I'm not normally one to turn away attention from the Blogorium, but if anonymous commenters are going to take me to task for things I didn't say about Roman Polanski yesterday, then by all means find somewhere else to make your point. Just because I find the timing of the arrest very odd doesn't mean I don't think he is guilty of something he plead guilty to or that he should be given a free pass or whatever else it is you're conflating with what I actually wrote. Sorry, this is a limited readership blog for the moment and you're not going to make a splash here.
If the extradition happens and Polanski returns to the U.S., of course I expect him to go to trial for skipping out on his sentencing. It was a shitty, stupid, cowardly thing to do. I stand by my point that this could have happened any time in the last 32 years by any number of means, so it's not like this is a "sudden break" that allowed the Los Angeles DA's office to arrest him. So yeah, I find that odd that so much ado is being made of "finally" catching Roman Polanski.
But I'm not in the mood to keep dragging this out, so I'm going to let the quarter decide what the Cap'n is talking about tonight.
Heads, I talk about The Wizard of Oz on Blu Ray.
Tails, I talk about the new A Nightmare on Elm Street trailer.
Toss that coin!
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Dammit. Tails. Okay, we'll talk about The Wizard of Oz tomorrow. Despite all intentions just to check the BD out, I ended up watching the entire movie. Again. It happens to me just about every time I start watching The Wizard of Oz, but with added incentive this time.
BUT we're not talking about that. I left it up to chance, stuck to my word, so we're talking about a different child molester tonight: Freddy Krueger.
That's right, the "Bastard Son of a Hundred Maniacs" is back, this time with a great big "FROM PRODUCER MICHAEL BAY" slapped in front of the title. You know how I feel about Platinum Dunes, but in the interest of covering what's current and because of A Nightmare on Elm Street's place among my horror favorites, let's take a look at the trailer, shall we?
(please forgive the embedding that pushes into the poll, links, and other info. I don't know how to keep it from doing that)
Okay, so let's start with positives, since I'm not on record as being a Platinum Dunes "Fan":
- I really like some of the dream imagery here. The snow (or is it ash?) and boiler room footage looks really good, and I like that the dreams seem to be more practical effects than cgi. Despite the wild possibilities afforded by digital effects, what makes the dreams so disturbing in the first film is that they seem real (at first) and the reality becomes perverted and frightening. So good on that, assuming that's the trend of the movie (and not simply because no FX work was done in time for the SDCC trailer).
- There's not a ton of Freddy in the trailer, but Jackie Earle Haley seems sufficiently creepy in that final moment. I'll take creepy Freddy over jokester Freddy, at least if this is a remake / reboot. The burn makeup is... interesting. I don't know how I feel about that yet.
- I'm very intrigued by this suggestion that maybe Freddy was innocent when the families burned him alive. It's certainly a different take than the sociopath version of Freddy that was always guilty and continued punishing in the afterlife. This sort of take gives a different kind of credence to Krueger taking revenge, even if it is a little obvious in the "generic plot type" department.
- The production design and cinematography in the opening shots looked great. I'd forgotten, partly because of how it changed in the sequels (particularly Freddy's Dead and Freddy vs Jason), about the abandoned factory that plays such a huge role in Nightmare 2 and, I guess 3. It's still a little slick and Texas Chainsaw Massacre-y, but I'm at least interested in seeing what director Samuel Bayer brings to the visual palette.
- Clancy Brown! Always a plus. Am I hoping too much that he plays the John Saxon role of Nancy's father in this iteration?
Alas, there are negatives, and kinda substantial ones.
- None of the kids made any impression at all. In fact, were it not for something I'm going to mention next, I couldn't tell you who was supposed to be Nancy and who was supposed to be Tina. Or which one was the Johnny Depp character or Tina's boyfriend. That's not a good thing when setting up this trailer.
- Instead, the trailer focuses on iconography, and unfortunately that includes some direct lifts of shots from the original Nightmare. While I dug most of the new dream imagery, all of a sudden you'd get "oh! it's the bathtub shot!" or "hey! it's the scene where Tina dies!", and it took me out of the trailer.
Suddenly I wasn't watching a new take on the story; I was watching shots that immediately drew comparisons to A Nightmare on Elm Street. There's the suggestion of the jail "hanging" scene, but with the jump rope girls inserted into the dream, and a really worrisome shot that reminded me of the worst part of Nightmare 2: the pool scene.
The "references" didn't really work in Shit Coffin, er, Friday the 13th, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre for that matter. In some ways, I wish they'd just drop trying to remind audiences "hey! you've seen this and remember it! we invite you to compare our version to the one you love before you've even seen it!" and work on successfully adapting the iconography of Freddy and the dreams into a newer context.
In all honesty, I'd say that I would be willing to watch a new Nightmare on Elm Street film, as long as it wasn't trying to BE A Nightmare on Elm Street. There's plenty of territory you can still explore with Freddy, the dreams, the parents, and the children without making implicit claims that this version is superior - and simultaneously beholden - to a film we're already familiar with.
But then again, that's been my fundamental problem with most of these remakes. If they aren't trying to be slavishly loyal to the source material, they're being slapdash and lazy with the references (see Friday the 13th). Even when the remake is different enough that it can almost exist on its own (Texas Chainsaw, for example), they have to throw in the "saw dance" to remind us that we're not watching a different take on the same story.
It's going to strike you as strange to hear me say I kinda liked the trailer. Given the track record of Platinum Dunes, I doubt I'll like the movie, but this was a promising first impression.
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Tomorrow: The Wizard of Oz, proving once again that the guy who told me "they shouldn't bother making 'old movies' on Blu Ray" was out of his mind.
2 comments:
I agree with most of your points on the cinematography and the style of the clips. Also the burned make-up was curious looking. But I am thinking it is going to be Shit Coffin 2: the Claw.
Oh, I agree with you. The first Shit Coffin trailer looked pretty good too, and it almost looked like its own movie. That didn't end up being the case, as I suspect Elm Street will also be.
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