Tuesday, April 13. 2004

Now I'm feeling zombified

The [conviction rate of reported rapes] is just under 6%, down from 33% in 1977. Given that informed estimates suggest only a small proportion of victims report rape, should the conviction rate drop much lower, it really will be more than mere rhetoric to invoke a "right to rape," according to J. Conaghan, professor of law at the University of Kent.
I'm reading last year's papers / although I don't know why
assassins, cons and rapers / might as well die

--Steely Dan, King of the World

Catching up with the Guardian never fails to supply me with tidbits like the one featured above, from the December 24 issue, ironically. Before that, it was the news that in an attempt to become "part of the gang", girls were helping juvenile delinquents with sexual assault, sometimes picking the victims, sometimes helping to pin them down. A softer world has a pictorial summary of my feelings, feelings that vaguely disconnect me from the sentiments Birte expresses -- the idea that perpetuating the existence of the so-called human so-called race has some intrinsic value always felt more than foreign to me. In fact, it's the same sentiment that put me off in 28 days later, a stupid 2002 flick that tries to be both a zombie movie and bloody Lord of the flies, and ends up being neither. (ObSpoiler: A handful of soldiers hold out against the zombies in a fortified house. Morale is low. The major's solution: Women, because "they mean hope." Not to the 12-year-old girl they attempt to rape, obviously, but oh well. It's only the outlook of his men he's concerned with, of course -- to quote the movie, "No, no. No, see, this is a really shit idea. You know why? Because it's really obviously a shit idea." If giving up humanity is the price to meet, humankind may just not be worth saving.) But then again, these are complex matters, and to understand mankind, we should probably look at the words that make up this term: "Mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It is a mystery, and thus, so is mankind.

To add insult to injury, Dawn of the Dead -- yeah, the one with the blue zombie-smurfs in the mall -- was remade, also using nimble zombies, when Bubba Ho-Tep shows us a way out of the "slow-moving monster not scary" dilemma: Elvis (who got bored with fame and traded places with an impersonator) spends his days in a rest home for the elderly and permanently baffled. When an ancient Egyptian mummy comes to suck the patients' brains out, nobody believes them, and they have to take on the mummy by themselves. The mummy may be slow, but then, so are the old geezers...
The result? The slowest (and perchance scariest) chase in movie history.

Anyway, the "Dawn" remake isn't very funny -- or very spooky -- with the possible exception of the Jay Leno scene (you'll know it when you see it), which leaves Resident Evil with its erratic continuity, pointless dogs, and bad creature FX the best of the zombie movies of the new millenium, by virtue of having a nice soundtrack. This fact in itself is easily as scary as all three movies combined.

That said, having read "When H.A.R.L.I.E. was One (version 2.0)", I don't find artificial intelligences quite that scary; I wouldn't mind having some sort of START-on-drugs.

To get back to the subject of assault, I just wonder why people keep featuring it in the movies. I mean, like, all the time. Most women I know wouldn't argue that it makes a story better, or that the subject made good entertainment after a tough day at work. I for one am tired of it. It's been done -- time and time and time again. On the upside, I just witnessed a long discussion on whether rape and child abuse are suitable topics for role-playing games that didn't degenerate into name-calling and actually had something like an upshot, a consensus.

Or maybe, it all just dwindled away because we all went away over the holidays.

Posted by Azundris in English at 15:07 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (2)
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Tatiana Azundris on : We who are about to ...

As foretold, I read Joanna Russ’ We who are about to (mild spoilers). Since unlike Samuel Delany who wrote the introduction to the current reprint, I don’t believe in giving away the surprises, I’ll put a few general comments first for t

Tatiana Azundris on : The Right to Rape

The [conviction rate of reported rapes] is just under 6%, down from 33% in 1977. Given that informed estimates suggest only a small proportion of victims report rape, should the conviction rate drop much lower, it really will be more than mere rhetoric to

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Azundris on :

*Watching it again, "Dawn of the Dead (2004)" seems a fairly decent movie (even if the guts'n'gore level is far below that of, say, "Night..."). Or maybe that's because this time, I watched the unrated version (or director's cut, or whatever they called it).

Azundris on :

*On a related note, "Resident Evil 2" sucked on so many levels I won't even review it. Let's just say that I expect at least one of "scary" and "guts'n'gore" from a zombie movie, and RE2 had neither. It was amusing here and there, but ultimately disappointed, and that's as far as I'll go.

Lewe on :

*I haven't seen either of them yet. But RE2 is on my list - eventhough I am quite sure its goin to suck. What did you think about RE1? I thought that already sucked big time.

Azundris on :

*RE1: Bad editing. Sometimes they were acting as a group, then alone again, then as a group again, with no reason or rhyme. One particularly bad instance of this was the scene where the heroine meets some zombie dogs. This is so mindboggingly pointless that even without having played the game, you know that the dogs originated in that -- they make no sense whatsoever in the movie otherwise, so the only possible explanation is a cameo of a well-known element of the game's.
Other than that it wasn't really scary, it didn't have a lot of guts'n'gore, and the CGI sucked.
On the upside, the music was nice enough, and in the beginning, there is a rather good suspense scene. Other semi-highlights include the slice'n'dice effects they stole from cube, and perchance the initial contamination. So in short, watching the first 3o minutes or so is harmless fun, the rest seems redundant. As always, YMMV.

Azundris on :

*While we're at it, I watched "Shaun of the Dead" a while back, and found it to be hilarious. My non-British friends only found it so-so, so I guess it's a Brit Thing(TM). So if you're a Brit or a native speaker who enjoys British comedy and you haven't already, go out and see it, it's well worth your money!

Azundris on :

*By the way the genre's given as ZomRomCom -- "a romantic comedy with zombies." Does that sound like a company name, or what? ZomRomCom Tech?

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