Electrophantasia

I saw Wall-E last night at the theater.  Now, I believe that everyone is perfectly entitled to their opinion.  You don’t like Speed Racer?  That’s fine.  You want to actually enjoy some bad movie, that’s fine too.  I do that lots of times.

Based on my experience last night I can tell you two things, though.  First, I think Wall-E is one of the greatest animated films of any kind ever made.  It ranks up with the movies that I think are the best Disney has ever done.  Second, if you don’t like this movie (and there are those who don’t) then that is your right.  It is also my right to lower my opinion of you.  I’m not going to argue about it, as such things are an exercise in silliness.  How many times have any of you ever seen someone’s opinion changed as a result of an online debate?  My current tally is zilch.  No, I’m just going to shake my head sadly and know that your kind and the movies previewed before Wall-E deserve each other, and I guess that’s just fine.

Everyone else, go see this movie especially if you like science fiction.  It’s actually an amazingly good science fiction story.  And if that auto-pilot wasn’t a sly nod to 2001: A Space Odyssey, I’m a rabbit.

I’ve recently completed my DVD collection of Godzilla movies.  To celebrate I’m going to be watching them one per day and doing up a bit of a post on each one and some of my thoughts.  I’m not entirely sure when the start date for this will be, since one of the movies is on backorder, I think.  Whenever I have them all in my hands I’ll probably go for it.  Could be interesting, we’ll see.

Well I kind of implied that I was going to do a second thing on Hellraiser, so here goes a quickie.

I think I gave a pretty clear idea of what my reaction to the first film in the series was back in my original post.  Going into the second film I had both the experience of the first and some knowledge of the movie under my belt, so I wasn’t very surprised.

On the whole, Hellraiser II: Hellbound is an interesting beast.  This time around Clive Barker gave the director’s chair to someone else and simply acted as producer.  As such, the movie is a fair bit more conventional and straightforward in its presentation.  It also seemed to move along at a much faster clip.

I think what I really enjoyed about the film was some of the visual aspects.  When the characters get to “hell” or whatever, there was some rather fun matte paintings and architecture.  Other than that the film is fairly uncomplicated, and actually didn’t have as much payoff as I would’ve hoped (the girl didn’t find her father, which was a bit of a let down to me.)

Overall I’d have to say the first film was a better film, but the second was more entertaining.  I think that works.  Maybe.

I also saw the third Hellraiser, but I didn’t care for it much.  It tried to be a little too silly and then wasn’t silly enough to actually make it okay.  The Cenobites used weren’t nearly as well-designed as the originals and their relatively short screen time at the end was mostly doing the menacing slow walk.

And that’s all the Hellraiser for now.  Probably not as interesting as the first post, but eh.  We shall endeavor for better next time.

I debated for a while whether or not I wanted to use any space on this page to get into a habit of ranting, but ultimately I decided that I can just file it under a category and if someone doesn’t want to read stuff like that they can just ignore it. It might also save my friends some of their sanity.

So if you read the title you may see where this is going already, but what the heck is the deal with video game launches? I have seen people like really upset about not getting a game or system on day one. Even I have been subject to this recently with the new PlayStation 3 bundle coming out in a few days. The fact that I am also a victim makes me even more angry because I feel it is dumb and irrational.

Despite my feelings of late, I don’t think I could ever reach the heights that I’ve seen lots of people reach. I got a Wii eventually, but I didn’t try super hard to do it. I certainly wasn’t paying more than retail price for it. And of course I didn’t buy it until quite a few months after launch. Obviously I haven’t bothered about the PlayStation 3 until now, either. Topping it off, I don’t have a 360. (Probably lost some gamer cred there.) So while I feel the tug, I’d say resisting it isn’t too terribly hard most of the time. Having no money helps, of course. It’s not that I don’t desire these things–I very much do–it’s that I don’t care the least bit about being timely.

People lining up at Halo 3 launches and things baffle me. I’m not much of a Halo fan, so let me just state also that if you are a huge fan of something, I can see the draw. There are people that seem drawn to the whole thing just for the hype of it, though. The need to be on the bleeding edge. Day one purchases for only the shiniest new console. I’m just more laid back and spread out about the whole thing, I guess. I’m still adding random games to a NES and SNES library. For the most part these games aren’t going anywhere. Settle down a little, guys.

By the way, rant inspired by someone screaming on a forum that if they didn’t get Metal Gear Solid 4 like IMMEDIATELY their crotch would explode. Or something.

It is both odd and appropriate that I begin this project with a horror movie. Appropriate because I’m supposed to be trying something different here. Odd because I don’t particularly like horror movies, as a general rule. At least that’s what I’ve said a lot of the time. I think that might not have been the entire truth, though. What exactly is a horror movie, anyway? I really like giant monster movies. Are those horror? What about Alien and the Evil Dead movies? I’ve always rather enjoyed those.

So upon reflection, I probably like quite a few horror movies just fine. That brings me to the Hellraiser films, one of the staples of the genre over the years. What did I think of them? Crazy stuff.

There was a British author named Clive Barker. At some point he wanted to get into the movies, so he got some crap together and became a director. He put out a very low-budget adaptation of a novella he wrote called The Hellbound Heart. The movie garnered quite a success with a crowd of people tired of movies about some silent crazy dude with a knife killing a bunch of teenagers. We are offered, instead, some guy with pins in his head that likes to pull apart people with random meathook tipped chains.

This was really my first time viewing these movies since I was a kid, and even back then I was way too scared of this stuff to watch very much of it. As I watched I rather wished I could go back to that child state of mind, because things tended to be more interesting back then. A person could believe in everything. Of course, that means I could also believe ET was hiding behind my bed waiting to extend his neck and shriek in my face, but you gotta take what comes. The point is, I was basically coming at it with a virgin eye.

The following is a bunch of excerpts from things I typed to a friend while watching the first movie:

-Well, so far some guy with really dirty fingernails has bought a box from some Chinese guy.

-Introduction seems to be going quick. He’s opening the box and like crazy shit is happening and I don’t even know his name yet.
-If that’s him, he’s been pretty fucked up. Yep. His face is all over the floor in pieces. Oh there’s that pinheaded guy. He’s putting the face pieces together like a puzzle. That’s interesting. Nothing seems to have come of it, however. I still don’t even know who that was. But man, he got fucked up, I guess.
-I dunno what’s going on again. They’re moving in, and some guy’s wife is all “lol I wish I could sex ur brother again, because he’s all hawt and wet” So they’re going back and forth between sex flashbacks and the husband pulling this mattress up the stairs. He cuts his hand really bad while doing this and like the blood is soaking into the floor. That’s usually for no good. Especially when it…fills…plastic baggies under the floor? What? Demons: Collecting ur blood in plastic baggies since 1987.

-Of course this baggie collecting is going to open a portal to hell or something.
-Or just make slime. That’s not right. The rats are annoyed by this whole thing, I guess. I would be too if some slime coalesced into a zombie in front of me.
-Okay lady, was the sex that fucking good? Frank seems like a dick. In any event, I dunno how much sex appeal he has now. He’s kind of all goopy zombieness.
-25 minutes in and I’m still not sure WTF is going on.
-The rats are now eating zombie remnants. Yum.
-What the hell random creepy bearded dude? That had nothing to do with anything. NOTHING.

-Man. Her entire life is just like…flashbacks to having sex.
-What the hell is this? She… Babies. What?
-Zombie be like “I’m in ur attics plannin’ ur doomz.”

-So yeah, bald dude, you aren’t going to get sexed. You are going to get zombie’d something fierce.
-The zombie is hungry for tighty whities?
-Zombie finger can’t taste that good.

-It’s the return of Creepbeard. Who apparently eats crickets from the pet store. K.

-Those rats are impaled for some reason. Maybe Frank was tired of them eating his zombie juice.
-I guess now that we’re in the movie about an hour the plot is actually starting.
-Don’t touch the box! It is evil! Actually, do touch the box. Maybe this movie will go somewhere.
-Waiiiiiiiiiiit! Balore just want friend!

-And thus the last 20 minutes of the film begins.
-Girl, your dad’s skin is NOT on correctly. This isn’t even very convincing! You even know what’s up with demons and crap, maybe you should notice this. There’s blood all over him too. I mean look at the side of his face!

-Gotta admit she at least knows how to do the hiding phase. She hid in a closet with a maggoty corpse and took it in stride. You don’t see that in horror movies too much.
-Now we trade the smart for the retarded. Do not leave the closet and stand out in the open sobbing up a storm. The crazy dadskin-wearing zombie thing with a knife will probably sneak up behind you. Like that.
-Did the fat one just get sent back to hell by having a roof fall on him?

-And here’s the boyfriend, only really present and doing anything in the last three minutes of the film. Even so, he’s taking the whole demon thing in stride.
-Slappy box contest!
-I dunno what’s up with this place with all the random fires, but if Creepbeard doesn’t show up I’ll be surprised.

-Oh shit there he is! I fucking called that one. And…turns out…Creepbeard was just…a skeleton gargoyle in disguise? He grabbed the box and flew away. And now the box is back with the random Chinese guy. Yep this movie makes total sense.

Hope you could make sense of that with the pictures and everything. Despite how it may sound, compared to a lot of the low budget crap in the horror genre, I thought Hellraiser was pretty good, if a bit slow and confusing. Next time we meet I shall continue the discussion of this subject and get into the movie’s sequel, Hellbound: Hellraiser II. Prepare yourself!

If you haven’t yet, you can check out the About page. I did write stuff there in my own meandering and roundabout way. That’s really my best explanation of what we’re going to be trying to do here, and even I’m not all that sure what I’m talking about. All I can really do is rush headlong into this lunacy, so let the posting begin.

The design right now is for the most part what I want. It’s very simple, but it feels easy to read to me. Blue is soothing, as well. Simple and soothing kind of goes along with what I’m trying to do, so I don’t see much need to clutter things up. Any feedback is, of course, welcome.