Elizabeth Reuter's Blog - Posts Tagged "cool-stuff"

I appear to have a page on the "SuccuWiki" website. :D

Succuwiki: DoRD

And I didn't make it myself or anything! :D

...busy drooling with geek joy over the new Avengers trailer.

A South Korean co-worker introduced me to the Hwarang, an ancient, elite bodyguard troupe. Over a thousand years ago, boys of 14 to 19 from "good families" were selected to undergo the most rigorous training imaginable in all areas: physical, mental, spiritual.

Today, if you read reports from military lovers, you'll hear what mighty warriors the Hwarang were, how they pushed themselves to the limit. This is true.

However, nobody male who admires the Hwarang ever mentions that hwa means "flower" and rang means "boys", and the Hwarang got their name from being being the prettiest group of boys in Korea! They were, in fact, selected for their beauty first and foremost.

I don't see where the beauty aspect of the Hwarang detracts from their unmatched abilities as warriors, but apparently manly types do, because there's practically a desperation to avoid the topic. It's like bringing up Alexander the Great's love of men to teenage boys who admire him as a warrior--somehow, the first detracts from the second in their eyes, and denial and rage are the only ways to deal.

Too strange.

I have trouble writing a review about Hellraiser because I have so many thoughts about it; about the characters and the story, about the subtle unease it creates vs. the huge, bloody light show at the end. Clive Barker described it as “uneven,” and I agree, but not just in terms of quality; also, you can look at it and see...well, anything. Hellraiser can mean anything or nothing when you look at it, depending on your point of view.

Basic story: the search for constantly escalating sexual stimulation leads asshole Frank to first seduce his brother’s wife Julia, then buy a box that releases demons which drag him down to S&M hell. He escapes and with Julia’s help, begins putting his body together through murder-powered magic. Julia’s stepdaughter, Kirsty, suspects something is up and investigates as Julia and Frank’s body count piles up. Meanwhile, the demons, unhappy Frank escaped, are looking for him...

The audio commentary mentions the lack of traditional shock moments; rather, Hellraiser relies on the unease its amoral characters’ actions provoke in the beginning, and the fear/excitement the cenobites (hi thar, Pinhead!) provoke at the end. Rather than outright scary, Hellraiser is creepy in the same way watching Clarice and Hannibal discuss Buffalo Bill gives viewers the willies. Watching the truly deranged is unsettling, even if the activity they’re performing is normal, and Hellraiser completely convinced me that its characters were deranged.

I could go on for pages about other little details: costumes that grabbed my eyes, scenes impossible to forget. About Pinhead, the most interesting of all horror-movie monsters to me. He’s bored with carnage and doles it out just because it’s what he does. What dulled him to the experience? What does he want? The glimpses of him we see in each successive movie reveal a complex character that can be sadistic or detached, disdainful or emotionally involved, that can even fall in love, and the result is terrifying. The moment Freddy shows up you know he’s going to chase teenagers down the street and try to kill them. But Pinhead? You can watch all of his movies and read everything Clive Barker wrote on him and never have a clue of what he’s thinking, let alone planning to do.

There is, unfortunately, a scene near the end with a horrible, horrible special effect featuring the Engineer (even if you don’t know who the Engineer is, the moment you see the scene, you’ll know what I mean). I know the film was done on a super-limited budget, but when the effect created is so silly it destroys the tension/fear being built up for the last hour in half a second, it would have been better to just leave it out. -_-

It’s the only bit that’s memorable for the wrong reasons. Everything else about Hellraiser burrows under the skin in all the right ways.

-Elizabeth Reuter
Author, The Demon of Renaissance Drive

...because I finally saw it last night and am still geeking out.

When I say "everything that worked," I mean besides the obvious: acting, story, and fight scenes, because duh, everyone knows those are great already.

* Captain America. It's so easy for a character like Cap to go the way of Cyclops in the X-Movies; boring and forgotten. But here, it's cool to be the good boy--and good wasn't limited to following rules (see: breaking into SHIELD's weapon's vault).

* Loki was scary as fuck. The scene where he swears he'll have Hawkeye rape Black Widow to death is tattooed on my brain.

* Hawkeye: "Nat, what are you doing?"

* Hulk punching Thor out. 'Nuff said.

* It was an ensemble movie. It made economic sense to push Iron Man in the ads, but it wouldn't have worked as a story if he'd been the main character. Nope! Everyone got their time, both fighting and being human.

* Nick Fury saying "stupid-ass decision" and firing a bazooka. Or missile launcher. Or whatever the hell that huge thing was. Long live Samuel L. :D

* "Hulk? Smash."

* Cap's fish-out-of-water jokes actually worked. "It appears to run on some type of electricity!" "Ooh, I got that reference."

* Cap and Tony bitching at each other. It made them both petty--and thus, more human.

* "Huh. This usually works."

To be edited, maybe, as I have future geek moments. We've got another typhoon sitting on Okinawa, so I ain't goin' anywhere today.

-Elizabeth Reuter
Author, The Demon of Renaissance Drive

Iiiiiit’s NANO!

…as it has been for over two weeks, but. *laugh* I’ve been busy, so there we are. Work has been insane with back-to-back events...and then, of course, writing!

I’m writing a story I’ve had in my head for years, one I really think I can make something out of. Who knows, it might be my next novel. Either way, I'm having a lot of fun writing it.

Elizabeth's Author Bio

Other Na-nites (?), friend me and I'll friend back! I love the creative energy that goes into this month.

-Elizabeth Reuter
Author, The Demon of Renaissance Drive

Sean of the Dead set the standard for horror comedy from Great Britain, but recently it has some challengers, both of which I was lucky enough to view this month: Grabbers from Ireland, and Attack the Block from England.

Grabbers is best described as Tremors with alcohol. Little island off the Irish coast is beset by tentacle monsters that travel through water, and are poisoned by alcohol. To survive the night, the entire island must get as drunk as possible. It’s a very Irish sort of monster movie, and the movie itself is aware of this; there’s a great scene where an Irish cop, not listening to a British scientist studying the monsters, winds up reviving a downed monster which then attacks him. “You,” the British scientist sighs, “you are really Irish aren’t you.”

(This scientist is played by Russell Tovey, by the way, star of the wonderful British monster TV show Being Human. He is known for brainy, neurotic, adorable characters, and does them so well, but has stated his desire for darker roles he can break type with. I hope he gets the chance, because he’s yet to be anything but wonderful in everything I’ve seen him in.)

Then there’s Attack the Block, best described as “poor kids vs. aliens.” The social commentary is obvious—“useless” kids society looks down upon save the world from a greater, outside menace—but the story didn’t beat us over the head with its message, and was both exciting and funny as all hell. It apparently launched the careers of half its actors, and did everything right on a shoe-string budget. With Hollywood currently stumbling under the weight of bloated blockbusters no one has gone to see, maybe a few lessons can be learned here.

Like: GIVE US GOOD SCRIPTS AND GOOD ACTING, HOLLYWOOD. SPECIAL EFFECTS ARE GREAT, BUT YOU STILL NEED GOOD SCRIPTS AND GOOD ACTING.

Easy.

-Elizabeth Reuter
Author, The Demon of Renaissance Drive

The last typhoon of Okinawa's yearly typhoon season is at full bore right now outside, rattling my windows with wind and debris. Rain falls in a solid wave, crashing against the ground with noise that makes me shiver.

...Time for a horror movie!

Starz has a youtube channel with free movies on it, horror and anime and even some mini-additions to Spartacus. Good way to pass hours of trembling walls and roaring skies.

-Elizabeth Reuter
Author, The Demon of Renaissance Drive

In my experience, not much horror ages well. Even one of my all-time favorites, Hellraiser, falls apart in the scene where the awful Engineer puppet shows up. The ones that hold up best are the ones that are character and suspense-focused and scare you without overdone effects, like Rosemary's Baby.

I just saw Evil Dead, and despite the cheap special effects, it holds up really well. This surprises me, because it's everything I don't like. It's splatter-gore, it's predictable in a lot of ways, and the effects are cheap to the point of being silly.

But something about it shines through. These ghosts are scary. This movie is scary. Certain scenes are memorable to the point of making me shiver and jump at night. I am fascinated, and want to know what the hell Sam and Rob did to make certain scenes, so dull in the hands of any other director, as striking as anything in anhy modern horror film I've enjoyed.

-Elizabeth Reuter
Author, The Demon of Renaissance Drive

American Horror Story season 1 came out this year in Japan. By coincidence, the first episode, subtitled, was available for preview purposes on another disc I rented, so I got to brush up on the first episode after over a year.

God I love this show. I think it’s my favorite modern TV show except maybe for Spartacus, and in terms of quality, the best I’ve seen in years (with the caveat that there’s lots of modern TV I haven’t seen yet, mind you, and I can only speak within my own experience).

It’s everything good about horror, in the same vein as Hellraiser and Rosemary’s Baby. There are ghosts and creepy things and serial murderers, and those are all scary. But they add to the atmosphere created by the story’s main characters: a family in distress. None in this family are idealized, nor are their struggles cut short by hugs and sappy soundtrack music. Mom is neurotic and cold, and that hurts the others. Dad got lonely and had an affair, which hurt the others. Daughter is angry and confused, and hurts her parents with her rage. They handle things badly, and though they clearly love each other, they don’t understand each other, and so the mistakes they make multiply and spiral out of control, taking them to places that frighten and harm them.

As we go back into the history of the house, we find the multiple families that lived there were all ruined by their own mistakes and misunderstandings, most involving infidelity, all involving bad communication, and too many involving murder. All these families tried to run from their problems into our setting, a beautiful Victorian house in LA, only to find they hadn’t left their problems behind, but only compounded them with the grotesque and evil presence haunting their “second chance.” The metaphor is blatantly obvious, but instead of trying to be coy, American Horror Story let the metaphor sit and developed both the stylish, gruesome ghosts, and the disturbing, honest family dynamics atop it. In other words, I never felt hit over the head or preached to.

Maybe that’s the best part, the lack of preaching. The family screws up, and watching them screw up, I felt I was looking at a real family, one that loves each other but, well, screws up. Sometimes they learn from their mistakes and sometimes they don’t; sometimes they come out on top and sometimes they don’t. The only constant is the unease behind their interactions, unease and anger and sadness, something any family who has had a period of hardship—every family, in other words—will recognize and wince along with.

American Horror Story is relatable, and uses its relatablity to create honest, gut-wrenching horror. Just watching the first episode again, I wanted to applaud.

-Elizabeth Reuter
Author, The Demon of Renaissance Drive

(PS: The DVD AHS episode 1 was a bonus on? Last disk of Glee Season 3. Ha!)