Back to Scotland and a bit of a rant
The last few weeks I have neglected the whole blog thing. Mainly because I was busy doing stuff. That has probably got to be a good thing. Now I am back in the UK, and I think my nasty flu thing that appeared on the way back has begun to subside. Spent most of Friday fairly incoherent, and Saturday completely incoherent and in bed. Watched “Donnie Darko” tonight, partly in response to the 20 minutes or so that I watched of a dreadful film called “Hostel”.
I’m sorry, but how shit like that gets made I’ll never know. They put kids into therapy for the most trivial of thought crimes and yet the monsters who conceive this twisted amoral crap walk our streets and pollute our TV screens. I’m not squeamish about horror movies, I just happen to think if you are going to make that kind of film it should have a purpose other than to shock and cauterise our feelings. I’m not big on gore, I’m particularly not big on such overly simplistic demonisation of characters in an attempt to engage your feeling for survival or destruction of the two dimensional barely considered roles. I’ve seen five minutes walk on parts receive more character development that this. There is a reason for this though. This movie is about brutality and fear. This is a film screaming out to be banned. “Tarentino presents” my arse.
The details of my last weeks in Portugal I will try to put together for here, photos and stuff.
I’ll be in touch
I’m sorry, but how shit like that gets made I’ll never know. They put kids into therapy for the most trivial of thought crimes and yet the monsters who conceive this twisted amoral crap walk our streets and pollute our TV screens. I’m not squeamish about horror movies, I just happen to think if you are going to make that kind of film it should have a purpose other than to shock and cauterise our feelings. I’m not big on gore, I’m particularly not big on such overly simplistic demonisation of characters in an attempt to engage your feeling for survival or destruction of the two dimensional barely considered roles. I’ve seen five minutes walk on parts receive more character development that this. There is a reason for this though. This movie is about brutality and fear. This is a film screaming out to be banned. “Tarentino presents” my arse.
The details of my last weeks in Portugal I will try to put together for here, photos and stuff.
I’ll be in touch
posted by Panic Stricken at 3:12 am
4 Comments:
Ah, now if you'd actually watched the movie, there is a very good moral in there. It's no more brutal than say Audition, but since that's a Japanese movie it's acceptable. Hostel and Hostel 2 are both excellent films with a very good story. Don't judge the movie without watching. That's damgerous ground. "Ban this" "Have you seen it?" "No I wouldn't watch that sort of thing"
Bit like book burning about 60 years ago.
Censorship is a very dangerous thing.
actually I did watch the film, but I lied about how much I sat through to minimise the pain and anguish that the "Inflictor" may feel. I'm sorry to say that you are completely wrong to say that simply because something is in a Japanese film it's acceptable. Its exposure in the west is considerably less and hence so is the subsequent moral outcry. Both the Hostel films are devoid of character development, an actual story and certainly have no moral message. Many other films, "Man Bites Dog" for example, take you through a scale of horror which is casually amusing up until the rape scene, at which point we realise we have been manipulated and find ourselves rapidly reassessing the previously humours array of psychosis. Indeed censorship can be a dangerous thing, just as much so is freedom of expression. Both carry very heavy levels of responsibility and it is when either party neglects that responsibility that harm is done. All done and dusted, if I'd had a bbq, yes, I'd have burned the bugger with a clear conscience.
I felt obliged to watch both Hostel and Hostel 2 as they were received as a "gift". I waited for some plot to develop, waited for a character to do something which might help me relate to them (or even be able to distinguish them from the others) and eventually I came to the conclusion that it's just torture porn. Basically it comes down to "some stupid people go somewhere and horrible things happen to them, pointlessly". It's true I've seen worse, but then I watch an awful lot of crap.
I thought that maybe I had missed something on this film, but then I remembered I'd seen it, and don't want to see it again. So I checked the user comments on the imdb website. I do note that the film appears to have a 5.7/10 rating, which confuses me, given the vast amount (page after page after page) of negative comments which I agree with.
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