Rant II

I have a feeling that rants might become their own column, so I have named it appropriately...

This time on rant, I wanted to take a more humorous approach and talk about some of the stupid things I have heard and seen (relatively) recently regarding cinema. To start off...

1. http://www.wanderinggoblin.com/2009/03/29/twilight-not-just-a-film-its-now-a-religion/

That's right, as if the horde of obnoxious little girls in chain pants wasn't enough to drive us insane, they are now creating their own religion to remind us just how dumb they are in case we forgot sometime between Queen of the Damned and now. The best part is that they require you to acknowledge that all the characters are indeed real people and truly exist. Yeah... right.

2. This is a story my friend told me. He was hanging around our campus, I believe, and he overheard someone say, and I paraphrase, "Yeah, Hostel? That terrible Saw rip off."

I really don't believe that story needs any explaining. There are so many points that are just so wrong it hurts.

3. This last one is something I once read. I was browsing the IMDb forums and happened upon a Black Christmas hate thread (the original, not any of this new bullshit) and they brought up how it was terrible (SPOILER LOOK AWAY NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN BLAIR WITCH OR BLACK CHRISTMAS) because it, like Blair Witch, never showed the "bad guy". They called it lazy writing and directing.

Are you joking me? Really? They are the lazy ones... what about you with your lame ass excuse because you have no imagination?

This ranting feels like a nice break between movie reviews and reminds me I need a new director post soon. I will have to get on that sometime...

Hype in Cinema

This will be a very brief entry, at least for now, as it is late and I want to go to bed. I wanted to pay a little attention to hype's roll in the success of certain films. Specifically "God's gift to cinema" The Dark Knight.

We are all well aware of the hype put around this film. Firstly, for people like me, Christopher Nolan has always come off as a very competent and powerful film director, even though his first entry into Gotham was less than stellar. Secondly, it is a film about Batman, which will always play well with the crowds (at least draw them in for some profits). Thirdly, and most important to this entry, the death of Heath Ledger. At the time, only the crew and his friends had any idea what his performance was like, and obviously they were going to say it was the most amazing thing to ever grace our vision since the Sistine Chapel.

This played perfectly into Nolan's hands as it gave his perfectly fine film the edge and publicity it needed to become truly huge. Obviously it could be argued that it would simply have been just as popular as Nolan's first entry if it hadn't been for the unfortunate death. That is the route I am going to take, but as I said, it is late so I am not going to do the arguing now.

The media obsession fueled by all of this helped shoot The Dark Knight into what VERY many people believe to be the single greatest film ever made. I hate to tell you people, but cinema does not start and stop with The Dark Knight. What drove me to point this out was I never got over the IMDb rush surrounding that movie. Fans, even before the movie came out, started voting The Dark Knight perfect 10 scores, and then to give it a little boost, they began voting the films that already had the top few spots scores of 1. This debacle actually worked, as The Dark Knight became the #1 movie of all time on IMDb's list for quite a while before other people caught on and balanced it back out (sort of).

The whole point of this really wasn't to say that The Dark Knight was a bad movie (I rather enjoyed it and would easily give it a score somewhere around 8). The point was to give that IMDb example to help show that people can be sort of... dumb, for lack of a better word. That movie was propelled into stardom by some form of mob mentality, but it will soon be replaced in most people's minds (most likely with the The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, which will be the last movie featuring Heath Ledger). If you still believe that The Dark Knight deserves to be called the greatest movie ever made, then you should just wait a little longer and watch as it becomes forgotten in the waves of releases, where only the true pieces of art remain afloat.

Errata: I was on amazon the day after I made this entry, and pretty much any item is now linked to The Dark Knight. I found a box set containing the entire series of the Flintstones... and it was linked to The Dark Knight. This is getting out of hand.