A Rusty Nail Part II

In between Last Man and I Am Legend was the 1970s attempt at the apocalypse, Omega Man, starring "C-Dog" Heston, of course, but this one didn't give me nightmares. Oh wait, yes it did: the part in which he watches Woodstock over and over and over again, mouthing the hippies' lines word for word. Shudder.

In I Am Legend, the film Will Smith watches over and over is Shrek, and the one foodstuff he saves in his freezer, bacon. He attaches these memories to his absent family, as with the character in the original novel and film. But as you would expect, the setting is NYC (not LA) and Smith won't leave "ground zero" to explore the possibility of other survivors. Moreover, the film is ruined by bad CGI by once again inserting smooth, shiny surfaces where there should be dark, porous ones. A says that we will look back on the CGI era the way we do cheap color of the 40s and 50s with its garish pinks and greens.

I will say that there are a few poignant moments that give new meaning to the word "loneliness" and an excellent nod to Romero's positing of a "talented 10th" of zombies (well, vampires--they're called "hemocytes" actually) who start to think for themselves. Overall, however, none of the three films dared touch the theme running through the novel about the "lewd and lascivious" female vamp-zombs who attempt to lure him outside by strip-tease and masturbation. In I Am Legend, Smith experiments on a female hemocyte, and one might as, why her? In the novel, the question is given an explicit answer, and it's not pretty (though not necrophilic either).

I also saved myself another restless night without sleep by turning to another fundamentally amazing text, Blade Runner: The Final Cut. The audio is in 5.1, the transfer is sharper, and more gore was added (put back in--it was originally taken out); the bad stunt doubles and continuity problems were nixed completely. However, the accompanying documentary, Dangerous Days, was a nerd's delight! Sound the neeeeeeerd hornnnnnn. Three hours looooooooog! Bring your Hot Pockets and Gatoraaaaaade. You get to see screen tests of other actors trying out for Pris and Rachel--with the exact same lighting, smoke, and blocking!!! <---that's real enthusiasm, not sarcasm). Watching it has the odd effect of suggesting other replicants are "out there."

The most fascinating part of the doc was actually a socio-historical one: why did it fail at the box office during the summer of 1982? Because Reaganomics promised hope and happiness, not dark dystopia. Guess which film made the most that summer? E fucking T!!!! I remember that summer so well because everyone was crying over ET--I mean everyone. Oh and here are some other films Blade Runner had to compete with that summer: Beastmaster, Conan the Barbarian, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Poltergeist, Star Trek II, Rocky III, The Thing, and Tron.

To conclude by reiterating CGI sucks (except in Buffy, in which it has a campy effect that actually heightens suspension of disbelief). As one of the producers of (the new) Battlestar Galactica series relates, "We often just say to the CGI people--give it that 'Blade Runner' look, and they know exactly what we mean." Ironically, there is no CGI in Blade Runner--it's all in-camera effects. We truly are ruled by computers and robots these days. The replicants have won:

A Rusty Nail....Part I

Last night I saw one of the scariest films of my life: Vincent Price in Last Man on Earth. How could I not have seen this film until now????? I cannot hold my head up high as a gothic/horror theorist. In fact, this film unites vampire and zombie mythology in one sutured text!

I was so scared that I could not sleep at all last night, not one wink. Oh, wait; yes, I slept for 10 minutes DURING WHICH I HAD NIGHTMARES, one of which was about my trying to get out of a basement full of vampire-zombies by opening one of those windows that swings up and out--only a bucket of long-ass railroad nails, rusty and iron-stinking, fell right on my head somehow. One nail managed to pierce me through the neck. I pulled it out, bleeding profusely and worried more about blood poisoning than the ghouls. Then I woke up.

You can watch the whole film on youtube, but here's a brief clip--watch only the first two minutes of this. Notice that Price isn't picking up dummies; they are real people. He's living in a private holocaust, complete with BURNING BODY PIT to which he makes daily deposits. Gahhhhhhhhhhhh! There is not one single cheesy thiing about this 1964 film and I'm not so sure Romero's first film is scarier. They're both pretty bleak. Stayed tuned for Part II, in which I read the original Matheson novel again, watch Omega Man and the Will Smith version. By the way, the phrase "I am legend" comes from a conversation Price has with a vampire who tells him that they all hate and fear him: he's "legendary" in the city. The book is written in the 3rd person; Price's film narrated in the 1st--though he never utters that phrase. It's one of the best titles ever, though I already know the WIll Smith film will suck--a lot.

Hulu.com Launch

So tomorrow is the beginning of hulo.com's auspicious rise to fame. Hulu offers almost all of the TV we'd watch with cable, but--here's the downside--it's ad-supported. However, apparently you can pick the kinds of ads you want to see. If I can pick movie trailers only, then I'm down. I am so fucking down. Gimmeh gimmeh gimmeh mooooore.....

If--and this is a BIG if--hulu.com gets as big as projected, Netflix will see a big drop in TV on DVD requests and iTunes will have to slash their video prices if not eliminate them completely. Youtube will also go back to being a amateur vid site primarily, as the pirated shows won't need to be ripped.

So here's what I'm worried about: some other site will come along and offer HBO, Cinemax, VHI classics, etc. for a small fee, and thus reinstate the same cable/pay division we had before. Anyone else anticipate how this or other sites like it will alter viewing habits, the Habermasian public sphere, etc.?

Halo-Scientology?

You're looking at one of the many temples built by the Covenant, a conglomerate group of aliens who collectively decided to become warlike in their method of spreading their message of the Great Journey, a journey one can take by travelling along various terraformed rings known as halos. I know, I know: sounds like Lord of the Rings or even Christianity. May I suggest Halo as an allegory for Scientology? Keep in mind, analogies do not work when there is an easy 1:1 correspondence. In fact, the two things being compared need a degree of mismatch for it to work--two unalike things work best because they highlight where the comparison works while granting where it doesn't.

Having recently purchased Halo 3 and thus essentially portalled into another dimension, I'm probably no where near the head space as anyone reading this blog, but here goes.



The Spartan warrior who destroyed one of the rings in a previous storyline is now friends with The Arbiter, leader of the heresy against the Prophet of Truth, i.e. L Ron Hubbard, who deliberately deceives his people by not telling them of the greater dangers of The Flood, a parasite that turns all forms of life into its zombie-puppets (lets call Gravemind, their leader, "Xenu," noting, however, that Gravemind does not have the same Yahweh-like powers as Xenu). The Spartan warrior you play as can travel through many levels of gradual revealing of the truth--or the truth of the Prophet's lies. It's like going deep undercover as a Scientologist.




When I play the game and fight The Flood, I'm always scared that one of the little infection modules will facehug onto some dead body and animate it, which will then divert my attention away from more incoming infection modules. Kinda like fighting Scientology and The Twelve Tribes at the same time--I turn my back on one and miss a body-snatching. (OK, so I've involved the TT--remember, the Covenant is not a single race, but a conglomerate. Feel free to insert any zealous group.)



The humans have recently allied with the Elites, lead by The Arbiter. I see the Elites as Crusaders turned good Christians--doubters of a "single path" to enlightenment, unlike their orthodox former friends in the Covenant. To mix comparisons even more, it's almost like Ishmael Reed's novel, Mumbo Jumbo. I fight alongside them, but wonder if they won't eventually give into their previous single-minded zealousy and forego their "common enemy" stance.



Last February 10 somehow became anti-Scientology day, with world-wide protests led against the church. What I don't know is if Scientology has drummed the whole thing up in order to appear the victim or if it's real. Apparently some hackers crashed the church's sites and have also made sure the Tom Cruise-is-batshit-crazy-videos don't disappear. What I do know is that some years ago The Free Zone dedicated itself to believing in the Hubbard-Xenuverse, but offered info entirely for free. What keeps me sane is knowing that I actually like it when humans believe in little fantasy worlds--I encourage it! I do it! It's when fantasy and reality merge at the corporate level--scary. I think I might actually like some of those Free Zone people--maybe. I like knowing that I am not like The Flood, an indiscriminate eradicator of all that stands in my way. Unfortunately, my TT and Sci family members think of me this way, as a Suppressive Person/the Devil, rather than as a defender of critical thinking, a destabilizer of orthodox, concrete, unwavering thinking. One of my ex's used to demand that I immediately make known my religious beliefs. I declared that I could, but that I also had an unconscious. She happened to be a pretty hardcore Christian, though she hid that from me for a long time. She accused me of being "patchwork" in my worldview. "You take a little of this and a little of that--but who are you?--what side are you on?"

And for that, I do not have an answer. I may not always know what I'm for, but I know that I'm against Scientology and the Twelve Tribes, and take great pleasure in imagining them as little AI beings that I can kill. I love not taking things literally.

Attacked by Cylons

Just now, three (well, four) things happened simultaneously. 1) An extremely low-level jet airplane flew by overhead, shaking the house; 2) a large garbage or dump truck drove past my house, rocking my foundation; 3) C and M switched on their high-pitched vacuum cleaner and began rolling it over the nice wood floors, which 4) made me think--for one split second--that the world had come to an end and cyclons were descending upon us all, my house being the first one to be decimated. Either these three things really were perfectly timed, or they happen all the time and I'm so paranoid I notice them.

Either way, I need a Scotch.