I have some mixed feelings about this movie. There were a couple of suspense scenes of pure genius in this movie. Particularly, one at Det. Anna Mari's home where she sees the killer's reflection in a bowl and chases him outside and then returns to her dark house (Horror movie heroines hate well-lit rooms!) and notices her gun missing from where she just laid it on the table. That scene worked quite well. And also the scene where Romo-- the video poker whiz-- follows the beautiful girl through the alleyways of Rome who was paid by the killer to bring him to the Two Doors.
After that, it's downhill. I don't know much about Italian culture-- Im guessing there was a craze on video poker there while the rest of the world fell for Hold 'Em and Omaha-- but there really is no such thing as a video poker whiz. Video poker is a game of pure probability. There is no other skill involved beside playing the percentages over and over. It's rather a dull, simple game. The idea that the police needed someone to "beat" the killer at poker was misinformed. Of course it is a moot point anyways, after further plot developments, seen coming a mile away.
I guess the killer's identity was fairly obvious from the beginning. Det. Anna Mari spurns his advances in the opening scene. Her love affair with the alcoholic British detective is also flat and unconvincing. Some of the clues and false clues thrown in are interesting. The Diologue is even more annoying than usual for Argento. The movie was remarkably less bloody than most Argento films, and this is not necessarily a good thing.
I guess the days of wildly inventive movies with lush colors and a frenetic Goblin score are over. Oh well.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
"Flowery" you say?
"Flowery" I think is a good term for a writer who cant handle the intricacies his style demands.
When you are blending a slow or non- action sequence with interior thoughts of a character,or resolving description and sensation and impression into precise language and metaphor, fusing layers of interconnectedness, the "show dont tell" rule is utterly useless, a bogus guideline for hacks and plot-reliant thrillers.
When you are describing an intense scene (scary in our case as horror writers), with fast-paced action then the rule becomes all-important. If you want to be Richard Laymon, or write like him, then you should worship like one would a wrathful god, the "show dont tell" rule.
The balance of the two modes-- ie, how well and how many balls or bowling pins you can juggle-- is crucial to writing something good and meaningful. Otherwise you are just passing off cliched images and trite plot points as something new.
Being "flowery" is NOT necessarily being overly descriptive, but also directly proportional to how inexact your thinking and writing is.
Incidently, to truly disturb a reader, which I feel is of utmost importantance in horror writing, it might actually be advisable to "alienate" your reader sometime. Now, you dont want to BORE them, that's another thing altogether. The most important rule in writing (and IM not saying I succeed personally) is to be interesting to your audience. Also, another point, even though everyone on this board is a horror writer, our potential audiences are very personal, some quite small, others having more appeal to a larger public consumption.
When you are blending a slow or non- action sequence with interior thoughts of a character,or resolving description and sensation and impression into precise language and metaphor, fusing layers of interconnectedness, the "show dont tell" rule is utterly useless, a bogus guideline for hacks and plot-reliant thrillers.
When you are describing an intense scene (scary in our case as horror writers), with fast-paced action then the rule becomes all-important. If you want to be Richard Laymon, or write like him, then you should worship like one would a wrathful god, the "show dont tell" rule.
The balance of the two modes-- ie, how well and how many balls or bowling pins you can juggle-- is crucial to writing something good and meaningful. Otherwise you are just passing off cliched images and trite plot points as something new.
Being "flowery" is NOT necessarily being overly descriptive, but also directly proportional to how inexact your thinking and writing is.
Incidently, to truly disturb a reader, which I feel is of utmost importantance in horror writing, it might actually be advisable to "alienate" your reader sometime. Now, you dont want to BORE them, that's another thing altogether. The most important rule in writing (and IM not saying I succeed personally) is to be interesting to your audience. Also, another point, even though everyone on this board is a horror writer, our potential audiences are very personal, some quite small, others having more appeal to a larger public consumption.
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