Moron of the Day

There are so many annoying things about this article in the NY Times - about Hostel Part II's release coming so soon after the Virginia Tech shootings - that I can hardly focus on just one, but I will, because it sums up everything wrong with writer Michael Cieply's perspective on the current so-called "torture porn" trend in horror films:

"Roy Lee, a film producer whose projects include a proposed remake of “Old Boy” for Universal... said that the [Virginia Tech] killings have seriously shaken the prospects for his “Battle Royale,” based on a Japanese video game in which ninth graders imprisoned on an island are forced to kill one another."

Oh Cieply. if I'm to listen to a word you say, maybe you could at least convince me that you've bothered to see any of the films of which you're speaking, or at the very least KNOW THAT BATTLE ROYALE WAS A MOVIE, NOT A VIDEO GAME. Ugh.

And I'll usually give anybody a lot of leverage in these arguments, because as I've put plainly before I hate with a whole lotta passion the Saw films and think they're despicable. But Hostel is another beast entirely, and dismissing it sight unseen does not sit well with me.

Hell, even dismissing the Saw films sight unseen bothers me too; if you're going to comment on the films, see them. It's the same, worthwhile argument that gets used when some religious group goes into a furor over something like Last Temptation of Christ or even Passion of the Christ - the latter of which was indeed despicable, but I can say that because I saw it - see the movies before you criticize them. Same goes with the Saw films - hateful, ugly things, but I sat through them in order to have the right to make my argument. I endured!

If this argument were made about Saw 4 I'd be less annoyed, but with the Hostel franchise, director Eli Roth has some worthy things on his mind that need to be discussed in our society; these films aren't there just to turn on the sicko-switch at the basest of our human urges. We live in a country where torture has been defined into non-existance by our Government, and I often feel sick with that responsibility and am glad somebody out there's messing around with these thoughts.

And hey, if you've seen the film and wanna disagree with me on its merits, then cool, let's get into that. But I don't need a writer like Ceiply who appears to be pulling facts from his ass making an argument like this in the NY Times.

Same with the FILM of Battle Royale, which ain't perfect but has a lot to say about Japanese society. And don't even get me started on the lumping of Park Chan-wook's films into these flaccid arguments.
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