Sorry, guys. It's been the first week of my last semester in college and I've been pretty distracted. Anyway, onto the discussion...
Fletch F. Fletch wrote:Too true. And Dagon is just so head and shoulders above all of this gore porn stuff like Saw and Hostel. Those films bore me. No imagination or creativity at all. Gordon's films have plenty of gore but there is also something else going on that makes them interesting to watch and thought-provoking.
I have to disagree about Hostel. It's one of the few horror films last year that I felt held any important, topical social-political criticism. The marketing and surface looks like a "torture porn" product, but Roth is still drawing heavily on his themes of cultural extremes clashing against each other over greed, exploitation and xenophobia (on both sides). After he clearly echoed The Wicker Man, I went back to Cabin Fever and discovered I was probably too harsh when I initially revisited it and had labeled it as empty. Yes, it was extremely derivative in it's approach and style, but Roth has since basically apologize for this and grown up (a little, at least) in that he is now trying to define his own. Otherwise, both his features have a surprising amount of honest confrontation over cultureal misconceptions, stereotypes, fears and illusions of superiority.
I was very much with Hostel and I only checked out toward the end, when his condemnation of the lead characters became confused with an obviously after-the-fact addition of that pointless, eye-for-an-eye showdown at the train station. I was sitting there dumbfounded as to why he would spend so much time judging and punishing his central figures, as he had with Cabin Fever, only to give such a questionable character a way out. I was convinced there had been some last minute tinkering with the ending, and sure enough, it turned out the original ending did not leave the "hero" off the hook.
Instead, it left him horribly damaged and on a potentially never-ending cycle of violence towards anyone, as that was pretty much the point of the entire film. The exploitation of others had no end and the violence and abuse would only continue to feed people until they became even more horrible monsters. However, the preview audiences were unable to cope with this and Lionsgate/Sony Screen Gems were able to coax a new, happier ending out of Roth that completely defeated the film's message.
I calmed down in my criticism of the resolution when Roth mentioned that the ending would find its way back into the film for home video, but then the film was a mega-hit and he quickly stopped talking about it. Upon release of the DVD, the original ending was nowhere to be seen and Roth announced that the sequel would pick up from the exact point that we left Jay Hernandez in the original. I was hoping this was a sign that he would take that kernal of an idea and do something appropriate with it, but that remains to be seen. He does seem pretty determined to continue Hernandez' descent into madness and self-destruction as the B-plot, but it also sounds like Roth will spend most of the film recycling the original story (but with girls) as the A-plot.
I have no idea if he's actually going to follow through and repair the damage left from the confused and immature theatrical ending to Hostel, but I feel he is a lot smarter than people give him credit for and will give the sequel a chance to go where it needs to. If he ultimately disappoints me, I may have to write off both films as casualties of commercial pandering and success. Meanwhile, I'm going to keep an open mind. Despite the problematic resolution, Hostel managed to piss off a lot of the gorehounds that the film was criticizing. As many of them put it, he didn't make the sex and torture as much fun as they thought they deserved and left many of them confused and angry. As a college student, I unfortunately happen to know some of these sick American tourist types who were pretty much the same as the main characters. The film seemed to hurt them enough internally that they don't even know why the movie makes them go into insecure rages. It even forced one of these people I know to admit his behavior in Amsterdam while simultaneously trying to justify his behavior. That's utterly fascinating!
Anyway, I wouldn't write off Hostel or El Roth so quickly if I were you. You may even want to reapproach his older material. In all my readings or discussions with people about it, most seem to have an extremely selective memory as to what was actually present in the films themselves. Chalking that up to PC sensitivities, ignorant bloodlust or just plain bordem, I rarely meet anyone who went into the film looking at it as anything other than just another attempt at pleasing the Saw crowd. I think I've only seen one review since the film debuted that even addressed the relevance of having a mirror American character paying to be able to kill secretly kill people for kicks. A panderingly conservative and xenophobic film indeed. 
I really dug "Homecoming" mostly for its aggressive political stance. Didja happen to catch John Carpenter's segment for this season? I thought it was excellent.
Not yet. A number of people warned me not to. The reviews had been far less forgiving of Cigarette Burns, a film which had seriously offended me in how derivative it was. I think it had one inspired moment, and that was the burn at the halfway point during that godawful scene lifted wholesale from "8mm". I became really worried about "Pro-Life" when someone I knew in L.A. told me that Carpenter was already complaining about how bad it was and that he hated it. Then another friend of mine said he couldn't even find anything that defined it as a work of Carpenter's, though that sounded like an exaggeration. I tried to remain optimistic, but then I saw a clip from it and gave up. What do you recommend about it? An excuse to check it out would be pretty useful at this point.
Oh yeah, I finally got around to getting a copy of Dark Star. It's the only theatrically released Carpenter film I've never seen! It looks fascinating too! I'll probably watch it soon.
But you never know, it might still exist in some vault or warehouse somewhere just waiting to be discovered.
I don't know. The story about it's destruction, from Gordon, sounded pretty final.
ranaing83 wrote:Fans of Re-Animator and Stuart Gordon don't get your hopes up too soon. AICN is reporting that the movie will be shelved (at least temporarily). Jefferey Combs stated that due to the shift of political power to the democrats, the movie, which was to skewer the Bush presidency, will no longer be relevant. Thus, the filmmakers have decided to stall their plans for the film.
AICN made up half the context of that story and the rest came from a lot of confusion stemming from both Combs and Yuzna. Combs has an understandably pessimistic attitude towards the production since the producer, and Gordon, have been talking about "House" since before they completed "Beyond Re-Animator". Every word from Yuzna and Gordon of late has emphasized that they are trying to make the film, but there are still financing and timing issues.
Gordon is still in post-production on "Stuck" and Yuzna is trying to get a larger budget than they usually need. Yuzna's stated problems with the dated storyline of "House" has nothing to do with the Democrats taking Congress, as AICN randomly speculated, but moreso with his already stated concerns that the film might not see release *before* Bush is out of office. He has addressed this, though, mentioning that Gordon could potentially rewrite it. Anyway, Combs' comments on the film being "asleep" have already been contradicted by the same place that reported it in the first place. Here.
I think this is a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing.
