No More HALLOWEEN or Remakes For Zombie - Sep 08, 2007 - 08:41am
Truth is relative! And all things proceed from our own vision! This is the problem with reboots, remakes, sequels, prequels, comic book movies opr anything that has a lot of fans. It becomes the artistic creative vision of the director and others involved in creating that film vs the vision of what the individual(s) wants or hopes to see in this. Preconceived notions are very often the enemy of such films. Whether or not you or I or anyone else including the box office says the film is good or bad does not necessarily make it so. As far as our own personal collection of good and bad ok, but that is different for each and every one of us and we could debate differences until doomsday with nothing accomplished whatsoever. A scary movie: I personally have not been scared by any film in ages. Perhaps it is that over time I have become too jaded or whatever. I might get an occasional shock moment or I might find something slightly disturbing. Suspense sometimes can for a bit. But when I was a kid almost all of it was scary. Horror: I read somewhere that horror films constituted all the monster films. So Frankenstein, Wolfman, Godzilla, Michael Myers etc. I guess that is one definition, but isn't horror that which horrifies? I personally am not so horrified by these monsters today, but I imagine I was at one time. Horror then includes that which is disturbing, exploitation films and that which we find done very horribly it depends on what is shocking to you. From what I gather this would then have to be called horror even if you also call it exploitation. What is good: The definition of good for any individual is determined by religion, our parents, teachers, society, government etc. There are about as many definitions of that as there are people. Again this is relative truth. The only absolute truth on what is good is determined by God if one even believes in God, but then we can study absolute truth in all the holy writings, which are supposedly from God or inspired by God or some such and then you might have some idea on absolute good. Under this definition of good (and this is debatable or subject to interpretation - relative) then any film defined as horror is by definition not good and then the debate only comes down to whether an individual person liked it or not. Now I don't know if the box office is any true representation, but a lot of people went to see it somehow with the idea that they were going to or at least might like this film. It is now apparent that this is one film where the build up was such that they actually got a relatively large number of people who did not like this film to go and see it. Thus there is controversy with some folks who did not like it arguing about what a pile it was vs those who happened to like it. And that can get emotional with personal attacks and such. Hey it can be emotional for some people when they waste their time and money on something they did not enjoy. What a horror! Yup, this is a horror film and yup it did exploit a lot of people and yup it served it's purpose and that was to make money for the film company. Some of you should feel so used and emotional and maybe this will help you avoid future mistakes. For the rest it is good that you enjoyed yourselves. I guess for you the film was so not good (in that absolute sense) that it was fun, interesting or whatever even good in that relative sense to you personally. Whether this is an important film or classic or cult film or whatever time will tell. Perhaps it will just slide into obscurity, but I rather doubt it.

---

Katie Holmes as WONDER WOMAN? - Aug 19, 2007 - 10:32am
Oh my gosh! Do not even take this even slightly serious. A studio would have to be insane to do this. Sure it couldn't help but be great for her career, but this is even sillier than the Katherine McPhee idea. With Katherine we have the big risk than she might not be able to act. And here I haven't really cared about Katie since Disturbing Behavior. Of course this brings up once again everyone listing off their own personal favorites for the part. We have our Buffy girl. We have our Firefly/Serenity and Stargate girl. We have our Matrix girl. Our X-Men girl. Our Van Helsing and Underworld girl. We have Xena. We have the Queen of Swords and we have others more obscure to the genre. All of these would have been ok in their day, but they have proved themselves as something else at a time when they were not known and now again we need someone new that is not known as something else already. I know the studio is tempted to go with some level of star power, but realistically to turn this into a franchise that can last ten or more years over 3-5 films before you have to change to a new actress you need someone young who is also everything Wonder Woman has to be. There is probably not a woman alive that can satisfy all the requirements for this part and satisfy everyone. I personally did not like Lynda Carter much, but she was ok and satisfy enough of us. She was an unknown at the time too. If you are just going for a one shot movie sure you could go with Charisma (I only mention her first because her fans seem to be the most rabid) or Morena or Monica or Rachelle or Shari or Rebecca or Evangeline or Lucy or Tessie or Shannon or Paz or Kate or whomever else you want (I think there were a couple others who were mentioned last time). I say bring 'em all in and have a nice amazon competition between them all at the beginning before the real Diana wins out. I love them all! You could even have Lynda play her mom. Whoever she is needs to be of some kind of Mediterranean descent and yet seem all-American enough. She needs to be statuesque in a classic sense and behave as royalty and as a strong woman. She is like a goddess and virtuous. All the lowly stuff is beneath her and yet she is not well versed in the ways of the current American world, so you have a certain naivety about that, but not necessarily innocence. It's sort of like Crocodile Dundee in the city where he does what he knows is right and learns from his experiences in the city and yet is not changed by them.

---

Pictures of Romero's DIARY OF THE DEAD - Aug 11, 2007 - 08:59am
Oh! We can call this the experimental side story to Night of the Living Dead. It's still low budget, but then sort of weirdly updated for today rather than back in the day. The whole thing just reminds me of Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. I just hope it doesn't feel much like the Blair Witch Project. These shots look alright. Guess we don't have so very long to find out.

---