Miley Cyrus greasing the climby pole at the Teen Video Awards — cellulite at 16?  Too many potato chip’n'banana on Wonder bread sandwiches back at the trailer, methinks.

Just a little reminder, parents buying Christmas gifts for daughters and nieces: don’t buy from godless transnational Disney Corp. and its best-known brand, Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Mountana-from-behind. The daughter of no-talent assclown and sometime male stripper Billy Ray Cyrus (a one-hit wonder known for his moving, lyrical “Leaky Reeky Fart” or something like that), Cyrus teaches young women to have self-esteem if they’re emotionally secure and work hard at studies and sports.

Just kidding! If they work the pole in whore’s drawers — please, Miley, the world doesn’t want to be your gynecologist — and ask men to treat them as objects to scratch itches on. Because, of course, men need that encouragement. If the hosebeast daughter ever covers Daddy’s one witless hit, it’ll doubtless become “Itchy Twitchy Twat.” ‘Cause that’s just the high caliber ofartist [sic] she is.

In this connection, you must, must, if you haven’t already, see the scintillating South Park season 13 episode “The Ring,” complete with brief Wagner allusion at the end for those of us who don’t have a beautician girlfriend to beat when she scratches the Camaro (admittedly a tiny percentage of Trey and Matt’s audience — we few, we happy few…).  It satirizes the absurd “purity ring” phenomenon peddled by Disney’s other pretend-wholesome musical phenom, faggy boy band The Jonas Brothers.   “Mr. Mouse” beats down when they cross his plan to “sell sex to little girls”:

And the brilliant, hysterical finale: “Even the Christians are too fucking stupid to figure out I’m selling sex to their daughters.  I’ve made billions off of Christian ignorance for decades now.  And do you know why?  Because Christians are RETARDED!”

And so, dear believers, we are — if we sit there and let Disney Corp. and the rest of the Hollywood soft-core porn industry, the immensely rich and immensely evil Michael Eisners and Steven Spielbergs and Sumner Redstones, pipe their sewage directly into our living rooms day after day, night after night on The Disney Channel and the rest of their media outlets.  And all the while our grade-school girls sit there transfixed with their souls turning to sludge.  Please, Mom and Dad — buy your girls something else this Christmas.

Numarul 13 nu a fost un numar cu ghinion pentru cei doi realizatori a binei cunoscute serie “South Park”.

Cartman, Kyle, Stan si Kenny au incheiat de curand si cel de-al 13-le sezon “South Park”.

Printre episoadele importante ale acestui sezon se numara episodul “Dead Celebrities”, dedicat in mare parte lui Michael Jackson, episodul “Fishsticks” – o satira binemeritata plasata lui Kanye West, si evident episodul “The Ring”, o parodie adresata canalului Disney, dar cu precadere fratilor Jonas.

Asa cum am fost obisnuiti, Kenny ne-a parasit in aproape toate episoadele, dar s-a intors printre noi de fiecare data. Cartman a lasat deoparte visul de a castiga 10 milioane de dolari, dar si-a dedicat viata dreptatii (ep. The Coon), iar Butters s-a transformat in pimp. (ep. Butters Bottom Bitch).

De asemenea Cartman s-a apucat de cantat, interpretand piesa “Poker Face” a lui Lady GaGa in episodul “Whale Whores”.

Puteti urmari episoadele in intregime pe site-ul lor oficial.

1.For this week’s individual task I’m going to look at one print-based, one television-based and one film-based media object. I have chosen the book “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, the television series “Ghost Whisperer” and the film “The Ring”.

“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”

The narrative of the story follows Tvetzan Todorov’s  narrative structure. The story begins with the equilibrium: Harry lives with his aunt and uncle in a little town and leads a fairly normal, although quite lonely life. Then comes the first disruption: Harry discovers he’s a wizard and enters the wizards world by going to study in one of the best schools for magic. This develops into a sort of second equilibrium. Then comes the second disruption: something very valuable and important is hidden in the school and someone is trying to steal it. The recognition happens at the same time, because the three main characters (Harry and his two friend) discover this at the same time. The follows the attempt: they try to break all the protective spells and get to the valuable object before the person, who is trying to steal it. The book ends with an enhanced equilibrium: the object is saved, the villain – defeated, and Harry returns to his aunt and uncle for the summer, only this time they won’t treat him as bad, because now he can do magic.

In the book it is also easy to identify Propp’s character types:

-          Hero – obviously Harry Potter

-          Villain 1 – Harry’s enemy at school Draco Malfoy

-          Villain 2 – the actual villain, who turns out to be one of the professors

-          Donor – the headmaster Dumbledor, who provides Harry with the Invisibility cloak, which aids his mission

-          Helper – again Dumbledor

-           Father – again Dumbledor, who is obviously a key figure and is to a great extent the one moving the narrative

-          The Dispatcher – Harry himself is the dispatcher, getting involved in the quest due to his own curiosity

-          The false hero – professor Quirrel, who eventually turns out to be the villain

The only missing character type is the princess, because the reward for the hero comes in the form of praise and a happier world, where he fits in.

Ghost Whisperer

The series revolves around the main character Melinda Gordon, who has the ability to see and talk to ghosts. Although there is an on-going plot throughout each season, each episode has an independent plot, which again follows Todorov’s linear narrative structure. The equilibrium in the beginning of each episode is how Melinda and her husband and friends live happily and calmly in a town, named Fareview. The disruption comes when Melinda meets a new ghost. The recognition has three parts. The first part is when Melinda finds out what the ghost is haunting and tells her husband and friends, who usually help. Then comes the attempt: to try and find what’s keeping the ghost from “crossing over” and then try and “get him into the light”. Then come the seond and third part of the recognition:  when Melinda discovers what the unfinished business of the ghost is and when Melinda explaines to the living relatives that she has a gift and that their son/mother/father/daughter/friend is a ghost and aids them in talking to each other. Finally comes the enhanced equilibrium, where again Melinda returns to her happy and normal life and the ghost’s relatives have found closure.

Propp’s character types are again present in the series:

-          Hero – Melinda

-          Villain 1 – the big villain who is kept in the shadows throughout the season but becomes revealed in the last episode, and who is usually trying to keep Melinda from helping the ghosts.

-          Villain 2 – the ghost acts as villain for the first ¾ of an episode, until he is understood correctly and helped to find piece.

-          Donor – one of Melinda’s friends, a professor in the local college

-          Helper – any of Melinda’s friends

-          Father – a special ghost, who is called “The Watcher”

-          The Dispatcher – Melinda herself

-          The false hero – in some episodes from season 1, this is Melinda’s brother, who turns out to be helping “the dark side”

Again, the only missing type is the princess, because the reward comes in the form of piece and personal satisfaction for the hero.

The Ring

The equilibrium at the beginning is the normal and peaceful life that the main characters Rachel and her son live. Then comes the disruption: both Rachel and her son watch a tape, which carries a demon and a curse that the watcher will die in 7 days. The recognition comes when Rachel finds out about previous victims of the curse and believes in it. The attempt is when she struggles to find a way out of the curse and tries to find where the tape comes from in order to save herself and her son. The enhanced equilibrium is when she escapes the curse (a.k.a. copies the tape) and she and her son can now return to living a normal life, now closer than ever. The only downside that the enhanced equilibrium has is that the curse isn’t actually destroyed and the plot leaves an opening for a sequel where the curse returns to haunt them.

Propp’s character types:

-          Hero – Rachel

-          Villain – Samara, the demon from the curse

-          Helper – one of Rachel’s colleagues, who provides information about the girl on the tape

-          The Dispatcher – the demon, who gives the 7-days deadline through a phonecall

As we can see we have several missing character types: the donor – basically the hero discovers everything herself; the princess – the reward is the hero and her son’s lives; the father – this character simply is missing; the false hero – also, another missing character.

2. A media object, that does not conform Todorov’s linear structure or most of Propp’s character types is a certain commercial for condoms: A father and his little son are in a supermarket. The son puts a package of candy in the shopping cart. The father takes them out. The boy puts them in again, making and angry face. The father again takes them out. Then the boy starts screaming, throwing things, throwing himself on the floor, kicking. People all around are looking shocked and indignant. The father gives out  a deep sigh and a message appears on the screen “Use Condoms”.

As we can see the plot starts with equilibrium – father and son, shopping. Then comes the disruption – the boy wants candy and starts screaming. The recognition: everybody in the store are staring in shock. Then the commercial ends, without an attempt or an enhanced equilibrium.

This is a sought-after effect, which leaves the viewer with the task to come up with a solution to the problem for himself – e.g. to use condoms and not allow a situation like this to happen. This commercial has been banned, due to the obvious implication that children are something to be avoided. Nevertheless, anyone who has seen it can confirm that, although it does not follow the usual linear narrative structure to the end, and in fact exactly Because of that, it is effective and leaves an impression.

So since he who has control over good things can do all things, whereas those who control evil things cannot do everything, it is clear that those who can do evil things are less powerful.

The professor whom I am assisting in the course on Boethius neatly divides Boethius’s “evil beings” into three categories.  Some men are evil through ignorance, because they simply do not know what the good is, or because they are deceived.  Some are evil through weakness of the will, because they know what is good but they desire evil more than the good.  But some are evil through malice, and they do what is evil because they know it is evil.  They take delight in the harm they cause.

In the case of Tolkien’s characters, at least the ones who are tempted by and succumb to the Ring, the first two categories seem to merge.  Through weakness of will Isildur keeps the Ring on account of its beauty, and he is thereby deceived into thinking it harmless.  Through ignorance, Bilbo and Frodo keep and use the Ring for many years, and it wears away the strength of their wills to the point that Bilbo barely gives it up, and Frodo cannot do so at all, even though at the last he knows with perfect clarity how evil it is.  Gollum desires the beauty of the Ring from the beginning, and murders for it; he is then deceived into thinking that, with the Ring’s help, he can learn great secrets under the mountains.  In all such cases, the action of the Ring depends on deception and the weakness of its wearer’s will, and its result is not to increase the wearer’s power, but to drain it away.

But what of the beings who are evil for evil’s own sake?  In what sense are they powerless?  Here I think my two previous meditations pertain the most.  For it is of these evil men, and only of these evil men, that Boethius asserts that they simply do not exist.  He qualifies this, of course, by saying that such men do not exist as men—they exist as something less, as corpses exist.  But do what sorts of powers pertain to a corpse?

… All power is to be reckoned among desirable things, and all desirable things are related to the good as to the high point of their nature.  But the capacity to wreak evil cannot be related to the good, and so is not something to be desired.  Yet all power is desirable, so it is clear that capacity for evil is not a power.

As it is with the Ring, so it is with Sauron and all evil beings.  They possess no powers except temptation and deception, acting like parasites on the ignorance and weakness of other beings.  In cases where these other beings resist temptation and deceit, they sometimes have the power to destroy.  But Sauron and all his ilk are wholly powerless to create: they can only destroy what has already been created.  They are powerful in the sense that leeches are powerful, deriving their capacity to cause harm only from the constitution of their victims, and not from any real power radiating from their own beings.

You see kings seated high on lofty thrones,
In gleaming purple bright, fenced by grim arms,
Speechless with rage, threats on their louring brows.
Draw back this veil of arrogant, empty show,
Then see close chains which bind the lords within.
Lust with its poisonous greed excites their hearts;
Wild anger whips up storm-waves in their minds;
Grief plagues these captives, slippery hope torments.
The king you see by many lords possessed,
His aims frustrated, by harsh masters pressed.

Or, as Boethius writes in the following chapter:

True voices and true shapes were lost;
Bereft of human norms,
Their minds alone endured unchanged
To mourn their monstrous forms.

(Consolation of Philosophy, V.2 & 3)

“But evil men, you will say, have power.”

My second meditation on Boethius begins with his own objection.  Having pressed his claim that evil men do not exist, Boethius comes to the sticking point:  if evil men don’t exist, why are they so powerful?  This is neither more nor less than the problem we have with Sauron and the Nazgul.  If Tolkien really embraces the Boethian/Augustinian view that evil is nothing, why is it that his evil creatures can cause so much harm?

“I would not deny this myself, but their power stems not from their strength but from their weakness.”

What weakness is this?

“If, as we concluded a little earlier, evil is nothing, it is obvious that wicked men have no power, because they can perform only evil deeds.”

This is hard to swallow.

The thing is that you can’t criticize Boethius for not knowing how much harm an evil person can do.  You can’t bring the Holocaust or World War II against him.  As Boethius pens the lines above, he is witnessing the final collapse of Roman civilization while pining in the prison whither he has been sent after betrayal and disgrace by his fellow senators.  The wicked men he mentions will eventually put him to death—an eventuality that he already suspects.  So there is no telling him that he does not know what he is talking about when it comes to the power wielded by evil men.

But power, Boethius suggests, is always a power for something.  Now, what if you set about to get something you want, but it turns out that every power you thought you had ends up hindering you in your quest?  Clearly these “powers” would not be real powers at all—they would be handicaps, because they would render you powerless to fulfill your desires.

It is precisely this that becomes the curse of the wicked.  For they too have desires (for happiness of course, like the rest of us), but they have chosen the ways of evil to bring them about.  And the problem with the ways of evil is that they take no account of the good.  But the good, as Boethius argues, is what all desire, and what is necessary for happiness.  Thus, having cultivated the wrong powers and become strong in the wrong paths, evil men are powerless to attain the good.

What is the weakness of Sauron?  It is the weakness that Boethius ascribes to the evil man.  “He is very wise,” Gandalf says of Sauron, “and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice.  But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts.”  In his weakness of mistaking power for the only desirable good, Sauron is blind to all other goods.  On this blindness depends the web and weft of the ensuing plot:  Sauron cannot think that someone would refuse power, and actively seek to destroy the One Ring.

Not much going on at Packeroo-Bradley Wedding HQ at the moment, not having picked a date hinders things somewhat…

Naturally the very second anything falls into place, you, dear readers, will be the first to know, and I may well share some general musings that I’m considering in the next few months so you know vaguely in which direction I’m leaning on various things.

In the meantime, however, the most exciting item to have been purchased so far was the ring, of course!  So I thought I’d share some pictures of my lovely sparkly rock, which, by the way, MrB picked out completely by himself (a whole 84 days before he was planning to ask the all-important question!) and chose absolutely perfectly, both in terms of the size and in terms of it being exactly what I wanted.  (Despite me not having any clue what I wanted beforehand!)

The 4Cs are as follows (for those who know what they are – because I didn’t when I was presented with it!):

Carat Weight: 1.06 carat

Color: G

Clarity: VS1

Cut: Excellent

[I apologise in advance for the scrolling required to see these pics - if you knew the issues (imagine steam coming out of my ears) I've had trying to get these posted side by side, you'd understand!]

Trying to be arty with a mirror

Actually on my finger

Last one, I promise!

All of these superb photos were taken by MrB, click on the pics to see them on Flickr.  Shameless plugging of MrB’s other photos can be found on the right sidebar of this blog

It’s another big fight week. Which means different things to different people.

Especially we writer types.

Some count down to opening bells by waxing nostalgic on past events. Some immerse in head-to-head matchups seeking evidence of one man’s superiority. And others simply spend time gorging on hospitality food and drink buffets.

Not a bad selection in the bunch… if you ask me.

But I come here not to praise the fistic establishment, but to bury it.

And, while simultaneously pondering replies to a Facebook friend request from someone I’ve neither seen in about 20 years nor liked in about 21, I’m feeling just a tad bit crusadery.

Either that or it’s another mid-life crisis.

And though no one’s asked my opinion in so many words, I’ve nonetheless chosen this week to climb on the soapbox and enlighten with my own home remedy for boxing’s ills.

My personal sanctioning body, if you will.

For lack of a better idea, and because all the good ones are taken, we’ll keep our name simple.

Ladies and gentlemen… I present the IMHO.

Of course, with the arrival of a supreme being of sanctioning bodies all the others must immediately be dissolved. So with apologies to their office-bound hierarchies and corporate staffs, I bid adieu to the IBF, IBO, WBA, WBC and WBO.

Not to mention The Ring.

Sorry Oscar, you’ve been downsized.

Or if you prefer, voted off alphabet island.

Next, I hereby declare all existing championships vacant.

To all the men who’d been holding world title belts when the aforementioned ruling was handed down, thanks for your time. Your in-ring service is noted. Your worthy accomplishments are commended. Now please step back into line with everyone else.

Our new tagline: “Lineal, schmineal. We’re the IMHO.”

P.S. – You can keep your belts if you’d like. You know, to show the grandkids someday as evidence that you were young once. Kind of like 8-track tapes. Or pay telephones.

But now… it’s on to new business.

At the risk of alienating purists in the crowd – you know the type, folks who pine desperately for the days of eight weight classes and log-chopping training camps – we have an announcement.

The IMHO is a champion of technology. We endorse replay to determine whether cuts are caused by punches. We give scratch pads to judges flummoxed by carrying 1s on their scorecards. And we use computers to remove any trace of human bias from our ratings.

OK, full disclosure… the IBO beat us to that last one.

But now that it’s been disbanded (see Paragraph 12), we’re claiming it as our own.

Nyah, nyaaaaah.

Upon annexation, the immediate priority becomes filling title vacancies.

Referring to ratings as of Nov. 1 (www.iboboxing.com/top_100_computerized_rankings.html), the top four in each weight class will be matched up in mini single-elimination tournaments to be begun and completed by mid-2010.

Tourney winners will be awarded pristine new championship belts.

All losers will be placed back in the mix for mandatory title defenses.

Each freshly minted champion will fight at least twice per year, once against the incumbent No. 1 challenger and once more against a top 10 contender of his choosing. If a champion elects to fight three or more times in a year, other opponents can be chosen at his whim.

If you want to give an anonymous hometown kid a shot, go for it. If you want to pull the trigger on a guy 25 pounds lighter, knock yourself out. And hey, if you can win multiple titles and meet defense requirements in multiple classes… bully.

Just don’t ask for special treatment. Because you won’t get it.

Meanwhile, concurrent fights between contenders will be called just that: fights between contenders. Not interim title fights. Or title eliminators.

Or any other trumped-up code name that actually translates to “Please remit 10 percent of your anticipated purse to the address below, in exchange for a meaningless title belt.”

Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend. But they’ve got no place in boxing.

Similar terms like super, interim, unified, undisputed, emeritus or in-recess have also been barred forever. In fact, the mere mention of such imposters – or the very mouthing of the term “catch weight” at any official IMHO gathering – is grounds for permanent media suspension.

And contrary to this weekend’s jewelry-encrusted “title fight” of convenience, the IMHO’s weight-class boundaries are hard, fast and non-negotiable.

If a fighter chooses to defend his title two pounds lighter than the limit, so be it. But no title match will be sanctioned that requires any fighter to come in at anything other than the established weights.

It may irk the odd promoter or two – sorry Bob – but it ought to satisfy the hardest line of a fickle scribe horde that’s always quick to point out shortfalls in existing systems, all while quickly lapping what the alphabets serve like parched dogs at a soiled toilet.

You can’t have it both ways, people. And in the new IMHO era, you won’t. 

Finally, presuming the fighters entering each mini-tourney as top seeds emerge victorious, the inaugural list of IMHO champions would look like this:

Heavyweight – Wladimir Klitschko

Cruiserweight – Steve Cunningham

Light Heavyweight – Chad Dawson

Super Middleweight – Carl Froch

Middleweight – Kelly Pavlik

Super Welterweight – Paul Williams

Welterweight – Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Super Lightweight – Manny Pacquiao

Lightweight – Juan Manuel Marquez

Super Featherweight – Humberto Soto

Featherweight – Chris John

Super Bantamweight – Celestino Caballero

Bantamweight – Hozumi Hasegawa

Super Flyweight – Nonito Donaire

Flyweight – Omar Narvaez

Junior Flyweight – Ivan Calderon

Strawweight – Oleydong Sithsamuochai

Not to speak for the masses, but we IMHO types think that’s a roster to be proud of.

And as for other day-to-day issues, they’ll be dealt with as they arise. In fact, I say bring ’em on and let’s get started. We’ve got promises to keep. And title fights to sign before we sleep.

After all, folks… it ain’t rocket science. It’s just boxing.

And in my humble opinion at least, we couldn’t do a lot worse.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

This week’s title-fight schedule:

FRIDAY

IBO welterweight title – Stoke, United Kingdom

Lovemore N’dou (champion) vs. Matthew Hatton (No. 50 contender)      

N’dou (47-11-1, 31 KO): First title defense; Ex-IBF champion at 140 pounds

Hatton (37-4-1, 14 KO): First title fight; Four-fight win streak since May 2008 (4-0, 1 KO)

Fitzbitz says: N’dou by decision

SATURDAY 

WBO welterweight title – Las Vegas, Nev.

Miguel Cotto (champion) vs. Manny Pacquiao (No. 1 contender)

Cotto (34-1, 27 KO): Second title defense; One loss in 15 title fights (14-1, 11 KO)

Pacquiao (49-3-2, 37 KO): First title fight at 147 pounds; One loss in 12 title fights (9-1-2, 8 KO)

Fitzbitz says: Pacquiao in 10

WBA super welterweight title – Las Vegas, Nev.

Daniel Santos (champion) vs. Yuri Foreman (No. 1 champion)      

Santos (32-3-1, 23 KO): First title defense; Two losses in 11 title fights (9-2, 5 KO)

Foreman (27-0, 8 KO): First title fight; Second fight in Las Vegas (1-0, 0 KO) 

Fitzbitz says: Santos by decision

Y no me refiero a la pelicula gringa ¬¬, si no de la adaptacion al manga de las historias de Koji Suizuki (The Ring), donde nos presenta 4 relatos cortos relacionados con lo tenebroso y oscuro que puede ser al agua.

El planeta azul en que vivimos tiene ese color porque el mar ocupa el 70% de la superficie… Alli se encuentra el origen de la vida, nos fascina, nos aterroriza

Asi empieza esta serie de historias, ilustradas por Meimu en las cuales podemos encontrar tramas como:

• Dark Water: (Si ya vieron la pelicula, les recomiendo leer esta historia) Una madre soltera y su hija viven en un edificio de mala muerte, aunque suficiente para que la madre puede pagarlo, donde 2 años atras, una niña de la misma de edad, desaparecio misteriosamente, ahora sucesos extraños ocurren alrededor de esta familia.
• Crucero a Yumenoshima: (Si vieron Masters of Horrors, Dream Cruise esta basada en esta historia) Un bote con varios pasajeros se detiene en el medio de la bahia, que es lo que detiene a este bote, y por que los pasajeros no quieren averiguarlo.
• A la deriva: El relato mas corto de los 4. Usted conoce alguna historia de barco fantasmas, ¿que les ocurre a los pasajeros de los navios que parecen desaparecer sin dejar rastro?, de eso se trata esta historia.
• Un bosque bajo el mar: Un hombre queda atrapado en una cueva, en un intento de revivir su audacia juvenil, años mas tarde su hijo sigue sus pasos.

Soy fanatico del terror psicologico, y esta es una de las historias que demuestran que no solo con asesinos con mascara se puede producir una sensacion de escalofrio, algo que llamamos liquido vital, puede traer las peores desgracias, muertes insospechables, y psicosis en las personas.

Pueden descargarlo desde esta direccion para leerlo.

Que opinan, que otra historia de terror psicologico conocen?

Nos vemos y cuidado con ese vaso de agua .

Hi

Cursed Video Girl is based loosely on “The Ring” -

- the scariest shit show of them all.

ARGH!

Pyron, Bobbie.  The Ring. 2009.  253p.  Westside Books, $15.95.  (978-1-934813-09-6).

Angry to the point of self-destruction, 15-year-old Mardie loses her resentment of her “perfect” older brother, Michael, when she takes up boxing and then discovers that Michael is gay.  Through her training to gain strategy and mental discipline in the ring, Mardie works through her emotional pain, her friend’s rejection, and her parents’ lack of understanding toward a sense of strength and fearlessness.  Although the focus is on Mardie, her growing relationship with Michael after she finds that he is gay and her protective attitude toward him when he is bullied shows the importance of family unity around a young glbtq person.

Bueno aprovechando que acaba de ser la noche de las brujas, Halloween, voy a hacer un pequeño ránking con las 10 películas de terror que más me han gustado a mi. Las películas que son una saga o una trilogía las meteré en el mismo pack, porque así tendremos más variedad, sino con dos o tres títulos ya tendremos la lista.

Me gustaría que enviéis vuestras propuestas para ampliar la lista y también ver películas para ampliar mi perspectiva cinematográfica. Bueno empezamos:

1- Saw, Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV y Saw V. Cada una con su encanto y con sus juegos enfermizos.

2- REC y REC 2. Un producción española que pone los pelos de punta.

3- Boogeyman. Un film que juega con los miedos infantiles que todos tubimos (la primera).

4- El exorcista. Todo un clásico.

5- Llamada perdida y El pozo. Las películas de The Ring pero en su original japonés.

6- Destino Final. La prueba que la muerte siempre nos pillará (la primera).

7- The Ring y The Ring 2. Me gustaron más las versiones japonesas pero ambas cuatro son la leche.

8- Tiburón. Esta provocó que jamás me bañase tranquilo en la playa.

9- La matanza de texas. Una sangrienta película no apta para los impresionables.

10- Señales. No es una película plenamente de terror, pero cuando el alien aparece en la fiesta de cumpleaños… Cada vez que lo recuerdo un escalofrío recorre mi espinazo.

Espero que mi ránking os guste y ayude que tengáis buenas noches de terror acompañados o solos, lo que prefiráis. Espero vuestras propuestas para ampliar la lista.

I really don’t have enough to say but I feel the need to write something, so here goes. Halloween, I never felt its presence as I child if it wasn’t for the scary shows shown on TV every October 31st. I can clearly remember watching the scary episode of MMK and apparently it is still shown up to know. And I still refuse to watch it again. I have only seen it once and never in my life I’m going to watch that again. I can deal with throat-slashing, flesh-eating, bone-breaking psycho-maniac monsters and other gory & scary stuff. Ghosts aren’t that hard to watch too, all you have to deal with is a week-long paranoia after watching it. I can watch all this sh*ts including Blair Witch Project, The Ring, Shutter and probably the infamous Paranormal Activity. What I cannot stand watching are the films dealing with hell and evils that came straight from it. I was only able to watch The Exorcist when I was with my 40 something friends. The Exorcism of Emily Rose is too creepy for me and Drag Me To Hell gave me the creeps for 2 weeks or something. I do not know what is up with those but it freaks the hell out of me. All right, that’s enough. We’re going to Bulacan tomorrow; Imma leave my laptop. Happy Halloween everyone!

My aunt just asked me if I want a Wii for Christmas; of course I said NO. I’ll explain everything on my next post.

Back in the mythological times of Ancient Greece, many ancient warriors wanted to claim the head of the snake-haired Gorgon sister, Medusa. Medusa was so hard to attack because one look into her eyes would spell your demise.

In “The Ring” a new film from Dreamworks, a mysterious videotape is watched by a pair of teenage girls. The tape drives one girl to end up in a mental institution and the other to mysteriously die. The tape eventually makes it into the hands of Rachel Keller, a single mother (Naomi Watts of “Mulholland Drive“) and her young son, Aidan.

Rachel is a reporter and begins an investigation to what happened to the two girls (one of the girls happens to be Rachel’s niece). Rachel finds herself slipping down a very slippery slope as she soon discovers that others who had seen the tape had only lived for 7 days after seeing the tape. The tape turns out to be the summit of a giant mystery that will bring Rachel and the people she cares about to the brink of death. What kind of power is housed within the tape? What are the secrets surrounding the tape?

“The Ring” is a nail-biter from the opening frame. It is a roller coaster for the mind that doesn’t let go till every pinpointed detail is revealed. I loved the feeling of this movie as it plays with your mind as the cleverly conceived plot unfolds. The film isn’t afraid to slowly release detail after detail very slowly and methodically. A lot of films these days tend to bash us over the head with a shock-ending or gross-fest but this film is too clever for either movie invention.

I loved that the film was multi-layered in that if you guessed a section of the secret you wouldn’t be disappointed when it came to the final frame. There are just so many twists and turns.

The film is a remake of a 1998 Japanese horror film called “Ringu” which I have never seen and I am sure that this version will the first time Western audiences are exposed to this story. If anything it may help Western audiences to look more closely at Japanese horror. Or at least open our eyes to the possibility.

Director Gore Verbinski (“Mouse Hunt” and “The Mexican“) wasn’t afraid to get dark and spooky with this project. Verbinski’s cinematographer Bojan Bazelli photographs the film very gritty but invokes the camera to do some very interesting angles. Bazelli’s dark gritty gift of camera photography was also witnessed in some of his other works like 1993’s “Kalifornia” and “Boxing Helena” as well as 1992’s “Body Snatchers“. Bazelli created a very lush look for 1998’s “Dangerous Beauty” but he seems to have gone back to what he does best with “The Ring“.

I really enjoyed Naomi Watts in her breakthrough role in “Mulholland Drive“. Naomi continues her strong screen presence and knack for being able to soar in experimental projects with grace and acting passion. There was darkness in “Mulholland Drive” which could have been overtaken by a weak actress but Naomi stood her ground. She continues the trend by making Rachel Keller a real and strong female character. I will be interested to see what she does next.

My only slight problem with the film was the strength of Rachel Keller’s romantic interest, Noah (played by relative newcomer Martin Henderson (Windtalkers)). I found that we never got a chance to know Noah except through the eyes of Rachel and Aidan. I also found Henderson’s performance a little lacking. I never felt he contributed much to the feelings in the film and that he was just there. I wonder how he was used in the Japanese version of the film.

What make films like this so draining and an unreal experience are the conversations that tend to awaken when you exit the theatre. You want so badly to debate and discuss what you have just witnessed. There hasn’t been a thriller this clever since the “Sixth Sense” and it surely will be looked at as the thriller of the year. This is one of the best films of the year.

4.5 out of 5

So Says the Soothsayer.

There have been a lot of great horror series in the course of Hollywood history. From Freddy’s razor sharp claws to Michael Myers’s ghostly face to blood-stained hockey mask of Jason Voorhees. Ok, all them aren’t great but the series were still a lot of fun.

When it comes to the Ring series, I may have to classify it in another horror series like “The Amityville Horror” series or dare I say “The Omen” or “The Exorcist”. “The Ring” movies are a new brand of psychological horror and like Amityville and others it probably should have stuck with just the one film.

“The Ring 2” follows Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) and her young son Aidan (David Dorfman) to a remote New England town where they hope they have finally outrun the supernatural force, Samara (Kelly Stables), who plagued them in the first film.

Rachel is concerned about her son when trickles of Samara seem to be coming back through him. She confides in a co-worker Max Rourke (Simon Baker from TV’s The Guardian) and even has to face off against a psychiatrist (Elizabeth Perkins).

What does the willowy Samara want this time? How can Rachel end the cycle of the Ring for the final time? What is Aidan’s link to Samara?

Like Amityville and other psychological horror series, The Ring’s sequel seems more or less like an after thought then a continuation of the series. The film barely chugs along and has little or no punch. There are no real scares or creepiness about the film, it is just there.

What is even more maddening is the wasted use of Elizabeth Perkins, Sissy Spacek and even Simon Baker. One of the small roles I kind of liked was that of Gary Cole as the surrealistic realtor who seemed to have stepped off the bus from Hunter S. Thompson territory. He was quite a gem.

You do also have to give Naomi Watts credit, she does have the feelings terror, shock, despair, desperation and motherly concern down pact. Her performance is quite good even if it does get a little tedious in some scenes.

David Dorfman’s Aidan is sort of creepy and he does a great job playing off Watts. In a lot of the quieter scenes, and there are lots of them, all I could hear echoing in the silence was one phrase, “I see dead people”.

The core of the film seems to be a metaphor for “postpartum” depression which in a lot of ways really bugged me. I know it’s a film but when it came down to this angle it left me quite hollow inside. If we are supposed to cheer for this struggling heroine why unleash such an unforgivable angle. It seemed like an odd choice on how to carry on the series or even in the development of the Rachel character.

I was hoping for a lot of what the original contained but I think one of its biggest faults was the fact that director Gore Verbinski wasn’t back. The film really needed his panache and craziness.

Another surprising fact is that director Hideo Nakata (director of the first 2 Ringu films) is the man responsible for the success of the Japanese films directed this boring mess maybe he is just utterly bored. I am however looking forward to his next scripted horror film, “Dark Water” that is coming out later this year.

“The Ring 2” is a major disappointment when it comes to building a franchise or scaring the pants off someone.

1.5 out of 5

So Says the Soothsayer.

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A couple years back, this was probably around 2003 or so, I did something I had never done before and, as near as I can remember never did again: I bought a DVD of a movie I hadn’t seen. I honestly don’t remember why I did it; my friends hadn’t exactly talked it up to me. The reviews were good, sure, but who drops 18 bucks on reviews and a hope?

Still, I bought the movie on a Friday night and took it home to watch. I popped it in the DVD player, collected the remote and my cigarettes, and turned off the living room lights. This is something else – turning off the lights to watch a movie – I had never done before and have never done since.

I lit a cigarette and pressed PLAY on the remote.

After the first scene I stood up, pressed PAUSE on the front of the DVD player, and turned the lights back on.

Once the lights were back on I sat on the edge of the recliner, trying to light another cigarette with shaking hands, looking around for the remote that had been sitting on my leg for the first scene of the movie. It was in the middle of the living room floor. It must have flown there when, at the end of the first scene, I literally jumped up in my chair and screamed louder than I ever have or ever will.

The remote laid there on the living room carpet, that terrible carpet we had back then before I tore it out in a fit of interior design rage, it laid there taunting me, DARING me, to turn the movie back on. I’d seen eight minutes of it and was more scared than I had been in my entire life. I sat there staring at the remote and just before I gathered up enough courage to pick it up and restart the movie I caught a glimpse of the light switch next to the TV and thought, it’s going to be a LONG time before I’m alone in the dark again.

This is how you take a big, mean, chain-smoking bastard and turn him into a mass of quivering baby food:

You sit him in the dark and show him The Ring.

Now, understand, I am a person who loves horror movies. Okay, let me clarify that a little. I love GOOD horror movies. And I’m not talking about “Friday the 13th Part XXXIV: Jason Goes to Tulsa” shit. Any idiot with a camera who knows what a foreground is can make that kind of horror movie. Funky death effects aside movies like that require no skill to make. I’m talking serious, honest-to-god movies that also happen to be really, really scary. We are talking about The Exorcist here. Halloween. Alien. Jaws. The really good stuff. I love movies like this. I LOVE them.

My love for them is, frankly, a little masochistic. I have an extensive series of clinical, left-brain blockages set up precisely so that I don’t immerse myself so much in whatever entertainment I’m consuming that I fall headfirst into it, but a really well-constructed horror movie blows right past all of that. I go from snobbish, detached film school intellectual to covering my eyes and whispering to the characters faster than Superman changes clothes. I am powerless against a really good horror flick, and yet I still repeatedly subject myself to them.

(Interesting side note: the only other genre that sucks me in that quickly and that thoroughly? Romances. c.f. my abiding love of Casablanca, The English Patient, Atonement, et al).

Before I saw The Ring I had, of course, been well and fully briefed on the leading lights of the horror genre. Back in college I was “the movie guy” and Halloween with me and my friends would routinely involve me bringing over large stacks of VHS horror movies and small bunches of us sitting around getting blitzed while scaring the crap out of ourselves. So I’d been there and I had most assuredly done that. I had seen The Exorcist in the theatre. I had gone into Blair Witch with an open mind and gotten a damn good scare for my trouble. I had believed the woman I was in love with at the time when she told me she wanted to watch Halloween (I had to sit on the floor in her dorm and, I am not making this up, she spent the entire movie kicking me in the back of the head). I had suffered plenty of mental damage and a bit of physical damage in the service of my horror movie jones.

As I sat down to watch The Ring – with the lights out, which to this day I cannot explain – I figured that I had already been through the proverbial wringer when it came to horror movies.

Oh, sweet merciful lord, how wrong I was.

After I spent a few minutes calming myself down I picked up the remote, took a deep breath, and started the movie again. I was immediately struck by how… I suppose the word is “careful” the filmmaking was. The first scene is scary as fucking hell, even years on and having seen it multiple times when I watched it this week I still jumped at the right spots, though not as high. After that, though, Verbinski works very hard to construct what for lack of a better word is a very “real” movie: single mother, precocious kid, grieving friends, broken relationships, everyone trying to come to terms with the death of a teenage girl in a depressing, rain-drenched landscape.

Once you get past that first scene things move along pretty swimmingly, actually, until the first time we see the tape.

The tape isn’t that scary in and of itself. It’s off-putting and weird and vaguely unpleasant but there’s nothing on there to make you scream. But watching it along with Rachel – and you do just watch the tape with the character, there’s only one cut away from it the first time it’s shown and it’s at a perfect spot – a sense of foreboding builds and builds and builds, and Rachel’s reaction just makes it somehow worse.

The worst part, though, is that you KNOW that phone is going to ring and you KNOW there’s going to be that horrible voice, and the anticipation of that happening is FAR worse than the actual event – face it, it’s a phone ringing – but through some genius alchemy Verbinksi holds that moment for JUST long enough that when it happens you still jump out of your seat. Because you are weak and while you are sitting in front of The Ring, Gore Verbinski is God. Worse, he is an all-powerful god of fear and you have severely displeased him.

Once you’ve seen the tape the movie proceeds as… I don’t want to say a “standard” horror movie, because it isn’t, if there even is such a thing. But it follows a known arc, at the very least. Mysterious happenings abound, Rachel investigates, things escalate from mysterious to dangerous to horrifying, the stakes are raised, questions are asked and answered, and eventually there is a horror- and emotion-packed climax. Make no mistake, though – everything up to this point has been executed with nothing less than stunning precision.

This is just how incredibly well-made the movie is:

Sitting there watching it, about halfway through the movie – around when Rachel arrives on the island – my phone rang. For the second time in less than two hours I literally JUMPED out of the recliner and started screaming incoherently. It wasn’t just the shock of the noise – I was absolutely certain that a ringing phone meant I WAS GOING TO DIE.

I clumsily grabbed the remote and paused the film, then grabbed a quick look at the display on my cell. It was my friend Chris.

I flipped open the phone and started screaming.

“YOU MOTHERFUCKER! OH MY GOD YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU SCARED THE LIVING FUCK OUT OF ME! YOU FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER OH MY FUCKING GOD!”

Chris said, “what? What did I do?”

I sputtered, “you… you… you fucking CALLED me! Oh my god I thought I was going to fucking DIE!”

Chris said, “what the hell are you doing?”

Starting to calm down, I said, “I’m watching The Ring.”

Chris said, “oh, Jesus Christ, I’m sorry, I’m REALLY sorry.”

His contrition was genuine: he’d seen the movie.

It goes beyond precision, really. Everything in The Ring is note-perfect, and part of its brilliance is the way we get drawn into the quest along with Rachel. We carry along and experience with her the feeling that, after you watch the tape, the entire world is just increasingly WRONG and the movie becomes as much about setting reality right as it is saving herself. Still, though, it IS a horror movie, and once everything has been set in place the aforementioned climax has to happen, and there are scares and moments of swelling emotion and finally release, and when Rachel says “I want to go home,” you sit there, exhausted, and say to yourself “god DAMN that was a great fucking movie!”

But, and this is the true genius of The Ring, the movie doesn’t end there.

After what would be the climactic final battle of a lesser movie – hell, of a perfectly respectable movie – The Ring yet has manipulations profane and sublime in store. In what is supposed to be the happy denouement between casually estranged mother and son, finally united against a cruel world, when Aidan says “why did you do that” your stomach drops and your flesh starts to crawl and you realize that everything up to that moment has just been the movie playing with you, TOYING with you, and that what’s about to come is going to be worse than you could possibly imagine.

And oh GOD does it come, and oh GOD is it worse than your wildest nicotine patch nightmares. I’ve watched a great white shark terrorize Amity Island, I’ve watched Michael Myers stalk Laurie Strode, I’ve watched Regan McNeil defile a crucifix, and for however visceral and truly horrifying those things are (and they most assuredly are), none of them, and indeed nothing I’d ever seen before or have since since or will likely ever see again, none of them come close to the sheer, abject terror of the penultimate scene of The Ring. I spent the entire scene desperately trying to get away from what was on my television, trying to scramble up and over the back of the recliner, trying to look away, moaning, “no, no, no” over and over again, but I was fixed to the spot. I couldn’t get away. I couldn’t not look at it.

You can very easily get all film-school-literary-studies-major douchebag about The Ring, talk about Verbinski’s repetition of imagery and use of color, or talk about how it uses the supernatural to demonstrate the threat of technology or how it presents a case for the empowerment of women or one of a host of lit-crit theory crap, and you’d have fertile ground on which to plant your bullshit lit-crit douchebag arguments, and all those things are true. Verbinski goes out of his way to create a real, artistic, serious “literary” movie, and he succeeds, and all those things apply. But for all it’s artistic merit – and it is fucking well brimming with it – the bottom line on The Ring is that penultimate scene. It is the pure distillation of horror in movie form. And I don’t mean in terms of gore or violence or blood. There aren’t any. I mean just stark, basic, amygdala-shattering terror. It is the single most frightening thing I’ve ever seen on film.

And I couldn’t look away.

JLK

HAPPY HALLOWEEN FROM DAILY MARAUDER

Remember this cinematic classic? The Ring (and yes the American version) still goes down as one of my favorite Halloween films of all time. That’s why I was more than pleased to turn myself into Samara from the scariest portion of the film: the ending in which she climbs through the television.

Considering that I’ve been working in television for 4 years, there’s nothing scarier than a small child with really horrible hair extensions climbing through my tube. Girl, let me help you fix that weave! Now, I too can be Samara in yet another way to waste time on the internet. Yay!

Go grab your creepiest pic of you and head over to Seenow.com for some Halloween fun. And remember, don’t do what I do on Halloween and insist on eating every last candy corn pumpkin in the bag.

whoa, so my first legit blog post.  cool.

i’ll get to the details of me and mine later on, but there is already all-consuming, stressing me to the max, wonderful, surprising news.

the short of it:

what: engaged
when: 7:45ish on 11/5
where: bliss restaurant on broad street
why: god knows… i was completely shocked
how: on one knee
bling: dunno about the c’s of the stone, but it’s a round solitaire, 6 prong setting, white gold.  very sparkly.
date: not set yet, but looking at may of 2011

the long of it:
rusty and i had tix for kevin smith at the merrium on 11/5.  decided earlier in the day to make a night of it so we started discussing dinner (this was around 3p).  we have gift certs for ruth’s chris and applebees, so i suggested those, but he wanted to go to this restaurant (Bliss) that we’d both never been to and was a block from the theatre.  okay – cool.  in the same im convo – he was like ‘you’re okay that we’re not getting engaged or anything till after i graduate, right?’ it’s that time of year again where a whole group of my friends are getting engaged/married/babied, so it’s a high topic.  ’sure.  just cause i’m talking about it  , don’t take it as pressure – it’s just a big deal to some people around me.’ get off the aim, get back to work… meet him for dinner…

the maitre’d  took us to the upstairs area that was empty, and naturally i blurt out ‘haha they’re putting us in the bad kids section’.  nothing is weird or out of the ordinary…. other than the salads being extraordinarily salty.  we eat dinner – he gets the swordfish, i get the chicken.  we end up switching entrees, but keep our sides.  i have a glass of pinot.  he drinks coke.  nothing weird going on.  no sweaty palms… nothing.  he did keep checking his cell phone though – but that’s because we were watching time before the show.  my creme brule comes, he asks to settle the bill.  the waiter takes forever…

i reach down to pick up my purse to check the time on my phone or something and come back up and he’s on one knee.  by the time i got home that night, i didn’t remember what happened so i had to ask him to recap:

i knelt down, you started freaking out – what? wha?  huh? what are you doing? wait.  now?  is this for real? get up.  i took your hand, asked you to marry me.  you said yes… then called me a jerk.

classic reaction.  i remember saying something about not wearing waterproof mascara and crying, and the ENTIRE restaurant staff coming up to congratulate us between the ‘yes’ and leaving.  they brought us champagne.  we clinked glasses, i swigged and then we had to be out the door because it was 7:50ish and the show was starting at 8.

Don’t really remember the show – Kevin Smith did some standup, answered a lot of audience questions… mostly talked about anal with his wife.  Hopped in a cab home.  i spoke to his dad (biological) when we were in the cab.  Called mom and dad when i got home.  they thought something was wrong because it was so late at night.  after mom and dad, talked to dave and joe, updated facebook, texted the bests and tried to sleep.

so we’re engaged!  after almost 7 years of knowing each other and a week shy of 4 years going steady, rusty shocked the crap out of me and asked me to be his wife.  my mind is still blown.  we’d been talking about everything and i was completely under the impression NOTHING would happen until he got his degree.  he got my dad to give permission, he saved for a ring (i don’t even want to know about that…), and popped the question.  whoa.

the next day in work was chaotic.  prison was chaotic… everyone wants to share the joy and it’s overwhelming.

let the insanity commence!

thanks for the card, ma