to come to get him. ("Pink elephants are a bunk. It's always little animals, like monkeys coming through the keyholes...") I wonder if the male nurses still do this now. Oh, and of course when the little animals do show up one of them is obviously a rubber bat.
The other thing that struck me for some reason was when Bim is giving Don a little history about all the guys in the ward and he says a lot of them got started during Prohibition--those were the days, apparently, in the old alkie ward. I felt that line was also the universe's way of telling me to work on my own writing because the thing I'm trying to work on is connected to Prohibition in a certain way. I guess you're supposed to see Don as primarily and alcoholic but I kept identifying more with his desire and inability to be a writer. Who knew this would be such an interesting companion piece to Adaptation? Yes, when it comes down to it, writing can destroy you. Ray Milland ultimately decides he does want to live and be the "other Don" who is the author instead of the drinker. He's going to do it by writing about his Lost Weekend. There's something a little odd in the idea that you can make money off your addiction; it's sort of a pre-cursor to all those celebrity tell-all books. But of course it's also a long tradition. The key thing is that you have to have talent to write a good book about your addiction just as you need talent to write a good book about anything.
Since I love horror movies, it seemed like I should have seen this in the theaters, but here's the thing: I hate movies about plagues. (My roommate was shocked when she saw I had it for that reason--I didn't realize my dislike of plague movies was that noticeable.) Anyway, it's not all plague movies I hate, really. I may not like them, but there's a difference between not caring for them and having an aversion to them. People talk about 28 Days Later film as a zombie film, and in a certain sense it is, but I don't dislike all zombie films. I love Night of the Living Dead and I didn't mind that movie where Vincent Price is the last man on an earth overrun with vampires (don't like it much, but it doesn't upset me).
What really puts it over the line for me, though, is the monkeys. Any movie where an epidemic is started by some monkeys in a lab is going to upset me...in fact I have just now remembered one time when I was a kid and tried to read a book on lab animals and it gave me nightmares all night (a rare thing for me), although the nightmares were not about the lab animals at all, but about Carrie. Go figure.
Anyway, 28 Days Later has all the things I dislike. There's the monkeys in a lab infected with something so dangerous one bite (or not even a bite!) will destroy the planet, yet under less security than a hotel safe. Thus they can be gotten to by animal activists too stupid to understand contagion. The stupid animal activists are another pet peeve of mine. It's not that I don't respect a level of animal rights, it's just this stereotype of the people who see themselves as messiahs of animals who don't understand the real situation--that bugs me. So they bring the plague on themselves, both by creating it in the lab and by releasing it despite the fact that a doctor is telling them exactly what will happen if they do. Perhaps some sort of back up quarantine security might have been wise given the kind of contagion we're talking about?
And what a plague it is! Yes, it's the other thing I can't stand--human being infected with rage. Jacob's Ladder is one of my favorite movies, but I still can't really watch the opening scene where the soldiers may or may not be under the influence of a drug called "The Ladder" which turns them into mindlessly violent killers. Maybe this just taps into my old Angel Dust fears I had as a kid. Yes, I was afraid of Angel Dust as a kid. It was just in the news or something for a while when I was like 8 or so, and the idea of it horrified me. (That episode of CSI? Freaked me out, yes.) I guess this is also connected to my other childhood fear of The Exorcist, and Patty Hearst, two things I always linked together. That isn't as strange as it sounds when you think about it--they happened around the same time, when I was too young to really understand either, yet I guess I did get it on some level because of the whole normal girl turned into monster idea. To this day the name Tanya is scary to me. I used to think about what would happen if everybody around me suddenly turned into monsters, like my parents and such.
So thank you, 28 Days Later for not only giving me people reduced to mindless rage with which they get infected by monkeys in cages but a disease that is also spewed so that you don't even have to be bitten. Contact contagion--so much worse than the idea of an airbourne virus or something transmitted through biting! What does this director have against me????
So putting aside all that stuff that did roll around in my head while I was trying and failing to sleep, I guess the movie was okay. It's very paranoid and has a bleak view of human nature, though at least the main characters all have their heads on straight. They have a healthy and believeable attitude towards the infected--kill them quickly. That's the thing that annoys me about the sequels to Night of the Living Dead, the suggestion that people would sometimes hesitate to kill Grandpa or whoever because he used to be Grandpa. I was interested in the idea the movie offers that in this kind of society women would basically become sex objects as played out in the army compound. Disturbing but possible, I thought, given those guys.
Ultimately I'd say it's definitely a movie worthy of respect. I couldn't say I enjoyed it, but I'm glad I saw it. The characters, as I said, were, imo, likeable and interesting. It was especially nice to see intelligent female characters and even more shocking to see an intelligent young female character. I appreciate that. Also it's just very sad seeing London empty. Though I thought it was a bit odd that when Jim is first wandering around in an empty city he picks up a paper with EXODUS in the headline and then drops it impatiently. You'd think that would be worth at least skimming...
PT, at work, is a big fan of the zombie movie (he even has a little silver trowell given to him by Kyra Schon, the little girl from NotLD) and he said 28 Days Later was good. I trust his opinion. Now I can not only discuss the movie intelligently but tell him all the things that get under my skin about it that are now his fault.
Quite a productive weekend, thusfar!
I got three other movies besides Adaptation.
The Italian Job
Nothing happens in this movie. More accurately, nothing happens when I put this DVD into my computer. Shall suggest refund when I get to the store.
Since Lost in Translation was sold out, I went for a movie with a similar title, Lost Weekend. I'm not quite sure what to say about it. It's interesting watching a 1940's movie about alcoholism. The performances were great. My favorite character was probably Bim, the aggressive alkie-ward male nurse who likes to taunt new-guy residen Ray Milland with stories of all the little animals who are going to come to get him. ("Pink elephants are a bunk. It's always little animals, like monkeys coming through the keyholes...") I wonder if the male nurses still do this now. Oh, and of course when the little animals do show up one of them is obviously a rubber bat.
The other thing that struck me for some reason was when Bim is giving Don a little history about all the guys in the ward and he says a lot of them got started during Prohibition--those were the days, apparently, in the old alkie ward. I felt that line was also the universe's way of telling me to work on my own writing because the thing I'm trying to work on is connected to Prohibition in a certain way. I guess you're supposed to see Don as primarily and alcoholic but I kept identifying more with his desire and inability to be a writer. Who knew this would be such an interesting companion piece to Adaptation? Yes, when it comes down to it, writing can destroy you. Ray Milland ultimately decides he does want to live and be the "other Don" who is the author instead of the drinker. He's going to do it by writing about his Lost Weekend. There's something a little odd in the idea that you can make money off your addiction; it's sort of a pre-cursor to all those celebrity tell-all books. But of course it's also a long tradition. The key thing is that you have to have talent to write a good book about your addiction just as you need talent to write a good book about anything.
Since I love horror movies, it seemed like I should have seen this in the theaters, but here's the thing: I hate movies about plagues. (My roommate was shocked when she saw I had it for that reason--I didn't realize my dislike of plague movies was that noticeable.) Anyway, it's not all plague movies I hate, really. I may not like them, but there's a difference between not caring for them and having an aversion to them. People talk about 28 Days Later film as a zombie film, and in a certain sense it is, but I don't dislike all zombie films. I love Night of the Living Dead and I didn't mind that movie where Vincent Price is the last man on an earth overrun with vampires (don't like it much, but it doesn't upset me).
What really puts it over the line for me, though, is the monkeys. Any movie where an epidemic is started by some monkeys in a lab is going to upset me...in fact I have just now remembered one time when I was a kid and tried to read a book on lab animals and it gave me nightmares all night (a rare thing for me), although the nightmares were not about the lab animals at all, but about Carrie. Go figure.
Anyway, 28 Days Later has all the things I dislike. There's the monkeys in a lab infected with something so dangerous one bite (or not even a bite!) will destroy the planet, yet under less security than a hotel safe. Thus they can be gotten to by animal activists too stupid to understand contagion. The stupid animal activists are another pet peeve of mine. It's not that I don't respect a level of animal rights, it's just this stereotype of the people who see themselves as messiahs of animals who don't understand the real situation--that bugs me. So they bring the plague on themselves, both by creating it in the lab and by releasing it despite the fact that a doctor is telling them exactly what will happen if they do. Perhaps some sort of back up quarantine security might have been wise given the kind of contagion we're talking about?
And what a plague it is! Yes, it's the other thing I can't stand--human being infected with rage. Jacob's Ladder is one of my favorite movies, but I still can't really watch the opening scene where the soldiers may or may not be under the influence of a drug called "The Ladder" which turns them into mindlessly violent killers. Maybe this just taps into my old Angel Dust fears I had as a kid. Yes, I was afraid of Angel Dust as a kid. It was just in the news or something for a while when I was like 8 or so, and the idea of it horrified me. (That episode of CSI? Freaked me out, yes.) I guess this is also connected to my other childhood fear of The Exorcist, and Patty Hearst, two things I always linked together. That isn't as strange as it sounds when you think about it--they happened around the same time, when I was too young to really understand either, yet I guess I did get it on some level because of the whole normal girl turned into monster idea. To this day the name Tanya is scary to me. I used to think about what would happen if everybody around me suddenly turned into monsters, like my parents and such.
So thank you, 28 Days Later for not only giving me people reduced to mindless rage with which they get infected by monkeys in cages but a disease that is also spewed so that you don't even have to be bitten. Contact contagion--so much worse than the idea of an airbourne virus or something transmitted through biting! What does this director have against me????
So putting aside all that stuff that did roll around in my head while I was trying and failing to sleep, I guess the movie was okay. It's very paranoid and has a bleak view of human nature, though at least the main characters all have their heads on straight. They have a healthy and believeable attitude towards the infected--kill them quickly. That's the thing that annoys me about the sequels to Night of the Living Dead, the suggestion that people would sometimes hesitate to kill Grandpa or whoever because he used to be Grandpa. I was interested in the idea the movie offers that in this kind of society women would basically become sex objects as played out in the army compound. Disturbing but possible, I thought, given those guys.
Ultimately I'd say it's definitely a movie worthy of respect. I couldn't say I enjoyed it, but I'm glad I saw it. The characters, as I said, were, imo, likeable and interesting. It was especially nice to see intelligent female characters and even more shocking to see an intelligent young female character. I appreciate that. Also it's just very sad seeing London empty. Though I thought it was a bit odd that when Jim is first wandering around in an empty city he picks up a paper with EXODUS in the headline and then drops it impatiently. You'd think that would be worth at least skimming...
PT, at work, is a big fan of the zombie movie (he even has a little silver trowell given to him by Kyra Schon, the little girl from NotLD) and he said 28 Days Later was good. I trust his opinion. Now I can not only discuss the movie intelligently but tell him all the things that get under my skin about it that are now his fault.
Quite a productive weekend, thusfar!
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From:
no subject
I know exactly what you mean by having an aversion to plague/zombie movies. I love them and hate them at the same time. It's like you said, I don't enjoy watching them (because they're too disturbing for me), but I love having seen them. There's just something so unsettling and horifying about something that spreads and no one has any control over. And then you end up alone with people trying to eat you on all sides and you can't do anything and it's just horrible. ;-;
And the soldiers scared the shit out of me as well. Nothing was wrong with them (they weren't infected), but they were still out of it, if you know what I mean. Everyone goes crazy except for the group of main characters, and that frustrates me and horrifies me.
Shawn of the Dead scared me quite a bit too. Yes, I am a little bit pathetic.
P.S. Have you seen the Ebola virus movie? (I'm guessing it's called 'Ebola' or maybe 'Airborne'...) With the monkeys? XD
Movies like that don't scare me as much (although they are disturbing), even though they deal with similar sort of things. They don't allow everyone in the world except for one group of people to become infected. And Ebola isn't something that makes you want to eat/destroy other people to make them like you. I don't think.
Also, I got a DVD the other day with 3 movies on it and immediately thought of you. It has in it The Little Shop of Horrors, Night of the Living Dead (the original) and House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price. :D
From:
no subject
I avoid all Ebola virus movies like...well, like the plague. Or the Ebola virus.:-D
Ooh! Good DVD. I've seen all three! A friend just taped "The House That Dripped Blood" and lent it to me. I'm going to watch it today. The most exciting thing was it was on AMC and in the taped commercials she said she taped the commercial she and I did for it! I've never seen it, so I'm excited to find it on the tape.:-)
From:
no subject
You're braver then me, then. :) I hate zombies. The inferi in HBP traumatised me.
Eventually I thought that it was kind of good to be one of the zombies, because then you'd have nothing to be scared of anymore.
Yep, totally. But you still can't really abandon your survival instincts, which is frustrating.
The most exciting thing was it was on AMC and in the taped commercials she said she taped the commercial she and I did for it! I've never seen it, so I'm excited to find it on the tape.:-)</b. wow, cool! :) By the way, I just saw your question on Adela's post on H/G about anti-h/g the community. It's fun and there's a lot of mocking and snarking. And it's just good to go there and rant every once in a while. I used to think that you weren't the sort of person who would enjoy things like that (which are a bit immature haha), but now that I know you a bit better, I think you might like it. That wasn't meant to be offensive in any way. ;) Just try it, in any case, and if you can't stand it, you can always leave, haha. All sorts of people post there, not just shippers, so it's good. I think in the poll we had, most people don't even ship any of the main fandom het ships. Mostly everyone voted for 'other'.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I used to think that you weren't the sort of person who would enjoy
things like that (which are a bit immature haha), but now that I know you
a bit better, I think you might like it. That wasn't meant to be
offensive in any way. ;)
LOL! I know what you mean.:-) Sometimes you do just have to have a place to rant. Or be assured you're not crazy.
From:
no subject
Well, I hope to see you in anti-h/g, then. ;)
Glad you got the whole comment in your email.