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Destroy All Podcasts DX Episode 74 - Uzumaki

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21 comments posted
Uzumaki rules

And anyone who loves Silent Hill, yet complains about the Uzumaki being slow, has absolutely zero credibility with me. I mean, seriously. The first hour of Silent Hill was just walking around calling that little girl's name. I had to watch that mess in two sittings because I just couldn't take it anymore (but I always finish what I start).

I will grant you that the effects could have been better in parts, for sure. But again, to say they were bad here and then applaud Silent Hill?!? Mind boggling. And I don't see any great difference between the characters in the manga versus how they were portrayed on-screen. Shuichi was just as boring and lacking in personality in the manga as in the movie. And Eriko Hatsune....oh yeah.. Yes, it's story is unresolved, but correct me if I'm wrong because it's been a long time since I read it, I don't recall there being any explanations offered in the manga, either. A whole bunch of weird episodes happen and then the end. It just stops. Not sure why the movie gets bashed for that and the manga gets a free pass.

Suggesting that this movie not being remade is evidence that it sucks is also quite bizarre. I mean, nobody remade Audition but everyone I've ever met who's seen that loved it and I seem to recall it being voted one of the scariest movies of all time. Why hasn't Wild Zero been remade? That movie was hugely popular. Did it actually suck, too? Come to think of it, there are lots of movies from all over the world that never got remade in America.. I guess they all must've sucked? Photobucket

"This must be settled the way nature intended....with a vicious, bloody fight!"
Onyx Blackman
Principal, Flatpoint High

NekroDave's picture
Posted by NekroDave on 26 October, 2008 - 22:01
Uzumaki Manga & Silent Hill

I've never read the Uzumaki manga nor have I seen the Silent Hill movie so... got me? I guess Zuey can reply to that? If Silent Hill did the same thing as this movie it would piss me off.

The comment about it not even being good enough for a crappy American remake starring an it girl was hyperbole. I like hyperbole and exaggeration.

P.S. Uzumaki is not the LEAST bit scary.

-Jeremy

Destroy All Podcasts DX's picture
Posted by Destroy All Pod... on 27 October, 2008 - 02:07
Pffffffffffft

Read Waita Utziga"s "Mai-chan's Daily Life".

VZMK2's picture
Posted by VZMK2 on 27 October, 2008 - 07:19
Hmm,huh,what? I'm sorry I nodded off there

Wow, that was boring. Not the podcast but the description you lot gave. Man, I was going asleep. I'm sure that the staff of this film meant to do something. Just not sure what that was exactly. I;m sue as sure can be that VIZ will correct this oversight and issue a collectors To be honest I tuned out of the American remakes of Japanese horrors after the The Grudge. The best thing about that film is Ted Raimi buying it.

So Zuey. You'd use this movie as a clearing
-out method? So what would happen if you brought me back to your place, put this on, and then had me say something like "Oh it's OK, baby. Bad movies turn me on."

WHAT WOULD YOU DO THEN, HUH!?!

Eeeper T Gozza's picture
Posted by Eeeper T Gozza on 27 October, 2008 - 18:06
That's the test.

If you stay through that whole movie, then you pass the test.

The test is, of course, the "who do I Mace and then call the cops" test.

RobotBastard's picture
Posted by RobotBastard on 27 October, 2008 - 22:18
Waste of my life

I saw this 4 years ago and I blocked it out of my mind until this podcast, and now I'm bored and angry from the memories.

Jen's picture
Posted by Jen on 28 October, 2008 - 20:10
David Lynch

Hello Jermey and Zuey:

I like your podcast on the J-Horror flick. I thought it was very entertaining and very, very, very blunt. In this episode, you said that you weren't fond of Jean-Luc Goddard because his movies are astronomically boring. All of his artsy films aren't that bad...are they? Personally, I thought 'Alphaville' was an interesting flick. I also didn't think that 'To Live One's Life' was boring either. I mean c'mon, it's got a New Wave babe in it for peace's sake.

Speaking of new wave directors, I am curious into finding out what's your take on David Lynch. His body of 'horror-noir' films: Do you dig them or diss them? Also, do you have any plans on covering his well-known work which is the TV show 'Twin Peaks' on DAP-ST? I think that's a show worthy of discussing if not the movie 'Blue Velvet'.

PS: Dear Zuey....I gotta confession to make...No offense, but I really miss The Robot doing the opening introduction WARNING to the podcast. That's not to say that yours suck because it didn't. I thought your intro was very funny, but I really like The Robot better. It would've been more appealing to me if you sounded like The Robot, but that's just me. I still think you're an interesting hostess though. That's all I wanted to say.

-R78

Rodimus78's picture
Posted by Rodimus78 on 29 October, 2008 - 14:31
Godard & Lynch

When I say new wave, I am talking specifically about the French nouvelle vague, guys like Godard and Truffaut. And I pretty much hate the movement. In film school I had to suffer through a series of increasingly annoying Godard movies. Breathless was dull and uinspired, Weekend was scattershot and stupid and pretentious and incoherent and pointless, and then there's Contempt, which is a heartbreaking waste of talent. Everyone involved (except maybe Godard) is brilliant. The cinematography is gorgeous. Brigitte Bardot is gorgeous too. Jack Palance is one my favorite character actors. Fritz Lang, my favorite director, is even here as an actor. But as beautiful as the movie is, it's still awful and this makes me super sad.

It is so boring it hurts. There's not much of a story at all. There is a half an hour scene of a couple arguing. For most of it they are sitting at a table and the camera is always pointed at plants and crap, never at them. It's excrucating.

This movie even manages to make a beautiful naked woman boring by spending its first fifteen minutes with her naked on her stomach next to her husband and they prattle inanely while the camera doesn't move and neither do they... for fifteen minutes. Painful.

The worst offender of the French new wave is the "oh let's just wing it instead of writing a script" thing and "screw actors, let's just get our friends to do it" often backfires badly too.

Yeah, you can call them interesting experiments, but they are also not GOOD. I far prefer the Italian neorealist movment which predates the French new wave and is neither as snooty nor as boring. In fact, I would say I totally dig Antonioni.

Neither movement is as wildly creative and interesting as the German expressionist movement from the 20's and 30's, but I do like some Italian neorealistic stuff.

As far as Lynch goes, I think he is an interesting but flawed filmmaker. He tends to be hit and miss. I love The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, but Dune is the definition of flawed but interesting. I quite like the look and the actors so it's fun except when it's being overlong and occasionally it has super boring exposition scenes. Then again, he has total godawful misfires like Wild At Heart. And what's the deal with The Straight Story? A feel good family Disney movie from David Lynch? That's a headscratcher. I'm not sure we would do any Lynch since it's pretty far from what the podcast is theoretically about, but maybe we'll do a Lynch ST sometime.

You'll also note that some of the podcasts still have the robot voice disclaimer. Most recently, Lucky Star had the robot voice. Hey, maybe I will vocode the sample so it will be both Zuey AND robot voice.

-Jeremy

Destroy All Podcasts DX's picture
Posted by Destroy All Pod... on 29 October, 2008 - 19:40
Funny. I just watched

Funny. I just watched "Breathless" yesterday and I liked it ok. It was the fourth Godard film I've seen (the others being "Alphaville", "Le Petit Soldat" and "Band of Outsiders") and while I enjoyed them all to varying degrees, I wouldn't say I particularly loved any. My favorite French director is Jean Rollin. :)

"This must be settled the way nature intended....with a vicious, bloody fight!"
Onyx Blackman
Principal, Flatpoint High

NekroDave's picture
Posted by NekroDave on 29 October, 2008 - 21:14
France

My favorite French director is by far Jacques Tati. He has such a amazing sense of humor. Take slapstick humor like in the old Pink Panther movies, but make it encompass the entire world, then add a sense of poetry and movement and child-like glee and you have one amazing movie. M. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle are both great, but Playtime especially is fantastic. Is it finding joy in the modern world? Is it criticizing the modern world? Is it both? So exciting and fun.

Jean Vigo also made some really stunning movies in the early days of film like Zero for Conduct and L'Atalante, but unfortunately died way too young. L'Atalante especially I love.

Oh, and don't forget Jean Renoir, son of a famous painter who is an awesome director. The Grand Illusion is classic, required viewing.

I'm not familiar with Jean Rollin. What did he do?

-Jeremy

Destroy All Podcasts DX's picture
Posted by Destroy All Pod... on 30 October, 2008 - 13:49
Rollin

"I'm not familiar with Jean Rollin. What did he do?"

Vampire movies and porn.

"This must be settled the way nature intended....with a vicious, bloody fight!"
Onyx Blackman
Principal, Flatpoint High

NekroDave's picture
Posted by NekroDave on 30 October, 2008 - 14:01
Rollin

And here I am being all high brow and serious. Ask a silly question...

-Jeremy

Destroy All Podcasts DX's picture
Posted by Destroy All Pod... on 30 October, 2008 - 14:56
Actually, that wasn't a

Actually, that wasn't a silly question, I just chose to respond with a silly answer, although not necessarily an inaccurate one. Rollin is probably best known for his movies "The Grapes of Death" (a zombie film) and "The Living Dead Girl" (also the title of a Rob Zombie song), but the majority of his career was indeed spent on vampire films and porn. His first movie, "The Rape of the Vampire", caused a riot and was generally hated by everyone in France . After that, his whole career was an uphill struggle, often working with no money and amateur casts and crews (including giving former French porn star Brigitte Lahaie her first real roles), all to produce movies that likely would have been hated no matter how they turned out just because he himself was outcast from the French movie scene, in part because of the fiasco involving the first movie, but also because he was making horror films, which really wasn't done much in France.

Really, I think you'd probably hate his movies since they are all incredibly slow moving (Uzumaki would be considered downright frenetic in comparison). But I really like most of them, with my favorites being "Lips of Blood" and "Fascination". The book "Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984" has a good section on Rollin.

"This must be settled the way nature intended....with a vicious, bloody fight!"
Onyx Blackman
Principal, Flatpoint High

NekroDave's picture
Posted by NekroDave on 30 October, 2008 - 18:12
Slow

Slow movies are fine, they just have to not suck. Blade Runner is slow as hell and I cherish that movie. You can make a slow, spooky horror movie. Higuchinsky just didn't.

The original 70's Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes its sweet time getting going but once it does it's totally worth it and you kind of feel for the dumb kids because you've been hanging out with them for half an hour before they are getting skewered on hooks and ripped apart by chainsaws. I don't give two shits about anyone in Uzumaki, the movie is totally boring, and none of the gore was even well done or inventive. It was just cartoonish and not scary.

I will check awesome local video store that has an extensive foreign movie collection and see if I can find any of this vampopron.

-Jeremy

Destroy All Podcasts DX's picture
Posted by Destroy All Pod... on 30 October, 2008 - 19:34
I didn't like Blade Runner

I didn't like Blade Runner at all. Different strokes, I guess.

"This must be settled the way nature intended....with a vicious, bloody fight!"
Onyx Blackman
Principal, Flatpoint High

NekroDave's picture
Posted by NekroDave on 30 October, 2008 - 21:52
Ooh! Ooh! Let's do "The Vampire Lovers!"

Or at least SOMETHING based on Carmilla.

RobotBastard's picture
Posted by RobotBastard on 31 October, 2008 - 00:40
Bionic Woman?

robo-Zuey? Hmmm...

RobotBastard's picture
Posted by RobotBastard on 30 October, 2008 - 01:18
Vorpal Sword, p186 AD&D 2nd Edition Dungeon Master's guide, 1989

Or check out here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorpal

A vorpal sword has a chance of decapitating an opponent.

And yes, the book I referenced 'vorpal sword' from is probably older than Zuey.

account15's picture
Posted by account15 on 29 October, 2008 - 17:30
1989?

1989? Really? Zuey is older than you think, apparently.

-Jeremy

Destroy All Podcasts DX's picture
Posted by Destroy All Pod... on 29 October, 2008 - 19:46
She's 14, remember?

We said that on the podcast.

PS "Vorpal" is much older than 1989.

RobotBastard's picture
Posted by RobotBastard on 30 October, 2008 - 01:17
"Jo-king? Minmay though me the word..."

Well, it's 2008 now. 1989 was 19 years ago. I guess I'm not sure if you were joking or not when you said she was like 16 or something.

I know vorpal sword is AD&D 1st edition old. I wasn't old enough to buy the 1st edition books at the time.

account15's picture
Posted by account15 on 31 October, 2008 - 17:47