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Right. Well then.
Oct. 24th, 2009 12:12 pm( This is why Trinity does not do body-mod. )
I woke up still in a panic. Not cool, subconscious.
In other news, I saw two things this weekend: the pilot for White Collar and Drag Me to Hell. I enjoyed White Collar, though I'm simultaneously a tad bored by it, if that makes sense? It's very much one more of USA's formula works, with the bickering leads and the supporting characters along with a mystery to string you along for a season. I did like the episode, but I suspect a lot of that has to do with Matt Bomer's beautiful eyes. Well, that, and his incredible ability to be very vulnerable. He's less cocky than most of USA's other "characters," which is odd given the premise of his character. But there's a real defeat to him that is charming and heart-breaking at the same time. I don't know how well that works with his character being a master criminal and all. I'm definitely interested it watching more, but they're going to have to work very hard on improving or at least balancing the tone. But cheers to Matt Bomer's baby blues. I never noticed they were so disarmingly clear on Chuck, but that's probably because up until the end of season two, I kinda hated Bryce Larkin.
Curiously, a problem of tone was what kept me from liking Drag Me to Hell. I come down on the Army of Darkness side of horror-Raimi (as opposed to Evil Dead II), mostly because I think Raimi's strength is in humor. His attempts to be genuinely scary without being somewhat (or entirely) silly are just not that impressive to me. Drag Me to Hell wanted to be gross and funny at the same time, but the timing was off. Gross-outs went on too long, were far too staged to be anything but stomach-churning turn-offs. (Yes, there are stomach-churning turn-ons, and, yes, it is possible to tell the difference.) Usually, when something is dragged out, it becomes ridiculous. The problem with the gross-outs in Drag Me to Hell is that the set-ups were so ludicrous that they were, themselves, the joke, not the fifteen extra seconds of gratuitous fluids being projectile-vomited into the heroine's mouth. That's another problem: repetition of the exact same gross-out gag. I just didn't find the balance between the funny and the not-so to be as finely tuned as Raimi's earlier horror work. It probably doesn't help that the film opened with a child being taken to Hell--little hard to laugh at that--and that I'd seen Paranormal Activity before this which had a similar bent but was genuinely scary (which made the humor all the better, since no one laughs louder than someone who is freaked out).
Worse, Drag Me to Hell was utterly predictable. I don't hold that against horror movies, generally speaking--there are only so many ways the horror can go: the heroine (it is almost always a woman at the center) wins; the heroine loses; or the heroine thinks she's won but the ghost/monster/undead slasher comes back at the very end. Options are a luxury horror doesn't tend to have, you know? What I resent is how telegraphed those endings are.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
feiran had seen the movie before, and she spotted the ending a mile off compared to me, but I still felt like I knew far too soon how it would play out. I knew the exact twist, knew the exact steps it would take to get there. Everything that wasn't on that agenda felt like extraneous noise and Raimi trying to reclaim some former glory. It's one thing to go, "Oh, this is an ending C movie (heroine thinks she's won, but...)" and watch anyway. It's another to go, "I bet she does X which leads to a scene where Y happens, and then there's a fake happy ending for Z-length of time, and then it's a C ending." That's how I felt about Drag Me to Hell. Very disappointing, on the whole.
I woke up still in a panic. Not cool, subconscious.
In other news, I saw two things this weekend: the pilot for White Collar and Drag Me to Hell. I enjoyed White Collar, though I'm simultaneously a tad bored by it, if that makes sense? It's very much one more of USA's formula works, with the bickering leads and the supporting characters along with a mystery to string you along for a season. I did like the episode, but I suspect a lot of that has to do with Matt Bomer's beautiful eyes. Well, that, and his incredible ability to be very vulnerable. He's less cocky than most of USA's other "characters," which is odd given the premise of his character. But there's a real defeat to him that is charming and heart-breaking at the same time. I don't know how well that works with his character being a master criminal and all. I'm definitely interested it watching more, but they're going to have to work very hard on improving or at least balancing the tone. But cheers to Matt Bomer's baby blues. I never noticed they were so disarmingly clear on Chuck, but that's probably because up until the end of season two, I kinda hated Bryce Larkin.
Curiously, a problem of tone was what kept me from liking Drag Me to Hell. I come down on the Army of Darkness side of horror-Raimi (as opposed to Evil Dead II), mostly because I think Raimi's strength is in humor. His attempts to be genuinely scary without being somewhat (or entirely) silly are just not that impressive to me. Drag Me to Hell wanted to be gross and funny at the same time, but the timing was off. Gross-outs went on too long, were far too staged to be anything but stomach-churning turn-offs. (Yes, there are stomach-churning turn-ons, and, yes, it is possible to tell the difference.) Usually, when something is dragged out, it becomes ridiculous. The problem with the gross-outs in Drag Me to Hell is that the set-ups were so ludicrous that they were, themselves, the joke, not the fifteen extra seconds of gratuitous fluids being projectile-vomited into the heroine's mouth. That's another problem: repetition of the exact same gross-out gag. I just didn't find the balance between the funny and the not-so to be as finely tuned as Raimi's earlier horror work. It probably doesn't help that the film opened with a child being taken to Hell--little hard to laugh at that--and that I'd seen Paranormal Activity before this which had a similar bent but was genuinely scary (which made the humor all the better, since no one laughs louder than someone who is freaked out).
Worse, Drag Me to Hell was utterly predictable. I don't hold that against horror movies, generally speaking--there are only so many ways the horror can go: the heroine (it is almost always a woman at the center) wins; the heroine loses; or the heroine thinks she's won but the ghost/monster/undead slasher comes back at the very end. Options are a luxury horror doesn't tend to have, you know? What I resent is how telegraphed those endings are.
feiran had seen the movie before, and she spotted the ending a mile off compared to me, but I still felt like I knew far too soon how it would play out. I knew the exact twist, knew the exact steps it would take to get there. Everything that wasn't on that agenda felt like extraneous noise and Raimi trying to reclaim some former glory. It's one thing to go, "Oh, this is an ending C movie (heroine thinks she's won, but...)" and watch anyway. It's another to go, "I bet she does X which leads to a scene where Y happens, and then there's a fake happy ending for Z-length of time, and then it's a C ending." That's how I felt about Drag Me to Hell. Very disappointing, on the whole.
