Monthly Archives: November 2009

Movie Review: Dead Snow

DeadSnow08Today a friend and i went downtown to see the Norwegian film, Dead Snow. The image to the left really tells you most of what you need to know about this movie before going to see it. Its about Nazi Zombies, in winter, and  in bad weather.

The core plot fo the film is simple. A group of college students — apparently all medical students — take a vacation into the Norwegian mountains for skiing and fun. Once there and cut off from help there as assault by the Third Reich’s finest, but in undead form.

So any connoisseur of zombie films will have this question pop to the top of their minds, What kind of Zombies are these?

First, these are fast zombies, capable of running down a sprinting person and chowing on their remains. Second, these are moderately intelligent zombies capable of using simple tools and weapons, but not the guns they have stashed about. However a knife wielding zombie is still a frightening thing to behold. Third these are not invulnerable zombies. A person does not have to inflect serious head trauma to down one of these zombies, machine guns to the torso would work just fine.

Now the question is what kind of movie is this? Sadly the answer is that this is a muddled film. The filmmakers swung back and froth from scenes of serious horror and revulsion to scenes of farce and camp. The result was a film without a definite tone and that caused the film to suffer. There are elements of this film that works  quite nicely, both with horror and with comedy, but total package never gelled together. It was entertaining, but only as a one time sunday afternoon kind of thing.

The film also suffered from basic story construction problems. The writers and/or the directors did not understand how to use establishment. If you are going to use a shotgun in the second and third acts it has to appear in the first act, or be rationally explained in it sudden presence. This is a very common establishment problem, but the filmmakers also managed to reverse this problem.  They established things in the first act that were never referenced or used again in the movie. If you tell me in the first thirty minutes of a story that one character can’t stand the sight of blood and another character is a claustrophobe then these should be important story points later one, not dropped to the way side like a forgotten package.

However, this was not the biggest flaw in the film. It is a spoiler so if you want to know, follow me through the jump. Otherwise just take it that this is a mildly entertaining, but flawed movie.

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Most Influential Horror Films

So what do you think are the five most influential horror films of all time? Not what are the best, or what are the most frightening, but the ones that had the biggest impact on films and on the culture as a whole?

 

Here’s my list

1) Dracula 1931

2) Frankenstein 1931

3) The Wolfman 1941

4) Godzilla/Gojirra 1954

5) Night Of The LIving Dead. 1968

 

If you think another film should be on this list, what is the movie and which film should be cut and why?

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Not a Happy Camper

The plans I had for tonight were destroyed by a pizzeria.

I had a two hour long training session at my day-job today. It was pretty interesting but the room it was held in was very frigid. An hour later my toes still were numb from the cold. I decided I wanted something hotter than microwave meal for lunch. Next door there is a pizza place, Regent’s Pizza. I studied their menu carefully and selected a couple of slices from a pizza that had no mushroom and plenty of meat. (Deep dish — which I am going to have to avoid from now on.)

After eating the pizza I found a slice of mushroom in the box. I was, as Prince Humperdink put it ‘most put out.’ I called and complained. They agreed that no mushrooms should have been in the pizza.

My stomach has informed me that there were indeed mushrooms present. I have spent this evening cramped and unhappy. Luckily I have not vomited, but that just means tomorrow will be my special bathroom day.

Joy oh joy

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One of the best books on Writing

first5This is going to be a short little post because I am utterly exhausted and will be climbing into bed in the very near future. It’s been a  busy week at work and I’ve continued to put in the hours on my novel, Cawdor.

What I want to talk about tonight is one of the best books I have read on how to be a better writer. The book is The First Five Pages by Agent Noah Lukeman. Many of the books on writing that I have read deal with broad concept level writing. How to construct plots, beginning middles and ends. That sort of thing and  that is very important. (Two books I would recommend are Writing The Breakout Novel by Donald Maass and Beginnings Middles and Ends by Nancy Kress.)

The First Five Pages should be on yourself with those two books. What Mr. Lukeman does with his book and help you diagnose and fix the detailed problems that get books rejected quickly. He gets down into the weeds of the matter and shows you how to tell a weed from a flower. The chapters are clear and concise, building on each other to lay open the complex task that is writing. At the end of each chapter there are work assignments to help you learn the lessons.

This book is exceptionally well written and deeply insightful. Cawdor is going to be  stronger novel because of it, If you are struggling with taking your writing to the next level, I think this book would help tremendously.

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Sunday Night Movie: The Innocents (1961)

innocents So last night I watched an atmospheric horror film from the early sixties, The Innocents (1961) based on the novella The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James.

The story is about a young and inexperienced nanny, Miss Giddens  – played wonderfully by Deborah Kerr – who is sent to look after the household and two young wards who are the niece and nephew of her employer.  Their uncle wants nothing to do with the children, being a bachelor and happy in his lack of responsibilities.

The household, Bly House, is in the country and the characters are isolated there, living in their own little world. Things seem normal enough until Miles, the young nephew is sent home, expelled from school under mysterious circumstances. Miles is played by the outstanding young actor Martin Stephens best known to me as the David the leader of the alien children in the classic SF film The Village Of The Damned. He is equally good here playing an equally stranger and terrifying child.

Events take a turns for the strange and Miss Giddens begins to suspects that not only is the supernatural afoot in the household, but that the two innocent children are hiding terrible secrets and that the innocence is all lies and deceit.

This film works its horror without overt acts of violence or scenes of random brutality. It is a slow piece, with careful photography  that builds suspense and tension with understated shots, and a disdain for photographic trickery. The image above is one of the ones I found most unsettling in the film. I can’t explain the image too much without indulging in spoilers, but it is the heart of the story right there in one image.

Today’s horror films have, in general, lost all sense of the unease that should be at the heart of horror. There is way too much attention paid to pain, suffering, and dismemberment. Torture-porn is not horror in my opinion. Horror comes from that moment when the sand shifts under your feet and the world no longer works the way you thought it did. This film capture that emotional wonderfully.

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Asinine Political Writing

From One Jonah Goldberg

Let me say up front, I don’t think President Obama is to blame for the Fort Hood shootings, and I don’t think it’s fair to say otherwise.

But (you knew there had to be a “but”) that doesn’t mean Obama won’t pay a political price for Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s rampage.

At first blush, it seems distasteful to take a political yardstick to the pain suffered at Fort Hood. But if we are to consider this incident part of the bloody tapestry of the larger war on terror, there’s no way to separate it from politics. After all, the war on terror has been driving politics in America for the better part of a decade now.

And that might offer insight into why so many are eager to make the massacre a story about the psychological breakdown of a man who just happened to be a Muslim. . . .

For instance, it seems likely that Obama has already suffered a rhetorical defeat. Whatever his faults, President Bush got to say one thing that the American people always appreciated: After 9/11, he kept us safe from a terrorist attack on the homeland. If Hasan acted as a jihadist terrorist and not a disgruntled psychiatrist, Obama can’t even make the same claim about his first year in office.

There is so much that is wrong with what was written by Mr. Goldberg in the above excerpt.  To bring up an opponent’s possible political cost from such a horrendous crime is the kind of tack left to propagandist and not any form of serious thinker or writer.

If this was an example of Islamic terrorism  since 9-11, then you can’t really say that Bush 43 kept us safe and prevented all attacks on US soil after 9-11 either. John A, Muhammad, the DC sniper from 2002, was convicted and recently put to death for acts of terrorism within the united States.

All seven justices agreed that Mr. Muhammad’s conviction under a previously untested terrorism law was appropriate. The law dispenses with the triggerman requirement in cases where the killing was “pursuant to the direction or order” of someone engaged in an act of terrorism. (NY Times April 23 2005)


What takes this sentiment of Mr. Goldberg’s into lunacy is that reflect on the Obama administration. As though Major Hasan would not have snapped in the same way had John McCain and the Goddess been elected in 2008. (There is no ideology save Conservatism and Palin is it profit. Blessed is her flirt and may peace be upon her.) In all likelihood this would have happened exactly the same way and then of course there would be silence from Mr. Goldberg about how this reflected poorly on the president.

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