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Sunday, July 10, 2005

"When they said repent, I wonder what they meant."
- Leonard Cohen, "The Future"


Let me get this straight. This month Steven Spielberg made a creepier movie than George Romero? Welcome to crazy world. i saw "War of the Worlds" and, besides a lame ending that comes straight from the book, it's a pretty effective two hours of dread. you got aliens grinding up people and spraying blood across the country-side to help cultivate their sinister red weeds (although you tragically never get to see them smoke it), you got a death ray that detonates people like the Evil Dude's minions in "Time Bandits" (only not as funny), you got a cage on the backs of the pleasingly low-tech war machines that holds mobs of screaming people, waiting for their turn to get sucked into a pulsing alien sphincter.

and what does George give us? "sky flowers?" I mean, fireworks. and sympathetic zombies that only eat the bad guys. and an ending that has the hero laying down his rockets and letting the zombies go, muttering "they're not worth it" wait, that was the shitty ending to "Roadhouse!" remember, after Swayze KILLS like 10 bad guys, he gets to the main bad guy and says "nope, can't do it" the pile of corpses he left in his wake was probably like, "hey! wish your guilt would have stopped you from ripping my throat out earlier, yo!" anyway, that's what happens. the hero really does decide to "live and let live" at the end of what should have been the most apocalyptic disturbing zombie opus of all time. instead it's not as good as the new "Dawn of the Dead." hell, it's not even as good as "Shaun of the Dead." hell, i'm starting to wonder if Joe Piscipo's "Dead Heat" zombie cops-n-robbers shitfest actually gives George a run for his money. at least those movies all had the balls to actually disturb and kill main characters at will. i don't know what George was thinking. maybe it was because there's this appreciation for the zombie "Bub" in "Day of the Dead" and he mistook that for people wanting the zombies to spend a whole movie gazing at fireworks, or sloooowly trying to play with slot machines, or sloooowly trying to play a broken videogame, or sloooooowly trying to wipe their ass...slowly realizing they aren't done shitting....then sloooowly wiping their ass again. i know everyone loves to say, "look at his satire of SOCIETY, what a master of irony! that zombie is still carrying a baseball mitt! holy fuck, i get it!!! we're ALL zombies!" we got the joke years ago.

same with Spielburg's movie actually. his movie isn't perfect either. he has the little girl yell, "is it the terrorists?" (never mind that she must be home-schooled to be dumb enough to believe Bin Laden finally got his LASERS working) and suddenly all the critics are declaring they've cracked the secret of its timely anti-war message like they solved the math problem off the chalk board in "Good Will Hunting." uh, shit blows up...terrorists blew shit up...i get it! actually, if they think about it for five goddamn seconds they'd realize that the only parallel to real life is the fact that the "suicide bomber" in the movie was Tom Cruise. he's the only person to do any damage (before God steps down to wrap things up, of course) by doing something that could only be described as a desperate act of martydom against a huge overpowering enemy. so the message is...suicide bombers good? terrorists bad? no, the message is both obvious and meaningless. the only reason to enjoy this movie is to watch a man run around and try not to get killed by big monsters crashing through treetops. and how about that noise they were making? this might be the best Godzilla movie never made.

you know, "The Aviator," besides being rather dull and obvious and having DiCaprio's face on the box resemble a giant fetus, has much more effective anti-war statements in it. they accuse Hughes of being a "war-profiteer" and, unlike the Republican wannabes in our midst who think if they pretend they're rich, someday they might be rich, this label is considered a BAD thing.

anyway, it's depressing that you can't count on a zombie to be scary in a movie by George Romero. gotta go clean the cat box.

wait, one last thing. because of the London attacks, on the news they were talking about how they've increased security for this Air Show in Pittsburgh and how they've tripled the military around the show and blah fucking blah and i started thinking how eager people are to pretend they're important enough to be in danger. this sorry-ass Air Show is going to be a big terrorist target? they wish it was. next there will be a garrison of troops around one of these stupid plastic dinosaurs sculptures that are on every corner. the whole thing is kind of sad and it reminds me of an ugly girl carrying mace around like anyone would really try to rape her.

::: david - 1:21 PM [+] :::
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