I do have a serious question here, Jess. How can you hold Neil LaBute to being more offensive than Lars Von Trier (minus his earlier, more stylish movies)? At least Neil doesn't induce vomiting with his shakey-cam. I think they are both about equal in treating human beings like shit (with a special emphasis on women, possibly).
That's a fair question. I find Lars von Trier to be a cold and soulless human who also somehow manages to make brilliantly evocative films. I've never understood the misogyny charges against him (and here, I must make an aside, because I just went over to Google to check the spelling of misogyny, and the sponsored link on the sidebar was this:
Christian Men
Who Hate Women
Only $9.74. (or order used).
Amazon.com
..which was too funny not to share. Back to serious now.)
Anyway, the vibe I get off of Lars' films is that everyone is his puppet, and horrible things will happen to them. He's not a misogynist, he's a sociopath. He makes horrible things happen to women in his movies because, historically, women have had the short end of the stick, and so seeing them beaten down on film is that much harder to watch, and he wants his audience a broken bleeding shattered wreck. Why I find this fascinating rather than offensive probably has something to do with why I also identified so much with Anya over the years.
Neil LaButte, I think is a misogynist and a talentless hack. Everything about his films makes me want to hurt him, badly. (I've had people try to convince me that In The Company of Men was on the woman's side, but I'm not buying it. The vibe I get off his films is that he has never spoken to a woman in his life, and wouldn't bother wasting his time doing so if given the opportunity, because frankly, we're just not worth that much attention.)
The other thing is that Lars is pretty straightforward about his "dance, puppets!" attitude towards the rest of humanity. Neil seems to think he's actually a feminist.
The problem with him directing Wicker Man is that I've seen what his conception of feminism is, and my skin is crawling just trying to imagine what his concept of paganism is.
Saw
Spanglish
last night (hooray for free screeners). It was incredibly dreary.
The problem with him directing Wicker Man is that I've seen what his conception of feminism is, and my skin is crawling just trying to imagine what his concept of paganism is.
I'm dreading the new ending they probably tacked on, Where Cage's character breaks out of the wicker man, hunts down the leaders of the local pagans and stuffs them in the wicker man, and says, "Who's the Wicker Man now, bitch?" before lighting them all on fire and watching them die screaming.
But on the plus side, we'd then have a movie with the line "Who's the Wicker Man now, bitch?" in it.
Has this trailer to Hitchhiker's Guide been linked yet: [link] ?
If so, sorry. Go watch it again.
Splendid trailer! I am commencing to not panic just now.
Emmett and I just got back from
The Pacifier.
Analysis: A lot of stuff happened. Cute kids. Teen girl totally doing S1 Buffy. Also, Vin Diesel is occasionally shirtless, and Vin Diesel shirtless inspired audible gasps from most of the women and not a few of the men in the audience at the showing we attended, immediately followed by an awed, reverent hush. The same gasp-and-hush occurred very late in the film during a brief scene of Vin in a snug short-sleeved shirt snuzzling a giggling toddler. Oh, dear God, the pretty.
Plot, writing, directing, all very paint-by-numbers and banal and blatantly manipulative. But oh so pretty. And he doesn't suck as an actor, and Lorelai Gilmore is also much more splendid than this kind of a movie deserves.
Did I mention the shirtless? 'Cause, damn.
Also notable: on the way out, Emmett looked at the marquee above the door across the hall and said, "Hey, can we see
Million Dollar Baby
next time?"
"Uh, NO."
He gave me a cross look. "But WHYNOTWHY?"
I reeled it all off quickly: Violent, scary, sad, people dying, scary grown-up things to think about, why the hell would he want to see it anyway?
He gave me a
duh, like it's not obvious
look. "There's a scene where a young guy gets beat up by an old man. AND, the old man is played by the old man who played God in
Bruce Almighty!
That'd be so tight! I totally want to see that!"
Still, um, NO.
I just read over at Oscarwatch that Friday's Daily Mail reported a rumor of a movie version of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, directed by Sam Mendes, possibly starring Russell Crowe as Sweeney and maybe Imelda Stauton as Mrs. Lovett! I'd definitely see this.
The same gasp-and-hush occurred very late in the film during a brief scene of Vin in a snug short-sleeved shirt snuzzling a giggling toddler.
He apparently spent a lot of the time on the set playing with the kidlets and has now been gushing about wanting kids of his own.
Hmm. I may have to see this movie...
