I actually liked Se7en, myself, but I haven't seen the Game yet. I liked Panic Room.

I take your hate with a grain of salt.

What you must remember is that you are a wrongheaded crackpot about such things, and I am not. I am always right.

The first time I saw Se7en, I walked in late and only saw the last 20 minutes (in which we get not only supercrazycalm Kevin Spacey, but also Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box). And I thought it was fucking brilliant.

Then I saw the whole thing, and I realized how completely mundane the movie is. (And since it doesn't realize it's mundane, it's doubly pretentious.) Very disappointing.

I have a thing for "American Justice" on A&E. Last week, they had a case where a woman was kidnapped and turned into a sex slave for 7 years. One of the things her captors did to her was retrofit their waterbed to hold a drawer in the base that this woman had to stay in when she wasn't performing sex acts or doing the dishes. She called it "the box."

"What's in the box? What's in the box?" became the saying of the evening again.

Se7en distrurbed me like Angel Heart disturbed me, which I guess means they both did their job.

Except for the abysmal acting in Angel Heart, I could not look at the 'craft' of either of the films because I was too busy covering my eyes or concentrating on keeping down my lunch.

Put me off my feed for three days.

Not in a good way, like The Fly. (I like both versions but the Jeff Goldbloom one actually made me queasy.) That was a gleeful creep out.

Hmph.

So the Shyamalan expose was a hoax.

Soon, there will be no actual news. Only mocku-trash.
Oh, wait that may already be the case.

Then again, I've gotta check the hypocracy meter because I loved Peter Jackson's Forgotten Silver .

Stroke of genius, that was. so I'm not sure why the SciFi 'publicity stunt gone too far' ticks me off so much.

No, I know why. One was in good fun and the other used 'tragedy' to dupe people. Feh.

Se7en distrurbed me like Angel Heart disturbed me, which I guess means they both did their job.

What's so impressive to me about Se7en is that it is frequently touted as an extremely violent movie, which is untrue. There are exactly two instance of on-screen violence in the movie, and they are both very tame.

The closest the movie comes to that is some not very graphic hints of dead bodies and crime scenes. Even those are tame, and much more is suggested than is shown.

What causes people to come away thinking it's a very violent or graphic film is that in all these scenes of the aftermath of intense violence, Pitt and Freeman are completely undisturbed by what is, to the rest of us, very disturbing. This sets up a jarring cognitive dissonance for many viewers, insisting that they fill in the blanks.

There's a great story that Fincher relates on the commentary to Se7en, where he talks about a woman coming up to him at a party and brow beating him for "showing everybody the woman's head in the box at the end."

He tried to explain to her that she was very mistaken, that they never actually show her head in the box (and they don't), but the woman was having none of that -- she knew what she'd seen.

So the Shyamalan expose was a hoax.

Not to pick on you, but you honestly thought otherwise? This is the same network that ran a "documentary" about the film students who got lost in the woods, which the "true story" of Blair Witch Project was based on.

I knew from the moment they started running adds for that Shyamalan "expose" that it was a hoax.

In an odd coincidence, I passed a mini-yard sale where a guy is selling his single-disc DVD of Seven for five bucks. I'm tempted to buy it, but there are zero extras.

I'm tempted to buy it, but there are zero extras.

Nah, if your going to get Se7en on DVD, pick up the New Line Platinum two disk set.

It's got great commentary from Finch, Freeman and Pitt on one track, Finch, the DP and the Production Designer, and one from Finch, wri9ter Andrew Kevin Walker and author Richard Dyer where they talk about genre, the look and structure of the film, and their presentation of evil.

Plus there's a whole other commentary by Fincher, Dyer, Sound Designner Ren Klyce, and composer Howard Shore on the sound design/music of the film, and how that effects the mood of the picture.

It's some great commentary.

I have to say that SciFi doc smelled like a hoax to me from the beginning. I've been watching their corp hijinks from the outside for a while, and it seemed like the natural extension of their skating up to the edge marketing style.

Stupid, tasteless, and hopefully earning them a bite in the corporate ass, but completely in line with expectations.

Yeah, the Fight Club single-disc edition at least has all four commentary tracks, so I'm okay with it. One day, I want to get the second disc, with all the behind-the-scenes stuff.