Even though I can't defend what Hostel ended up being *cough*homophobic*cough, to my mind the man behind the eye-gouging has good bad-intentions (i.e. I think he could make a really fucked-up movie in the right ways, instead of the wrong ways) and got a little off track there, I think, and, well... he (or, more likely, some 12th assistant) added me as his MySpace friend and how I can not love him?
Oh sure, he's got 8488 other friends, but I'm special.
Plus, the man is butt-raping a decapitated dummy in one of his MySpace pictures. If that isn't loveable, then I don't know what is.
Oh, and here's a new article about him I haven't read yet, just so this isn't a completely empty and gratuitious post (not that I don't do empty and gratuitous...).
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Oh sure, he's got 8488 other friends, but I'm special.
Plus, the man is butt-raping a decapitated dummy in one of his MySpace pictures. If that isn't loveable, then I don't know what is.
Oh, and here's a new article about him I haven't read yet, just so this isn't a completely empty and gratuitious post (not that I don't do empty and gratuitous...).
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5 comments:
I hated Cabin Fever (it was the horror equivalent of Shrek 2. Just incredibly lazy) and I never saw Hostel but I didn't like Saw and they're sorta the same movie, right?
He's got a cute face, but he seems like a pretty twisted guy.
Ah, twisted guys... they make my knees go weak.
And Cabin Fever was a mess, but it was a mess with a couple of sequences that amongst the scariest/freakiest things I've seen in years (the leg-shaving scene is PERFECT, and I've watched just that scene about 20 times over... so well done).
And, same for Hostel. Hostel was worlds better than Saw though, which I fucking loathed, but still not by any means a perfect movie.
But he's trying, and he loves Takashi Miike, and... he's ass-raping a dummy! Love.
Yes, I have problems. ;-)
Ever since I saw that "100 Scariest Movies" thing on Bravo, I've liked Eli. I just haven't liked any of his movies yet. Ditto Rob Zombie. Except Eli gets the edge because he's also cute. But...homophobic? That gives me pause.
The homophobic thing, I think, happened accidentily in Hostel. I mean, I don't think Roth intended that to happen. But he also felt the need to turn the main character, who was a homophobic dickhead, into a revenge-seeking hero-type at the end, which is what ended up turning the movie into a "rah rah, kill the evil faggot" movie.
I think what he was really trying to do is show the main character as being as degenerate and disgusting as the sadists that'd killed his friends, but it didn't work. The audience reaction wasn't one of revulsion, of saying "wow, he's turned into a monster, too" but one of, like I said, "yeah, kill the pervert!".
And yeah, it is problematic that the main sadist of the film is portrayed as queer, but then, the main characters best friend is portrayed as being sexually confused, so I do think he was doing something interesting there. And I, for one, have no problem with the "evil faggot" character in movies, and wish we got it again; I honestly would like to scare the straight dudes some.
So anyway, I'm given pause by what Roth's actually accomplishing, versus what I really do think are his intentions. I'm giving him another movie (looks like it'll be Hostel 2) to figure out what he's trying to say.
And yeah, I think that bravo special, along with his interview with Takashi Miike on one of Miike's DVDs (maybe Audition, I can't remember), are what made me fall for him.
Plus, the only sex scene in Roth's first straight-dudes-opus Cabin Fever had a guy getting anally-probed by his girlfriend, so I know Roth's trying to be, shall we say, progressive in these things. He does just need to figure out the right way to get across the issues he's obviously trying to work with.
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