Lost in the Fundamentals

I, along with everyone else who lives in the city, just went through a municipal election. As a political junkie I find the strange creatures known as politicians interesting to watch and analyse. My interest in human psychology and behaviour thrives in the political scene, but I admit there are times when I wish I was part of the many potential voters who just don’t give one care about the whole process. I really don’t blame them- the world of politics is a strange fantasy land that has very few tethers anchoring it to our own.

What is really hard for me is that for every election, from federal to municipal, I have had to compromise my own fundamental political ideology and vote for representatives that I hardly saw eye to eye with.

I’m tired of voting for the lesser evil.

That’s what I had to do with this last municipal election. For the mayor I had to hold my nose and vote against the person I didn’t like rather than being an enthusiastic supporter of the one I voted for. In the case of selecting my Ward representative I did something I am just disgusted at myself over: I was down to two choices, so I flipped a coin. I was reduced to voting by chance.

It’s hard for me because, while I am glad to be citizen (not proud, glad) of this country, I disagree with some of the fundamentals of its government. I’m a Libertarian, and it is hard being one in a very socialist and statist country.

I got “crazy” ideas, ideas that I didn’t think of overnight, but ones that came from hard study and genuine inquiry.

Random ideas like:

-Nothing would make me happier than bringing more business to the city in the form of a “digital media centre” (where they can make video games and CGI movies). It’s a great idea, but why does our mayor (soon to be former mayor) feel that we must ALL pay for it? If she thinks it is such a great idea, why doesn’t she put her own money towards it and encourage other private investors to do as well? It’s not the WHAT I have a problem with, it’s the HOW (pretty much how I feel about all government services and businesses).

-Canada does not need a public news agency: sell off the CBC and let it be a private company.

-It is wrong that I, along with other non-Catholics, am forced to pay for Catholic schools.

-The Human Rights Commission is a travesty of justice and serves no genuine purpose. It undermines the real justice system that deals with “hate” crime more efficiently and more maturely than it does.

-I should be allowed to opt out of the public health care system. If it does not work for me, I should be able to take my money elsewhere. Why should I not have the choice? Why does the public health care system fear competing against private medical providers?

-Taxes are a form of mugging. It is money taken from me with the ultimate threat of imprisonment (and even being shot) if I do not comply. Sure it pays for many useful things, but it is also wasted on a lot more and encourages an environment of overhyped entitlement. Do the ends justify the means?

These are just a few of the “crazy” sentiments I have. They are more thought out than this simple list, but what really irks me is how, when I try discussing these ideas or sentiments to a candidate, they will actually nod in agreement, understand my “frustration”, and totally ignore the fact that the policies they stand for completely fly in the face of them.

Am I a nut job? Maybe, but what is really sad is the lack of dialogue, debate and genuine argument in the political arena. Right now all there is empty rhetoric, fake anger and snappy promises.

This interest in politics is feeling too much like a curse these days, and I feel frustrated that, at this point in my life, all I can do is talk and write about it.

Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) review

Fuck you Michael Bay.

Seriously: Fuck you.

Not for making bad movies. Your films are often brainless exercises in flashy explosions and stupid frat jokes that I cannot deny makes money- lots of money. I would be hard pressed to argue against the millions you have made with brain dead hits like Transformers.

So why am I giving you a whole hearted “fuck you” Michael Bay? Because while your remake of Nightmare on Elm Street isn’t bad, it isn’t particularly good as well. It is definitely a waste of time and talent.

It takes a special kind of soul sucking talent to take out everything that made the original Nightmare on Elm Street (made in 1984) and its sequels unique and scary.

Just what makes Freddy Kruger scary?

In the original films, Freddy had an undeniable freak factor. He came at you when you were most vulnerable and in ways they made his victims doubt their own safety. Attacking within a victim’s dreams made the comfortable and resorting act of sleep into a battle to the death and a struggling lost cause to stay awake. He could torture and kill you in ways limited only by his twisted imagination, fueled by the endless possibilities of the world of dreams. What made Freddy such an iconic character was his evil-yet-cheesy wit and numerous “dream kills” full of creepy symbolism and a what-the-hell factor that made them memorable.

Just take a look at THIS dream kill for instance. It is from one of the earlier sequels, and it wasn’t one of the better ones, but this scene definite invokes a surreal freakish feeling of disgust and helplessness. It definitely provokes a “What the Hell?” response.

The kills in the new Nightmare can’t even compare to the twisted death scenes of the original. The new Freddy Kruger seems to have no hint of an imagination. For the first victim, he slashes her with his claws. His second, he slashes with his claws. The third, he punches through the victim’s chest…then slashes him with the claws.

Now it is true that the original Freddy had his trademark clawed glove and used it frequently, but at least he would put the victim through an interesting dream sequence and some witty banter before slashing away.

The new Freddy hardly says anything at all other than generic threats and spooky cliché. There is one point in the film where I had some hope. Freddy kills Jesse (portrayed by Thomas Decker) while in the dream world, making him die in the real world. We are shown Jesse bleeding to death in the jail cell he is in before we are cut back to the dream world where Freddy has hung the still alive Jesse up and taunts him. Freddy explains that the brain has enough oxygen to live for 5 to 6 minutes after death, and Jesse screams in terror as he realizes that Freddy is going to make his last few minutes of life into a torturous hell.

Wow. That is actually kind of scary to think about. I wonder what kind of torture Freddy will come up with before the poor boy finally dies?

Guess what: We never are shown because we are immediately cut to the next scene. Now you might point out that not knowing what kind of torture Freddy puts Jesse through before he dies makes it scarier (because our imagination does the work for the film), but this film is so devoid of detail and soul that I wanted at least something scary shown to me.

The new revamped Nightmare on Elm Street still involves a Freddy Kruger who strikes from the nightmares of teenagers, but any of the creepy and random dream imagery used from the earlier films is abandoned for typical decrepit buildings and a matter of shooting the same setting with a wide or foggy camera lens.

Dreams are weird; anyone who has ever remembered a dream they had would know that. When you’re dreaming the most surreal things make utter sense and go unquestioned. In the original Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven understood this. While the character wondered around the dream world that was a darker version of their real life surroundings they would encounter random things like a goat crossing an alleyway or blood smears bleeding through white wallpapered walls.

Fans of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series will understand when I say, “I wear the cheese, it does not wear me.”

Dream imagery is hardly ever used in the new Nightmare on Elm Street. Characters will be walking along and then FLASH! they are in Freddy’s nightmare world of dirty industrial pipes and ducts. No clever transitions like in the earlier films, just a blatant “Nightmare on, nightmare off” effect that serves mostly as a cheap jump-scare.

Speaking of jump-scares (when something “jumps” on screen quickly and unexpectedly, like a cat jumping out of a cupboard or a balloon popping), the new Nightmare depends heavily on them. Seriously, nothing is truly scary about this film.

Several scenes that play homage to the original are wasted.

In the original Nightmare one of the creepiest scenes is when Nancy (portrayed by Heather Langenkamp) falls asleep during class and “wakes” to find her recently dead friend Tina (portrayed by Amanda Wyss) wrapped in a bloody transparent body bag whispering her name beside her. Nancy follows the transporting Tina into the hallway where she sees her being dragged away by an invisible force, leaving a bloody trail behind. Nancy then wakes up in class screaming her head off.

In the remake the character of Tina is replaced by Kris (portrayed by Katie Cassidy) who, after she is killed, appears in the same manner to Nancy (portrayed by Roony Mara) in the “nightmare on, nightmare off” effect and goes away so quickly it has no time to sink in. Seeing her dead, bloody friend dragged off is just an afterthought to the new Nancy. She shrugs it off with no emotional reaction whatsoever. I guess that’s what the audience should do too.

Another scene is the iconic bedroom shot of Freddy lunging out of the wallpaper above Nancy’s bed as she lies there unaware. It is amazing that in the original, when they had to use a cheap cloth sheet and lighting to achieve the effect is far better than the cheesy, obviously CGI crap used in the new film.

The problem is that they took everything that made Freddy Kruger scary (and unique) and deemphasized it. No witty remarks, no freaky dream sequences, just a guy with a burn victim makeover and a scary claw glove.

As I watched the new Nightmare on Elm Street I got the distinct feeling that the producers and director (long time friend of Michael Bay, Samuel Bayer) forgot that Freddy Kruger is an iconic character. This film seems to be made for people who have not only never seen one of the original Nightmare on Elm Street films, but also never heard of the Freddy Kruger icon. The creators seemed to think that focusing on his pedophilia would be enough of a revelation to keep things fresh. They were wrong.

In the new Nightmare, Freddy’s pedophilia is the center of his character. Unlike the original where he is killing young men and women to get revenge at the parents who killed him, this new Freddy is hunting down the children who revealed him as the pervert he was (and then their parents burnt him to death, but he seems cool with that). The problem is that the fact that Freddy is a pedophile does not make him scary. It definitely has an icky factor to it, but now he has been reduced to the motivations of the usual homicidal pedophile you see every so often on CSI.

I know that it is a common cliché that the characters in a slasher horror always lack a certain sense of reason. They go down into the dark basement alone where the scary noises are coming from, they walk out into the dead of night without a flashlight, they forget how to open doors, and they choose the banana when offered a knife, a gun, or a grenade to take down the killer. In the Nightmare films the victim’s naiveté was somewhat forgivable because they were not dealing with a typical guy in a mask with a knife. They were dealing with an evil dude who could invade your dreams. In the original Nightmare on Elm Street, Nancy is pretty quick to figure out what is happening and is frustrated when she can’t find the answers she is looking for. The information she needs is being kept away from her from her alcoholic mother and until she can get her mother to talk there is not much she can do.

The characters in the new Nightmare on Elm Street have everything laid out before them- then do nothing about it. There is an emphasis on how Tina and Nancy go out to search for information, but they seem to never act on what they find.

For example, Tina finds out at the funeral of her recently dead boyfriend a picture of him when he was very young. She is also in the picture. This confuses her because she does not remember meeting her boyfriend before high school. When she looks at her family’s photo albums she finds a whole year is missing. Her mother tells her the photos must be in the attic.

So Tina goes in the attic right? That would be the next logical way to go to solve the mystery, right? Well Tina has a dream sequence where she goes to the attic but is attacked by Freddy. Later she decides to brave the real attic, slowly and cautiously moving towards the pull cord to bring down the attic stairs when her mother interrupts her (providing another jump scare). The director makes a point to provide a whole, slow scene afterwards of Tina watching her mother leave the house and drive away, looking on carefully through curtains as she waits until the coast is clear.

So with her mother gone, the next thing Tina should do is go directly to the attic right? After all it has been established that Tina is really interested in what is in that attic, so does she go there? Hell no! She goes to bed! We never find out what is in the attic because Tina is conveniently killed by Freddy. Oh, and by the way, the scene with Tina watching her mother leave was during the day, and the next scene with her in bed is at night, so during all that time in between she didn’t go to the attic?

This may seem to be like nick picking but this whole sequence convinced me that the director didn’t care about the movie. In other horror movies when the stalking and slashing takes a majority of the film and characters find the essential information they need near the end to take down the killer. This way the characters wonder around ignorantly for the killer to pick them off. It’s a simple (and lazy) way to avoid having characters find out too early about the killer and take steps to take them out. It might seem great that the characters in the new Nightmare are smart enough to research and finds things out, but then they are total idiots when they don’t act on the information they found. The new Nightmare goes out of its way to set up a situation, and then lets it hang and rot in front of your face.

This pretty much sums up the whole experience of watching the new Nightmare on Elm Street, a film made with apathetic determination. Michael Bay professes how he loved the original Nightmare so much he bought the rights to make this film. His has focused his production company to remaking these films which he apparently loved so much. If this weak, bland attempt of homage is how Michael Bay treats the things he loves, then I want nothing of it. If he loved these films so much why didn’t he do something truly creative and make something inspired by them, rather than the bland remakes he spews out? Because, most likely, he’s full of crap and just wants to make some big bucks. All the power to him in that respect, but this has nothing to do with respect of the original product.

Now Nightmare on Elm Street is not the only slasher remake Michael Bay has produced recently. He also made a remake of Friday the 13th in 2009.

What did I think of that film?

Refer back to the first sentence.