This Things I Believe *

8.26.10

3:44 pm

My milk starts to go bad in three days.

Last night I watched the movie Little Children.

It was very Happiness.

Like comedy so black it wasn't really comedy.

It wasn't as funny as Happiness and there were less so-awkward-you-die moments, but it shared several elements, including the actress that played Joy in Happiness. She was doing her usual fragile, damaged, birdlike thing. In fact, based on what she said in Little Children, this might have actually been the character from Happiness.

And, knowing that, the terrible thing that happens to her is made hilarious (in a Happiness sort of way...it's still pretty horrible no matter how you slice it).

The actor that played Rorschach in Watchmen plays a child molester (exposing yourself to kids, that's child molesting, right? There's not some other, more PC term?) and does a great job of it, not over the top at all. Just as in Happiness, the film doesn't seek to make the child molester look bad (something not all that hard to do) but to humanize him, not that he was falsely accused or anything, he did what he was accused of and does some stuff in this movie that is hella creepy.

An odd addition, maybe from the book, I'm not sure, was the voice of a narrator. It was sparsely used, but a bit distracting at times.

In the end, everything that needs to happen happens (sort of) and everyone learns a lesson, usually a painful one.

Jennifer Connelly looks a little like an alien in it and Kate Winslet is getting more and more naked.

Both are...off putting in their own special ways.

Before I watched Little Children, I tried to watch the latest entry in the Romero Dead Trilogy**, Survival of the Dead.

*sigh*

When Land of the Dead came out, Philip happened to be in New York so we went and saw it in the theaters. This was the first Romero "Dead" movie since Day of the Dead and we were jazzed.

Mr. Zombie was adding a fourth installment to his pivotal, genre-defining series.

And it blew dead goats.

A lot of the effects were digital, bad digital, a HUGE slap in the face to the practical magic of Tom Savini, the plot was vaguely interesting until you met the larger than life characters and found out that THE ZOMBIES WERE LEARNING AND REMEMBERING.

George...no they weren't.

They CAN'T.

That's the point, they are an unstoppable army of corpses, they aren't remembering shit!

They are here to consume you and your shitty retcon!

So that was a bummer.

The guy who started a movement, succumbing to the clichés plaguing that movement.

Years later (about ten after the Blair Witch Project shocked and terrified the nation), Mr. Romero thought it would be cool to meld two dead things (zombies and first person perspective filmmaking) into one smelly bag of decay.

And he did so with Diary of the Dead.

*double sigh*

I downloaded this one and got exactly what I paid for.

A bunch of idiot kids decided that "people need to see this!!!!!!!!!!" and grab a camcorder, as if fucking anyone in the whole zombie-riddled world wasn't seeing this...

A side note, the kind of sentiment behind this, that people "need to see" the Zombie Apocalypse, that someone might have missed it, is the same sentiment behind people showing footage of the fucking Twin Towers going down while chanting "never forget". Who, in the blue FUCK, is going to forget something like this?!

Anyway, while on their journeys, this intrepid bunch of kids gets pulled over by some folks wearing Army uniforms (mistake number one in the world of the Zombie Apocalypse). They board their RV and take all their shit, then disappear. The movie continues to slouch on until it finally falls dead, its brain destroyed.

Then.

2010.

(Hopefully) the final sigh...Survival of the Dead.

*triple sigh*

Downloaded this one as well (call it a funny feeling...).

This movie is allll about those asshole solders who took those kids for everything they had.

I got about thirty minutes in before realizing I'd rather be killed and eaten by zombies than watch the rest.

Imagine a bad movie with a random character.

Now imagine a worse movie all about that random character?

These are the kind of movies that should NOT be made.

George, you listening?

Funny thing is, I used to work for the producer of these last few films, Peter Grunwald, and I could, conceivably, call him (I still have his cell) and just ask him why he thought these were a good idea.

I could.

Would it be a horrible, perhaps career ending move?

Perhaps.

But would it be funny?

Not as much as I'd think.

And plus, this guy knows Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, so I'm not jeopardizing that.

I'm one degree away from Shaun of the Dead, yo!

Can't fuck that up...

Anyway.

Don't watch any Romero movies with "dead" in the title if they were made after 1991.

Night of the Living Dead, the remake directed by Tom Savini, is excellent and is the last good zombie movie Romero is associated with, unless he had something to do with the Dawn of the Dead remake as well, which was also excellent.

Phil and I started writing a zombie movie while sitting in Doc Brown's on the upper east side one afternoon, but it devolved quickly when George Michael then Prince came on the jukebox and it became a satire seconds later.

One day, my friend...one day...

* Super obscure Simpsons reference = !!!POINTS!!!

**This one makes six.