Man...

...I need to update this blog. I actually saw "Dead Silence" by the way--wasn't impressed. Saw "300" and was MIGHTILY impressed. Good Lord, Gerard Butler is just...there are no words.

I'm working on a new website now, and I've got a new book of short stories available to buy at Lulu.com (and soon at Amazon).

And I know all ZERO of my readers are just dying to know more. :)

A few movies...

...that I HAVE to see. Have to. No question. I'm talking, if I don't get to see these movies at a theater, I will not be a happy camper.

These are just a few of the new movies coming out soon. Your opinions on their viewaliciousness may vary. ;)

Dead Silence

Have you seen the preview for "Dead Silence"? Holy God...what is up with that old woman? I haven't been actually creeped out by a movie since...well...probably "The Exorcist" or "Beyond the Door." They're promoting the hell out of the fact that it's by the guys who did "Saw," but that's not a selling point for me (the first "Saw" was okay; the others are just painful and gross for the sake of being painful and gross--but that's a rant for another post).

Scary bug-eyed old woman + freaky ventriloquist dummies = my butt in a theater seat.

300

By nature, I'm not a particularly passionate kind of person. My moods rarely go into extremes, and I'm not the type of woman who would throw herself at a man to get his attention.

That said...Gerard Butler makes me drool like Cujo after the bat bite. I kid you not. The man is, quite literally, just about perfect. And that's just physically. From what I gather in his interviews, he's intelligent (he was a lawyer once--don't hold that against him) and he has a pretty good sense of humor. Don't care what the movie's about. Don't care about the cutting edge special effects or the graphic novel it was based on or anything else.

Gerard Butler in a loin cloth. With abs that look like CGI.

'Nuff said.

Hills Have Eyes 2

I just saw the preview for this the other day, and I have to say...sure, okay, I'll go see it. Of course, I'll go during the matinee and pay considerably less for the ticket, but okay, sure. Hill cannibals going after National Guardsmen (or some such plot)? Yeah, I'll pay $4.50 for that.

One thing I noticed in the trailer: the movie is co-written by Wes Craven and Jonathan Craven. Not to be all bitter and all, but gee...must be easy to get a screenwriting gig when your father's already carved a path for you (ok...calming down...another rant for another day). :)

Blades of Glory

...which can't be as funny as the previews make it seem to be. Okay, maybe it can.

Beware the USOs!

I found myself watching a show on the History Channel last night about mysterious USOs that are causing fear and panic in certain countries.

And yes, just like you, my mind went immediately to images of Bob Hope and Brooke Shields rampaging through the countryside.

Actually, the show was about Unidentified Submerged Objects...see the subtle shading of difference there? Submerged. Which means that the little green men are swimming around in the oceans instead of whizzing around the skies. Which doesn't help me sleep at night, even though I live hundreds of miles inland.

UFOs have always scared me. Always. Growing up, I had nightmares about only two things: UFOs (and the accompanying alien invasion) and zombies. Even now, I don't like to go out at night and be exposed under the skies. I always have the sense of something being up there, hovering, watching.

There's a line in Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" that I always think of when I'm outdoors at night: "When twilight came I had vaguely wished some clouds would gather, for an odd timidity about the deep skyey voids above had crept into my soul."

Yeah, you've got to watch those deep skyey voids...because they're certainly watching you.

Candy is dandy, but "Wicker" is quicker

No, I do not have any clue what I was going for with that title.

Saw "Wicker Man" the same day I saw the first fifteen minutes of "Crank," and...well...uh...

Hmmm....wait a minute. I'm trying to see if I remember the movie or not.

You see, that's the problem right there. I know I saw it. I remember staring at Nicholas Cage and wondering how on earth he ever became a leading man. I remember waiting for the creepy stuff to start (and waiting...and waiting...and waiting...). I remember thinking that Neil LeBute is probably the founding member of his local He-Man Woman-Hater's club.

But as for the movie itself...not so much with the remembering.

The original "Wicker Man," which starred Christopher Lee and Edward Woodward is--as you probably know--a cult classic (whatever that means nowadays). The crux of the conflict in that version was basically "My religion can kick your religion's ass." Pagan gods versus Christian God. Who's betting on the winning horse?

But this version...there was really none of that here, and that's a shame. Cage plays his typical schlubby guy, a cop who gets a letter from an old girlfriend asking him to help her find her missing daughter. So he traipses off to Summersisle in the Pacific Northwest and discovers himself, almost literally, in no-man's-land. Women are everywhere (and with the exception of Ellen Burstyn, who is absolutely beautiful, all the older women are rough-edged and ruddy-faced, while all the younger women are all dewy and nubile...what's up with that crap, LaBute?)

While watching this movie, I kept waiting for the creepy to kick in. What's this business with all the bees? Why are the men all quiet and subservient? What's with the graveyard? And those spooky photos of young girls at the Harvest Festival...surely something scary's going to happen there, right?

The answer...a big old resounding NOPE.

This movie is what you get when a non-horror writer/director thinks that any old bastard can make a scary movie. I've seen LaBute's other films, and there's nothing in his background that would even remotely lead me to believe that he would be capable of writing a good horror movie, especially one based on such a revered classic. I suspect he took the job thinking that he could add depth and sophistication to such a tired old trollop as a horror flick, and so he tried to add characterization and subtle shading and...

I'm going to have to cut myself off there. The pretention is choking me.

The fact is, LaBute used this movie (as he seems to use most of his movies) as a platform to display how horrible Non-Penised-Americans are. They'll set up communes and use men for breeding stock! They'll worship weird and unusual pagan goddesses! They'll make men subservient and use them as workhorses! Them womenfolk are just up to no good!

Leelee Sobieski's character is shoehorned into this movie for some reason to help prove the point that men just can't trust them old girls. Otherwise, she's useless--she doesn't do anything for the plot, and all she's really good for is to remind people of a young Helen Hunt, and how useful is that?

Everything that was good and cool and creepy about the original film is completely cut out of this version. It has a "men good/women evil" mentality that annoys on a major scale. Cage stumbles around looking pathetically stupid. The women of the town lumber about and sneer at the men. LaBute pulls out every old chestnut cliche of the horror movie (including the "dream within a dream" ploy...yawn) and forgets that this is supposed to be a movie about the pagan ways triumphing over the Christian way.

And the ending...holy joe...the ending...

If you've seen the original "Wicker Man," you'll probably remember how chilling the ending was, how it went on and on even under the credits. Even if you didn't like the original, you probably have to admit that the ending was memorable.

This version has a similar scene towards the end...but it's not the actual end! Instead, we cut to a modern bar somewhere off the island (obviously, because the men are drinking and laughing and the women are not sneering at them). A couple of Summersisle women are gussied up in slut gear and picking up a couple of new breeding stock and...here we go again with those wacky chicks!

Ugh. Maybe next time LaBute will spare everyone the trouble and just make ninety minutes of a guy standing on a street corner calling every woman who walks past him a bitch.

Avoid this movie. Watch the original instead. At least Christopher Lee dresses in drag and sings in it.

"Crank" = CRAP

For the first time in my life, I walked out of a movie.

Fifteen or twenty minutes in (who knows...it felt like an eternity), I walked out of the craptacular crapfest of the crappiest crap that ever did crap, "Crank."

I don't know where to begin in my rant against this kind of celluloid shit (hah! bet you thought I was going to say 'crap' again, didn't you?). I've been reading good reviews of this movie, and I have to wonder if maybe they saw a different version from me. Maybe they saw the cut that didn't include cutesy freeze-frames of random action shots. Or the version that didn't have the done-to-death-by-"24"-already split screen sequences. Or the version that didn't have the by-God biker bar bulging during a fight scene. Bulging!

And I'm not loathing this movie because I'm a girl, so nobody can pull that "Oh, she only likes chick flicks" crap with me. I like the so-called "dick flicks" as much as the next testosterone-soaked he-man. But this movie...good God. It's like the director had adult ADD when it came time to edit, all jumpy, splicy, snip-happy cuts.

The biggest sin in this movie (well, in what I managed to watch of this movie) is the fact that the director never let you forget that you were watching a movie. All that jumpy stuff just drew unwanted attention to the fact that somewhere in an editing suite, some self-important hotstuff young director was probably gooing himself over how edgy and cutting-edge he is. And I'd rather not think about anyone gooing himself, thank you for asking.

I'd suggest that no one waste their hard-earned moolah on "Crank," but it's already come and gone from the box office. Oh dear...what a shame.

I'm just surprised I sat through a whole fifteen minutes of it. Blecch.

Bad blogging

For some reason, I'm having a hard time getting into this whole blogging thing. It's not that I don't like to write, and it's not that I don't have my own opinions on stuff, it's just...hard to do.

I've never been one to keep journals, either (remember diaries? with the little lock and key that gave the illusion of privacy? made out of paper? like books? remember books? oh, nevermind...)

Anyway, there have been many times in my life when I could have kept a pretty pathetic journal, but I--thankfully--restrained myself. It would have been page after page of "Oh, I'm soooo looooonely!" or "Oh, I wish he liked me!" or "Oh, I hate college/work/life-in-general!" You know...the usual angsty crap.

Actually, I've found aborted journals that I tried to keep during a few periods of my life and reading them was a surreal experience--especially when I'd talk directly to "Future Becky," which never friggin' fails to freak me right the hell out for some goofy reason. I found one that I kept when I was in college, and all I can say is that I'm glad I wasn't aware that I was so miserable back then. Jeez...one page actually had tear-stained ink. I cringe to think of myself at that time.

The best thing about this whole deal is that I have the feeling that no one is actually reading it, so in a way, it's just as good as the old-fashioned lock-and-key diary. About as secure too, I guess. There's a certain freedom here to write whatever the hell I want, without worrying about how I come across, and that's fairly cool, I suppose.

Still...I'm a terrible blogger.

Pulsating Descent

I saw a double feature today of "Pulse" and "The Descent." Two horror movies in one day and it's not even October!

I liked both movies, but I swear to God that lately I feel like I'm too old for the horror movies they're making now. I never noticed that the characters are always in their late teens/early twenties. When did I age out of that demographic? Actually, it happened about ten years ago, but I digress...I'm talking about the movies here.

"Pulse" was...well, it was okay. Could have been better, but okay. And by the way, Kristen Bell needs to tell her makeup people to lay off the gothy black eye shadow. The basic plot is that some computer geek hacker manages to break into a frequency that no one has ever known about before--probably because it is the frequency...OF THE DAMNED!

And of course, the hacker is, ironically, himself hacked and the frequency somehow gets out and, like spam from beyond the grave, starts popping up all over the Internet. There's something about not letting the ghosts look you in the eye because they tend to suck the "life" out of you--and apparently ghosts use a dial-up connection, because they move all herky-jerky and buzz in and out of visibility. Those infected by their one-on-one time with the ghosts start growing what looks like a black mold (although later in the film it's described as bruises...on Christina Milian it just looked like she'd fallen asleep with her eye make-up on) and some of them make greasy black stains on the walls (how is never really explained?) and some of them poof up into ashes. Again, it's not explained why.

I think that's what rubbed me wrong about this movie. Horror movies need a certain amount of exposition to tell the audience where the horror is actually originating from. "Pulse" didn't really bother to do that. Are the pasty white guys dead? Are they ghosts? Could they come through television lines or just the Internet and cell phone connections? Were the Luddites right all along to shun the electronic revolution?

And why did they film this movie in such a washed out palette of grays and blacks? What's with the red duct tape to seal up the windows and doors? Are the undead working for Homeland Defense? Why do all the college students live in what looks like abject squalor? (Because come on...you got maggots in your fridge but a $2000 computer system in your place?)

And my biggest question...did Stephen King happen to watch the Japanese version (Kairo, 2001) before he wrote Cell? Because there are a few remarkable similarities, plotwise. Not making any kind of accusations or anything. I'm just sayin'.

Anyway..."Pulse" was okay. Should have been better since Wes Craven co-wrote the script, but there wasn't anything really scary or disturbing about it. From the previews, I thought it would make me think twice about logging online or looking at unfamiliar websites, but...nothin'. Not bad, but not great. I give it an "Eh."

***

"The Descent" is being called a horror chick-flick, and that annoys me. Really, it does. It's the second film by Neil Marshall, director of the much-hailed werewolf movie "Dog Soldiers" (I've not yet been able to make myself sit through it for some reason; not criticizing it, I just haven't been in the mood for it), and it takes place in a cave in the Appalachian Mountains, USA.

Being an inhabitant of the Appalachian Mountains, USA, I was intrigued. What was THIS movie going to say about us? "Wrong Turn" had us painted as cannibal hillbillies, and "Cabin Fever" portrayed mountain people as being redneck morons, so I couldn't wait to see what "The Descent " would have to say about the inhabitants of this part of the country.

Oh...albino cannibal mole people. Riiiiight. Should've known.

What this movie did right was create a sense of claustrophobia. I'm not particularly touchy when it comes to small rooms or elevators, but something within me totally rebels against the idea of crawling headfirst into an opening maybe an inch wider than my shoulders. Underground. In the dark. With cannibal mole people running around. Maybe it's just me.

Lots of estrogen and "grrl power" in this one. Which is okay, because Marshall didn't stock the movie with castoffs from the WB but with actual women over the age of 25. For some reason, this group of plucky gals meet up every year to do some unbelievably macho activity that bonds them in ways that men can only imagine. One year they go white water rafting. One year they go mountain climbing. Stuff that you usually only see on Mountain Dew commercials.

So this year, after one of the members of the group suffers a tragic loss that haunts her, the gang decides to meet up in the indeterminate mountains of "Appalachia," which look, by the way, nothing like any mountains I've ever seen (probably because it was filmed in the UK). After a night of female bonding that reminded me of those old International Coffee commercials, they set off on a wild day of cavern exploring and...stuff.

And as a side note, apparently only really skinny, athletic women actually ever DO stuff like cave exploring, because they were squeezing into some tiny, tiny spaces. Why would anyone voluntarily do that? Is there some kind of correlation between cellulite and the ability to realize that crawling through tight caves is a bad idea?

Anyway, they soon learn that going into that particular cave system was a very, very bad idea. Monumentally bad. They're trapped two miles underground, they've lost some of their equipment, their batteries are going to die in a matter of hours, and oh yeah...those cannibal mole guys are hanging around.

I won't go into any particulars, because much of this movie's shock value is of the "oogy-boogy jump out of the shadows" nature, but if you're a seasoned horror movie fan, you'll recognize the pacing: a character is nervous, they hear something and jump, but it's nothing to be afraid of. Then they turn around and BOOM, we've achieved the "gotcha!" for that scene.

At a couple of points in this film, I halfway expected the women to pass the crew from "The Cave" in one of the passages and nod howdy ("Hey." "Hey." "We just passed some mutant bat creatures back thataway." "Really? We've seen some albino mole people." "Huh." "Yeah.")

But anyway...I've seen some comments that compare this movie to "Alien" and, well...not so much, really. Kinda, I guess. It's tense and it's gory enough (one scene involved thumbs and eyeballs and went on FOR-EV-ER). And there's one part that was like the lost scene from "Carrie White Goes Spelunking." This movie could even been seen as a feminist statement-- women are at the violent mercy of men who want to devour them--but that's pretentious and stupid. It's an action flick with six women instead of six guys, that's all.

Overall, I liked "The Descent" well enough. There's been some debate about the ending (the US version versus the UK version) and I have to say that I like the UK version better. The ending I saw today left me sitting there saying, "WHAT?" and feeling like something had been cut out. As it turns out, I was right. HA! I knew it.

I'd tell people to go see both "Pulse" and "The Descent," because we need to support horror movies and because neither movie was all that bad. If you know going into it that it's going to be an entertaining way to spend 90 or so minutes, then that's what you'll get from it.

And points to both films for having leading female characters and absolutely no gratuitous nudity. Boobs for the sake of boobs just irritates the hell out of me.

Enjoy the movies.

Cult of Celebrity

Okay...just a show of hands here, but who else is sick to friggin' death of hearing about Lindsey Lohan? What about Jessica Simpson? "Brangelina"? Britney & K-Fed?

What in the hell is wrong with people? I include myself in that question, because I'm just as guilty of reading the gossip sites and tabloids as everyone else. But seriously...what's wrong with us? Why do we give a damn about any of those celebrities and their lives? Am I going to be able to call in sick to work because I'm suffering from "exhaustion"? Nope (not if I want to keep my job...which, by the way, pays less per year than Jessica Simpson probably drops on a couple of fugly handbags).

You know, the whole celebrity worship culture we've got going on in this country is actually embarrassing, when you stop and think about it. We've got children in this country who are going to bed dirty and hungry (that is, if they have their own beds to go to) but people are more concerned about seeing a photo of Tom Cruise's loinspawn. We've got women in this country who are suffering through miserable relationships where they're regularly beaten and humiliated, but we're more interested in the fact that Paris Hilton has broken up with her latest Greek shipping heir. Our priorities are screwed, and no one seems to really care.

The whole situation reminds me of "They Live"--you know the movie...society is brainwashed by aliens to see only what they want to see and everything has hidden subliminal messages that control the masses. It's like as long as people care about Mel Gibson acting like a drunken jerk, they won't care about what really matters, like war or terrorism or anything ooky like that. It's like a magician waving around a pretty scarf so you won't notice him slipping the dove out of his jacket. The art of distraction, but practiced by whom? The conspiracy theorist in me has some ideas.

I still read the gossip sites to kill time, and I'll page through a tabloid if there's nothing else to look at, but why in God's name does anyone other than the celebrities and their immediate families actually CARE about these people?

It's enough to drive a girl into the hospital for exhaustion.

Blogging

Hello to anyone who might be reading this. My name's Rebecca Brock, but you can call me Beck if you like. "Rebecca" is too fancy for day-to-day use. Makes for a good professional name, though, so there you go.

For a writer, this whole blog/internet/publicizing/networking thing is kicking my ass. Really. I'm not good at tooting my own horn, and I really hate the attitudes that I've seen with some unknown writers (I call it the "Second Coming of Stephen King" syndrome, where they act like they've already hit mass market distribution and worldwide fame. I'm always leery of coming across like that, so trust me...I KNOW that I'm nobody.

So why should you read this blog? Dunno. Maybe you're killing time. Maybe you stumbled across my website and thought you'd poke around. I'm going to try to keep some kind of a professional blog here, not that much is happening at the time, but this place is free and I might as well do something.

Whoever's reading this...thanks. I hope you'll come back.