As you can tell I like horror movies. The sad thing is that since I wrote this in 01 I have seen movies that are possibly worse than anything on this list (Axe 'em). Who knows maybe one day I will start doing movie reviews again. Well that's all and until next time"Blame is a beautiful thing, baby. Blame keeps this whole planet spinning. You can point your finger at the next man, you can shift the weight onto him, you don't have to carry that shit around yourself. You can slide into bed and get a good night's nap. Yeah, right."
Augustus Hill - OZHello every one... you know I couldn't think of anything to even say this week. I mean I wanted to update the page but I couldn't think of anything to say so I have decided to make it a real quick list of movies that I thought just absolutely positively without a shadow of a doubt SUCK. Well along with the name of the film i will give a brief description, a notable character or occurrence, the cover description, the tagline, and who was to blame in me seeing the film. Yeah the quote above had something to do with this update, and you probably thought it was some cool nugget of information or something right? Well these films are in no particular order and you may see some reviews (longer ones) in the recommendations folder (or the coming soon Movie Review folder). Well Lock and Load....
MOVIE TITLE: GRIM
TAGLINE: This is no fairy tale
This movie is about a monster that appears in people’s houses and takes them hostage couch and all in one case. Also a team of Spelunkers decides to go explore Grim's cave for some reason. And then you know what happens people see Grim, Grim kills people final confrontation.
Interesting tidbit: This movie stars Hero Man who isn't afraid of anything and said things like "So what if it's pitch black and we lost 45 comrades I'm going in with this paper clip and this rubber band to save the cat" Well not in those words but you get the gist.
Who's to blame? This is Kral's fault mostly. At blockbuster we passed it many times but finally we broke down and rented it after he said it can’t be that bad.…
cover: A picture of Grim (the monster)
MOVIE TITLE: WES CRAVEN PRESENTS CARNIVAL OF SOULS
Tagline: Enter at your own risk
ARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH. Think Jacobs ladder with a stupid story and clowns. A girl sees her mother murdered by her boyfriend, (who she decided to go out with after he found the daughter wandering around the carnival at night). And then 15 years later he gets out of jail to kill her and her sister. The woman and the boyfriend end up in a car that goes into a lake and then all insanity ensues, insanity for those who watch it. Seems that the woman can't figure out if she's dead or not. Guess what nobody gives a what.
Interesting tidbit: The boyfriend was a clown in the Carnival and therefore is automatically scary, yeah right. This fruit ball has a mean jab and carries balloons. And he says, "I didn't find you, you found me." When he finds the little girl at the beginning in the carnival, and pretty much every time they talk. You know what I can't think of anything else.
Who's to Blame? This one was all me. I saw a movie in the store called Carnival of Terror and then I saw this at Blockbuster and thought, "Was it Carnival of Souls I wanted to see?" So I rented it and felt the agony.
Cover: The Clown, Balloons, a carnival, Souls in the balloons…….
MOVIE TITLE: THE FEAR
Tagline: He’s whatever scares you the most
Imagine a group of students that want to do a study of fear in the woods in a friends cabin. Now imagine that the cabin has a cigar puppet named Morty that the kid played with when he was younger. Now imagine that Morty comes to life and kills the students by there worst fears. Sounds interesting right? Well let’s say someone’s worst fear is growing old, Morty looks at him or her and they turn old and die. Sound fun still? Well it’s not. O and there is some side story about someone going around raping women.
Interesting tidbit: You know this movie put me to sleep so umm hey I think Tony Todd was in it (The guy that plays Candyman). He was the token black guy, so you know what happened right. O yea Morty moves I think…. And Wes Craven is in it….
Who’s to blame? Once again it’s all my fault. I had a free rental to get so I picked this up real quick like.
Cover: Morty and he’s all splintery.
MOVIE TITLE: PINOCCHIO'S REVENGE
Tagline: Evil comes with strings attached
A toy maker is arrested for killing his son and burying him. He also buries his puppet. A mother, who I think is an attorney, forgets to give her daughter a birthday gift. So somehow Geppetto’s puppet (the toy maker is Geppeto I think if not he is now) ends up in her possession and the kid loves it but it’s not her toy. But she won’t take no for an answer and the killing begins but who is doing it? Is it the Psycho kid or the deranged puppet? Geppetto knows….
Interesting tidbit: The kid was crazy, or just stupid. But besides that watch the ending (why am I telling you to watch this flick?) where the girl morphs into the puppet and then back, that is all, o and the stupidity of the boyfriend and Pinocchio the peeping tom
Who’s to blame? OK it was me. I always wanted to see this and Rumpelstiltskin and after seeing this Mr. Skin might not be getting rented.
Cover: Pinocchio I think and the kid?
MOVIE TITLE: VENGEANCE OF THE DEAD
Tagline: The dead never forget…
Stupidity has reached new heights. A kid goes to visit his grandpa in his old town. Well while flying his plane he comes across a burnt down house. In the ashes lies a golden spoon. Well he takes it and puts it in his drawer well guess what the spoon decides it hates his underwear and goes back home after a pair of ghosts appear. So the intelligent man goes and gets the spoon from the rubble again. Yea I said he went and got the spoon again. Argh.. Well then he winds up possessed and killing old guys by fire, well first he burns a dead body then he kills old guys. But why? Because the dead need Vengeance…
Interesting tidbit: I am not going to lie to you. There are mad interesting tidbits…… This movie contains the famous bike-throwing scene where I almost cursed (I was like what the fu.arggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh). Also the wood masturbation… and the way they decided to show the nudity was dumb, that’s all I can say, wait for the review It’s gonna be wicked. Oh and the aging ghost and the zoot suit and what about the spoon? Does he know what common sense is?… Oh and Pimp has a bad commercial.
Who’s to blame? Kral. We saw the small package and we were baffled. How does the tape fit? He said it’s by Full Moon so it’s good. They made puppet master, but they made Blood Dolls too and I couldn’t watch that movie. So he picked this s&*t and I picked Python that wasn’t that great but this just all out sucked. Worse than COS.
Cover: A skull or a dead person and the little girl ghost. I can’t tell don’t remember and don’t care. But the VHS box is red and it looks too small to fit a movie in it.
MOVIE TITLE: CUT
Tagline: They just have to finish the film... before it finishes them
I admit this movie did not totally suck but i wanted to express my self again about it. A movie was made in Australia and it sucked. And it wasn’t finished because the killer went bonkers and murdered the director. Then he gets killed. Well years later the director’s daughter and her film class decide to finish the movie (even though it sux) even though it has a curse on it. That whoever watches the flick dies. Well the killer comes back and does some killing old school style. So it’s up to the cast to kill the killer before it’s too late. This wouldn’t be so bad if it was a comedy….
Interesting tidbit: OK two words Soldier Boy. Man this guy is like Afleck in Phantoms. He gets skewered and lives while other people die stupidly. O and how can I forget the sex scene lol? O and the light sabers
Who’s to blame? You know I can’t remember who’s Idea it was to watch this….
Cover: The killer and a filmstrip
MOVIE TITLE: BREEDERS
Tagline: I don’t know
Women are getting raped. They all have one thing in common they are all virgins. Lots of nudity occurs and it’s up to a doctor and a cop to try to stop the rapist. And the raped women leave the hospital.
Interesting tidbit: I saw parts of this on Sci-Fi and man was there a lot of nudity. I mean Sci-Fi had to do mad editing then they said forget it lets just blur it out. So they did. And there is a scene of a woman doing aerobics naked. I think she gets raped… Umm this movie is sick
Who’s to blame? My roommate Jase. I was sleep and he said “Hey they are showing naked women on sci-fi. I thought he was joking so I got up and said holy crap. Then we sat trough most of it but it just sucked so we turned and turned back to see the end.
Cover: I can’t even make it out….
MOVIE TITLE: WISHMASTER 3 BEYOND THE GATES OF HELL
Tagline:
The “Djinn” is “back” and “granting” “wishes” this tine on a college campus. A student awakes him. He kills people to get to the chick that let him free so she can make three wishes and set his army free on earth. Also an Archangel appears.
Interesting tidbit: The bike trip scene is good. And the Djinn is shiny…. And his human form is Sean Connery’s son.
Who’s to blame? Everyone that was there that day….
Cover: The djinns eyes and a pentagram
Well everyone it’s getting late and I can’t think of any more movies as of now. Soon I will try to do full reviews of these movies and much more but until then be excellent to each other and party on dudes…..
Perk
So I missed school today because me and Erica….I mean Erica and I, went to the hospital. The docs thought that Erica has not gained enough weight and therefore we needed to go to get a super ultrasound to check the babies…..I mean
But here is my question. How do ultrasounds work I mean they are kind of infatuated because you can see though the baby but at the same time you can see the baby. It’s crazyyyy. I could wikipedia it but I think I’ll just let it sit as something I’ll find out one day when I’m not bored. Until next time
Don’t keep secrets because then you will have half secret half human babies.
Perkins out
Yea so that's my first Kubrick paper and I don't understand half of the metaphors I used. Especially the whole canal thing. Well enjoy your nights and look out for monkeys and bones and computers and big headed babies in canals and stuff. Until next timeJason S Perkins
English 578
Paper 1
Beja
Evolutionary Studies In 2001:There exists a difference between a movie and a film. A movie’s first objective is to entertain the audience the best way it knows how. A film, however, looks entertainment in the mouth and laughs. Films are about getting a message across. That message is that of the director. It is possible for some films to be entertaining after being watched the first time. However, that is not the main objective of a film. A film can be a success even if it bores the audiences to sleep (Secrets and Lies). A movie that does this (The Real Cancun) is a flop. Another advantage a film has over a movie is that a film can be as confusing as humanly possible (Memento) yet still elicit positive reviews somewhere down the line. Movies that are confusing just agitate everyone forever. A film can even be panned by critics when it is first released and then get rave reviews when it is watched a decade or two later (Vertigo). A movie does not have the slightest chance of that happening (Battlefield Earth). There are very few films that bore the audience, confuse them, and get trashed by critics only to get a place in the top one hundred films of all time. 2001 A Space Odyssey is such a film. This movie bored me to death the first time watching it. As a matter of fact it bored everyone that I know. The movie is confusing on purpose, Arthur C. Clarke said "If you understand 2001 completely, we failed. We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered."1. The film was panned by critics at first and even after a cut of twenty minutes was made the movie was still ripped into. However now it is one of the greatest movies of all time as voted by the American Film Institute.2
What makes 2001 such a great film? This film works on many different levels. It has many different layers. Some layers are thicker than others, but they are all there and that helps make the film just that. There is a lot of symbolism in this film and parallels that run throughout. This paper will look at one of these layers. The layer it will focus on is the deeper meaning of the film or how one person sees it.
Stanley Kubrick has said that the plot of 2001 “Deals with man’s contact with such superior extraterrestrial intelligences, though perhaps not quite deities.”3. This can easily be seen when actually sitting through the film. The plot is pretty straight forward but what underlies the plot is different all together. This movie is actually about evolution. Kagan writes that 2001 is like “a canal with locks linking two bodies of water at different heights. To get from the lower to the higher body of water a species moves into the lowest lock. The monolith closes the door and the species raises itself to the level of the second lock by pumping in water.” After this the monolith closes the lock and the process repeats until the species has reached the highest level. “Substitute consciousness or intelligence for water, “instinct “ for the lower body of water, “rationality” or “tool making” for the first lock, “super-rationality” or “transcendence” for the second lock, and “refining techniques” for pumping and you have 2001”4
Let us take a journey through this canal system. In the Dawn of Man segment of the film the apes learn that they do not have to eat the dry leaves alongside the other animals. Also they figure out that they do not have to be intimidated by other apes. All of this is due to the black monolith that appears one early dawn morning. The monolith awakens something inside of Moonwatcher that causes him to see that a bone can be used to smash. This leads to probably the greatest thing that the apes learn: that through the use of tools and ingenuity they can kill to preserve their own lives. They use this new skill of killing to eat meat instead of plants. However, they also learn that this skill can be used to take back the water hole that they were “fighting” the other apes for. The instinct of Moonwatcher is what causes him to use the bone to kill the other ape rather than to let it continue to harass him. It is also this instinct that drives him to continue to pummel the already dead body.
The second part of the movie deals with Dr. Heywood Floyd and his trying to figure out a way to deal with a new monolith that has been found on the moon. It is due to the earlier monolith that humans now have the capability to travel to the moon, or so the film wants you to believe. This is shown in the cut from the bone that Moonwatcher throws into the air that becomes a satellite when it is coming back down. This is meant to show that that one instance of a tool being used has brought forth a great era where tools are used in everyday outings and also for more sophisticated purposes. It is the refining of the older processes that causes the new processes to be accomplished. In this segment of the movie we see that Floyd likes to be in charge of situations with the little banter around the coffee table with Russians. Another trait that humans seem to share. When Floyd gets to the moon and sees the monolith he reaches out and touches it. Nothing happens until the sun strikes the monolith and when that happens a screeching sound is emitted.
This leads into the third part of the film, Jupiter Mission 18 months later. This sequence brings forth HAL 9000 a very intelligent super computer with no known defects. However this time, on this mission, HAL starts acting weird and gives some advice that may or may not be right. This leads to Frank and Dave having a conversation about disconnecting HAL which Hal does not care for in the least. HAL is already a super computer that is beyond what humans could think about. He has gone through this evolution process already. As HAL realizes that he is to be disconnected he takes drastic measures and kills Frank and the other crew members who were frozen. This is just Hal resorting to his basic instinct of survival. HAL then leaves Dave out in space and this causes Dave to use his ingenuity and the tools he has to get inside of the ship and “kill” HAL by pulling out his memory modules. Here Dave resorts back to primal instinct to kill in order to preserve his life. While Hal dies he devolves back into an ordinary computer. Actually he becomes more like a child. Somehow all of the water from the canal has found a way to escape and the locks have been opened for Hal and he rushes back down to the lowest level. However this also helps push Dave up another level in his own canal. HAL’s death sets off a message from Floyd and then leads into the final sequence Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite.
.This sequence is nothing more than Dave traveling into the final monolith over Jupiter. While traveling through this monolith Dave is inside a star gate that stretches into forever. When finally it does stop he finds himself in a room with an older version of himself. As he explores the room he keeps looking at and then becoming older versions of himself until he finally is too old to live and is in his death bed. On his bed we see him reach out and try to touch the monolith that has appeared at the end of his bed. He then dies and is reborn as a star child that travels to Earth to begin something anew. This is akin to the final level of the canal. At the very top one realizes that tools are of no use and basic earthly functions are worthless in the long run. Dave has transcended and is beyond the thought of all others.
However this brings forth a question about transcendence. In order for Dave to become free of this plane and fulfill his destiny he had to die and be reborn. HAL did a very similar thing when he died also. However Hal was a being that was already beyond his own species. Computers do not have consciousness yet Hal was very conscious of himself and his feelings. HAL was actually a very evolved computer. Maybe his evolutions came a bit too soon and that is why he had to die. While Dave came at just the right time and has earned the right to become a super-being. Is this possible? Maybe the monolith had this all planned from the beginning. Maybe the monolith is the ultimate form of evolution. Supreme knowledge may come at a cost and the cost could be loss of vital functions. Is it a coincidence that HAL’s memory modules were shaped like little monoliths? As said earlier Hal could have already been a very highly evolved entity that was not ready for his evolution.
All in all 2001: A Space Odyssey is not the type of movie that you go out with your friends and see on a Saturday night. However it is the type of film you see when you want to think about something. Who knows what the real meaning of this film is? Is it transcendence? Is it that we are not alone? Maybe this is a film about mankind in general and how if we try and move too quickly into the future it will catch up to us and kill us all. Or maybe it is just a study on how we as a species can overcome all obstacles set before us and reach a perfect state in the evolutionary plane. Maybe there are many meanings to the film. Maybe there is only one. I think that Kubrick wanted us to just get into the canal and start pumping water until we are high enough to sail through the lock and into the next level. Then maybe we will see the true meaning. Maybe that is the true meaning of the film.
1 IMDB trivia
2 AFI top 100 movies of all time
3 Kagan p 146
4 Kagan pp 159-160
