August 2004 Archives

Well we did get to see Exorcist: The Begninning Friday night. It's not the worst horror movie I've ever seen, but I have my share of complaints.

The concept of a prequel detailing Father Merrin's first encounter with the demon Pazuzu has so much potential. Instead of exploiting that potential, Renny Harlin opted to give us a fairly standard horror movie.

There were lots of "Boo!" type scares to make people jump out of their seats, and there was a fair amount of blood and gore. These things are not necessarily bad; they certainly have their place in the genre, but I was definitely hoping for something different in this film.

What really bugs me is that there is a great story in here just waiting to get out. This could have been a wonderful dramatic, psycological horror movie, like the original. There is also a conspicuous lack of any engaging dialog, which was another great thing about the original film.

The final confrontation between Merrin and the demon lacked any of the puch that the exorcism scenes in the original had. The fact that it was made into more of a physical showdown was a huge mistake. The demon's dialog was so cheesy at time it makes one cringe. The make up job for the possesion victim was not all that frightening, and it doesn't stand up to the makeup job on Linda Blair in the original, even though that movie is over 30 years old.

The ending seemed rather anti-climactic, and perhaps left it open for another sequel. I seriously hope this doesn't happen. It's time to let it go.

I've really been looking forward to seeing Exorcist: The Beginning, considering that I'm a huge fan of the book and the original movie. But I read something on the IMDb's trivia page for the film yesterday that makes me somewhat apprehensive about the quality of this prequel:

Morgan Creek Productions fired Paul Schrader after he had submitted a completed movie, saying that he had given them "footage without any of the bloody violence the backers had wanted". He had already made it clear in interviews that he was making more of a psychological drama than an all-out gore-fest. He was fired and Renny Harlin was hired to re-shoot the movie. Almost 90% of the movie was re-shot and at least two characters have been dropped from Paul Schrader's version of the movie.

So these fabled backers wanted a movie that emphasizes "bloody violence" over psychological drama... great. Granted, the original film was pretty graphic in spots, but the psyhological impact was what really made it the great movie that it is. I really hope The Beginning doesn't disappoint me.

Well our apartment has had a flea problem for the last couple weeks. To give some background, we got two kittens in early June. They were checked out by a vet before we brought them home. No fleas. A couple weeks ago, fleas started showing up. Our cats don't go outside, other than the few times they've been out on our balcony.

So last week we took the cats to my parent's house and bathed them thoroughly in the backyard. We inspected them many times over the next few days, and didn't find a single flea. During this time we also flea-fogged our apartment, put plenty of flea poweder on the carpet and furniture, vacuumed many times, and finally steamed cleaned the carpet before we brought the cats backs. They also had shiny new flea collars before we brought them back in.

The kitties have been back for a few days, and they have fleas again. Now the apartment manager says it's our cats' fault that the fleas are there. She also says that there haven't been any other complaints about fleas; even though one of the receptionists told us that there have been other complaints.

The apartment manager says she is going to call Orkin, but she wouldn't give us an estimate on how long it's going to take, and she was generally shitty to Jenny about it on the phone. It's probably for the best that I wasn't the one who spoke with her, because I may not have been able to remain civil.

If we don't here anything in the next day or so, I'm going to keep hounding her (the apt. manager) until this is taken care of.

I want this:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/modmacosx/