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San Francisco, 7:09 AM
Sat Nov 21
26 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/20/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/19/09
11/20/09
#calendar
11/20/09
no translation error:
"slaves in harness and piled with goods of war and after that the women, perhaps a dozen in number, some of them pregnant, and lastly a supplementary consort of catamites illclothed against the cold and fitted in dogcollars and yoked each to each. All passed on. They lay listening."
"A catamite is the younger, passive (anal recipient) partner in a pederastic relationship between a man and a boy, which was a popular arrangement in many areas of the ancient world."
#calendar
11/20/09
I read it in a dictionary
#calendar
11/20/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
of course they considered it, but the Cormac slapped him up side the head.
11/18/09
So I would of thought someone like Hillcoat would have recognized it as an untouchable moment that shouldn't be left out.
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/18/09
11/16/09
Sounds like I'll have to recruit some local IO9ers with whom to go see it. #theroad
11/16/09
11/16/09
11/16/09
11/16/09
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11/17/09
11/02/09
In Hollywood: not many. #theroad
11/02/09
11/01/09
The Shining also has that brutal moment that toys with hope - Dick makes the difficult journey from Florida to the Overlook and there's the brief second when you think Wendy and Danny are saved, which is all quickly dispatched with an axe. #heartbreakinghorror
11/01/09
I also watched Shaun of the Dead on DVD yesterday and I cried when Shaun has to kill his mom after she was transformed into a zombie. His stepfather had already transformed. That scene gets me everytime.
The Shining was one of the scariest films I have ever seen.
All good choices! #heartbreakinghorror
11/01/09
11/01/09
As Jean Cocteau put it:
"Tragedy is clean, it is restful, it is flawless. It has nothing to do with melodrama -- with wicked villains, persecuted maidens, avengers, sudden revelations and eleventh-hour repentances. Death, in a melodrama, is really horrible because it is never inevitable. The dear old father might so easily have been saved; the honest young man might so easily have brought in the police five minutes earlier.
In a tragedy, nothing is in doubt and everyone's destiny is known. That makes for tranquility. There is a sort of fellow-feeling among characters in a tragedy: he who kills is as innocent as he who gets killed: it's all a matter of what part you are playing. Tragedy is restful; and the reason is that hope, that foul deceitful thing, has no part in it. There isn't any hope. You're trapped. The whole sky has fallen on you, and all you can do about it is shout. Don't mistake me: I said 'shout': I did not say groan, whimper, complain. That, you cannot do. But you can shout aloud; you can get at all those things said that you never dared say--or never even knew till then. And you don't say these things because it will do any good to say them: you know better than that. You say them for their own sake; you say them because you learn a lot from them."
Now, that's great horror.
11/01/09
It's really a crushing film, emotionally. Plus it has vomit that eats peoples hands off. #heartbreakinghorror
11/02/09
11/02/09
11/01/09
In those classic horrors, the drama derived from the idea of a universe so frightfully full of meaning, where a very real battle between very real Good and Evil was going on, that the fate of each soul was of the most paramount importance. What happens to Mina, Frank Stanley, Larry Talbot, the Frankenstein Monster and the little girl he accidentally kills is really, really important. People are important.
In modern horror, we get the opposite senario, where the drama is supposed to be derived from the idea of a universe so frightfully devoid of meaning, where we're all just meatbags, that all that is left is the bittersweet curse of survival. But even the best examples of that begin with the premise that people are important in order to undermine it. We have to care about Ben in order to be horrified by what happens to him and what it means for us.
Too much modern horror forgets this and begins with the premise that people are not important so that it can entertain us with the creative ways in which it finds to destroy meaningless human lives. Who cares about the people killed by Michael Myers, Jigsaw or Roland Emmerich?
However, without getting real human characters, it's just pornography. It's bad drama. It's not horrifying... at best it's just gross. I personally can't stomach it because it's an outright affront to how I experience my own life and those of the people around me. Even the horror of it: to stop and really consider that each person you see on the commute to work has their own life, loves, tragedies, and hopes is frightening and beautiful all at once. People really are important. I can't pack that in to a film with characters who are less human than real people I know. #heartbreakinghorror
10/31/09
I can't tell you how many times I've tried to explain concepts like this to friends of mine. For me, watching horror films always evokes deep gut-wrenching sadness well before any feelings of fear.
I think for me, at core, it's the depictions of blatant, intense and miserable suffering. #heartbreakinghorror