DANGEROUS DAYS

Dead Snow (2009)
Zombie Horror; Norway
91 mins

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So...anybody know what the deal with Norwegians and disembowelment is? I can only imagine it's a cultural obsession because it happens a shit-ton of times in "Dead Snow". How the hell do you get your intestines caught on a tree branch as you stroll by it? I have no fucking idea, but apparently it's as common as tripping on your own shoelaces in Norway!

This movie claims to be about Nazi zombies, but really they play a very small role in the action. The fact that these zombies happened to be Nazis once upon a time doesn't really come into play except as a bit of backstory and, of course, in the costuming. Aside from that fact, this movie is like the general premise of the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" meets every other fucking movie in history where zombies stalk a group of 20-somethings in a remote cabin.

The "dumb bitch syndrome" runs rampant in this one. Do people go outside to investigate shit they really shouldn't be fucking with? Oh yea! Does someone go to the outhouse alone at night after some freaky shit has already transpired? Of course! Do the few remaining survivors split up to cover more ground and insure that they make themselves as easy to kill as possible? You better fuckin' believe they do because this is a horror movie that follows just about every horror movie cliche in the book. But you know what? It was still mildly entertaining.

Give this movie some time if you're into: anything/everything zombie related, watching stupid people make bad decisions that end in death or dismemberment.

Michael Jackson

Did the "King of Pop" spawn an entire generation of sci-fi fans?

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I’m sure many of you are getting a little sick of all the Michael Jackson coverage – frankly I am too. But the sheer amount of press the King of Pop’s death has attracted is an inevitable byproduct of the loss of someone who has had so much influence over the lives of so many people. Michael Jackson was more than a man, more than a singer – he was a cultural institution.

As sci-fi fans, the loss of MJ also means the loss of quite possibly the geekiest pop star that’s ever walked the Earth. Fantasy, horror, magic and futurism were ever-present throughout Jackson’s career in his videos, his stage performances and his fashion sense. Michael always looked like he just stepped off a space ship from the future, even until the end of his life (though I’d categorize that look more as Galactic Emperor than his usual Han Solo).

The guy single handedly invented the concept of the mega-star pop idol – a concept that has since taken root in many a sci-fi story. He introduced a whole generation to zombies and techno-futurist fashions. He got everybody thinking about walking backwards on the moon. He insured the brilliant John Landis an eternal spot in the collective consciousness. He slept in a pressurized oxygen chamber. He made an epic 3-D space adventure movie that (though cheesy) still looks pretty cool to this day (and inspired Star Trek: TNG’s Borg). In short, the mofo did more than enough for sci-fi to ensure a place in the geek hall of fame…quite possibly a lifetime achievement award, even.

Of course, you can’t talk about Michael Jackson without mentioning the plethora of controversy surrounding him. From the skin thing, to the chimpanzees, to Peter Pan, to little children…there was no shortage of weirdness from the man. But you know what, people? That’s what it’s like when you come from the future – people just don’t get what you’re all about and they eat you alive because of it. I mean, look what happened to David Bowe in “The Man Who Fell To Earth”.

The most important thing to remember about the gossip and controversy is that 99% of it is unfounded and unproven and the other 1% is just a result of him being so damn weird. The oxygen chamber? Whatever, that’s not even that weird – it was cool when it was in “Alien”, but somehow it’s creepy when MJ does it. Bullshit. Bubbles the chimp? That’s not weird, that’s awesome! I would totally have a chimp if I could. I wouldn’t name him Bubbles, by any means, but we’ll chalk that up to taste. Speed Racer had a fuckin’ chimp and people loved that guy. The sexual abuse allegations? If they were true, they’d surely be unforgivable crimes, but come on…the circumstances surrounding both of the cases were more than fishy in terms of the true motivation behind the lawsuits and that’s before we even consider the fact that Jackson doesn’t fit the profile of your typical child rapist whatsoever (acting more like a regressed child himself at times) and that he was never found guilty of any of the accusations.

A lot of people also suggest that Michael Jackson was ashamed of being black and therefore bleached his skin and got plastic surgery to make himself look white. I just don’t buy it. This is the guy who portrayed Egyptian kings as blacks in his “Remember The Time” video (which isn’t exactly the norm), called Tommy Mottola a white devil, almost always cast himself opposite ethnic females in his videos, spearheaded the “We Are The World” campaign for Africa, talked about the white man needing to make a change, sang African chants in his music and donated countless millions to the United Negro College Fund, but somehow he also had such a deep seeded self-hatred that he would counteract all that racial pride he displayed by bleaching his skin in such a drastic and obvious fashion and then blame it on a skin disease in order to cover it up. That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Just leave the poor guy alone and stop doggin’ him around, for fuck’s sake. Yea, he was a goddamn weirdo, but so was Salvador Dali, so was DaVinci…every great artist is a weirdo. How else do you come up with weird shit, if not from your fucking weird-ass brain? You know what else is true of most great artists? They’re overly sensitive individuals with traumatic, troubled pasts who usually end up becoming reclusive drug addicts in order to cope with the fact that they can’t seem to make sense of the blatant contradictions and cruelties of our world. Sound familiar?

My only hope from all of this is that the resurgence of interest in his career will put the spark back in people’s eyes and get them celebrating the uniqueness and forward thinking vision that made Michael Jackson such a massive success in the first place. Michael was never a trend follower – he made his own path. Our culture has become so stagnant these past decades, relying too heavily on nostalgia and reinventing old ideas, that what we need more than ever is a visionary to lead us through and show us the wonder in new ideas. We need someone to blow our minds and show us that anything is possible. If Michael can’t be that guiding light, then hopefully his legacy will inspire others to step up and take his place, blazing their own trails instead of blindly following the ones already trodden.

Much respect to the man who personally opened up my imagination and inspired many of the lofty goals I’ve set for myself in life. R.I.P.

[rec]

watch, remake, repeat

It seems that behind any great ideas these days there are the brilliant artistic minds that spawn them and then there are the teams of talentless hangers-on that inevitably run said idea into the ground.

I experience it every day and I'm sure most of you do as well -- a great original movie comes out, does better than expected, and before you know it, there are 15 pitiful sequels in production, each as worthless as the next and none of them featuring any of the original team that created the phenomenon in the first place.

Or perhaps you've experienced the joys of discovering a great new budding television show that was unlike anything you'd ever seen before, only to watch it disintegrate into a cesspool of meh-ness at the hands of some network big-wig who thinks he knows the magic formula to making everything better (ie, more like everything else that already exists).

But lately there's been a new trend to add to the already raging fires of mediocrity we call an entertainment industry in this country -- taking a wonderful little foreign film and remaking it exactly the same, shot for shot, but completely dumbing down the story. It's become an epidemic in recent years with Japanese horror flicks like "The Ring," "The Grudge" and "The Eye," even more recently with "Bangkok Dangerous" and the remake of the Spanish film "[Rec]" as "Quarantine."

"[Rec]" (pronounced as "record" between me and my cohorts) is one of those foreign genre films that is so engrossing that you're willing to forgive it for its minor shortcomings based on the fact that it is just so tightly made. It's a fresh take on the zombie horror formula, presenting it in a way that really hasn't been done before. But the real beauty of the film is in the effortlessness with which it is pulled off. The director doesn't waste time beating us over the head with an origin story - it's there, if you should choose to pick it apart, but it's not the focus of the story, just a little detail that helps expand the world if you're the kind of geek that gets off on stuff like that (and I most certainly am!).

The scares are ... well, they're scary. So scary, in fact, that my lady attempted to watch it by herself one night while I was working late and I had to spend 10 minutes on the phone trying to convince her that there weren't any rabid zombie old ladies skulking around the hallways of our apartment building.

All in all, it's a pretty great little flick.

The film is not without its flaws, however. The main character gets a serious case of the dumb-bitches toward the end; making a bunch of noise, crying, knocking over all the noisy stuff and freaking out when any human worth a damn would suck it up. STFU and concentrate really hard on not getting ripped to shreds.

And before you ask, yes, her whiny scared voice is really annoying, but at least she's not speaking English, right? For some reason incessant whining is slightly more palatable with that sexy Spanish lisp thrown in there.

The thing that really gets me though is that somebody out there saw this movie and obviously liked it just as much as I did, but instead of sitting back and saying, "Wow, what an awesome movie, I'm gonna go recommend it to some friends," they instead thought, "Wow, what an awesome movie -- I'm totally gonna remake this shit in English and it'll be frickin' sweeeeeeeeeet, bro!"

I just don't get it. To me, there's certain criteria that needs to be met before you waste your time and money redoing something that's already been made.

First off, the movie has to be old! I don't see the point of remaking a movie that's only been out for a year or two -- that's just lazy! Get your own damn ideas!

Second, there needs to be something wrong with the original that needs correcting, updating or refreshing. And no, I don't count "not being in English" as a flaw. It just isn't a good enough reason. I value awful English dubs higher than I value pointless remakes of perfectly good movies. If it ain't broke...

Obviously, there wasn't much that was broken about "[Rec]" because when I finally forced myself to watch "Quarantine," I was surprised to see that it was literally a shot-by-shot redo of the original. The plot was the same, the action was the same, the compositions were the same, the dialog was the same...wait, wait, I take that back...they did change a few lines here and there.

I guess there were some inherent problems with a few of the story elements that the producers just couldn't sit with. What were those issues, you ask? Well, have a seat because they're very important -- you see, in the original there is a Chinese family that lives in the building and many of the residents begin to place blame on them for the outbreak of a strange disease because they smell funny, they eat weird food and are just...well, really Chinese, I guess.

Obviously, that's a little racially insensitive, it might offend people, so I can see wanting to remove it, but oh no, that wasn't their fix. They found a more subtle, more ingenious workaround. They just changed them from a Chinese family to an African family! Brilliant! Problem solved!

Forget the fact that it's straight up racist to insinuate that a certain culture of person is below anybody else because of their traditions -- that's not even the point. People are racist in the world, they do have biases, so I don't necessarily have a problem with that being reflected in film, but think about this for a second -- that tiny little incidental detail is literally the only thing they changed about this movie.

What does that say? The only thing you think is worth changing is the object of racial disdain for a few characters? The only creative effort you put forth in the entire span of the production from beginning to end is a tiny dig on black people? That is what you consider important? Really?

Wow.