Smeagol's Revenge

Well-made horror movies are among my favorite types of films. The key here, though, is WELL-MADE horror movies, which are rare and few. After seeing early reviews of "The Descent," I was pretty excited, but I didn't want to get my hopes up. "The most effective horror movie since 'Alien'"? Come on! "Alien" is a masterwork after all.
However I was NOT disappointed. "The Descent" was scary as hell, but also a really good movie with great characters and genuine nail-biting suspense. At the moment I can only think of two other horror movies that have scared me as much, while still being extremely well-made and developed..."Alien" of course, will always be #1, but "The Descent" was at least on par with the original "Halloween."
To be honest, I thought the movie lost a little bit of steam once the monsters finally showed up, since up to that point we were on the edge of our seat waiting for them. However that's not saying much, since those early scenes were some of the most tense I've ever witnessed. I also thought that the scenes with the monsters relied a tad too much on gore in a few cases than was needed (such as poking the monster's eyes out multiple times), but even so, my thumbs are WAY up on this one, and I am not planning on going spelunking anytime soon.
However one thing I would like to mention are my thought on the ending (spoilers...ding! ding! ding!). Often with movies like this you can conquer any nervous fears you have by thinking, "Well, it's just a movie...I don't live in a cave so I don't have to worry," but in this case the movie ends with the terrifying scare of Juno showing up as a corpse in the carseat next to the main heroine Sarah. This had me glancing over to my OWN carseat all the way home. The dumb interpretation of this ending is "Oooo...Juno's ghost" which is, quite frankly, LAAAAME. The more popular, and probably correct, interpretation is that Sarah never made it out of the cave alive, and now instead of nightmares of her daughter she has nightmares of her friend she murdered (note how Sarah bonks her head on the rocks right before she sees the exit to the cave and manages to escape). The UK ending, which I just watched online, states this pretty explicitly, although I didn't like it as much as the US one. However MY interpretation is that even IF Sarah made it out of the cave alive, she will now be haunted instead by recurring nightmares of Juno, and not her daughter. Her journey through the caves with the monsters may have caused her to get over her horrible accident from years ago, but now she has a new, and even worse, accident to plague her conscience. My interpretation probably isn't the correct one, but I like it more...so there!
And lastly...can I say that the girl who played Juno is pretty freakin' hot?

Fish gets PAID to make a movie!

Just watched "The Picture of Dorian Gray" from the 1940s on TCM. The first 40 minutes or so were pretty boring, but once creepy things started happening to the picture of the title things got interesting, and by the end I was surprisingly wrapped up in the whole chilling story. Granted, the overall film was WAY to talky, and had a whole crapload of narration that generally loosened tension instead of tightening it, but still there's something to be said for these old school black-and-white horror movies that relied on psychological creepiness instead of "jump-out-of-your-seat" scares.

Today was also the first day of shooting for the promo vid I'm doing for the museum. It's been an interesting experience, since I'm handling it very documentary-like. To be honest I've never done much in the way of docs, so I'm nervous how the whole thing will turn out. Generally my rule of thumb with all my projects has been to have a pretty solid idea in my head how the final product will work. Room should always be left for improvisation (and unforeseen set-backs), but I like to at least be confident with the overall idea in my head. Here it's been different, since I have had very little time to prepare, and many of the scientists will simply ramble on about whatever seems interesting to them (editing is going to be a NIGHTMARE). I'm generally just discovering the project as I shoot and fly by the seat of my pants. I suppose the other reason why this is nerve-wracking is this is the first time I've ever shot anything that had a paycheck attached to it, but hey, that's also pretty flippin' sweet too.

Who am I? I am Spider-Man...

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 95% Superman 80% Green Lantern 75% Robin 72% Iron Man 65% Supergirl 57% The Flash 55% Hulk 50% Batman 50% Wonder Woman 47% Catwoman 35%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...


This is only one of two tests I've recently taken where I came out as Spider-Man. The other test was "which action hero are you?" and while I didn't save the link, I did print out the results. And here they are:

Spider-Man: 92%
Indy Jones: 71%
Jack Sparrow: 71%
Lara Croft: 67%
Neo: 67%
Batman: 67%
Zorro: 58%
The Terminator: 50%
William Wallace: 50%
James Bond: 42%

Maximus from Gladiator was also somewhere lower, though that part got cut off by the printer. The point is, I didn't TRY to get Spider-Man on these things, but I've always felt I related to Spider-Man, and gosh darn-it, I'm very happy that two of these random Internet tests agree with me.

I also just saw "Little Miss Sunshine" and highly recommend it. Steve Carrell and Alan Arkin in particular give great performances, as does the little girl who plays Olive. It was quite a fun time and was enjoyed by every member of my family, and even my great-aunt and cousin. The only person who didn't adore it all that much was my dad, and that's probably because he a bit of a closet homophobe who couldn't bring himself to relate to Steve Carrell's character.