the Darkness...

[b.miller]

darker take on...

...a group of sexy teens...

...going for realism


You know, they recently announced a remake of Faces of Death and I believe the comments from the producer actually included all three of these phrases.

Yeah, a remake of Faces of Death. Apparently they're making the "host" doctor character from the original into like, a serial killer, who kidnaps a group of sexy teens or something. It's a darker take on the medical profession and they're really going for realism with the autopsies.

anyway... it's funny that this topic comes up because it's so true. darkness != maturity.

We're in a prison of youth-driven entertainment now though... I don't know how many movies from the 70s will make you think "man that's really watered down" at the end of them... I'm sure there are some, but it also seems like there were just many more movies that were actually aimed at adults. Taking of Pelham One Two Three, which was talked about in another thread, is a good example where it's not like some Cassavettes relationship melodrama or Kubrick intellectual sci-fi exploration... it's just a heist film, but it still has an attitude and presentation behind it that doesn't feel cheap or dumbed down.

I am not even getting into the action photography nowadays. seriously. i don't think I'm alone in saying i'd like to see more than just an elbow or nostril at a time whenever one guy wants to fight another guy.

I can't help but bring up Batman Begins here. Yes, I enjoyed it for the most part but it fits perfectly into this mold. I listened to that Christopher Nolan interview that was also linked from another thread and Elvis Mitchell spent all his time talking about how dark and nuanced the film was and of course Nolan was all like "of course." It's still a friggin comic book movie about a guy dressed up as a bat. The guy wears a mask with pointy ears on it. No matter how deep and gravelly and angsty his mouth and chin are, he's still got rubber pointy ears on the top of his head. It's a teen movie. It's a teen version of an adult movie. What sucks is younger-than-teens want to see it because hey, it's about a man dressed up as a bat.

this sort of taps into a whole rant i have about why movies today and the movie business aren't as cool as i want them to be... it's probably pretty boring for everyone here... but i will just say that it'd be cool if the NC-17 rating actually worked and didn't just mean "porn." That goes into problems with American morals and crap like that but... imagining for the moment that American culture wasn't so hung up on sex and having a rating that said "look, not only is this not appropriate for children, we don't think they'd even want to see it anyway because there's no way they'd properly understand it" and then imagine for a moment that it's throngs of adults looking for good movies every weekend instead of getting home after a week of hard work and just wanting to sit there and watch whatever's on tv, and we'd still have great, MATURE movies in all kinds of varying degrees of light and darkness. Ahh that impossible dream...

I don't want every movie to be deep and "mature"... but it's really nice to A: have the option, and B: actually get it when they say they're giving it to you.

We still get a few though. just not enough.