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.