I haven’t been able to blog in a while due to a bitter underlying reason, along with the fact I have absolutely no time (!). Still, I promised myself that I would add all my summer movie reviews here, as a personal goal. I failed it miserably, but it’s the thought that counts, right?Anyway, as if the title didn’t give it away, I’m here to talk to you about a little old movie that came out today: Halloween (2007). First off the bat, I have to address the problem with reviewing remakes. I’ve read a few reviews already and they all suffer from original movie-only nazism. Sure, it would be oh-so easy to dismiss movies because they’re remakes — and it is easy — but a movie is a movie, and that’s something you’ve got to keep in mind.

Remakes are inevitable. There’s been a plethora of them already. It’s a way for movie corporations to cheaply milk more money from an already-created film to introduce a story (or in this case the scariest movie villain of all time) to the newer generation. Still, that should be taken with a grain of salt. You can remake a movie into a carbon copy achievement and have a good movie, but would be the point? Aside from aesthetics, it would be the same movie. You oughta just re-release it.Essentially, for remakes to work, you need to have a new take on the original. Then you have something new to review, that’s where you review it, but on its own merits. Put the original aside, and review the movie — not the controversy that led up to the movie.

I’ll try not to remain too biased but Michael Myers holds an extremely special place in my heart, as morbid as that may sound. It was one of the first horror movies I ever saw and still today remains to be the best. Halloween is just without a doubt the best of best. I don’t know how much I can convey that without coming off to fanboy-ish. I included a video at the top, spoken by my idol movie reviewer, to help illustrate the beauty of Halloween.

I was skeptical about Halloween at first. How could you possibly redo the best of the best? Ultimately, however, it was the best route. The franchise really died (pun intended!) during the previous few iterations (I will never again have respect for Busta Rhymes — really, who dares to kung fu Michael!?), and lost its only reason to continue when Laurie Strode’s life fell (again, pun intended! Man, I’m on a roll…) short. Anything after the death of the one elusive character Michael never seem possible to finally kill is just rubbish (and don’t you dare introduce another niece!) .

So here we are now. Months after religiously reading all the tidbits I could get, it came out. And of course, I just had to see it opening day. It had the makings of what a good remake would conceal: a back-story on Michael (finally!), the music, a great director, and a fine cast. The verdict: underwhelming. I really did try to like it, I really really did.

Let me start off with the most important feature: the music. Yes, the music. Halloween suffers from a Jaws-type complex. Michael is scary — no doubt about that — but it’s the music that crawls under our skin and lays a nest of eggs. The iconic theme runs chills down my spines to this day, and it sets the tone. Without it, you have nothing. Rob Zombie (director) got the music right for the most part, relying on the main theme for the montages and using the dun-dun, dun-dun-chingchingchingching (just listen to video above), for many scenes. It worked, but felt too overused during the fast-paced scenes. Subtly anyone? It doesn’t work if there’s no suspense already be displayed. You have ease it in unbeknownst to the viewer.

Which leads me into what the movie lacked: suspense. Again, watch the video. Wasn’t your heart racing during that scene? I still need something to grab hold of when watching our lone heroine uncoil that coat hanger. The new movie didn’t have much suspense. It was was to fast in it’s execution. It was simply scene-to-scene, nothing building. Fact, the only thing I looked forward to was the special effects, which were done well.

I think the problem of the film originates during the very beginning. We come to seemingly sympathize for this young kid who lives within a very dysfunctional family. He clearly has his problems and cannot express his emotions is less violent way. This leads to the hospital scenes, which were great till he stops talking.

Okay, rewind: what!? You’ve got to be kidding me. This family has Jerry Springer written all over it but what is a lone stripper breadwinner doing with a man like that? Then there’s just the actual catalyst to Michael’s eventual infamous murderous Halloween. So, this random encounter (of several) with a bully was the second point to this ticking time-bomb?

But then there’s the whole gratuitous killing thing. What was the deal with Laurie’s (female main character) two best-friends? They weren’t an obstacle whatsoever. This movie is littered with things that clearly were only present due to the fact of them being in the original. Fact, some kills were taken straight out of the original. Fact-fact, it would have been easier to simply have the back-story part of the movie sandwiched in front of the original. Now, I’m not saying it’s bad to remain true to some of the original’s most memorable scenes, but if this is supposed to be a developed character, where’s Michael’s resolve? Speaking of which, why the hell did I care about Laurie’s (Michael’s sister) to best-friends to begin with!?

Back to Michael. Okay, so he’s apparently 10 feet tall? Pah-lease. Being huge doesn’t make you scary — it’s only aesthetics. Still, Tyler Mane (the adult Michael) played his body language smoothly enough that even, to my utter disappointment, the fitting half-tilt-stare-at-his-disturbing-work’s disappearance wasn’t totally heartbreaking. Another explanation they give is the need of masks. I’m sure there are a few things that you could gather if you read between the lines, but the only explanation they seem to give is that Michael thinks of himself as ‘ugly’. Oh, brother!

I’m going to divert for a moment and jump on the positive train. The movie is really good looking. Honestly, we should go out. The gore was clearly much more elaborate than the 1978 counterpart, something synonymous with a Rob Zombie feature. He toned it down to fit the film quite nicely. His other works included too much gore but still worked for those films. Halloween isn’t a Saw movie, it need not rely on gore.

Casting was mostly fine. I’m still a bit yang-ying about that Hollywood thing of directors casting their own posse into all their movies (a la Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman, etc.) since it just doesn’t seem ethical, but it didn’t bother my viewing experience. I was only left at a loss for words when it to the actress playing Laurie. I felt sorry for her for all the wrong reasons. Why exactly do I care about her? Oh, yeah, she’s his sister! Seriously, I’m sure she could have pulled it off had she been given more screen time along with a script that had more development than sex jokes.

I had a few gripes with several scenes with the camera but, overall, it was great. There were a few shaky camera shots which did fit the scene nicely. I didn’t like the close up shots since the whole cat and mouse thing works better on wide-long shots. Shooting closeup to the potential victim and Michael on reiterates his abnormally tall height. Also, zooming in too close only shows me the character’s usually bare torso (Transformers ((2007)) did this as well). The atmosphere was spot on, no troubles there.

There were many sorry excuses for a plot device in there that I haven’t addressed, but are flawed as well. There a few highlights, but this back-story (and present story) in terms of logic, is filled with downright idiocies and clunkiness. Putting together what I mentioned about how to rate remakes, this movie fails. Back-story was the basis for this movie — it was the only selling point — and it didn’t get it right. Not horrendously bad, but juvenile at best. It has the the frosting, all it needed was the cake.

The movie will never appease everyone’s wants, but at least attempts to get on some kind of direction. A flawed direction, granted, but still harboring traces of what makes Michael Myers scary. 2 hysterically sadistic blood-gurgling screams out of a possible 5.

I was attempting to find tips for growing lettuce via a search engine when I came across VideoJug. It is essentially YouTube but ten times better, and with amazing video quality. It is primarily made up of official videos (created by the site) that give video tips about pretty much everything; getting gum off of clothing, properly cleaning windows (yes, apparently there is proper way), proper man-to-man hugging (again, there is a proper way for our society), etc. Very, very handy. www.videojug.com

School’s over. Yay!

Looking back, there were a few blog-worthy things I neglected to mention. So without further ado…

A few months ago, my school held one of its weekly community forums. Essentially, we all simply get together and discuss a few important issues/partake in an interesting event. At the end of this particular forum, an older student decided to engage us all in an activity.

The gimmick was pretty straightforward: edgy-yet-background-y music playing with select persons each reading a paragraph from an essay-like piece of literature that was written by the female student. I chose not to be involved vocally.

My memory consistently hazy here and there, but some of the topics brought up by the makeshift script included: poverty, hate, the government, depression and other human dilemmas. It was interesting. This girl wrote this to provoke ideas and controversy — but in a good way. She didn’t state anything cliché like, “Bush is the source of all our problems” or “the World Trade Organization is killing farmers”, etc. She created something that was trying to get us to rethink the way we see the world with our own perspective. Simply put, all she did was open our minds. (more…)

I like to think of myself as a teen activist at times. I’m totally for community involvement, have been quoted as being a ‘positive rolemodel’ in my Environmental Studies class, and am aware of my surroundings, so to speak. So the point of this blog entry is that it should hopefully one day be accidentally Googled by a random TDSB worker who will then direct this to their managers’ managers’ and — theoretically — cause change, or at least some kind of discussion. (more…)

EXAMS SUCK!

That is all.

*sigh*

So I failed my G2 test… Well, failed my G2 Test again should I say (to be technical). Though, the first can’t really be counted since my right-hand brake light died out on me. That really ticked me off. Like, the one day I need my brake light more than ever, it departs to expired lights heaven.

To top it off, the next only available time was over a month away. I repeat: …a month away! That’s total crap. Like what if I needed to get my G2 for a job or something? Just imagine I suddenly had no substantial source of income (AKA parents) aside from my crappy job at the golf course — which I pseudo-ly quit! I’d be totally screwed. But of course that means nothing to the Ministry. Pfft.

And that’s a perfect segway to the day before yesterday’s activities. So I went for the test again. I was mildly late but still early. So I get up to the receptionist chick, she rudely cackles at me for being late, which I was not, and then rebooks me with another instructor. Now I don’t want to assume anything… so I won’t. (more…)

I’m not sure why I persist with my impromptu entertainment reviews. I guess it’s because I like to practise. I also want to become a film/TV critic at some point in my life. However, why do I blog them? I’m here to attract readers. And frankly, why would anyone care about my opinions regarding movies, TV, etc. (more…)

(Okay listen, this took me a long time to scan in and format so please give me some major kudos.)

I don’t know why I’m bloggin’ when I have 7 summatives to complete, but here we go… I finally developed my film from last, last Friday’s photo-shoot for my Photography summative. It’s essentially a horror story (in Photographic form) involving psychotic custodian. She is busy away picking up pieces of garbage that some silly kids dropped and didn’t bother picking up. She’s angry.

Eventually, a girl slips into the school. A par-tay is going down in library. She passes a corner, drops her gum-wrapper literally right in front of the custodian, and walks away. The custodian has had enough and finally goes ballistic. I know that’s a fairly blasé resolve for a custodian, considering how often they must face that kind of injustice, however, that’s the beauty of my Photography: I don’t care what you think.

…well I do, I do. At least constructive wisdom, anyway, but, you know… (more…)