Lucifer_Carroll
GOATS!!!
- Joined
- May 4, 2004
- Posts
- 3,319
So, I went out and saw Silent Hill. I am a big fan of the games as they are ingeniously written with a surreality and intelligence of plot that makes them fodder for intense discussion among the more intelligent segments of video game playing culture. The general consensus is that they are Jacob's Ladder turned into a video game.
On that count it failed. The plot could have used some tweaking for holes and the dialogue required the admittedly well-done ambience to cause you to suspend disbelief. Also the director went over the line from creepy to blood-splatter extraordinaire at times to great dismay though overall it was creepy.
Overall, a mediocre-decent movie or even crap depending on how much the music, shots, and actually creepy bits (where the gore was off-camera or non-existant) sucked you in.
I give this review as a setup. After the movie experience and over the last couple of days I read some reviews. Most were bitching about a lack of a preview night wherein the critics made it very clear that they had decided their minds about the movie without seeing it. Beyond that was a very common problem, they didn't get it.
Each one talked about their inability to grasp a fairly simple if not surreal plot wherein everything was spelled out in a giant flashback. They complained about it being long and having a story that was "too dense". Some of the comments made it clear that they failed to even grasp the elementary points of the story. Yes, it was surreal, but what the hell? Many of them prided on their confusion. Robert Ebert stated how he didn't get it because his brain works too much after making a pointed comment about how video games are essentially dumb-dumb entertainment. Many also carried the echo of how little they respect video games. And that's cool. Most video games are brainless devices no better than the idiot box. Some seem only to be played by that violent kind of kid who's so intent on backyard wrestling and who you always suspected was just too lazy to do a school shooting.
Nonetheless...
It grates when someone proves too ADD to grasp basic surrealistic concepts like (it doesn't have to be in reality or real) assumes the basic idiocy on those who do and who have played a game that requires at least 10 times more dexterity of brain to comprehend. We are not the idiots, senor.
Of course, this frustration is only the recent ebb of that when actually watching the movie, an event that makes me wish to slay most of the 18-24 demographic. Imagine a lovely theater of teenagers with the emotional maturity of grapefruit. They cannot grasp ideas such as not talking nonstop 15-25 minutes into the picture when the guy in front of you has repeatedly asked you not to. Add to this that a great swath of the crowd where mostly horror movie types who screamed awesome when something bloody happened. Considering the depths the movie sunk to, I was afraid to walk back to the car alongside some of them. Laughing when someone's skin is shredded off was far more horrifying than having to witness it and thus have some more innocence cells burned away. After the movie there were catcalls of "I don't get it."
Ergh. Yes, I realize, porn forum, not bloody movie review forum, but nonetheless I've recently had enough. It does not make one feel better about humanity when the dexterity required to sit through or understand an elementary surreal work means that mental dexterity of the imagined kind is dying. Imaginations, despite the resurgence of fantasy and all the sources of entertainment we receive, seem to be diminishing by the decade. Kafka and the surrealists used to rule entertainment. Not long ago, film noir required one to keep a mind alongside a detective. Not long ago Jacob's Ladder was understood. Now this may not be something you fear, but as writers and citizens it's a cause of alarm. Writing is imaginary, is creating a world of fancy. And as citizens, we should all note that empathy requires the ability to imagine what it is like to live someone else's life, have to deal with their problems. If none of us can imagine anymore, if most have rusty imaginations, how will they act to those that had fewer breaks?
Nor is it good for the mind to imagine that shock no longer just merely fails to shock, but who are excited by gore. I admit to being jaded to violence. It goes deep and stays there. A result of being a victim of violence I suspect. There's a difference though between merely being unengaged and laughing one's ass off as someone screams to death.
And for more fear, we must combine the two. People without imaginations who are excited by violence and can never imagine what it is actually like to have said acts done to them. What are these people capable of? If they can't imagine a victim's pain, if they laugh and are excited by displays of blood and screaming, they are certainly not all that far from the events noted in the homeless beating thread.
And for a more porn scare, imagine men with hardons and a stoked violence fetish who can't imagine the thoughts of a scared female, imagine people like the ones above who have also been taught that those who commit certain sex acts or even any sex acts at all are subhuman. It all brings to mind a scene in Transmetropolitan where a man is nearly beaten to death by retro fundamentalists for taking his girlfriend to a porno. And even more ironical the movie Silent Hill itself wherein the cultists gleefully put to death the child and her aids because of "sins". These sins were lacking a named father and having a child that looked like the kid who lacked a named father and trying to help that kid.
Overall, I wish I could slap these people before they become like those in the movie or the people in the papers that make us all cower in fear clutching our guns and our Child Finder device thingies. Make 'em imagine, make 'em think. Before it's too late.
On that count it failed. The plot could have used some tweaking for holes and the dialogue required the admittedly well-done ambience to cause you to suspend disbelief. Also the director went over the line from creepy to blood-splatter extraordinaire at times to great dismay though overall it was creepy.
Overall, a mediocre-decent movie or even crap depending on how much the music, shots, and actually creepy bits (where the gore was off-camera or non-existant) sucked you in.
I give this review as a setup. After the movie experience and over the last couple of days I read some reviews. Most were bitching about a lack of a preview night wherein the critics made it very clear that they had decided their minds about the movie without seeing it. Beyond that was a very common problem, they didn't get it.
Each one talked about their inability to grasp a fairly simple if not surreal plot wherein everything was spelled out in a giant flashback. They complained about it being long and having a story that was "too dense". Some of the comments made it clear that they failed to even grasp the elementary points of the story. Yes, it was surreal, but what the hell? Many of them prided on their confusion. Robert Ebert stated how he didn't get it because his brain works too much after making a pointed comment about how video games are essentially dumb-dumb entertainment. Many also carried the echo of how little they respect video games. And that's cool. Most video games are brainless devices no better than the idiot box. Some seem only to be played by that violent kind of kid who's so intent on backyard wrestling and who you always suspected was just too lazy to do a school shooting.
Nonetheless...
It grates when someone proves too ADD to grasp basic surrealistic concepts like (it doesn't have to be in reality or real) assumes the basic idiocy on those who do and who have played a game that requires at least 10 times more dexterity of brain to comprehend. We are not the idiots, senor.
Of course, this frustration is only the recent ebb of that when actually watching the movie, an event that makes me wish to slay most of the 18-24 demographic. Imagine a lovely theater of teenagers with the emotional maturity of grapefruit. They cannot grasp ideas such as not talking nonstop 15-25 minutes into the picture when the guy in front of you has repeatedly asked you not to. Add to this that a great swath of the crowd where mostly horror movie types who screamed awesome when something bloody happened. Considering the depths the movie sunk to, I was afraid to walk back to the car alongside some of them. Laughing when someone's skin is shredded off was far more horrifying than having to witness it and thus have some more innocence cells burned away. After the movie there were catcalls of "I don't get it."
Ergh. Yes, I realize, porn forum, not bloody movie review forum, but nonetheless I've recently had enough. It does not make one feel better about humanity when the dexterity required to sit through or understand an elementary surreal work means that mental dexterity of the imagined kind is dying. Imaginations, despite the resurgence of fantasy and all the sources of entertainment we receive, seem to be diminishing by the decade. Kafka and the surrealists used to rule entertainment. Not long ago, film noir required one to keep a mind alongside a detective. Not long ago Jacob's Ladder was understood. Now this may not be something you fear, but as writers and citizens it's a cause of alarm. Writing is imaginary, is creating a world of fancy. And as citizens, we should all note that empathy requires the ability to imagine what it is like to live someone else's life, have to deal with their problems. If none of us can imagine anymore, if most have rusty imaginations, how will they act to those that had fewer breaks?
Nor is it good for the mind to imagine that shock no longer just merely fails to shock, but who are excited by gore. I admit to being jaded to violence. It goes deep and stays there. A result of being a victim of violence I suspect. There's a difference though between merely being unengaged and laughing one's ass off as someone screams to death.
And for more fear, we must combine the two. People without imaginations who are excited by violence and can never imagine what it is actually like to have said acts done to them. What are these people capable of? If they can't imagine a victim's pain, if they laugh and are excited by displays of blood and screaming, they are certainly not all that far from the events noted in the homeless beating thread.
And for a more porn scare, imagine men with hardons and a stoked violence fetish who can't imagine the thoughts of a scared female, imagine people like the ones above who have also been taught that those who commit certain sex acts or even any sex acts at all are subhuman. It all brings to mind a scene in Transmetropolitan where a man is nearly beaten to death by retro fundamentalists for taking his girlfriend to a porno. And even more ironical the movie Silent Hill itself wherein the cultists gleefully put to death the child and her aids because of "sins". These sins were lacking a named father and having a child that looked like the kid who lacked a named father and trying to help that kid.
Overall, I wish I could slap these people before they become like those in the movie or the people in the papers that make us all cower in fear clutching our guns and our Child Finder device thingies. Make 'em imagine, make 'em think. Before it's too late.
