2005-06-05

Love Story 1, Skanky Hoe 0

I turned down a skanky hoe last night. Yay me!

An odd girl that I met soon after arriving here (who hopefully doesn't know that I blog) called me up around 10.30pm. She was driving. She was cussing mad at her redneck boyfriend and she asked if I wanted to go dancing "now". Ignoring for a moment that there's nowhere good to go dancing downtown, I had a vision of me listening to her complain for three hours just to get some play. I said no and gave some advice about her boyfriend issues.

Do I respect myself more these days, or am I just getting better at detecting trouble at the outset? Whatever, I stayed home and watched The Village instead.

So many people were critical of that movie, I was able to thoroughly enjoy it. The problem of hype and expectation is exacerbated with a Night Shyamalan movie because, since The Sixth Sense, the audience expects a big twist. As a writer-director, what do you do? Twist? Double-twist? Fake-out twist? Try something original and everyone will say the great M. Night has lost it. I'm not sure you can win when your audience is expecting to be surprised. That's a self-defeating frame of mind and makes about as much sense as your XO telling you to "expect the unexpected".



Sure, Ramalamadingdong manipulates your sense of danger with a minimalist approach to sound design and some really tight framing - so you often can't see what's right next to Ivy, who is blind - but his writing is so sharp I forgive him these "tricks of the trade". His characters don't avoid the burning plot questions, which often happens in movies to prolong the tension (think The Ring, The Grudge, or The X-Files on TV). He takes a simple idea and explores every single facet. Despite being a part of the summer blockbuster line-up, his scripts are the antithesis of many Hollywood movies which aim to entertain through spectacle and distraction. I like his stuff.

I guessed a large part of the ending before the movie even started. Maybe I liked this movie because it made me feel smart? Or maybe because I have a soft spot for unconventional love stories like this, Solaris, and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind?

Ivy: "Why won't you say what's in your head?"
Lucius: "Why won't you stop saying what's in yours?"


That's right, ladies... I'm sensitive, single and I don't pick up scraps anymore. Unless they're really hot. Or it's a bet. And we don't speak of such things.

8 Comments:

Blogger TheGirard said...

is she a hot skank though? That might make it all better. I mean, could she have won best ass in the Hague?

17:42  
Blogger thisismarcus said...

LOL, man. Hell, no... she's not in Ivy's League.

17:52  
Blogger erika said...

i guess the skanky hoe distracted from the fact THE VILLAGE WAS THE WORST MOVIE EVER.

well, besides:
the aviator
birth
open water (?)
did i mention 'birth'??
also, BIRTH.

20:01  
Blogger GiromiDe said...

I enjoy Solaris and Eternal... as good films and great unconventional love stories. Eternal... says more about the nature of love and relationships than 1,000 Meg Ryan flicks.

21:33  
Blogger The Paranoid Mod said...

Don't knock When Harry Met Sally, now...

Personally, the Sweet Hereafter was the most boring 2 hours of my life. A bus crashes, all the children die, and then... nothing happens in a very understated way for the rest of the film. Pants.

Marcus, glad to see you've stopped picking up drunk mingers. It was becoming an addiction for a while there. hehe.

10:59  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sorry the village was exactly what it said on the tin.

Rural, uninteresting pap, that doesn't appeal.

Yawned my way through it and fell asleep before I'd finished the yawn.

Joa-quim Pissnex sux as well. Plays the same, tight lipped dappy ponce every time. YAW...zzzzzzz

22:09  
Blogger DrHeimlich said...

My complaint with The Village is that I wasn't prepared for it when I saw it.

See, the trailers for all of M. Night's other movies were great. They give away very little of the movie, while giving you a sense of what it is you're going to see.

The Sixth Sense trailer let you know you were in for a movie with some series psychological thrills in it.

The Unbreakable trailer let you new the bizarre mystery at the heart of the piece, and told you the film would be about exploring what is special about this sole survivor of a train derailment. It did NOT paint the movie as a "scary movie." And for good reason -- it wasn't.

Signs was back to thriller territory, promising bumps in the night and scares.

Then came the trailer for The Village. It depicted another scary thriller of a movie. Instead, the movie was an allegory with romance overtones. Huh? My dislike of The Village had very little to do with the question of "is there a twist ending? Did you figure it out?" It had to do with the fact that I was expecting to see something in the spirit of The Ring, and instead got something more like Jane Eyre. I'd been duped.

I've seen The Village again on DVD, and my opinion of it did change a bit. I still think little of it -- it's the one M. Night movie not on my top 100 list. But I was able to respect it much better for the elements of it that were good when I was more fully prepared for the tone of what I was going to see.

03:56  
Blogger thisismarcus said...

It seems I'm in the minority on this one. Definite Top 100 material for me.

Dr Heimlich: it wasn't the twist ending but nevertheless, the marketing had you expecting something and left you wanting. The trailer for Solaris made it look like Alien 5, which may help get bums on seats in the first place but must have pissed off a lot of testosterone jocks.

13:33  

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