A Tribute to Discontinued Cereals
I’m both bothered and thrilled that someone did all this research on nostalgic breakfast cereals.
http://grub.gunaxin.com/a-tribute-to-discontinued-cereals/11570
Posts tagged ‘kids’
Media Log: 01.20.2012
(cinema) We Need to Talk About Kevin, d. Lynne Ramsay, 2011. The IMDB entry for this movie says: The mother of a teenage boy who went on a high-school killing spree tries to deal with her grief and feelings of responsibility for her child’s actions. I lived in Colorado at the time of the Columbine High School murders and I’ve thought a lot about what life must be like for a parent whose kid has does something so awful. It’s an intriguing script idea but it doesn’t happen to be what Kevin is actually about. The high school mass murders here are a sort of foregone conclusion to the story of a mother who is emotionally terrorized by her son, beginning when he is an infant. This is a unique piece in that the story is told in non-linear flashbacks and the cinematography is experimental. Yet the story to me plays closer in genre to horror than to a psychological drama you might see at the arthouse. I can recommend this movie if it’s only on the multiplex at the mall level. Otherwise we’re looking at something that it is on the edge of camp. Witness the
Ezra Miller as Kevin
scene where the mother tries to explain reproduction to her little boy via the Mama Bear and Papa Bear and the boy interrupts, “Is this about fuckin’?” If it isn’t highbrow horror Kevin is just Mommy Dearest with the abuse roles switched around. Did you want the gays to love your movie like that? ๏๏๏… Afterschool, d. Antonio Campos, 2008. The actor who plays the
Miller in Afterschool
sociopath in We Need to Talk About Kevin was in this earlier movie where he also plays a disturbed kid but with a bit more subtlety. Ezra Miller is great actor in addition to have grown up to be pretty hot. Anyway, in Afterschool, Miller is a nobody kid at a prep school who accidentally videotapes two popular girls die overdosing on tainted cocaine. As the school goes into damage control trying to shake out all the drugs, Miller starts to act erratically believing he is under surveillance. Surveillance, public image and acts of watching are huge themes in movie. Apparently a lot of people don’t care for the slow pace of the story and static camera scenes. I could write a book on why every shot matters. I think it’s brilliant.๏๏๏๏๏
Addendum: If you want to a see an excellent movie about the psychology behind school shootings I recommend Zero Day, from 2003. Both Afterschool and Zero Day stream on Netflix.
BSD Movie Log: Fear of the Dark
Fear of the Dark (2002, d. K.C. Bascombe)
A 12 twelve year boy old lives with chronic phobia of dark places. Is it a psychological disorder, immaturity, desire for attention, or does the boy see really see terrifying things in the dark that can’t be seen in the light? His torment comes to zenith when one stormy night he and his older teenage brother are at home alone during a blackout. Evil spirits come from the walls to attack the boy, and big, macho brother starts to see them too.
This is a horror movie that falls in-between being to0 scary for kids, and too arrested for any adult with an IQ above 80.
BSD Movie Log: Clownhouse
Clownhouse (1989, d. Victor Salva)
Just back from an unsettling night at the circus, and home alone, three young brothers are terrorized by three escaped mental patients dressed as circus clowns. This movie is about confronting childhood fears, identity questions, and sexual anxiety. Taking it more logically, I didn’t understand why the clowns wanted to get into the house or why they thought disguising themselves in white face and hoop-waist pants would make them inconspicuous.
This movie became notorious years after its release when one of the young cast members came forward that the director had molested him during production. Somebody who wants to pick it apart will find a lot of analogous behavior between the scary clowns and the decision by the director to frequently show the tween boys in their underpants. It left me feeling a little dirty. But to anybody who pervs on that, I say. “Bon appetite, Short Eyes!”
La Vampire Boheme
The Brown Shoe Diaries Halloween Movie Club. Track down today’s movie and post your comments. Good? Lame? Scary? Not scary? Bring it.
Today’s recommended feature is:
Let Me In (2010, d. Matt Reeves)
I think it’s bad that vampires have lost their pseudo-European offbeatness. Dracula was a genuine weirdo who slept all day in a creeky coffin. The Count on Sesame Street suffers from a common manifestation of OCD, uncontrollably counting things, and yet he is never compelled to clean his cobweb quilted castle. Lestat and Louis from Interview With A Vampire want the same legal rights afforded to corporeal couples, but they also want to live as artists in The French Quarter and raise their immortal daughter on human flesh. Now, because of Buffy, Twilight and oodles of copy-bats, vampires have become all vamp and no bite. They drive Volvos and wear Burberry. I understand Twlight’s hip Cullen kids are frequently spotted living-it-up at Seattle Marriner’s night games (although they are invisible on the Diamond Vision screen). Maybe all that is why it seemed relevant to the fillmakers of Let Me In to set it in suburban New Mexico, early 1980’s. Perhaps they wanted to construct a feeling of innocence and nostalgia. Maybe they wanted to take us back to a time when vampirin’ wasn’t cool.
"Is that dress a Vivienne Westwood?" - Let Me In
12 year old Owen’s nerdy kidness will be familiar to all because we all knew one or were one like him. His hair is greasy. He looks permanently sewn in to his oversize, dirty, fake-fur parka. He’s smaller than his classmates and frequently the object of ridicule and pummelings on behalf of a trio of school bullies. Owen and his single mother live in a rundown apartment complex. He has little to do but spy on his neighbors through a toy telescope. One snowy, winter evening Owen watches a barefoot girl, about his age, moving her box of possessions into the unit next door with the help of an unkempt, middle-aged man. Slowly, over several night time encounters in the apartment courtyard, the girl, Abby, starts up an awkward friendship and juvenile romance with Owen, over the objections of the man. Owen begins to figure out that Abby is not what she appears to be but rather an ageless vampire in the body of a twelve year old. The unkempt man is not Abby’s father either, but rather her longtime mortal consort, dating back to his own childhood. His duty is to look after Abby by going about the murders of young men. He collects their blood in a plastic bottle and keep his vampire mistress fed. Eventually the man’s nocturnal activities are accidentally exposed. He dies and the trail of murders leads back to the apartment. Abby must move on, although she helps Owen in a final violent showdown with the school bullies.
Let The Right One In - these sweaters were more Dale Of Norway
Let Me In is a loyal remake of the sucessful Swedish movie Let The Right One In from 2008. In terms of story and tone the two movies are nearly idential and both are great, although I think the American remake offers some important improvements. I find the child actors in the American remake to better actors, and there is a more convincing, eerie chemistry between them. Also, the Swedish version employs an ill fitting sub-plot about a group of local alcoholics who are both victims of the vampire misdeeds and the source of public exposure. In Let Me In, that group is swaped out completely for a gritty homicide detective who is putting together the clues of the murders. This makes it more crime-thriller. Also, the American version of this movie folds in an interesting homoerotic subtext that brings some texture not present in the first version. Owen is confused about his male image, particularly in his associations with the bullies, whose taunt him as a wimp and call him “little girl.” Abby is confused with her feelings toward Owen, saying that she is neither a girl nor or boy. And the man stalks active young men for Abby, when more yielding victims could be easier prey.
A mild objection I have is over the choice of setting for Let Me In. It makes sense to me that vampires who burn up in sunlight travel to long Swedish winters where they might not even see sunlight for a few months out of the year. Los Alimos, New Mexico averages 310 days of sunshine a year. Look it up.
Both movies succeed in telling a compelling and sad story that leaves fascinating mysteries to the imagination. Why does the man object to the children’s friendship? He may be acting like a jealous lover or he could be protecting Owen from Abby and the circumstance that befell his own youth. Does the middle-aged man risk the danger in murdering young men because that’s what Abby prefers, or is he acting out on some projected self-loathing, or even sexual frustration? Does Abby really love Owen or is she killing him softly, selfishly grooming him to become her new life paramour? The viewers are challenged with these unanswered questions and by the morality in our sympathy toward Abby. She is a pretty, 12 year old girl, who is also a human predator. Yet, her station is to live forever, from consort to consort, in an unforgiving existential transience – a shattered, improverished eternity. The Cullen’s are Whole Foods. Abby will always be strictly whole blood.
Let The Right One In (2008, d. Thomas Alfredson)
R F Brown 