Posted by Felix Vasquez Jr. in Writer's Corner at 6:28 AM
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Hell, this July you may be looking at a multi-million dollar monstrosity from Michael Bay involving a former Disney channel actor, a really hot actress with the apt last name of Fox, a rapper, and the star of a bad dramedy, but hell, you’ll at least hear the original Optimus Prime kicking the shit out of Megatron in “Transformers.”
The current release, given the dubious honor of “Best Summer Movie we haven’t Seen” by the mental giants MTV, may end up being a lot of fun, but for my money, nothing can replace “The Transformers: The Movie,” the 1986 animated film starring Judd Nelson and Orson Welles. The nut stomping hard rocking sci-fi animated film is still one of my favorites, and it still sports an utterly bad ass theme song.
So, when you’re in theaters this month watching Hugo Weaving don the Megatron cape, and Peter Cullen return to the Optimus Prime mantle, remember this theme song loud and clear. It still gives this young animation buff chills, and it might, just might, still end up being better than the Michael Bay actioner:
Uwe Boll is no doubt one of the most infamous filmmakers of our generation. The minute someone watches 47 seconds of any film he’s made, they automatically want to hunt him down and destroy him. He’s so bad that it seems people forgot about that other video game filmmaker, Paul WS Anderson (Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil). At least Uwe Boll didn’t mess up Alien Vs. Predator.
Boll, responsible for such classics as House of the Dead and BloodRayne, may be a touch on the misunderstood side. Sure, his films are terrible pieces of schlock but you can’t deny his charms. Just listen to this snippet of commentary from the Alone in the Dark DVD:
How can you fault a person who genuinely thinks he’s made such a great film? And I actually think he is somewhat on the right side when it wonders how people can hate his movies so easily, yet let shit like Hide and Seek slide. I’d rather watch 6 Uwe Boll films in their entirety than sit through that Dakota Fanning nightmare one more time.
At least I can laugh at a Boll movie.
Last year, Boll decided to take on some of his worst critics in a boxing match. No one can say for sure if he was hoping to change their minds, or if he just wanted to kick some ass, but he took on 4 critics from various publications and walked away unbruised.
I am told by some of the local press around here that when they did a public pre-screening of Alone in the Dark a few years ago, the projectionist responsible for putting the print together accidentally put the reels together in the wrong order but no one was able to tell. They just thought it was perfectly normal for Uwe to cut from a weird monster action sequence to Christian Slater having sex with that gross chick, then cut back to the monster action sequence. I really wish I didn’t miss this screening.
Also available on Youtube is the first few minutes of his newest film, Postal.
I am at a loss for words. Clearly that’s going to offend some people, if not all people. Perhaps these is why he is so hated. He’s like the “King of Comedy” for all things not funny, previously held by Carlos Mencia. What’s a Boll to do?
Posted by Excess Hollywood in Columns at 5:19 AM
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Let me preface this column (blog, whatever) with two things. The movie ratings system should be abolished, and “Hostel 2” was a better film than the first one, which I liked. If you agree that the ratings board is a necessary evil (and I don’t, but plenty do), you have to admit that it got it wrong with the R rating for “Hostel 2.” I’m not the only one who thinks this, either. “Entertainment Weekly” has a columnist who believes the same thing, though he had different reasons than mine.
“Hostel 2” should have been NC-17 based purely on its tone. It wasn’t the “erotic bloodbath” cited by the previously mentioned columnist that pushed it past the R. It wasn’t the castration scene, either. The “gore” was pretty standard stuff (though that castration scene was fairly nasty, but not unheard of in an R rated movie). There was a point where the tone of the film shifted, however, and that’s why I thought the simple minds behind the ratings would have given it that dreaded NC-17.
American horror movies consider some things to be fairly taboo. One of those things is killing children. (It seems far more acceptable to do that in a drama as opposed to a horror film.) “Hostel 2,” for those who haven’t seen it, features a cold-blooded, drawn out execution of a child. During that scene the crowd in the theatre I saw the film in went from fairly quiet to dead still by its end. It made the movie feel slightly unsafe and brutal (things that worked in its favor), and it sent the film into new territory. Why the film got an R can only be explained by the money behind it. With an NC-17 fewer theatres would have shown it, and it would have done even less business at the box office (I suspect it will do far better on DVD). Had this been an independent, it would’ve never made it by with an R.
“Hostel 2” is one more reason the ratings board should be abolished. It can’t do its job properly even within its own loose guidelines. If it can’t get this one film right, why should anyone believe it can properly rate any other film? It’s more proof that parents, whom the ratings board was designed for, need to actually read reviews of the films before letting their kids see them. (Better yet, actually watch the film without the children first, then make your decision.) In any case, they shouldn’t trust the ratings board because “Hostel 2” shows how wrong it can go. If you can’t trust the board, it isn’t doing its job, and if it’s not doing its job it needs to be fired.
Let’s get rid of these fools and start taking matters into our own hands when it comes to our films. And if you think I’m being extreme, ask yourself this: If the execution of a child in a horror film (which is at the end of a scene that features a line of children having a gun shoved in their faces one by one) doesn’t rate an NC-17 for tone alone, what does?
Why is it that every single horror film, hell every single film with a villain, in the midst of grabbing for the almighty dollar, seems intent on demystifying previously imposing villains these days?
In a world of Tabloids, Blogs, MySpace, websites, and reality shows, we’ve come to the apex of the end of privacy as we know it, and have become a people that seek to expose everything about ourselves for our friends and random public to watch, if for not other reason to seek fame, or infamy.
And it seems to reflect poorly on horror films, as these days every single villain has to be explained, or deemed just a sad little puppy under a psychotic exterior, that really isn’t that bad once you get to know them. The height of this ludicrous attempts were with Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” prequels, where we discovered the dark lord who destroyed a planet and choked folks to death like it was a bowel movement, really was just a hurting petulant teenager who did it all for the nookie.
It seems studios, in their search to milk every franchise within their grasps, want to stretch the line thin as far as possible, thus the next move beyond the stories, are to over explain our villains. Their motives, their origins, their emotions, their family, their favorite soft drink, everything has to be explained for us.
And we don’t seem to mind it too much. Horror, as a reflection of society, seems to have headed in a direction where even the most harrowing of monsters have to be explained and somehow redeemed as a tragic figure to gain viewers sympathies rather than scare them. It’s happening all the time these days.
King Kong went from an angry ape taken out of his land, to a clunky love struck buffoon who really just wanted some Ann Darrow tail, and was quite sweet underneath his rough exterior. To many this was deemed as a high point of Peter Jackson’s remake, but it very much took away the mystique and horror that was Kong’s destruction of this concrete jungle.
And I can’t imagine how they could have botched the prequel to “Hannibal Rising” anymore, but they pulled off what was such a great film, and turned it into a waning franchise, that then dissolved into a really boring prequel that was “Batman Begins” without the costume. It was bad enough I could not buy Gaspard Ulliel as a younger Hannibal Lecter, but here we learned that he was really just a sad little boy underneath his cannibalism.
Shit, he ate his sister not because he liked it, but because he was hungry and sad. He eats humans not because he’s a madman, but because it’s his own form of revenge. Oh, and he’s also a samurai. But in reality, Hannibal Lecter is just an abused orphan who lost his way, like Darth.
“Hannibal Rising” is a film I just refuse to accept as his official origin. To me, Hannibal will always be a man who remains a mystery and the tale told in the film, is really just speculation and hearsay based on myths and urban legends.
There’s also the de-mystification of Michael Myers coming soon, which will be a film that depicts Michael as a bulking maniac with long hair, and is, as actress Taylor Scout Compton declared, just a big puppy dog under a mask. So, the embodiment of pure merciless evil is now just a big old softy who is just misguided and tortured.
Then there’s Leatherface who went from a deranged lunatic to a man with a disfigurement who is just misunderstood exemplified in the horrible remake where he unmasks to reveal a deformed kisser anxiously attempting to invoke a sense of sympathy from us.
This was further display “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning,” a movie about a studio who wrote themselves into a corner by cutting Leather face’s arm off, and built a prequel instead, which gave them an excuse to show Leatherface with both arms, and show an “origin” that was comprised of him without a mask, and in a meat house.
I recall bursting with laughter when R. Lee Ermy’s character screams “Kill him! He’s just like the boys who used torment you!” A pussy getting back at bullies, wow, that’s horrifying. I recall many a chuckle that day.
Then there’s Billy from Black Christmas who became a transvestite abused and raped by his mom, and Robert Carlyle’s character in “28 Weeks Later” who, though the infected are declared as being void of any state of logic, sound mind, or mercy, suddenly found it in himself to topple the infection to follow his kids halfway around England, and recognize them in a state of sadness right before biting it. You have to love that ability to undermine the story.
There’s just an unspoken unanimous decision these days to show that every monster is really just a sad being inside, and while that’s good for something like “Frankenstein,” often times monsters are just monsters. Creatures that come from the dark, and try to destroy us sometimes just are. There’s really no rhyme or reason.
One of the primary examples of this random destruction of the genre and the mystery would be in “Hostel Part II.” The problem with the film, aside from being just as bad as the former was that Roth just over explained his villains. By revealing everything about this organization, he dropped the curtain on a menacing entity that would have served as a versatile threat to everyone and anyone who stepped into its clutches.
Instead, we’re told everything about them, and any intimidating presence they brought to the story was relinquished, and Roth ended up exploring them more than he did our victims, who should have been the actual centers.
This is also shown in the “Spider-Man” films, in where every single person that comes across “Spider-Man” is not evil, or megalomaniacal, or even psychotic, but just a misguided human. Sandman was really just a man trying to see his daughter, Venom was just a broken reporter, Doctor Octopus was really just a man grieving his wife, and did I mention Norman Osborne was a whiny man whose power was grabbed from him?
Sometimes a psycho is just a psycho, and I really don’t care to know why Lecter eats people, why Michael has to destroy, why the walking dead have to eat, and why Leatherface is plain nuts. Sometimes the scarier aspect of horror is in not knowing. That’s why there’s so much hatred toward what’s different, because sometimes the new and unusual just frighten us. Should we sympathize for the freaks in “The Hills Have Eyes” because they’re suffering from radiation, or should we be scared that they’re planning to eat a baby?
Why do people who command these stories feel we have to know about the monster and feel for them before watching them? How does that increase their personality or gravitas? The answers are many times just: Money. Studios go where the money is, and they’ll explain the origins of their beasts for as long as humanly possible, but sometimes, just sometimes, there’s a director out there who wants to explain their beast, and then pull the rug out from us.
Did we have to know about the monsters in the cave before “The Descent” scared the crap out of us? Wasn’t Michael a horrifying monster before the sequels, and this remake? Did we have to know the aliens were just lost puppies in order to fear them popping from the dark and impregnating us?
I say no.
Stop ruining the illusion for us by explaining the magic trick, and just let us decide for ourselves why that masked man is hacking up teens, or why that scientist wants to ruin Spider-Man’s day, because not knowing is sometimes scarier than explanation. I mean, do I have to explain why the ladies love me? I think not.
Somewhere in the magical land of Hollywood exists a person who dreamed of making a sequel to Tom Shadyac’s Bruce Almighty from 2003. He dreamed of it so much in fact, that he could barely sleep a wink at night. “How can I make this happen?” he thought to himself often, as he would walk the beach every night after work. Then Morgan Freeman came to him, in the form of God, and asked him to build a film for which he can act in.
And that’s when it hit our poor studio executive guy. “That’s it - Bruce can build an ark this time!” But Bruce (Jim Carrey) wanted no part of it. “Damn, foiled!” the man exclaimed to the heavens. God came back down and said, “Do you think Noah gave up the first time he smashed his fingers with a hammer?”
This motivated the suit and he began pondering, “Who can be Bruce instead?” Thankfully, maybe even coincidentally, NBC’s “The Office” was on at that exact moment. “Steve Carell… people like him, his films make money… that’s it! Oh yeah, and he was in the first one too!”
With his ideas further in place, and a script written, he had everything he needed to get going. Everything, that is, except the $175,000,000 it would cost to fund this trip.
One studio executive said of his request, “You need how much? Are you making a trilogy?” Another asked, “How many explosions are going to be in this?”
The suit laughed at their questions and said, “No, no, you got it all wrong. It’s going to be Steve Carell, and he is going to have a really long beard. And there is going to be a very large boat. And cute animals all over the place!”
With his enthusiasm, they caved in and gave him the money. Fast forward many months later, the film would only take in about $32,000,000 opening weekend.
“He fucked us,” said the other executives at a meeting this morning. “How could we do this? This movie should have only cost us around $60,000,000… where did the money go?” The suit then kicked down the door, complete with long hair and beard, and exclaimed, “We built it, so they will come.”
For the most part, audiences were pretty smart this weekend. That isn’t to say that $32 million isn’t a lot, because it is but for this time of year and considering how much money the film cost, it’s not all that much.
Hopefully someone learned a valuable lesson: if you’re going to make a sequel to a film barely anyone remembers, lower the budget a bit. It might help your pocket out later in life.
In the mid-fifties there were almost 5000 Drive-In’s in the United States, by 1990 that number had dwindled to a little less than 1000. By 1998 that number was down to 800. Family owned independent theatres have suffered a similar fate, and the decline continues as the giant corporate chains take over. If this keeps up the independent theatre experience will be only a distant memory.
And good fucking riddance.
I remember Drive-In’s and I remember the small, family owned theatres. At the time, it was sort of fun. Then again I was ten and thought “Who’s The Boss?” was quality entertainment. 1980-83 was also the age of tiny home televisions so any screen larger than a laptop computer monitor seemed huge and exotic. I’d recommend going in much the same way I’d recommend drinking at a rough biker bar. It’s an experience that’ll give you character, just don’t blame me when you end up in the emergency room with a knife in your ass.
All kidding aside though, those places sucked.
Indie theatre? Who the hell wants to sit in a squalid 20 x 40 room with 300 people and no air conditioning while watching a movie on a screen smaller than Calista Flockhart’s ass? If you really want the experience you can invite me over. For ten bucks I’ll burn/cook some cheap popcorn, water down your soda, soil your couch, smear Vaseline on the screen and disconnect some speaker wires so you can’t hear anything from the left side. After that I’ll go roll around in some manure, then sit next to you and masturbate while you watch the movie, occasionally slapping you in the back of the head. That should give you the full tiny ass movie theatre experience. For an extra five bucks I’ll call Australia and talk loudly for the duration of the film.
Drive in? Gawd… You could barely see the screen or understand a single fucking thing from the lousy mono speaker. Not to mention all the people who walked or drove in front of your car. A typical night would run like this: You’d show up 2-3 hours early with a few friends in different cars. Someone would break out the beer and cooler from the trunk, the guy with the customized van would turn on the disco ball and quadrophonic 8 track system, and then everyone would hang out and chill and get loaded while it got dark. Then the previews would start and no one would pay any fucking attention at all. When the movie eventually did play they’d watch for 10-20 minutes and if it didn’t grab their limited attention they’d just hop back in their cars with their dates for a lil’ in and out, or continue the party outside with the disco music blaring at top volume. Nobody gave a shit. Does any of this sound like fun for the people who went to actually see the movie? Do you really wanna watch a washed out print of Texas Chainsaw Massacre while a drunk asshole pisses on your door and makes kissy faces at your girl? Granted I don’t speak from absolute experience, but I’ve been to genuine drive in’s often enough to know that 4 times out of 10 this is how shit went down. Those are the kind of odds I can’t live with. It’s like the annoyance from the phone assholes in the regular theatre multiplied by a million.
Give me one of those 40 screen megachains any day of the fucking week: Big ass seats. Nobody’s head blocking the screen. Nice AC. Toilets that work. Ushers that don’t look like muggers. No waiting for tickets. Clean toilets. A concession stand that sells candy made by companies that weren’t shut down by the food and drug administration. Heaven! So what if it’s not “family owned”? People throw around that designation as if it means anything. Slums and sweatshops are family owned you know. So are cockfighting rings, massage parlors, whorehouses and betting shops.
Oh sure, there’s a few indie theatres that rock. Concordia/J.A. DeSeve where Fantasia plays every year is pretty damn sweet. It’s huge, well laid out, and the seats aren’t too bad. The AC works. The projectionists know what the hell their doing and the movies rule. Every city has a place like that. Just like there’s a few Drive-in’s that are worth going to because an effort is made to make the viewing of a movie PLEASANT to the audience. However, you won’t see me mourn the death of most of the other, lesser, places because they’re shitholes. That’s why the big chains are eating them up. It’s the same thing as why Wal-Mart is killing small stores. Because no one wants to spend 50$ on a toilet seat lid while being rung up on a NCR brand Cash Register from the 40’s by a man who just might be wearing an adult diaper. It’s disconcerting to enter a dimly lit “store” that looks like someone’s garage and have the clerk kind of pop up behind you looking as if you’d just interrupted him from committing suicide.
I also think it’s telling that the people who bitch and moan about the loss of the drive-in and indie theatres tend to be the ones who were way too young to have gone to an authentic one. The ones that survive to this day are typically not representative of the breed, that’s why they survived. Most of the real places were badly managed dumps that were outdated a decade before I was born and showed shitty ass films that weren’t 70’s retro cool, they were just shitty. It was only a matter of time before they died. Not a single one of you reading this right now would have enjoyed going there. Not a one. Don’t mourn these deaths, instead rejoice. It’s Darwinism at its finest. The good places will live and the bad will die.
And if we’re lucky, the tide will be so strong that it’ll take all the crappy corporate jackoff places along with them too leaving only the absolute cream of the crop behind. No more phone assholes, no more theatre hopping families with 9 kids and 2 babies, no more dumbasses who keep asking questions through the viewing. They’d all be banned for life from these awesome places of true film worship. That’s a world I could dig living in.
Posted by Excess Hollywood in Columns at 5:22 AM
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Ever since I was a little kid I’ve liked horror films. When I was 10 I started keeping a typewritten list of all the horror movies I’d seen and how I rated them (just like Film Threat rates them with one to five stars). I did the same with the books I read, too, many of which were horror. I didn’t think of myself as an especially morbid kid, and I wasn’t a serial killer in waiting. I just loved the thrill a good horror film gave me and devoured everything I could find that was horror related. Magazines, books, movies, toys, trading cards. If it had any ties to horror, I wanted it. I wanted to write horror novels, too, and tried my hand at several short stories that I entered into contests. I was bit by the bug, and as I got older I often found myself explaining to friends why the only movies I wanted to see that Friday were horror films.
Far too many of my friends liked teen comedies or boring action flicks. Some horror films, like the “Friday the 13th” ones, were acceptable to them because they were safe, but they’d rather see the latest Hollywood blockbuster. I, on the other hand, would vote for “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2” or a night in watching “Bloodsucking Freaks” on video. I was usually lost that fight.
Horror films do something to people that you can’t get from other film genres. When you watch “Hellraiser” for the first time you find yourself transported to a place where things seem familiar, but you are surrounded by insanity that is erotic, scary and disturbing. Evil beings clad in leather want to harm pleasure seekers who would dare conjure them. They promise the ultimate in pleasure and pain, and that’s a perfect symbolism for the horror film.
People seek out horror movies because being scared is a pleasurable act. It makes one feel alive. When you sit in a darkened theatre or living room, you know you’re safe but can’t help but be a bit worried. You may laugh nervously or breathe a sigh of relief. The heart is pumping and the palms are sweating. It’s a comforting anxiety, and maybe even addictive. That’s not something you get from a romance film.
People in high school thought I loved the gore. Admittedly, there was an aspect of my personality that liked the shock value. There still is, but my enthusiasm went deeper than that. I liked what a horror movie was capable of doing to a person. Everyone has fears. A good horror movie can zone in on those fears and amplify them to the point of unease. A great horror movie does that and never lets you off the hook. I like the ones that never let go; the ones that play it safe do nothing for me. They are like diet soda or a condom with a hole in it — utterly worthless. All one has to do is compare the original “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” to see the difference. It wasn’t the gore. It really never was. It was the emotion.
Now that I’ve reached the upper thirties in age, my love for horror and exploitation has remained strong. It’s weathered lean years when no good films were coming out and every other damn book seemed to have a sexy vampire in it. To find anything worthwhile I had to really dig or go back to the classics. Now there’s a resurgence, which I believe is tied in part to the current political atmosphere (it seems like the best horror films and books come out of the most conservative and repressive political climes). Cinema no longer seems scared of being scary. Teen horror flicks, where good looking boys and girls give an unstoppable killing machine its due, are slowly dying and are actively being mocked. Stuff like “Wolf Creek” has people gripping their seats in fear. That is the good stuff. That’s the ride I like to take.
My friends still think I have a lot of growing up to do, but I don’t care. They can watch their latest mall dreck and feel safe and secure knowing they made it through another very challenging installment of movies MTV style. Me? I’ll take the shadows, the blood streaked faces, the rusty chains and the death rattles over movies starring cast members from “Dawson’s Creek” any day.
Posted by Felix Vasquez Jr. in Writer's Corner at 2:10 PM
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Most recently, Entertainment Weekly released a list of the 25 best Action movies of all time, what with the re-emergence of John McClane in his safe for everyone in the age of 13 sequel: “Live Free or Die Hard.” Of course, number one was indeed “Die Hard,” with the sad omission of “The Professional,” but we weren’t short changed, with titles like “Kill Bill, Vol. 1,” and “Mad Max,” and “Lethal Weapon.”
So, I being the big fan of lists, decided to consider my favorite action films of all time, and as you’d guess, I made a list. Not of the top ten, but more of the top five, just to keep it lean and tender for this return to the blogs. So, without further ado, here are my top five action films of all time:
The Warriors
Sho ‘Nuff, Camp is abound in what is easily one of the best action movies ever made in Walter Hill’s depiction of Inner-city gangs taking place in New York city. The plot is simple but extremely action packed as a famous and beloved gang kingpin is assassinated, and the blame pinned solely on the small Coney Island gang, The Warriors. Though their numbers are slim, they’re attacked by almost every gang in the city, with a high bounty on their head, and prove their worth engaging in some brutal bouts, including one of my favorite on-screen brawls, where the Warriors go toe to toe with the Roller Skating punks in a subway bathroom. Beyond that they have to tussle with painted base ballers, and knife wielding lesbians, just to get to their home turf in Coney Island. There’s not a single dull moment in the film.
The Crow
You know it, you love it, I almost never stop talking about it, this is Brandon Lee’s swan song to the action-horror genre, as a rocker who returns from the dead to wreak bloody vengeance on the gang members who took the lives of him and his wife. Most appealing about this film is that we’re supplied with villains who carry their own presence in the likes of Tony Todd, Bai Ling, and Michael Wincott respectively, without ever drowning out the sheer morbid appeal of the painted up Eric Draven. One of the best scenes in the film, behind the knife fight, is Draven just painting the walls with blood as he crashes a gang summit, and helps the body count rise.
Assault on Precinct 13
I speak of the original masterpiece, not the watered down remake that shit on screens back in ‘05. This is a time where Carpenter’s standing as a filmmaker was clear. He was gritty, he loved Westerns, he knew how to create scores that were simple but eerie, and he wasn’t selling off his films like it was a Garage sale. Once again a film consisting of a gang element, “Assault on Precinct 13″ involves a man who kills a vicious gang member after murdering his daughter on a street corner. He seeks refuge in a run down precinct in an abandoned part of the city, and now a bunch of off duty cops and a small group of vicious prisoners have to fend off against an endless supply of violent gangsters aching to break in. Though, oddly enough, there are fans of the remake, Carpenter’s original has many things in its favor including a rather chaotic story, and Napoleon Wilson who becomes a hero you just love to hate. For equal impact, check out “Straw Dogs.”
Dirty Harry
Sure, others may have their preference for the “Dirty Harry” films, but I personally prefer the first, which ends up being much more of a tale of this under appreciated cop, rather than the story of foiling this vicious murderer. He’s Dirty Harry because he has to do all the dirty work, and he almost gets no praise for risking his life, even when it includes stopping Scorpio from massacring a school bus filled with children. Eastwood is great here helping to pave the opening as one of the greatest moments in film history as he stops a bank robbery single handedly, even though he has to interrupt his lunch doing it. I hate when that happens.
The Getaway
This is yet another film I’ve written about numerously, and I’m not ashamed to continue harping on this. Anything with Steve McQueen is almost a guaranteed win, and even at his worst, the man is always on. McQueen is Doc McCoy, a thief who has just been released from prison thanks to his wife, and is now being called to duty again to rob another bank, and goes Rogue. “The Getaway” is a pure road flick following McCoy and his wife Carol across the country to get to the Mexican border, while being tailed by the authorities, as they continue to get themselves into hot water. Many people prefer McQueen’s other action films like “Bullitt,” and “Nevada Smith,” but for my money, Peckinpah’s entry into the McQueen legend is by far the best.
I’m finally home in the comfort of my apartment, where I get to dictate whether I ever hear that “Umbrella…ella…ella…A…A…” song again, which is precisely as it should be. Like most long festival adventures, my body and health got me through the work-load of seeing and reviewing films, only to crap out on me right before the final screening of the festival.
I was having a conversation in the HQ prior to “You Kill Me” when my right ear went all swimmer-ear on me and clogged up… or something. Point is, I suddenly couldn’t hear out of my right ear. On top of that, my head began to hurt, felt dizzy… and I still had a movie to see and the closing night party to attend.
Jamie and I got our seats for “You Kill Me,” and I gave her the heads-up that if it really got bad, I was going to retreat for the evening and hope I felt better in the morning. Then an amazing thing happened: “You Kill Me” started, and was really good. Despite the pain in my ear, I couldn’t leave the flick, I was really into it. When the movie ended my ear was still clogged, but I felt better all-around, so Jamie and I went to the closing night party at Mandalay Bay’s new beach-style casino.
This particular party was a bit too big for my tastes, but Jamie and I found some nice beach chairs and I just reclined, soaking in the end of my festival experience. Nice and cool, pretty lights and a surprising live concert by Katherine McPhee all happened while I sat, half-deaf, in that beach chair.
But once again, the festival is over, and I’m home. Still can’t hear our of my one ear, but I’m convinced it’s all allergy/sinus-related (as Vegas always gives me trouble with that), so I’m taking the necessary allergy meds and hopefully I’ll be back to tip-top shape in time for the end of the week’s Los Angeles Film Festival.
Big thanks to everyone involved with CineVegas this year, especially Trevor, Mike, Devon, Linda, Chris, Kate and every filmmaker, staff or volunteer I got to hang out with and talk to as the days went on. And of course, huge thanks to Jamie and Don for rocking the festival with me, keeping the reviews coming and the commentary fun.
