25 Comments


  1. Rusty James says:
    March 18, 2009 at 4:38 pm

    haven’t listened to most of this. But I thought Kurt’s comments about Rorshoch were pretty interesting.
    You really think he wouldn’t have been embraced as a protagonist a decade ago? It seems like there’s a long tradition of american audiences (go fuck yerself Henrik! j/k) embracing violent vigilantes. Dirty Harry, Death Wish (disclosure, I’ve not seen any of those films).

    It’s certaintly the case in comics. Its an established cliche; if you want to make a character instantly popular make him a violent psychopath. Alan Moore has frequently condemned the readers for being so quick to indentify and sympathize with Rorshoch. Although he also made Rorshoch the protagonist of the story and he’s frequently shown in a sympathetic light. He’s principled, his crazy conspiracy theory pans out, and for the most part his psychopathic outbursts are aimed in the direction of people who are pretty difficult to defend.

    Oh yeah. Jeffrey Dean Morgan in Watchmen… overrated!

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  2. Rusty James says:
    March 18, 2009 at 4:41 pm

    And Serena, I dont think you should be dating a guy who giggles and gets uncomfortable in front of giant blue penises. He needs to do some growing up.

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  3. Kurt Halfyard says:
    March 18, 2009 at 6:07 pm

    Perhaps you are right Rusty. But Rors is pretty unhinged, and his back-story with the bullies is pretty crazy. I’m not saying that he would have been hated back in the 1960s, but he would certainly not get the ‘fist-pumping’ and applause that audience gave his canteen-scene in Watchmen. I don’t know if Moore meant that to be a “YEAH!” moment, or merely to show more Rage from Rors.

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  4. Rusty James says:
    March 18, 2009 at 7:09 pm

    @ I don’t know if Moore meant that to be a “YEAH!” moment, or merely to show more Rage from Rors[choch].

    One of the (many) aspects I appreciate much more about the book is that while the movie has action; and sometimes cartoony Friday 13th style gore; the books have violence.

    I think violence is always going to illicit the “yeah” reaction in audiences. Especially when it’s a lone underdog fighting his way out of a corner.

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  5. Henrik says:
    March 18, 2009 at 7:44 pm

    Jeffrey Dean Morgan wasn’t very good. I hated his acting the Nam scene, but I blame Snyder. The scene was like bam-bam-over-with-then-spit-out-the-dialogue. It was like he already knew what to say after he did what he did, in the book it comes off way more believeable.

    If Rorscach is idolized as a hero by somebody, I will call that somebody a fucking moron (or maybe I’ll even assume he’s american)!

    I know people love the wildcards, for the same reason they love visual effects I guess, it’s just fantasy. I mean Rorschach and Wolverine have a lot in common, they’re both convicted, uncompromising, and they have the physical strength to pull it off. Every adolescent (or maybe every american) wants that! But I certainly don’t think Alan Moore intended for Rorscach to become somebody to root for, even though he is an interesting character, only because he is so extreme.

    People love the extreme. Look at 90% of documentaries out there, they’re just movies about wackos, and people gobble it up. Complexity is out, too boring. If anything I appreciated that Zack Snyder (and the writers) realized they had nothing on Alan Moore, and just kept what was in the book, even though it seems through watching the movie, that they didn’t know anyting about what it meant, or didn’t care because it got too boring. I mean the only scene they keep from Rorscach is the horrific action scene, that’s great and all, extreme, but doesn’t really satisfy an audience interested in him, because in no way does it justify how he is. But that’s too complex for the movie, I guess, maybe for any movie (save for select few, Bergman obviously), but definitely for an american mainstream movie.

    So faithful or not, it’s still feeble, Rorscach in the movie I can see people rooting for the same way they root for the joker, but I’m not sure I want to know these people.

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  6. Goon says:
    March 18, 2009 at 8:41 pm

    you can cheer for Rorschach the same way a wrestling fan might cheer for the bad guy, its not that you’re buying into that characters beliefs or actions, its more like the depiction of them is done so well, or is just so charismatic, that since you know its fiction you can detach yourself from it from one level and cheer. i mean, have you ever laughed at something darkly funny or inappropriate? there’s more complex reasoning to support something besides face value.

    anywhoo…

    Serena once again makes a good guest, even though from everything I know, I don’t share her taste or perhaps even interest in movies… I’m not turned off by horror movies, but I either ignore them or are unimpressed with them the same way Andrew looks down on comic book movies, or Jay looks down on a lot of asian cinema. Doesnt do it for me. Once in a while something comes along that wows me, and it can come from anywhere – Japan, the 80s, hell theres even one or two of those modern remakes I didnt mind, but in general even those ones take a big back seat.

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  7. Goon says:
    March 18, 2009 at 8:46 pm

    one more thing about Rorschach, the reason he can be well liked by people who have the complete opposite worldview as him, is that Moore’s writing will paint him to one degree as a kook, but he creates a character that comes across like he truly believes he is right and can once in a while at least make a good point. a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that if the character is mostly right or the protagonist, that its an endorsement of every other view the character has, when its really trying to flesh out who this character is.

    I can’t stand conspiracy theories and 911 truthers, but a lot of them can be otherwise smart, rational, critical thinkers. As much as I’d like to just poke fun if writing a satire or a character like that, if i were trying to be realistic I would have to be a lot more fair.

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  8. Henrik says:
    March 18, 2009 at 9:44 pm

    I laugh at nazi jokes, but if anybody idolizes the nazis I would call him an idiot as well.

    With Rorscach, I just think that idolizing him, doesn’t that sort of mean that you wish what he had? As if he was what you wish you could be? Anybody who wants that life must be delusional. Or just loves violence I guess. Same thing.

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  9. Rusty James says:
    March 19, 2009 at 12:42 am

    @ “there’s a lot of interesting things being said about teenagers in Ghost World”

    No there arent’. It’s a film about old men and every time it tries to be about teenage girls it embarrasses itself. Other than that I agree with your point about our muddled and confused sense of moral outrage. A good example would be KIDS which I saw in the theater when I was about 14. The irony was delicious, a film frankly depicting teenagers that culture authoritarians were convinced teenagers needed to be “protected” from.

    I also noticed you couched your derision in some stern America lecturing. Whatever, am I supposed to believe that the Jonas Brothers and Twilight are huge over here; but step over the boarder and tweens are too busy watching Ice Hocky and Trailer Park Boys? Unlikely.

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  10. Goon says:
    March 19, 2009 at 5:37 am

    Kurt brought up the differences between US and Canadian high schools, but I think he phrases everything rather clumsily.

    But yeah, I wanted to echo that there is some major differences. First again is size – my high school was considered a ‘large’ high school and it had around 800 kids. So do you have less schools in a city? Because St. Catharines is probably a bigger community than Columbine was, and their school was fucking huge. We have a lot of high schools in each city spread all over the place, with less people overall in each one.

    So the only question is what does being in a much bigger school do to someones mind? Does a popular kid become a bigger egomaniac or bitch, does a nerd become angrier, do others become more motivate to get ‘revenge’ out of their post-high school life through success? I’m sure theres both ups and downs. For me while I’m glad to have only had a school with 800 kids, a bigger school may have afforded a larger and thus perhaps better pool of friends to find, whereas as it were my optimal friend choices were scattered all over the city in other schools. Don’t know.

    So I don’t know about finger waving re: mental advantages, or educational advantages, but the sports thing really does creep me out. That’s just odd to me the focus that goes there from adults. Also, and I’m citing American Teen but its something I dont think they could make up, inter-school TVs? How often does that happen? Just rich areas?

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  11. Rusty James says:
    March 19, 2009 at 5:58 am

    ^^^^^^^^^ Goon, are you responding to me?

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  12. Kurt Halfyard says:
    March 19, 2009 at 7:28 am

    @ “there’s a lot of interesting things being said about teenagers in Ghost World”

    Perhaps I like the laying out of the landscape of the transition between high-school and post-high-school in Ghostworld, from the dissolution of clique culture, to the ‘spice girls’ graduation, to the inevitable random meet-up in a diner with awkward small-talk. These things are real, even as they function as pretty good satire.

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  13. Liney says:
    March 19, 2009 at 7:37 am

    Am I the only one who’s having trouble listening to all of this? Only about 50mins in the feed on this page, and the RSS feed doesn’t seem to have a link for episode 115. Help!

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  14. Matt Gamble says:
    March 19, 2009 at 8:21 am

    I lived in a city with ~65,000 people and had 4 high schools starting my senior year. I think by the time my little sister was in HS 8 years later average class size was about 300, with 1200 students in each school for the 4 grades. For the suburbs that was a pretty standard size, with Milwaukee schools being slightly higher. Most of the real giant schools tend to be in rural areas, where you have kids from multiple areas all bussed to one location. Most of my relatives live in Van Wert, OH, which is a town of about 20K and it has one high school with something like 2000-3000 kids going there. I think that is just for 3 grades as well.

    Oddly enough American Teen was filmed in an area not all that far from my family in Ohio, and from what I know that is a pretty well off HS. Interschool television is pretty unheard of in most of the US, and AV stuff hasn’t even really taken off until about the last decade or so. Its simply to expensive for many school districts to afford it.

    As for the whole High School being the pinnacle of people’s lives, I’ve always chalked that up to the fact that my parent’s generation served in Vietnam, my grandparents in Korea and my great-grandparents in WWII and so on and so forth. For a lot of people, serving in the military has been the only way to afford any sort of a higher education, and serving brings about a real risk of dying. And for those that didn’t go into the military, that meant working at the local factory, which are hard jobs with long hours and not a lot of pay. Social lives would be effectively eliminated for these people, and they rarely had any disposable income. That meant High School was for many people in the US the last time you would have both freedom and the time to enjoy it.

    Or for farmers, like my father and grandfather, they worked the farm during their summers, so High School was the one time when they got to interact with their friends and were able to have fun. I’m not sure that most people outside of the US realize how much of the country is dedicated to farming. While its dropped in the past decade or so, the US is still primarily devoted to farming and for kids living in these rural areas High School is about all they have. You had little money, little free time, and really your only option to get out of farming was to serve.

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  15. rot says:
    March 19, 2009 at 8:33 am

    Just heard a bit of this, and had to add that I am no longer VP of Mergers and Acquisitions, but soon will be CEO of Row Three and pick up a few of those AIG size bonuses.

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  16. Kurt Halfyard says:
    March 19, 2009 at 9:00 am

    @Rot. We’ll ask for 90% of that back of course.

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    • Andrew James says:
      March 19, 2009 at 9:05 am

      @Rusty – I think the attempt was a to get me to bite on Son of Rambow. Which I’ve made my feeling about very clear. If the bait was to get me to talk about advertising vs adaptations, then touche.

      As for S. King books, in every case (except Stand By Me), I read the book first.

      Reply
      • Andrew James says:
        March 19, 2009 at 9:07 am

        Don’t get me started today on the AIG thing. A trillion dollar stimulus bill that no one bothered to read? They just voted yes, signed the bottom of the page and started printing money. Astonishing.

        Reply
  17. Serena Whitney says:
    March 19, 2009 at 11:18 am

    Hey guys,

    Once again, thank you so much for inviting me for this week’s podcast…it was awesome and I’ll happy to be called on again when you need me to talk more horror. Have you seen the new Sorority Row trailer? That’s something to be talked about! (hehehe)

    @Rusty James-If I didn’t date guys who laughed at or least chuckled by seeing the blue CGI-enhanced penis, I’d probably have to become a lesbian. :P (Judging from my “Watchmen” experience.) Long time no hear! Great to hear from ya!

    Reply
  18. ralph says:
    March 19, 2009 at 11:41 am

    this is an interesting new voice in the podcast. i always like hearing a new voice in my podcasts i listen to.

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  19. Rusty James says:
    March 19, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    I’m flattered you remember me Serena. From the movie blog I’m guessing.

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  20. Goon says:
    March 19, 2009 at 10:44 pm

    Inappropriate diversion time:

    I was sad when I saw Natasha Richardson had died, but it was because it was tragic and because Liam Neeson is her husband, and nobody needs a sad Neeson.

    I took a look at her filmography today and there’s not a single good film. Not one. Just crap after crap after crap. I’m only being a jackass because I’m drunk, but seriously, if people are going to rag over Phoenix or Ledger lionization, lets call this out too, because unless she has some legendary stage career, this – especially from the Canadian media since it happened here and OMG IT THUS MUST BE MORE IMPORTANT – is ridiculous. I probably would have let it lie but I’m seeing people on facebook or other places just make posts or updates about how we lost a great actress, and i highly doubt any of them have seen her films either. When your best movie is Nell, and your most famous role is probably Maid in Manhattan, mean or not, I’m sorry, but lets cut down on the hypberbole here.

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  21. Henrik says:
    March 19, 2009 at 11:49 pm

    I was just happy it wasn’t Miranda Richardson. I have no idea who Natasha Richardson was.

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  22. Henrik says:
    March 19, 2009 at 11:50 pm

    Iøve more or less stopped posting when I am drunk though Goon, too much hassle to deal with.

    Reply

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