Terrorizing the Kiddies
 

I know the other guy said they're identical, but the Japanese version wasn't nearly as scary, and I didn't see the imagery, at least as realized, as the same. Maybe it wasn't as scary because of the subtitles, or maybe because the different culture makes it harder to relate (its okay if the calls are happening in Japan), or because I saw it second.

Paging TF
 

I was wonderig the same thing. All this socking has me confused, am I the only other person here? Am I alone in talking to Penske's various personas? Picture it, one lone man rushing from terminal to terminal, the multiple personalities arguing with each other for the right to respond.

Now there's an idea for a horror movie.

Paging TF
 

Yes.

-T(Penske's pregnant sock)L

Paging TF
 

This is the moment of realization at which you pass from a newbie to jaded old poster.

In a month, you'll retire, only to be pulled back two days later.

Paging TF
 

Please. Even my socks are gay. They just don't say so.

Tag lines & terrorizing kiddies
 

You are the coolest dad, ever. Very nice.

Anyhow, my favorite tag-line of all time is probably from The Abominable Dr. Phibes: "Love means never having to say you're ugly." Followed closely by the tag line for Deliverance: this is the weekend they didn't play golf.

Other goodies:
The Thing (remake): Man is the warmest place to hide.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space: In space, no one can eat ice cream.
Off the horror - changing lanes' tag line always stuck in my mind as being superficially amusing (one wrong turn deserves another).

Not really re: tag lines, but has anyone else noticed that, whoever is in charge of AMC's "MonsterFest" really, really knows their horror movies? First, they are picking really fine films, many of them NOT of the well-known or cultish variety (I was particularly impressed with their resurection of Funhouse). Second, the ads are picking up exactly the right lines from the movies to showcase. For Armies of Darkness, they got both "boomstick" and "groovey," and I think they also got in "gimme some sugar, baby," which was so funny that the first time I saw it I nearly peed my pants.

Ghosts and Other Scary Things
 

I've just gotten off the phone with PETA about you and your squirrel killing. It's a capital offense (to them) and they say you better watch yourself going home tonight or you'll be roadkill yourself. They aren't happy.

They've also informed me that if you go out tonight in a squirrel outfit wearing a "squirrel killer" sign, and hand acorns out to your woodland friends, they will consider a plea bargain.

Fair warning.

There are some great ones for old movies.

The wedding night. The anticipation. The kiss. The knife.

(from the Night of the Hunter).


or a classic:

Gaity! Glory! Glamour!

(guess!)

Paging TF
 

I think you mean "newber."

Ghosts and Other Scary Things
 

Lucky for me that PETA has never gotten much of a stronghold here in God's country. I'm sure the two displaced Berkeleyites holed up in an abandoned warehouse somewhere in Deep Ellum have way too much on their hands to worry about little old me and a couple of dead squirrels. First on their list being all the Park Cities ladies-who-lunch and their furs that they bust out the 3 times per year that the temperature is below 30 here.

I appreciate the heads up though.

Ghosts and Other Scary Things
 

The night before my Bat Mitzvah, I woke up to see an old man standing in the corner of my room. He put his finger to his lips in a "shhh..." kind of way, and walked across the room. He sat on the edge of my bed, laid his hand on my forehead, and I fell back to sleep.

He visited me again the night before I graduated from law school and the night before my daughter was born.

My mother thinks its my great-grandfather who died at age 99 when I was just 8 months old.

I also frequently think I see my best friend (who died almost 2 years ago) out of the corner of my eye.

Terrorizing the Kiddies
 

They aren't identical at all, though I think the US version was a pretty competent translation of the elements of the Japanese original that would play here.

They had quite different plots at significant points (the US version had significantly more plot explication, and it was different from the explication in the Japanese version - though I might be bringing some of the explication from Ringu 2 in).

They also had quite different imagery & subtext (horses, lighthouses, pervasiveness of TVs, gorey bodies, all new; children's rhymes about goblins, demon imagery, active relationship between science and the supernatural, disease and contagion suggestions, all gone).

Some things that were the same: the implicit "guilt" of the working single mother; oddly precocious kid; juxtaposition of juvenile innocence and knowledge of horrible truth was downplayed in the US version but still present; natural/resort/sea imagery juxtaposed with urban imagery.

The Japanese one was ... very Japanese. It was extremely terrifying, in its way, but that was completely different from the way the US version was scary. Ringu was much less obvious, and it gave were no real reasons for one to be scared. Western audiences seem too logical to appreciate being freaked just ... because you somehow are. OTOH, the Ringu camera work was friggin' brilliant - I found the editing itself creepy and disorienting.

Paging TF
 

See, I knew you were a Penske sock. Leave it to some dumbass guy to not realize a pregnancy lasts 9 months, not twelve.


(Or does it just seem like it's been that long?)

Fucking Frenchies
 

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/...een/index.html

[Halloween, a rather new introduction, is already dying out in France. Idiots don't know a good thing when they get it. Then again, with 247 days of national holidays a year, I guess they might get distracted. So long as they continue to sincerely celebrate All Saints and Day of the Dead, I guess I can forgive them.]

Paging TF
 

Let's just say I'm ready to begin eviction proceedings.

-TL