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Guys:
Before anybody gets off a blast about one of the Tremor Bros. sitting on
a chainsaw or Acosta flamebroiling some guys nuts, let me offer a preemptive
rebuttal.
ONE: Both the ball roasting and the Tremor disembowelment are suggested.
(That goes for the other Acosta torture pieces. Nothing is overt)
You never see blowtorch-to-scrotum action, nor do you see the teeth of the
chainsaw chewing into Jeeves's ass crack (Wow, this post is REALLY CLASSY) and
that should be noted if for nothing more than its comparative restraint.
TWO: Combined, these scenes make up about seven seconds of screen time
in 'Smokin' Aces.' And it's man to man. There's not a single female presence
(something I find personally f*cking revolting, I know, it's prudish and prosaic
as sh*t, I don't care) in that movie, being slowly and excruciatingly humiliated
and tortured. And there isn't a whole film based around the exhibition and celebration
of that either.
Now I've never seen Hostel I or II. I met Eli Roth a few years ago and he was just a
good dude. I'm not going to sit here and assail another artist. Clearly, he does
what he does really well and you can't hate anybody's game. It's bulls*it. I will
never trash somebody, regardless of whatever artistic difference of opinion I
may have with them. There's a reason I haven't seen those films. To quote my
friend James Ellroy, when I took him to a Sacramento Kings game last year and
asked him how he liked it, his response? 'I'd rather be watching flies f*ck in Alabama.'
It's not that he found basketball so reprehensibe. It just wasn't his bag. That's
how I am with the whole torture film thing. I liked the first SAW. I thought it was clever
and the bad guy being in the room the whole time, then sitting up at the end, was
fantastic but I think it's gone from that to this overblown, carnage level, blood sodden
grand guignol aimed at the most base, depraved parts of the human psyche. I see these
ads for 'Captivity' and the wallowing in and fetishism of torture and I want to put my
fist through something solid. And I don't think there's some political overtones or
some Iraq/Abu Gharib allegories at work here. F*ck that, it's about titilation
and ticket sales.
Yeah, there's a place for everything in the world. Censorship is the refuge of chickensh*ts
and cowards and therefore not an option. I'm also not preaching or prostelatizing or
trying to point toward a better tomorrow or some nonsense.
I'm just wondering aloud if we could and should, do a whole helluva lot better.
JC
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