Originally posted August 9, 2006 at 17:24.
Pulse (Japanese)
I've been wanting to watch this movie for MONTHS, since I read a review of how horribly creepy and great it was. Yeah, there's another dissapointment to add to the list. I was bored. Here's what I wrote up for another blog of mine:
Now, normally when it comes down to it, I like J-Horror okay, but I think several of the American remakes have really taken what was originally almost there and made it really there. That makes no sense, but it's hard to explain. But I doubt it's cultural differences, though it could be that I expect more from my movies than some.
I think, overall, Japanese films and anime tend to leave a lot for imagination and assumption. I was watching the commentary on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and was SHOCKED how much I just didn't get from the film, that would have helped the entire thing be better.
It's something that I struggle with when writing, the idea that you think something is obvious but if the audience or readers don't get it without you explaining it, then it isn't there. You can defend your work if you like, but if nobody sees what you see then you have to step back and realize that it's your fault, not theirs.
Pulse felt like that to me. I really have no idea what the director/writer was trying to convey. Something about lonliness? A commentary on a perverse version of The Rapture? Something about ghosts overflowing into reality? Something about computer graphics?
I don't know. There was so much there, and nothing was ever really laid out. I don't need everything given to me on a silver platter, but I do like to understand SOMETHING before I'm done. I felt this way about White Noise too, because at the end I just didn't understand almost anything that went on during the film.
I think the American version of this one looks to just go completly in the wrong direction with it though. I'm one of the rare, rare few that really loved the American version of The Grudge. It scared me half to death, I was literally biting my fingers during tense scenes. But I think that there's a big difference between me and the average horror audience. I don't like gore, could do completly without it. I think that gore, 99% of the time, only detracts from the true fright.
You know what I find almost scarier than anything? Not disembodied limbs, or guys with machetes and hockey masks. Mirrors and other reflective surfaces.
Because one day, you could look into it and not see what is supposed to be there. And then what would you do? That's the kind of scare I want. I think the American Pulse that's coming out in the next few weeks (can't remember when) is going to go with the wrong kind of scare. The Japanese film could have really been frightening, but there were just too many instances of me going "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHERE ARE YOU?"
Seriously, there's an entire scene that I have no clue where it happened. I don't even know if they were still in Tokyo. But the American one? Yeah, when people crawl out of laundry machines I just lose all desire to care. Dark Water and Identity have both been down the creepy washing machine route.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Originally published July 16, 2006 at 21:37.
I'm going to be trying to write less-formal reviews so that I can write MORE reviews, which is really the entire purpose of this exercise in blogging.
So first up for that idea:
The Queen Jade by Yxta Maya Murray.
I have to say that this book has sat on my shelf for AGES without being read. I also have to admit that I skimmed large portions of it.
That said, I think I could recommend it to people with a larger attention span that I had when I read it today. I just wasn't up for such a detailed storyline I guess.
The basic idea is that of an archaeological adventure, and it succeeds very well on that score. The main character, Lola, is searching for her mother. Her mother was searching for The Queen Jade, a legendary artifact with very fascinating history with betrayal, sorcery, mazes, and all that good stuff.
With just enough real history to provide the backdrop, the entire book seems very plausible. I liked the characters, I wanted them to succeed. And the very basics of the story, from the secret locations to the tromping through the jungle, are well done and interesting.
I don't think it'll ever be considered "high literature" but I don't like most of those stories anyway. This is one I'll probably pass on to friends of mine that like their books a little more intelligent than the average modern fiction.
I'm going to be trying to write less-formal reviews so that I can write MORE reviews, which is really the entire purpose of this exercise in blogging.
So first up for that idea:
The Queen Jade by Yxta Maya Murray.
I have to say that this book has sat on my shelf for AGES without being read. I also have to admit that I skimmed large portions of it.
That said, I think I could recommend it to people with a larger attention span that I had when I read it today. I just wasn't up for such a detailed storyline I guess.
The basic idea is that of an archaeological adventure, and it succeeds very well on that score. The main character, Lola, is searching for her mother. Her mother was searching for The Queen Jade, a legendary artifact with very fascinating history with betrayal, sorcery, mazes, and all that good stuff.
With just enough real history to provide the backdrop, the entire book seems very plausible. I liked the characters, I wanted them to succeed. And the very basics of the story, from the secret locations to the tromping through the jungle, are well done and interesting.
I don't think it'll ever be considered "high literature" but I don't like most of those stories anyway. This is one I'll probably pass on to friends of mine that like their books a little more intelligent than the average modern fiction.
Originally posted February 5, 2006 at 20:41.
18 Seconds by George Shuman
This book is one of the few that I'll end up reviewing that haven't been released yet. I got to read it by virtue of the advanced reader's edition that arrived at the bookstore. Since the point is for me to read it and try to sell it to people if I liked it, I decided to go ahead and review it here.
To get one thing out of the way: I was annoyed that the "heroine" was beautiful. Drop-dead-everybody-talks-about-her-for-an-hour beautiful. Sure, her life is horrible and tragic and yadda yadda, but I really was sick and tired of hearing how pretty she is, and how it doesn't fit that she's pretty and blind.
Um, since when?
That little snit out of the way, since it doesn't matter at all really, the character is interesting. Turns out, through some quirk that's never explained (thankfully, explaining things makes them sometimes boring) Sherry can see into the last 18 seconds of a person's life when she touches their corpse. She can only get images from corpses, and only the residual flashes in the short-term memory.
While Sherry is doing her best to solve crime, new Leiutenant Kelly Lynch-O'Shaughnessy is trying to solve the dissapearances of two young women in her little summer-escape town. The book uses the technique where the reader knows exactly who the killer is, and at least a few of his methods. This definetly works well, and makes the mystery that much more intriguing.
What doesn't help, despite a review to the contrary on Amazon.com is the personal lives of the characters. I can see that Shuman is trying to keep us from falling too far into the Serial Killer's mind (which is an extremly scary place) but you can tell his hand isn't well practiced at this kind of writing. The strengths are in the policework, the attitudes, and the killer himself. The biggest weakness is Sherry's unrequited love, which comes off too false.
Shuman is a retired police officer, and you can get that feeling by reading. But trying to write a lonely woman's feelings about why she wants to find love, it falls into trite emotions that just don't capture the moment at all.
Lynch-O'Shaughnessy (whose name is far too long and is thankfully referred to as Leiu most of the time) has a similar turbulance in her personal life, and in the end it comes off a lot better than Sherry's, but only by comparison. If it was the only personal story in the book, I wouldn't have liked it either. I'm not sure what would have made those sections better, but they do drag it down a bit.
But when it comes down to the meat of the novel, the serial killer, his crimes, the policework used to catch him, 18 seconds does a wonderful job. There's no magic-like CSI actions here, but real procedure. The best thing is that it takes longer than a half hour for DNA evidence to come through. Shuman knows procedure and he puts it on the page faithfully.
The bad guy is very bad, and very well written. The loose ends get tied up a little neatly, but in the end everything comes together as a mystery novel should. The only reason I can't give it a whole-hearted reccomendation is the limping personal stories. Parts could also be hard to take for people who don't like violence, but then why would you be reading about a serial killer if you don't like violence?
18 Seconds by George Shuman
This book is one of the few that I'll end up reviewing that haven't been released yet. I got to read it by virtue of the advanced reader's edition that arrived at the bookstore. Since the point is for me to read it and try to sell it to people if I liked it, I decided to go ahead and review it here.
To get one thing out of the way: I was annoyed that the "heroine" was beautiful. Drop-dead-everybody-talks-about-her-for-an-hour beautiful. Sure, her life is horrible and tragic and yadda yadda, but I really was sick and tired of hearing how pretty she is, and how it doesn't fit that she's pretty and blind.
Um, since when?
That little snit out of the way, since it doesn't matter at all really, the character is interesting. Turns out, through some quirk that's never explained (thankfully, explaining things makes them sometimes boring) Sherry can see into the last 18 seconds of a person's life when she touches their corpse. She can only get images from corpses, and only the residual flashes in the short-term memory.
While Sherry is doing her best to solve crime, new Leiutenant Kelly Lynch-O'Shaughnessy is trying to solve the dissapearances of two young women in her little summer-escape town. The book uses the technique where the reader knows exactly who the killer is, and at least a few of his methods. This definetly works well, and makes the mystery that much more intriguing.
What doesn't help, despite a review to the contrary on Amazon.com is the personal lives of the characters. I can see that Shuman is trying to keep us from falling too far into the Serial Killer's mind (which is an extremly scary place) but you can tell his hand isn't well practiced at this kind of writing. The strengths are in the policework, the attitudes, and the killer himself. The biggest weakness is Sherry's unrequited love, which comes off too false.
Shuman is a retired police officer, and you can get that feeling by reading. But trying to write a lonely woman's feelings about why she wants to find love, it falls into trite emotions that just don't capture the moment at all.
Lynch-O'Shaughnessy (whose name is far too long and is thankfully referred to as Leiu most of the time) has a similar turbulance in her personal life, and in the end it comes off a lot better than Sherry's, but only by comparison. If it was the only personal story in the book, I wouldn't have liked it either. I'm not sure what would have made those sections better, but they do drag it down a bit.
But when it comes down to the meat of the novel, the serial killer, his crimes, the policework used to catch him, 18 seconds does a wonderful job. There's no magic-like CSI actions here, but real procedure. The best thing is that it takes longer than a half hour for DNA evidence to come through. Shuman knows procedure and he puts it on the page faithfully.
The bad guy is very bad, and very well written. The loose ends get tied up a little neatly, but in the end everything comes together as a mystery novel should. The only reason I can't give it a whole-hearted reccomendation is the limping personal stories. Parts could also be hard to take for people who don't like violence, but then why would you be reading about a serial killer if you don't like violence?
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