My movie adventure and a New Years resolution of sorts...

In reverse order.

I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions. If you have to wait for a certain time of year, a certain day, to start changing your life, then you're already far down the road to failure, in my opinion. So I never make them, unless my resolutions are to go to the gym less, sit on the couch more, and continue my drinking ways, all of which I feel I would actually have a good possibilty of achieving.

However, this year, I'm not so much making a resolution as trying to strengthen one I already made. Which is to write in this blog more. But for a particular reason. Every now and then I get the inkling that I'd like to write something. A short story, a screenplay, a novel if I'm feeling particularly inspired. It's something I used to feel a lot more when I was younger, and still do to some, albeit a lesser, extent. That's one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place: to keep up what meager writing "chops" I may have, and hopefully get better, learn, make the process easier. Because the daunting part of writing, for me, is actually sitting down and doing it. I can come up with a story idea or hook I like pretty easily most of the time, but the process of sitting down and actually fleshing it out, making it happens, often stumps me. That's where I hope this blog can help. Even if I'm not writing about anything, which is usually the case. (Although I can see you saying: "For someone that doesn't write about anything, you sure use a lot of words to do it.") It's just the actual act of doing it, the practice. Much like those times when I'm sitting in front of the TV with a guitar in hand. I'm not doing any serious playing, but I'm noodling nonetheless, just to keep my hands doing it.

So, I'm going to try and write more in here. Lucky you.
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After work today, I headed straight to the Randolph movie theater. I wanted to see Brokeback Mountain, supposedly the best damned saddest movie about gay cowboys this year. I know, "gay cowboys"? How can that NOT be funny? Well, apparently not so. In fact, it looks like it has the potential to be the saddest movie I'll see in a long time. When I get to see it. For when I got to Randolph there were people. Lot's of them. A line of cars waiting to get into the movie theater lot. It's a holiday today, so apparently everyone was going to the movies. I finally make it into the lot, get one of the last half-dozen free spaces (no joke), walk over to the theater and...SOLD OUT!

To be honest, this surprised me. Despite rave reviews I had felt that the concept of a gay cowboy movie was going to fly like a penguin with the general public. I just don't see our culture nowadays as being tolerant enough in general to embrace it. But it was sold out, and not at a rinky-dink little theater. Randolph theaters seat a good many people. So, unfortunatley my gay cowboy experience will have to wait...unless I put an ad up on Craigslist or something.

I headed home with vague ideas of checking out Moviefone.com and finding out what time the film would be playing at Harvard and going later. But no sooner was I through the door than Matt called. He and his girl, Stephanie, were going to see Wolf Creek and wanted to know if I wanted to go. Well, that one was also on the list, so I turned right around and drove over to meet them at the Fenway Theater.

I had high hopes for Wolf Creek. It seemed very well reviewed. I liked the trailer. It had a lot of promise. Classic recipe for a letdown.

Thankfully it wasn't.

Billed as being based upon true events---although according to my sister, who did some research because she was writing a review for it, it was based upon three separate incidents---it's a story of a guy and two girls driving across Australia, when they are abducted and tortured by one sick outback puppy. The shooting style of the film lent itself very well to the "true events" nature of the film, feeling very gritty and real. The build up might be considered slow by a lot of people, and to some extent it is, but I felt that this only enhanced the film. Because you know bad stuff is coming, that much is apparent if you've only just seen the commercials. It serves the dual purpose or ratcheting up the suspense and disquiet and making us care more about the characters enough so that when things start going bad for them, we care all the more.
The violence, when it comes, is shocking. It's gory enough to feel real, and leave you feeling uncomfortable, but not overly so as to come across as cartoonish. There are a couple of horror cliches---for example: when trying to get a car to escape, don't take a few minutes to look through the garage at other things, get in the car and leave. Or, when the killer is unconscious and you're holding a rifle, I don't care if it's out of bullets, reload and shoot him a couple of times. You'll save youself a lot more grief in the long run---but even they couldn't detract from the film as a whole, as they were obviously being used as a means to advance the plot.

Make no mistake: This is a sadistic movie. Seemingly a re-emerging trend in horror films, what with the Devil's Rejects and the upcoming Hostel. In much of the genre, we as fans delight in characters getting killed off. You know it's going to happen. You expect it and you're afraid and you jump a little when the knife comes. Or the axe. Weed-whacker. Etc. But the character is dead, the end, move on. In Wolf Creek it's differnet. I wasn't afraid that he was going to kill these people. I was afraid he wasn't. I was afraid for what he was going to do to them, what I was going to have to watch. Because this killer was brutal and evil. Killing was not his aim, torture was. Death was just the end result, and at such a time he would just go kidnap someone else and start all over again. And that's a kind of evil that's not as much fun to think about when the movie's over. That's not a guy with knives for fingers that kills you in your dreams. It's some mystical bad guy that even when you kill him, comes back for the sequel. That's pure human, "based on true events" evil, the kind that makes you want to doublecheck your locks before you go to sleep at night.

And in this case, that was a horror movie that made me felt something more than: "I just wasted 9 dollars and 90 minutes of my life."