Matt is awesome. He shared this comic with me:
and as it came just as I was taking my first sips of sweet, sweet caffeine, my day is much brighter.
I was up way late last night watching Death Race with friends. And while I’m always up for a bit of eye candy, more eye candy, excessive explosions, and fast cars, I somehow didn’t realize how… violent it was going to be. As Christian so aptly put it when I pointed this out, “It’s called Death Race.”
But like the time I watched Battle Royal (where you basically see a group of school kids kill each other off.. it’s social commentary on a very graphic level) or Kids (which is so true to life it hurts my soul), I wonder why people seek these movies out. Admittedly I stifled a cackle during Death Race at a few points. It’s funny and depressing that we take such joy in violence. I think it’s a good reminder to me that people are not as good and intelligent and altruistic as I hope they are.
On really bad days, when I was back in Bloomington, I would take walks with Gregory and I would vent about how people had not lived up to my expectations that day. I would say “I just don’t get it.” And he would laugh. And laugh and laugh. And he would tell me that people are predictable and easy to understand… you just have to accept that the majority of them are dumb, and selfish, and sometimes mean.
So thanks to you all for making up for all the Dumb in the world.
/gush
1. I WISH unicorns were summoned when doing any kind of finance, because then financial management wouldn’t have killed me as much.
2. I admit to being very guilty, and shamefully so, of wanting to see Death Race. But with the violence in it, how does it vary from the popularity of horror films? The type of violence and intent behind it may be very different, but I bet that fundamentally, there is probably a similarity in their nature & our need to see them.
There is a difference in perceptions it seems. In horror you expect it to be gruesome and violent, and (sadly) films are lauded because they can exceed those expectations. With Death Race, despite the title and the trailers, I wouldn’t expect it to be gruesome or overt violence. A car crashes or flips, a dude is shot… but from your comment, I am imagining it to be more so than that?
And is our pleasure really from the violence itself, but something else? In horror we’re happy to see the wicked punished and the good succeed (with exceptions for when we want the evil to succeed). In Death Race, I imagine there’s something about that– there are characters who are going to be malicious, empty, vapid and shallow, and we want to see them of victims of a circumstance they put themselves in to, to be punished for the Otherness. And we want to see the triumph of the wrongfully accused, the lone hero.
Sorry, I think my film geeky got turned on a bit.
Tape that geek down!
I agree that we take pleasure in the same sorts of things for different reasons across movie genres. And it’s actually nice to have first impressions (set up by the director and writer, etc) rewarded with appropriate outcomes. There’s so much closure in the 90-180 minutes of a movie that it’s incredibly satisfying. Especially as I’ve had my nose buried in books for the past week or so, trying to pull ends out and then connect dots, etc.
Yay for geeking out! Thank you.
All those movies are pretty tame on violence compared to The Story of Ricky. (it almost sounds like it could be a musical).
I showed this movie to V and Noah, and while V didn’t really pay attention, Noah was rendered almost speechless.
Adam played that in the background at an Axis. A lot of people couldn’t look at it. Adam chortled to himself, as he is prone to do.
(*waves Oct 1 flag* ah? ah?)
Oh yeah. I told Preston about the text. I’ll ask him about it again tonight when I see him.
I’ll probably be looked on poorly for saying this, but “The Story of Ricky” was perhaps one of the most hilarious and hokey movies that I’ve seen. Yea it’s pretty gruesome but if you look at it, even the gore is laughable in the way it’s presented. It looked like the FX guys were trying to imitate Troma’s style and failing quite a bit. The cheesiest thing in the whole presentation is when the warden ” ‘roids out”, he looks like he belongs in GWAR. In fact he looks like The Sexecutioner’s brother. Literally. I can see why people would chortle over this. If you’ve watched a lot of slasher/horror/B Movie/FX flicks, it is very humorous.
The sad thing is the Manga is far more realistic and gruesome than the movie. In fact if anything else the movie unintentionally turns the manga on it’s head and makes a mockery of it.
There is much worse out there….trust me on this.
Yeah, that movie Kids, TOTALLY bummed me out!! I felt sorry for society after that!!
Wait, does that make me dumb?
I don’t get it.
The comic or the movie stuff?
If it’s the comic, the cartoonist says this: “I’ve never worked in a corporate office, but I’m pretty sure this is what it’s like. Everything is shouted, everyone rides unicorns.”