Okay! Finally got my self made blog template working! Took a lot more work than I would have thought. Of course, now I hate it. It looks stupid, doesn't it? Well, I'm going to work on it this weekend, I promise.

In other news we saw both 'House of 1000 Corpses' and 'Spider' last weekend. Interesting combination because they are both horror movies. 'House..' is a horror movie in the classic 70's mode. And it really is. It's the first movie that I've seen that really feels like it loves those films and isn't just milking them for cheap laughs. I just hope that whoever thought it would be a bright idea to remake Texas Chainsaw Massacre watches this film really carefully. And slaps that stupid look off of Jessica Biel's face.

'Spider', on the other hand couldn't be farther away from that type of film. First, there are no spiders, that's the nickname of the protagonist played by Ralph Fiennes. The film opens with Spider being let out of an institution and brought to a sort of halfway-house for men like him. The amazing conceit of the film is that Spider can barely speak coherently. Other than a couple of groaned refusals, Fiennes never says anything recognizable. Instead, he keeps up a nonstop incomprehesible mumble. The fact that it never stops being riveting is a testament to the kind of actor/director teamwork that seems so rare these days. I have to say, this is probably Cronenburg's most accessible work in years. You don't really have to know anything about his work, or even the source material, to have access to this film on many levels. A feat all the more impressive considering how little dialogue there is in the film.

  ¶ 1:52 PM