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Archive for April 9th, 2007

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Apr09

FOR THE DUMB KIDS

April 9th, 2007 | by Tom
  • Comics
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(5 votes, average: 8.20 out of 10)
FOR THE DUMB KIDS

Sorry I didn’t have another Grindhouse comic for you guys today. But I think I ran through all of my ideas last week! Didn’t get a chance to see it and it doesn’t look like that many of you guys did, either! A disappointing fourth place take this weekend at the box office. Surprising, for one of the most heavily-hyped films of the year. No so surprising within the context of a major Christian holiday weekend. Whoops!

If you saw Grindhouse this weekend, leave your comments after the blog. I’d love to hear what you thought! Sounds like people are really responding to the ending in Tarantino’s Death Proof. Don’t spoil it – but what did you think?

I’m sure Gordon, Joe and I will talking about Grindhouse and it’s impact (or lack thereof) up and down The Triple Feature talkcast tonight at 9:00 PM CST. If you have the druthers, join us over at TalkShoe while we take your calls and answer your questions. What went wrong? What went RIGHT?! Listen in tonight at 9:00 PM CST for the answers!

Disturbia starring Shia LaBeouf comes out this weekend and I know people who are genuinely excited to see it. To them I say “Good for you?”

Look, don’t kid yourselves. This is a total rip off of Rear Window. I’m not saying Hitchcock got their first with stories about voyeurs seeing things they aren’t supposed to see. But he did it best. CERTAINLY one of the best suspense films of all time, completely bastardized by filmmakers who are going to ratchet up the gore, throw in some lame T&A and occasionally have David Morse jump out of the shadows at you. This is Rear Window without a brain.

One of the best decisions Hitchcock ever made was to handicap Jimmy Stuart’s character with a broken leg. Smarter still, he doesn’t leave his apartment to confront the murderer until he absolutely has to – and even then, it’s for something like 5 minutes.

Disturbia tries to leverage something similar by putting their teenage protagonist under house arrest. They did this in a effort to make him edgy, I guess. Too far out of bounds and the cops come to haul our little punk to the pokey. Sure. Like that’s stopped anyone. Or like cops have nothing better to do than to patrol lazy suburban confines for the errant house arrest escapee.

Everything about the trailers for this movie make me want to retch. From the blood splatter across windows and torture implements in the basement, to the too-cute punny title, to the over-earnestness of Shia LeBeouf begging to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor, this film reeks of cheap tricks and imitation.

Do yourselves a favor – instead of seeing Disturbia this weekend, rent Rear Window and see how it’s done. You can keep your MTV and your fancy iPoo-poos! I’ll take the classics!

That is all!

└ Tags: collective unconscious, cosmos, Disturbia, Hitchcock, Jimmy Stewart, Rear Window, remake, Shia LaBeouf
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