Tag Archives: Guest Contributors

Aug 28

For the Love of Gore

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braindeadHey there faithful Normalinauts. Kilian here and, for the second week in a row, we at Normality Restored are pleased to welcome a guest contributor. He has requested that we call him “D. Composition” and I fully honor that request. As a slight, personally advantageous, aside I will say that I am enjoying the guest contributors as it means I do less writing (though more editing) and so we get a wider array of voices here on the ol’ NR.

So without further ado, I present to you…

If I were to walk up to an average movie fan and ask him if he remembered such films as “Deep Blue Sea” or “Resident Evil”, I imagine his response to the latter would be “Not really, but I do remember that guy getting diced by those lasers! That was awesome!” and to the former “Not really, but I do remember the shark jumping up and eating Sam Jackson! That was awesome!”

Sorry for the spoiler, but if you haven’t already seen Deep Blue Sea, chances are high that you either don’t want to see it or you already know about it because of Dave Chapelle.

Dave Chapelle: Samuel L. Jackson’s

I find this to be a commonality with a lot of movies, even when the movie is pretty good (I personally enjoyed Deep Blue Sea very much). We all know the reason for its everpresence. It’s the same reason people love rollercoasters. It’s a shocking thrill rolled in fun. Better the fictional movie characters deal with it than us, of course. It’s a fun way to have all the characters we hate get offed in a film. It works the opposite way with our heroes though (There were too many good times with Chef from South Park before his grisly demise. Gore is like taking a wound, or a death, in a story and turning it up full blast, much to the chagrin or delight of the prospective viewer. The gore can be a little much for some people, but that can be enjoyable too. I always find myself smiling at gore moments if I notice that someone else is cringing while watching. I think anything in a movie that can get a reaction like that is doing something right. I suppose I’ve personally been desensitized to the majority of the gore out there, though. I got started at an early age with a certain stripe-sweatered melty boogeyman with knives for fingers. Who could get these images out of a 7 year old’s mind (or a 27 year old’s mind for that matter)?

Few films, however, can match the feeling one gets when watching Dead Alive (Braindead). Back in the late 80’s-early 90’s Peter Jackson (you know the one…he directed the Lord of the Rings movies, for all you non-existent non-nerds reading this) made a couple of really funny and really gory little movies. Dead Alive is the best of these (according to myself and some friends). A few stragglers aside, it seems to be the undisputed “goriest fright film of all time.” If you’re not familiar with Dead Alive, you’ll either be really happy or really pissed off you’ve missed out for so long.

The movie is about a young man who lives with his old abusive mother. The films opens with the mother getting bitten by a rat-monkey at the zoo and, of course, contracting a zombie-like disease. The ball starts tumbling from there. The protagonist does his best to take care of his zombie-mom despite the infection of more and more, who also end up getting kept in his house. There is zombie sex, a zombie baby, a kung fu priest, a lawnmower scene, and a bunch of gross out stuff that even had me squirming.

If you do decide you want to see this movie, make sure to get the unrated version, because the “safe” version has so much cut out it really isn’t the same movie.

Needless to say, gore is and has been a great joy of mine for all kinds of reasons. It’s always fun to see where the filmmaker is going to take the viewer to get to some new level of shock or creativity.  This is why people always talk about the “curb scene” in American History X or the “pen trick scene” in Dark Knight or the “eye splinter scene” from Zombi or the “tooth-pulling scene” from Oldboy. These are the standout moments in film for many because they are so shocking and so memorable.

Aug 21

Newstastic or Craptastic…its Newsies!

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newsiesGreetings to all faithful Normalinauts.  This week, we are lucky to have a guest contributor.  She may or may not become a permanent fixture here at NR.  I certainly would be in favor of seeing her contribute more so if you enjoy the following piece of writing please let her know.  She has asked that the moniker “Oedipa Wheeler” be attributed to her and I consciously decided to NOT try and figure out what that means.

And yes, she is a female.  If my memory can be relied upon at all, this is the first article we’ve posted actually written by a female.  First women get the right to vote and now this!  Truly females are now set to rule the world.

OK, I’ll shut up now…

The beauty of a truly horrific, yet pleasurable, train wreck, metaphorically speaking, of course, given that I don’t harbor any Crash-esque fantasies, is that it brings all those perched upon the upper echelons of our society down to the level of our mediocre and downright embarrassing bourgeois lives. Movie stars are, of course, the usual “victims,” …just a moment while I brush that single, solitary tear off my cheek…of this desire to destroy the ideal. Take Christian “You’re Unprofessional!” Bale as one such victim of the tabloids. This gut-wrenchingly funny tantrum perpetrated by Bale could, in fact, be tossed off as just a part of his artistic temperament, not to overshadow his theatrical abilities. Yet, just visit your local video store and walk directly to the “musicals” section. There, my friends, you will find a film that demonstrates the true range of Bale’s acting abilities; Newsies. And yes, Bale does do all of his own singing and dancing…no stunt doubles for this Renaissance man. Or better yet visit the bookmines so I can escort you myself to this brilliant piece of movie making, giggling all the way.

The popularity of Disney’s live action musicals, à la High School Musical, apparently had not yet found its niche when Newsies made its inauspicious debut in 1992. Yet again, maybe this musical that recreates the 1899 strike of newspaper boys in New York is just pure, unadulterated crap. Bale is quoted as saying of his stellar performance, “Time healed those wounds. But it took awhile.” Time heals all wounds sooner or later, unless it’s the bruise you’ll inevitably get from literally falling off your chair laughing; that’ll take a week or two to heal. Yet, as I sit here rewatching Newsies (yes I own it…it’s hidden between Masculine, Feminine and Citizen Kane in true film major guilty pleasure fashion), I question what was the clincher that lead Bale to look back so shamefully upon this role. Was it singing catchy lyrics like, “If the life don’t seem to suit ya how ‘bout a change of scene, far from the lousy headlines and the deadlines in between!” with the ever elegant heavy New York accent. Or maybe it was the impressive bit of soft shoe he did in unison with about twenty other young men, a veritable precursor to the likes of ‘Nsync or Backstreet Boys. Whatever it was, I hold fast to the cruel pleasure I get from watching Bale’s embarrassing performance.

This pleasure, needless to say, begets some shame for finding so much enjoyment in another man’s humiliation. I gracefully reference you back to my admission that I work at the bookmines as a pretext to my forthcoming rationalization for this shameful pleasure. There is a special kind of enjoyment for a film major who has done nothing with the degree (or any person for that matter who decided to join the Humanities department much to the chagrin of his or her parents) to watch someone successful in the film industry fail so utterly. It gives hope to the wretches like us who will never watch our films light up the silver screen of Sundance, never find our brilliantly penned essays in the New Yorker, or never hear our musical opus on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic. We want to know that those established in the arts are not necessarily there because of their superior talent. They are, in fact, us with better looks and/or a bit more luck. Their failures bring them back down to us, still searching for a bit of the lime light. Thus, for the time being, I, along with my fellow unsuccessful artistically leaning compatriots, will get our kicks from these simple, disreputable pleasures.