The Grudge sucked

[Mark Chance]

I think you have to watch the show to really comment on it. It is the best written show in a while and alot of it is the underlining meanings in the episodes. You can't watch a couple of shows and make a comment on it.

How amusing. You presume I was speaking out of ignorance. I regularly watched Buffy for the first few seasons. Then, pretty much right after Columbine, it went downhill real fast and crashed into a giant wall of made of alternating bricks of mediocrity and banality.

I'm not a bandwagon guy but Whedon is a genius writer.

"Genius" is a word so over-used and misapplied nowadays that it has pretty much lost all meaning. Shakespeare was a genius. James Joyce was a genius. Cervantes was a genius. Ernest Hemingway, whose fiction I don't like, was a genius. E. A. Poe was a genius.

Joss Whedon is a better writer than I, but he's not a genius. He's barely above average.

But, back to the thread:

Was The Grudge scary? Sure, in a jumping out from behind the door and yelling BOO! sort of way. The premise of the movie itself wasn't that scary. The situations weren't scary. Of course, I'm rather difficult to scare.

So, okay, if the only criterion we're going to have is "Was the movie scary?" then I guess, at some level, The Grudge was a success. It still isn't a good movie. A good movie - meaning a movie that is well made - has a sensible plot, decent acting, believeable dialogue, good direction, competent editing, et cetera. The Grudge really didn't have any of these. Ju-on was good in the directing and acting categories, but that's it. (Well, maybe the dialogue was done well, but I don't understand Japanese and have to rely on subtitles.)

 

[warlord]

Mark, your a lost cause(Gets up from computer and walks away.)

 

[DonTadow]

How amusing. You presume I was speaking out of ignorance. I regularly watched Buffy for the first few seasons. Then, pretty much right after Columbine, it went downhill real fast and crashed into a giant wall of made of alternating bricks of mediocrity and banality.


"Genius" is a word so over-used and misapplied nowadays that it has pretty much lost all meaning. Shakespeare was a genius. James Joyce was a genius. Cervantes was a genius. Ernest Hemingway, whose fiction I don't like, was a genius. E. A. Poe was a genius.

Joss Whedon is a better writer than I, but he's not a genius. He's barely above average.

But, back to the thread:

Was The Grudge scary? Sure, in a jumping out from behind the door and yelling BOO! sort of way. The premise of the movie itself wasn't that scary. The situations weren't scary. Of course, I'm rather difficult to scare.

So, okay, if the only criterion we're going to have is "Was the movie scary?" then I guess, at some level, The Grudge was a success. It still isn't a good movie. A good movie - meaning a movie that is well made - has a sensible plot, decent acting, believeable dialogue, good direction, competent editing, et cetera. The Grudge really didn't have any of these. Ju-on was good in the directing and acting categories, but that's it. (Well, maybe the dialogue was done well, but I don't understand Japanese and have to rely on subtitles.)

So, by your own admission you stopped watching somewhere just before season 3 ended, missing more than half of the rest of the series and leaving a great season uncomplete. YOu also could have stopped watching sometime into season 4 (which would have been months after Columbine) but season 4 was, imo, the worst season (though there are some episodes that are highlights). Genius is either going to be an objective or subjective word. When we talk about writers , authors and mucisians its purely subjective. Heck I love Poe more than most but I doubt his writing was due to genius as much as paranoid delusions from all the opium he put in his body. Hemmingway was a man who wrote only when the bottle was nearby.

Modern day, Whedon is about the best visual fiction writer out here. It's hard writing good scifi let alone putting it on any screen and making sure your ideas convey correctly. Even some of the big gun sci fi authors have failed when it comes to putting their works on any screen.

But, back to the subject. A good movie goes out and does what it pronounces to do. Grudge, Ju'on, The Ring are horror movies. I don't expect citizen cane when i go see them. I expect to walk out scared. My only basis for a good scary movie was was the scares original and were they frightening. You admit the movies provide both but because no one had a 5 minute monologue tying up all the loose ends they were bad? I can't name one well acted horror movie that has come out. No modern day horror movies nominated for Oscars. So why my friend do you place such high expectations on horror movies?

 

[Mark Chance]

I can't name one well acted horror movie that has come out. No modern day horror movies nominated for Oscars.

Gaps in your knowledge do not a fact make. Horror(-esque) films that have gotten nods and/or awards from the Academy include (in no particular order) Rosemary's Baby, Misery, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Psycho, A Clockwork Orange, and The Exorcist.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I have to say, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that just didn't like Buffy. And yes, I kept watching it. Friends always had the show on.

Whedon is not some god of writers and he isn't the best out there. Yes, he's good(I love Firefly and his Astonishing X-Men), but there are still many better out there.

 

[DonTadow]

Gaps in your knowledge do not a fact make. Horror(-esque) films that have gotten nods and/or awards from the Academy include (in no particular order) Rosemary's Baby, Misery, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Psycho, A Clockwork Orange, and The Exorcist.

That's why I added the word modern in my statement. I will admit I did forgot about Six Sense. But are you saying there has been only 1 "good horror movie" that has come out in nearly 15 to 20 years. If that was the case, the horror genre would have died years ago as an unprofitable entity. PEople go to horror movies to be scared. It is the genre that people suspend their belief the most.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

That's why I added the word modern in my statement. I will admit I did forgot about Six Sense. But are you saying there has been only 1 "good horror movie" that has come out in nearly 15 to 20 years. If that was the case, the horror genre would have died years ago as an unprofitable entity. PEople go to horror movies to be scared. It is the genre that people suspend their belief the most.

That's a pretty stringent definition of 'modern' you're using. I'd swear that at least Silence of the Lambs, Clockwork Orange, and The Exorcist would still fit 'modern'.

And since when was an Academy Award any indication of a good movie?

EDIT: Oh, and Silence of the Lambs was '91

 

[DonTadow]

That's a pretty stringent definition of 'modern' you're using. I'd swear that at least Silence of the Lambs, Clockwork Orange, and The Exorcist would still fit 'modern'.

And since when was an Academy Award any indication of a good movie?

EDIT: Oh, and Silence of the Lambs was '91

I didn't consider silence of the lamb horror, it was a lot closer to a thriller, and a great thriller it was.

All the other movies have gone through their 25 year old aniversary's already and are more classic than modern. By modern I mean in the last 10 to 15 years.

 

[CrusaderX]

I have to say, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that just didn't like Buffy. And yes, I kept watching it. Friends always had the show on.

Whedon is not some god of writers and he isn't the best out there. Yes, he's good(I love Firefly and his Astonishing X-Men), but there are still many better out there.

Whedon is extremely overrated. Buffy was decent, but far from great. Firefly bored me. Astonishing X-Men is just average, and it's only getting attention because the X-books had been so far below average for years (Chuck Austen, anyone?).

Just my opinions. Sorry to contribute to the thread hijack. Carry on.