Self-loathing morbid curiosity: why I watch horror movies

Posted on October 31, 2012 by wellsdc

“Self-loathing morbid curiosity.” That was my answer when someone asked me why I watch movies like Hostel and Piranha 3-D when I so obviously hate them.

Halloween is the time of year when cable TV runs marathons of various horror movie franchises, and I seem to find myself drawn in even when I can’t actually stand watching. This is not limited to the Halloween season for me, though. I occasionally find myself watching bad knock-off slasher films on Chiller, or second-rate horror movies on HBO. Not too long ago, I was flipping channels and came across the beginning of Final Destination 5. Perhaps it was the sight of Dave Koechner getting covered in hot tar while dangling from a bridge (yea, that was a spoiler, but it happened in the first ten minutes), but the next thing I knew, I had watched the whole damn thing. I admire the creativity the writers have shown in killing off characters across five movies, but I have to wonder if that creativity could be better spent elsewhere.

At least the Final Destination films show some creativity, albeit of the most formulaic sort. The Saw films made a valiant effort to maintain a complex continuity across seven films, and it required a new sort of suspension of disbelief. Rather than forcing the audience to believe that a slow-moving berserker could deftly pursue sprinting teenagers, the Saw films asked us to believe that a cancer-ridden civil engineer could build, maintain, and oversee multiple Rube Goldberg-esque schemes, both from his deathbed and from beyond the grave, with only the help of a handful of emotionally crippled proteges who remained unaware of one another’s involvement. That’s far less plausible than a burly masked man keeping pace, at a walk, with a sprinting eighteen year-old, but it is at least slightly more engaging for the higher functions of the brain. Continue reading →

Halloween Reading Material, 2012

Posted on October 31, 2012 by wellsdc

Back in the day, I used to do a round-up of horror movies around Halloween. This year, I’m sharing a new medium of horror story. Horror comics aren’t new, obviously, and you would think that horror webcomics are generally a derivative of that medium.

This one is different. Trust me.

Keep the sound on, and scroll sloooowwwwwllllyyyyyy through Bongcheon-Dong Ghost by HORANG, easily the spookiest comic I’ve read in any medium. It only takes a couple minutes, but you won’t forget it.

Via Lauren Davis at io9:

Scroll down slowly and keep the sound on as you read this Korean comic—often called the scariest webcomic of all time—based on an urban legend. A young girl is walking home alone one night when she spots a woman limping ahead of her, and gets a horrifying lesson in why you shouldn’t talk to dead strangers.

Happy Halloween.

Photo credit: Bongcheon-Dong Ghost Manhwa, via mangapark.com.

“Here, have a taco”

Posted on October 26, 2012 by wellsdc

With the news of Meat Loaf’s endorsement of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, it may be worth taking a moment to remember his finest performance. While Meat Loaf has undoubtedly had a distinguished career, it was his duet with Chef for 1998’s Chef Aid album that stands above all the rest, including his consumption of an animated taco on a two-dimensional stage.

South Park – Chef Aid – Tonight Is Right for Love from Stanley Trent on Vimeo.

Fun SciFi Trivia: 2001 Originally Had Nukes in Space

Posted on October 8, 2012 by wellsdc

MatchCut Remember the early scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey when the newly-smartened proto-hominid beats the leader of the competing pack to death with a bone, throws the bone up in the air, and the bone turns into a spaceship? Did you know that spaceship was originally supposed to be an orbiting nuclear weapons platform?

I just though that was an interesting bit of trivia. The film originally set up a continued nuclear stalemate between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and the first spaceship we see was meant to be a missile launcher. At the end, when Dave Bowman appears above Earth as the Starchild, he was going to detonate all the nukes in orbit, which I guess was meant to bring Peace on Earth. Or a massive EMP returning Earth to the Stone Age. One of those, probably.

Anyway, Stanley Kubrick’s most recent film at the time was 1964’s Dr. Strangelove, so he was kind of over telling Cold War nuke stories. As Wikipedia says:

Another holdover of discarded plot ideas is with regard to the famous match-cut from prehistoric bone-weapon to orbiting satellite, followed sequentially by views of three more satellites. At first, Kubrick planned to have a narrator state explicitly that these were armed nuclear weapon platforms while speaking of a nuclear stalemate between the superpowers.^[60]

This would have foreshadowed the now-discarded conclusion of the film showing the Star Child’s detonating all of them.^[61] Piers Bizony, in his book 2001 Filming The Future, stated that after ordering designs for orbiting nuclear weapon platforms, Kubrick became convinced to avoid too many associations with Dr. Strangelove, and he decided not to make it so obvious that they were “war machines”.^[62]

Alexander Walker, in a book he wrote with Kubrick’s assistance and authorization, described the bone as “transformed into a spacecraft of the year A.D. 2001 as it orbits in the blackness around Earth”, and he stated that Kubrick eliminated from his film the theme of a nuclear stalemate between the United States and the Soviet Union, each with a globe-orbiting nuclear weapons. Kubrick now thought this had “no place at all in the film’s thematic development”, with the bombs now becoming an “orbiting red herring”. Walker further noted that some filmgoers in 1968-69 would know that an agreement had been reached in 1967 between the powers not to put any nuclear weapons into outer space, and that if the film suggested otherwise, it would “merely have raised irrelevant questions to suggest this as a reality of the twenty-first century”.^[63]

In the Canadian TV documentary 2001 and Beyond, Dr. Clarke stated that not only was the military purpose of the satellites “not spelled out in the film, there is no need for it to be”, repeating later in this documentary that “Stanley didn’t want to have anything to do with bombs after Dr. Strangelove”.^{[64] Continue reading →}

A Very NSFW Charity Campaign

Posted on October 6, 2012 by wellsdc

The internet has brought a near-inifinte set of methods to raise money for charities. There are so many worthwhile charities in the world, it can be hard to decide where to contribute. Fortunately, the internet is here to propose clever solutions. As but one example, are you looking for a way to support breast cancer research? Do you not want to donate to Komen because of all that stuff they did? Do you like breasts in a possibly socially-inappropriate way? Via imgur, we have the following:

For the month of October, PornHub is donating 1 cent for every 30 views from its big tit and small tit categories to breast cancer research.

Sure enough, if you go to PornHub’s Save the Boobs page (do I need to actually tell you these links are not-work-safe? Didn’t think so) you will find the above message. The total number of videos viewed (I’m not sure if that’s all videos or just the ones that directly contribute to the campaign) has already gone into octuple-digits (I’ve actually seen the number go up by more than 1,000 in the few minutes it has taken me to write this post). I’m kind of amazed more charities don’t do this.

The rub, of course (double entendre alert!) is this: where will they be donating the money that the viewers, ahem, raise? They don’t say. The page just says they will donate to “a breast cancer research charity.” As of the moment I’m writing this, the tally on the site says 11,766,918 (actually, it just went up again, but let’s stick with this number.) If they donate $0.01 for every thirty videos viewed, that would be a total of $3,922.31 so far. Not exactly overwhelming, but not nothing. Keep in mind, of course, that I am writing this at noon on Friday, October 5. If we assume the daily rate holds steady, that’s about 2,614,871 views per day. Over the month of October, that’s 81,061,001 views, for a total donation of $27,020.33. Considering this would all be accomplished without actually doing anything, that ain’t bad. Continue reading →

This Week in WTF, October 5, 2012

Posted on October 5, 2012 by wellsdc

– A college student at the University of Tennessee required hospitalization with a 0.448 blood alcohol level (you read that right) obtained via an “alcohol enema” (you also read that right). As if that wasn’t bad enough, the alcohol administered to the common-sense-challenged frat boy was Franzia Sunset Blush wine. You think you’re hardcore, kid? In my day, we drank Boone’s, and we put it in our mouths.

– A Ukrainian teenager really likes anime. I mean, she really, really likes it, so much so that she has turned herself into an anime character, mostly with makeup. It’s…….uncanny.

– This is from a month ago, but it’s worth mentioning. As if living in Mississippi weren’t bad enough, and living in Mississippi during Hurricane Isaac weren’t even worse, try to imagine living among thousands of dead nutria washed ashore by the storm. Or, you know, don’t try to imagine that. (No disrespect intended towards the good people of Mississippi with that jab at your state. It’s the bad people I was addressing.)

– A Supervisor in San Francisco wants to ban nudity in public spaces.

San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener plans to tell nudists to butt out of public plazas and other spots through legislation he is introducing at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.

The District 8 supervisor Weiner said he planed to introduce legislation Tuesday that would prohibit display of one’s genitals and buttocks on sidewalks, plazas and aboard public transit.

The proposal calls for a $100 fine for the first offense, $200 for the second and a possible misdemeanor charge for a third. Nudity would still be allowed at events such as the Folsom Street Fair, Pride Parade and Bay to Breakers run.

First off, his name is Weiner. Tee hee. Second, you mean this isn’t already illegal in San Francisco? I feel like such a prude…

– In Oregon, a 70 year-old farmer went out to feed his hogs and never came back. Because they ate him. That’s it, I’m done for this week.

We have quite a bit of post-apocalyptic or dystopian SF about the U.S., but what about everyone else?

Posted on October 1, 2012 by wellsdc

1153288_52572910 I came across this brief post as I was scrolling through Tumblr entitled “I still wonder what happened to the rest of the world in The Hunger Games”:

Do they still have meetings and stuff?
France: Anyone heard from America lately?
Mexico: Same old, same old. They’re still sending out children to fight to the death in a reality show.
UK: Shouldn’t we do something about that?
China: Just leave them, at least they’re not annoying us.

We have a rather extensive set of post-apocalyptic or dystopian speculative fiction set within the boundaries of the United States or North America, but not much looking at such an America from the outside. Speculative fiction, by offering a view of a possible future, is often the best vehicle for commenting on or criticizing today’s political, economic, or social realities. Think of how much social commentary the original Star Trek was able to accomplish by setting its stories in a quasi-utopian future humanity. I too wonder what a post-disaster U.S. would look like from a non-U.S. perspective, particularly one from the “developing world.”

In terms of post-apocalyptic or dystopian future Americas, aside from The Hunger Games, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road comes to mind, along with alternate history works like Harry Turtledove’s “Timeline-191” series and about half the episodes of the TV show Sliders. Then there are TV shows like Jericho, which portrayed a modern-day nuclear attack, and Terra Nova, which was set 85 million years ago but centered around a dangerously polluted 22nd-century America. The new ABC show Last Resort, about which I will probably write more later, depicts a potentially dystopian contemporary or near-future United States. These all focus on America itself, though.

Robert Silverberg’s Time of the Great Freeze takes place during a future Ice Age, where ice sheets have covered much of North America. The protagonists leave their underground city in North America after picking up a radio signal from the London area, intending to cross the ice sheet over the Atlantic. The book mentions that, with much of Europe, North America, and East Asia covered in ice, the equatorial nations of South America, Africa, and Asia have become dominant world powers. It still doesn’t tell us anything about life in those places.

The Brits Seem to Have No Problem Blowing Us Up in Fiction

The best examples I can think of, that deal with the rest of the world, should the United States go all post-apocalyptic or dystopian, come from Great Britain or other English-speaking countries. The films V for Vendetta and Children of Men both came out around the same time in 2005 or 2006. Both are set in the relatively-near future: V for Vendatta mentions the year 2015 as the not-too-distant past, and Clive Owen’s character in Children of Men wears an extremely ratty London 2012 Olympics sweatshirt for much of the film. Both films reference events in “the former United States,” and both depict a UK turned to dictatorship in one form or another. Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, set in Australia, shows a U.S. devastated by nuclear war. Continue reading →

Distraction-Free Football in Missouri

Posted on September 30, 2012 by wellsdc

Photo by Eric Blumberg. What were we talking about?

I came across this mildly amusing story during my daily wanderings of the internet (much of which I get paid for, which still blows my mind…) This occurred back in August.

Missouri head football coach Gary Pinkel must be taking the Tigers’ move to the SEC very seriously.

So seriously that, apparently, he feels the presence of coeds at his practices to be an unwelcome distraction for his team.

Sports reporter Eric Blumberg of KOMU-TV in Columbia tweeted a photo on Wednesday morning of two women in athletic shorts and sports bras running stairs at Faurot Field. Blumberg says that a Missouri coach asked the two women to “come back later.”

As has been pointed out on Twitter, maybe the coaching staff feared these were SEC spies.

Coach Pinkel apparently viewed the women as a distraction.

This might not have been such an auspicious start for Mizzou’s entry into the SEC. I don’t really know anything about college football conferences. Apparently the major teams in the South are in either the SEC or the ACC, and I have no mnemonic device to remember which schools are in which conference.

I did confirm that Florida State, the school that produced Jenn Sterger, is in the ACC, so Mizzou players will not have to worry about distractions from the likes of her. That is not intended in any way to impugn the fans of the SEC, of course. It just got me wondering, if Mizzou players are distracted by two women running bleachers in sports bras, how do they handle game days?

In the interest of science, and because I am terrible at valuing my own time, I did a quick Google search for “Missouri football fans” and “SEC football fans,” to see how much distraction Mizzou can expect to face from now on. It was, uh, distracting. Continue reading →

Generalissimo Romney

Posted on September 20, 2012 by wellsdc

Via Huffington Post

The latest gaffe (metedura de pata en español) from the Romney camp involves a question of skin tone. I honestly cannot believe I am writing this.

Mitt Romney appeared to be a touch more tanned during an TV interview for Spanish-language channel Univision on Wednesday, prompting suggestions the Republican leader had piled on the make up to make himself more appealing to Latino voters.

I desperately want to call bullshit on this, so that I may continue to cling to a modicum of sanity in this world.

I’m not the only one. Adam Mordechai at Upworthy posits a few hypotheses, and I fully expect to see some good SNL skits about this soon. I just have two comments to direct to the floundering presidential candidates.

1. Don’t refer to anyone as an “illegal alien.” I would say don’t do that on Univision (seriously, what is wrong with you?) in particular, but just don’t say it anywhere.

2. You’ve got a meme here, Señor. I say own it. If you have the ability to transition between former Massachusetts Governor Romney and Generalissimo Romney, you need to own that shit. You might not be the first Generalissimo, but you could be the greatest.

Ten years later, you still can’t take the sky from me

Posted on September 20, 2012 by wellsdc

Ten years ago today, a Golden Age of television began. Though it only lasted three months, we still feel its impact today. I am talking, of course, about the premiere of Joss Whedon’s Firefly on September 20, 2002.

There is no way to do the show justice in the format of a blog post. Since it was one of the most quotable shows in television history, I’ll let the coda of the pilot episode, “Serenity,” speak for me. (For those unfamiliar with the show, Captain Malcolm Reynolds commands a Firefly-class ship named Serenity. He has taken on two fugitives, a young doctor and his sister, who are on the run from the fascist-like Alliance. In the final scene of the pilot, Mal has offered the doctor, Simon, and his sister a place on the ship):

Simon: I’m trying to put this as delicately as I can… How do I know you won’t kill me in my sleep?

Mal: You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake, you’ll be facing me, and you’ll be armed.

Simon: Are you always this sentimental?

Mal: I had a good day.

Simon: You had the Alliance on you… criminals and savages… half the people on the ship have been shot or wounded, including yourself… and you’re harboring known fugitives.

Mal: We’re still flying.

Simon: That’s not much.

Mal: It’s enough.

Click to embiggen

The show had a small following during its run, myself included, and I tried to do my part to support it. Perhaps one of my most-prized possessions is this thank-you note I received from the “Cast & Crew” of the show. It would have been cooler if they had all signed it, but I’m not really that greedy.

Firefly‘s release on DVD brought it much of its fame. That, and the anguished cries of people who never saw it on television yet wanted to know how such a good show could have such a short run. I suspect Firefly‘s DVD popularity helped prove the viability of releasing whole TV seasons (or shows) as DVD sets. Fan pressure even helped get a feature film made that, disappointingly but aptly, wrapped up some of the longer threads of the series. (Fun fact: the dead city on the planet Miranda in the movie is actually a high school campus in Pomona, California.)

It would make me sound like an annoying Whedon fanboy to say that Firefly was ahead of its time, that the television-watching masses were not ready for this type of show, or that Fox condemned the show from the start with bad marketing and scheduling. All of those things are true to some extent, but let’s just take a moment to appreciate that good television shows do exist. As that guy in Blade Runner said, the light that shines twice as bright only burns half as long. That quote probably applies here somehow.

Cryptic Philosopher

Die Fleem ees Okey-Dokey!

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