Drag Me To Hell

Holy. Shit.

Watching Drag Me To Hell is like running into an old friend you thought had died and then going out and painting the town red. It’s shocking at first to see such a balls out insane old school piece of Sam Raimi filmmaking, but as the shock wears off you realize something.

Namely that the movie is awesome.

Raimi aping his old style wouldn’t have been enough, it’s just as easy to see Drag Me To Hell going very wrong, proving that Raimi doesn’t have the chops for this kind of giddy insanity anymore. That’s OK Raimi couldn’t have kept making Evil Dead 2 over and over again or he’d end up like Don Coscarelli, Tobe Hooper or Stuart Gordon or all the other 80’s horror wunderkids who never where able to grow up. Drag Me To Hell could have been a sad attempt to recapture something that as much as I love didn’t really need to be recaptured. Instead, it was the most fun I’ve had in a movie theater all year, and I expect it to still be holding that title come next January.

I’m a Sam Raimi super freak have been since Jr. High. I’m the kind of Raimi fan who owns For Love Of The Game and The Quick And The Dead. It would not be hyperbole for good or ill to say that Raimi has been one of the primary influences on my life. Raimi’s movies demystified the filmmaking process in the way Jim Jaramusch and Kevin Smith did for others. Movies where no longer made via alchemy somewhere in Hollywood but by real people with ideas, and a crazy kind of vision. While I knew about directors via John Carpenter, Tim Burton, Oliver Stone (I was obsessed with JFK at twelve, long story) and Stanley Kubrick (and Dr. Strangelove) Raimi was the first one I could relate to.

When Spiderman hit it was a mixed bag for me. On one hand I loved the movie and was psyched to see Raimi get that kind of success. On the other hand it definitely felt like I was losing my favorite filmmaker. Yeah part of it was “I liked it before it was cool.” Geek snobbery but it was also a very real sadness that I’d probably never see the type of film I’d fallen in love with again (That said I enjoy all three Spiderman movies. No that’s not a typo).

Until today. Drag Me To Hell is as giddy and anarchic as any slice of prime Raimi with a command of character better then any he’s quite had before. The theater I saw it in rocked between laughter, screams, and profanity laden tirades of disbelief. To spoil any of the shocks and scares Raimi has in store would make me the worst kind of Curmudgeon. All I’ll say is I can’t believe it’s PG-13.

Truth in criticism I was lucky enough to be on the set for Drag Me To Hell twice, once when I was lucky enough to see them shoot a few effects shots in the Fox Lot, and again when they came to CSU Northridge. At Northridge I actually got the chance to meet Raimi. They tell you to never meet your heroes I guess I’m lucky that one of mine is such a class act. And can still surprise me after all these years.

Under The Skin: Part 1: Johnny The Homicidal Maniac

The First in a series of looks at the pop culture that shaped my formative years.





One of my favorite critics recently noted that “The Stuff that gets under your skin at seventeen never really leaves you.” That’s true, but it’s also true that sometimes under the skin is where it should stay.

It’s hard to describe the effect this book had on me when I thumbed through the well read copy that got passed back and forth along with the joints, around the theater group where I made a brief sojourn on in my long quest to fit in at highschool.

The novel starts out with a cuddly cartoon critter recommending the book to you as his children are tortured, which is then followed by a neglected child being terrorized by our obstinate hero ending with a schizophrenic rant as he stabs the boys teddy bear to death, at this point the comic is interrupted by a screaming stick figure who declares himself “Testicles God Of The Rash Covered Scrotum” and is popular with the insane homeless, before moving on to the wall “THAT WON’T STOP DRINKING BLOOD!!!” after which we get to the first Mass Murder, talking rabbit head, and sentient Pilsbury Doughboy who urges Johnny to kill himself with the phrase “Your body is an anchor that keeps you from flying over the stars.” At this point you’re around page 10.

This wasn’t a book it was a freaking Vaudeville review from hell. Humor so black that it actually made well lit rooms go dim, nihilism at it’s punk rock finest, A view of humanity that made John Water’s grotesqueries look angelic, a book that took no side hating all the subcultures as much as the mainstream but never making itself out to be some perfect entity either. IT flipped the whole earth, other worlds, and the after life (Heaven is a bunch of folding chairs and a taco bell, Hell a slightly dingier version of the San Fernando Valley) a very angry bird. Coupled with a uniquely simple and beautiful art style, like Ralph Steadman made horrifically clear and a sense of metaphysical absurdity to rival Achewood, all timed with a Chuck Jones like sense of the gag.

To an alienated suburban kid experiencing rebellion and weed for the first time, as well as having grown the teenage ego necessary to truly believe to the core of your being that the world is the one that’s got it all wrong, not you, this book was like a bomb going off in my head. It was like what hearing The Sex Pistols back in 1977 must have been like, dark, funny, free and more then a little truly scary. I’d never read anything so gleefully amoral, and the effect was as liberating as it was terrifying.

So you can of course understand the glee with which I picked this thing up on the 50% off table.

Of course the thing could never hold up. Nor could it ever recapture the rush of the forbidden I felt reading it for the first time. But it still holds it’s own. There are parts that are giddy perfection. If I ever grow too sour to appreciate the site of a Nun using her psychic powers to make everyone in heaven’s head explode, I know it will be time to end it all. While the book does feel a bit adolescent and mannered and our buddy Jhonen isn’t exactly afraid to hit something directly on the nose using the heel of his hand, it still does feel surprisingly subversive. Which is nice in a cultural landscape that throws that word around like it’s fucking confetti (“Look they made a funny about The President’s accent that’s raw”) It’s refreshing to see something that’s truly warped, that truly does not give a fuck. No one’s going to be co opting Johnny The Homicidal Maniac anytime soon. He’s going to remain safely under my skin.

Worst. Saint. Patrick's. Day. Ever.

Did I Get To Eat Corned Beef?

No.

Did I Get To Drink An Irish Carbomb?

No.

Did O Get To Spend St. Patrick's Day With Friends, Family and Assorted Loved Ones? Sharing Mutual Pride In Your Heritage?

No.

Did I Even Get To Set Foot Inside A Bar?

No.

Did you have to Work?

Yes.

Did I Get To Stay A Forty Minutes Late At Work?

Yes.

Does That Mean I Got Overtime?

No.

Did I Get Out Of Work To Find That Someone had slashed Your Bike Tire Valves?

Yes.

After Walking For Twenty Minutes Did You Find A Line Extended Around The Block At The Pub You Where Planning On Going To?

Yes.

Was There A Single Irish Person In That Line?

No.

Did I Then Decide to swallow your Pride And Buy Some Guiness At The Overpriced Ralphs across The Street?

Yes.

How'd That Go?

A Meth Head Tried To Mug Me In the Parking Lot.

Really?

Yes Very Politely.

How'd You Know He Was On Meth?

Oh He told me.

How'd You Get Rid Of Him?

I Told him the cops had left and he could get his Pipe Back.

That Sucks?

Yeah But It's Fucking LA.

So After That Did You Start the Five Mile Walk Back To Your Flat?

Yes.

How'd That Go.

Not Well.

Did The Cops Stop You?

Yeah.

How Many Times?

Twice.

Rather THen The Meth Head?

Yes.

Where you Riding Your Bike? It's Still A DUI, if you do Are?

I Was Walking My Bike. Someone Cut My Fucking Valves.

So What Did You Do Then?

Finally Got Home Two hours after Leaving Work. Starting Drinking My Guiness, Wrote This.

That Blows.

Yeah.

Maybe Next Time You'll Get lucky and Just Drown in your own vomit after puking in a gutter.

One Can Only Hope.

Dawn Of The Dead (2004)

Ah Watchmen, a movie so good that it forced me to go back and rewatch Dawn Of The Dead. Love him or hate him, Zack Synder has proven himself to be one of the most unique stylists of the modern day. I decided now was as good a time as any to go back and check out his debut feature.

Even if it’s one I loathed.

Let me explain I don’t like the original Dawn Of The Dead I love it. As well as being a damn fine horror film its one of the most blackly funny satires of America ever made. A vision of a world not unlike WALLE’s where corporate culture has infalatized us to the point where everyone from Hare Krishna to Cops to Nuns can only worship before the all mighty call of consumerism, and be devoured by their hunger. In Romero’s bleak world view we’ve voted for Mammon over God to a startling degree.

What bothered me about the remake wasn’t the fast zombies or any other such canonical nonsense, but the way this satire was stripped from the films very soul. The mall ceased to be a materialistic hellscape and became just a cool fort to hang out in. So much so that when our survivors do decide to band out their decision just seems arbitrary zombie baby or no.

Almost worse is the way the remake jettisoned the orginal’s intimate four person cast to become an ensemble piece thus losing a huge amount of the claustrophobia. The ensemble itself is a mixed bag Ving Rhames and a few others do solid work, but Sarah Polley never quite loses the “Gawd I can’t believe I’m in a zombie movie.” Indie girl vide.

At the end of the day Dawn Of The Dead became just another zombie movie, and to my mind at the time not even a particularly good one.

Watching it for the first time since theaters I can see I underrated Dawn Of The Dead. It is a particularly good zombie movie. From his opening frames Synder proved himself to be a canny stylist, taking his time building the day to day rhythms of suburbia before ruthlessly tearing it all down in one fell swoop. The carnage and the pace of the first attacks is a textbook in action filmmaking. Synder films the apocalypse with a sense of sheer scale that has never really been scene in a horror film before. Ten minutes in the viewer is left with a palatable sense of doom.

And that’s before we hit the films credit sequence scored to Johnny earth shakingly awesome “When The Man Comes Around.” Which cannily mixes real world newsfootage with staged zombie B roll until our world and the apocalypse become indistinguishable from one another. It’s a bone chilling bit of work, and for these fifteen minutes alone the film becomes worth reevaluating.



Somehow it’s even more disturbing in German.

Unfortunately once the mall is reached, theres not a whole hell of a lot that happens. As well as the claustrophobia and the intensity, the larger cast massacres a great deal of the film’s momentum as well. Dawn of The Dead keeps getting bogged down in meaningless subplot that goes nowhere after meaningless subplot that goes nowhere. Oh good! More storytime devoted to the asshole security guards power struggle. Man thank God that asshole security guard showed up because I would hate to be bored by such trivial things as THE WALKING FUCKING DEAD. Nope, Some redneck mall cop being a douche to everyone is all the drama I need.

The film has some fun moments, Ken Foree comes back to deliver his “No more room in hell.” line. There’s an intense battle in the sewers, and the scene where the characters stop to comment on what a badass Tom Savini is is pretty funny. The film picks itself up for a suitably intense finale, but it never really touches the intensity of the original ten minutes.

Perhaps the film didn’t lose its social satire so much as find a new target. It almost helps if you think of it, not as a remake of Dawn Of The Dead, but a prequel to The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman’s fantastic series, which takes the end of civilization as a chance to start following Thoreau. It’s boredom more then anything else that drives the patrons from the mall.

After all which would you rather do? Face the living dead? Or live in Starbucks for the rest of your life?

Revist Evangelion: Yeah it's back

Yeah I know it’s been awhile.

So after a cheery five month hiatus we come roaring back! With what might just be the two weakest episodes in the series.

Well shit.

In all honesty there’s not a lot to write about on these. To quote Johnny Cash these episodes are “Low Down and Triflin’”. Both Episodes are frankly bad, all the terrible things about Eva with none of the good. The first episode starts with perhaps the only straight filler episode in Eva. Paced with all the brevity and snap of the Bataan Death March Episode 7, finds NERV under attack for their piss poor record of saving the earth from utter annihilation a mere three times.

The Bureaucrats want something less risky then the Evangelions to deal with the angels (Understandable). So they decide on a giant clumsy mechanical beast with no human oversight and a nuclear reactor strapped inside it’s chest (Less Understandable). In an utterly unsurprising development things do not go well!

The big terrible idea goes beserk and it’s up to Misato and Shinji to stop it. The big twist is that the almost meltdown wasn’t an accident at all! No really. It was all set up by NERV. I can remember being really surprised by this at the time. You mean the good guys set it up!?!? I can only conclude that at fifteen I was a bit dim as up until this point NERV has been potrayed as so shady that I’m frankly surprised that Gendo and Co aren’t shown dining nightly on living puppies. A bit of industrial sabotage is simply not that shocking anymore.

What Episode 7 has in obtuseness Episode 8 makes up for in stupidity. It’s dumb. No I mean REAAALLYY Dumb. The episode, unlike 7 at least have a nominal purpose, namely bringing the last two main players, the pilot Askua, and double agent/ Old Flame of Misato’s/ General N’er do well into well play. Part of Eva’s greatness is its Watchmen like ability (note I didn’t say quality) at busting down the stock characters that make up any given series. Unfortunately this means that at first blush these characters appear to be just as boring as any a standard Giant Robot show has to offer. While Kaji and Asuka would later reveal the hidden depths and insecurities that drive them, for now they remain safely hidden under a bland veneer. A shrill unlikable bland veneer.

Which means that most of the episode is devoted to “hilarious” single entendres by the “wacky” supporting cast crosscut with “fascinating” bureaucratic chatter, and a fucking awful action sequence that makes Michael Bay look like a physics professor.

The final sequence and the reveal of Kaji’s cargo bring the intrigue back, while we’re still a few episodes away from the game changer that would send EVA down the dark garden path, the reveal of Adam was kind enough to remind me that it’s coming.

Christ I hope so.

Episode 7: F
Episode 8: F

Public Enemies... Huh?

I couldn't help but notice something strange while watching the trailer for the new Michael Mann Film Public Enemies.

Namely that it looks fucking terrible.

I'm not talking about the movie itself, I'm talking about the actual quality of the image. It's ironic that Mann was one of the first major Hollywood directors to get a bug up his ass as far as proving HD looked as good as film. It's ironic because he did do that, in Collateral, a movie that no matter what qualms you might have about it, looked astonishingly good and perhaps caught LA better then any other film I've ever seen. In short it was purty. Miami Vice on the other hand was not. And now Public Enemies, really is not.

The type of degraded image that Mann shows in the trailer is simply perplexing. I mean it looks bad. While other directors and cinematographers are showing just how far this thing could go, Mann seems hell bent on showing you how tawdry and cheap video looks, AFTER he has already convinced you otherwise. He's like a traveling salesmen who blurts out that he's fucked your wife after he's already sold you a couple of vacuums.

When is someone going to admit that the emperor has no clothes. Michael Mann apparently makes Ugly films now. I'll repeat that. Michael Mann the guy who made Heat and fucking Last Of The Mochicans has now produced two films in a row that look like I could have put them together on my camcorder.

They are ungodly fucking ugly.

The Brothers Bloom

It’s very easy to get jaded as a critic. It’s the hazard of the profession. You see so much stuff that it’s practically inevitable. You start to see the patterns and the formulas more then the films. You judge by what you’ve seen before and what you hope to have seen more then what you did see. After awhile it’s almost like your judging by some strict sense of personal dogma. You start giving things passes that you shouldn’t and unduly harsh to others. You make rules.

But every once in awhile you see something that makes you forget all of that and makes you fall in love. Like you used to. The only difference is now you understand what a rare and valuable thing that love is.

Ah but that’s the trick isn’t it. Because love is blind. The little foilables and cute eccentricities and imperfections of those we love may be wonderful to us and nails on a chalkboard to others. But that’s OK. Love makes you look vulnerable. Love makes you look foolish.

I cannot tell you if you’ll love The Brother’s Bloom, I can only tell you that I did. Completely.

From the very first sequence The Brother’s Bloom is the movie it set out to be. A real confidence fills the entire proceeding. Once again this is a blessing and a curse, you’ll either fall for Johnson’s fairy tale or reject it utterly. But either way Bloom confirms what Brick hinted at, that Rian Johnson is an American filmmaker of original wit and style with a natural eye. A rare and valuable thing. Someone who can make a scene laugh out loud funny simply by the framing, and heart breaking in the same way, while laughing his head off the entire time. He’s what we all wished Richard Kelly was.

The Brother’s Bloom tells the story of the titular siblings. Introduced in a long and strangely beautiful opening that tells their story in a poem narrated by the irreplaceable Ricky Jay. The opening is the key to the movie, either you invest yourself in The Brother’s Story or you don’t. Flashing forward twenty five years later, the brothers have become uber successful con men, assisted by their girl Friday Bang Bang, an anarchistic nearly mute Japanese explosive expert, played by Rinko Kikuchi in a performance that makes her turn in Babel seem staid, and will either be the final bit of icing on the cake, or the thing that makes you start to tear up your theater seat in the urge to find something to throw at the screen.

The Brother’s played in adulthood by Mark Ruffalo, whose never been quite so much fun, and a convincingly damaged Adrien Brody, start on one last con to swindle the fantastically rich and completely adorable Rachel Weisz out of some small part of her vast fortune. Things are of course complicated by love, but the surprise comes from just whose love does the complicating.

Because for all it’s stylistic tics and cartoonish moments that’s all The Brother’s Bloom is, a love story. One that affected me deeply. I hope you feel the same.