I’ve made this habit while being at home of falling asleep on the couch around 11 and waking up as a film on tv is starting at 1 or 2am. It started out with rather bad Nicholas Cage movies, Face Off and the one where he jumps out of a plane dressed as Elvis. Ok, I did like that one. Last night I watched Carry On Camel. Or something. I don’t know either, but I felt pretty bad for smirking at every joke, similar to what happened while watching Hairspray [2007], except I didn’t think it was bad. I thought it was pretty good in a way that it rehashed John Waters’ film for today’s audience. My friend who loves Divine and all things camp would slaughter me for saying this, but it was still delightfully camp, just in a 00 way instead of an 80s way. But I’m probably biased because I love musicals [Oklahoma on Christmas day? Oh yes], even though it is not at all cool to love musicals.
Yes, I was highly disappointed when no one would go and see High School Musical: senior year with me [so much woe], and I never understood why those films get so much hate from my generation. They’re for kids and should be watched as kid’s films. Maybe its confusing because the characters are meant to be older, and when I watched for the first time I thought it was being somewhat satirical, because I didn’t realise the actual target audience until I visited EuroDisney that year and saw how young those kids where. As a kid’s film I think it’s a good film, I don’t really understand what people are expecting for a low-budget Disney live action aimed at 5-10 year old girls. For the record if I had children, I’d rather them watch a week-long HSM marathon than read Twilight. That’s not aimed at me, but I can still hate it because the message is quite backward. But that’s my opinion. Does loving kids’ films make any more sense than hating them? Probably not, but maybe for those idiots still infatuated with Disney [read: me].
One of the interesting things that happened to me with the falling asleep on the couch thing was waking up at the start of a film called Journey through the Night. I think it was a film festival piece, 10 minutes long. A man on a sleeper train finds himself in the same cabin as a cannibal, who proceeds to describe in some detail how he would go about eating him. The man could easily change cabins any time, or alert someone, but instead forces himself to stay awake and continue the conversation of how to go about eating the human body. Suddenly everything changes to animation, A Scanner Darkly sort of thing but more painterly. I did not see the point of this, it doesn’t really do anything more than add a bit of visual intrigue and perhaps emphasize the disorientation resulting from lack of sleep. The conversation led into questioning some of the morality and philosophy behind cannibalism. The whole situation implied the man was somewhat fascinated with the idea of it, just staying there long enough is playing with death until he comes to his senses at the end and you see the cannibal being thrown out of the train.
I really liked this film. Its interesting, while being confronted with a situation where you could leave any time, something so horrific can begin to make sense even if you’ve never thought about that thing in no more depth than ‘this is wrong’, before your reasonable part wakes up and you realise there are some things you shouldn’t question, or possibly shouldn’t think about too much. I’m quite a squeamish person, but I’m fascinated by horrible crimes and terrible, strange things. I think it’s the same for a lot of people and it’s not particularly weird. Usually after indulging in crime/horror novels I find I can’t sleep much afterwards, but morbid curiosity/masochism continues to make you seek out more shocking things. I like the idea of seeing inside the criminal’s head before saying, ‘that’s evil’. Of course, everyone knows murder is wrong so perhaps it’s pointless to think about these things at all? I don’t think so. Understanding crime is important even if the physical outcome is the same.
Oh, I’ve written a lot already. There were other things I wanted to say, but I’ll leave you with some highly amusing anime.
Possibly don’t watch if you’re at all offended by claymation gore.
Also, I was so disappointed I didn’t get to see The Mist today! I love horror films so I’ll seek it out on my own. I’ve had a bit of a nasty illness.
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