Jasonisms

Okay, so I'm sitting here watching Sharknado 2: The Second One on DVR. This is a beautiful mess! My friend just asked me, "Why is it just sharks?" I told her, "Sharks are heavier than fish." She then asked, "Then why not whales?" "Because Whalenado sounds stupid." Ha ha ha! --------------------------------------------------------- Ian Ziering's character's name if "Finn" because sharks have fins . --------------------------------------------------------- Tara Reid is one handed, Will Wheaton is dead. Richard Kind knocked one out of the park - literally. --------------------------------------------------------- Sharks eating alligators in the sewers! --------------------------------------------------------- "Maybe a hipster fell on the tracks, they're pretty light." Oh my god, I almost fell out of my seat! ---------------------------------------------------------  Statue of Liberty hea...

Why am I writing this? Because I'm bored, that's why. As a fan of those paranormal "ghost hunting" shows (well, some of them) I was pleasantly surprised by the first Paranormal Activity  movie. However, towards the end, PA made the same mistake nearly all horror movies make: they try and explain the supernatural. It's the explanation of how and why that decreases the mystery, breaking fear down into chunks of knowledge and understanding.  What typically terrifies us isn't the what but the why . Jason (from the Friday the 13th franchise) is a man in a mask killing people for no discernible reason. And then they gave him a reason taking what made him terrifying away from the audience. Freddy Kruger (from A Nightmare on Elm Street  fame) reached into your dreams, killing you where you were the most vulnerable ... and then they gave him a why making him just another killer on a revenge quest. The people who keep making PA movies are falling into th...

This week I had a chance to sit down and watch two recent zombie movies. Oddly enough, both movies were based on books. The first movie, Warm Bodies , based on the book Warm Bodies , by Isaac Newton and World War Z , loosely based on the graphic novel, World War Z , by Max Brooks. While I am a fan of the supernatural style books, movies and TV shows, I've never really been a fan of the zombie genre which, for some reason, seems to have been popular for the past couple of years with pop culture phenomena like The Walking Dead , Zombieland , the Resident Evil (movie) franchise and even the comedy, Shaun of the Dead. For me, zombies are boring. Traditionally, these undead have been cast as slow brain-hungry bodies that mill about seeking fresh meat, also in the form of brains. More modern incantations of the zombie lore have taken these slow decaying bodies and put them in faster, athletic self-healing roles supposedly to add a heightened scare factor to a world that moves at the...

I saw a movie. Well, let's face it, I've seen a lot of movies, but this is the most recent movie I've seen (in the theater anyway). And let's also face it, I find the supernatural fascinating. Why? I don't know. Maybe it's because the supernatural is sort of like proto-science. And using modern understanding of physics and psychology can explain away a vast majority of the supernatural but then what's left? What do we have when something can't be explained? That's the real terror -- no knowing.  Science explains. Science brings us comfort in a world we work to understand. In my opinion, one of the worst things a "spooky" movie can do is explain what's spooky. By creating an explanation the story tellers are taking the terror of the unknown right out of the story. The Conjuring does that. The movie starts off with a, well, a prelude -- a very creepy prelude about a doll that haunts two girls. This prel...

Saw the second installment in the STAR TREK reboot this afternoon. Now, to be honest, I'm more of  STAR WARS  fan than  STAR TREK   but I like a good sci-fi movie whenever I can get it, no matter the family it falls within. Since this is Monday morning and all the cool kids have probably seen the movie already, I'm sharing my take on what I found wrong (and somewhat right) with the film. There are a bunch of spoilers in this post, so if you're not interested, don't look. I mean, seriously: don't read any further. There were a lot of problems I found with this movie, problems that were never reasonably explained or just didn't think much of the science  in science fiction. First : In the beginning sequence we see Kirk running from the natives, ala  Indiana Jones, through a jungle whilst dodging spears and arrows. That's great. Why? Because he stole a holy canvas. Why? We don't know -- the only answer that was ever given was simply: "They wer...