#16 – Quiet City, #17 – Paranormal Activity, and #18 – The Brothers McMullen
Was mostly notable to me for a single reason: it dredged up some deeply-held resentment towards people who behave in an infantile manner.
Well, okay. I am allegedly at a point in my life where I am at least legally considered an adult and I still think cartoons and comics are some of the best things out there. I’m even currently making plans with another technical adult friend to see later in the week.
I also separate in my mind, though, my enjoyment of animated things and kids’ movies (to be fair I am really, really particular about and critical of kids’ movies) from the way I speak and interact with real people in the real world.
My mom loves children’s books. But her job involves reading to little kids once a week. And she doesn’t act like a child. She acts like a mature adult who happens to have an interest that she shares with the 3-10 set.
The hipsters in refer to semi-adult things like jobs and physical intimacy and renting apartments and…I don’t know, knowing subway schedules (I grew up on a farm, but I’m guess most inner-city kids are pretty aware of subway schedules). But to me, their behavior seems annoyingly infantile. Not in a sweet way or a way that suggests they’re in touch with their inner child or something. In a way that is, to me, obnoxious (I had very similar problems with the “penis game” scene in was very scary. Or foreboding or whatever. This is apparently a movie that even left grown-ass man and professional horror fanboy Eli Roth terrified. So the fact that I wasn’t really phased by it doesn’t make me feel so much like a badass as it makes me feel like kind of a joyless jerk.
It also had some good things going for it. And its popularity hopefully means good news for the direction horror movies will start going.
I actually wrote a really long review of this for my friends’ website which is being launched soon. I’ll provide a link once it’s up and running.
And finally: seemed like basically a harmless movie with the exception of a total of about…I’m gonna say ten or so minutes wherein it became clear that one character was dating a really negative Jewish girl stereotype.
A “J.A.P.” if you will.
I don’t like it when people say “that offends me because I’m ____” because I feel like things that are truly offensive are kind of offensive to everyone regardless of whether or not they are ____ (this is a personal belief that has lead to many an argument with male friends when I’m shocked to find that they don’t seem as hypersensitive to movie sexism as I am).
But that said: I am a young lady of the Jewish persuasion:
I rest firmly in what most people would deem the “middle class” however my incredibly wise and gracious parents began saving money for my sister and I to go to college as soon as possible.
As a result, I am one of the few people at my incredibly snooty and expensive private liberal arts college who will leave this school without a mountain of student loans.
I guess what I’m saying is: I’m a young, loud-mouthed Jew girl who happens to have really amazing parents who are willing to help her out with things.
None of this has anything to do with Jewishness (my dad is definitely not Jewish, for starters).
Look, this movie is from the mid-90s when
Top Reasons Why Paranormal Activity is so cool you don’t even know:
* Whoever-made-the-movie-I’m-too-lazy-to look-it-up does things with structure that should not be possible according to our current understanding of physics. First off, there are NO END CREDITS. Isn’t that against union rules? Second, and most importantly, the film was able to stop midway through and project an apologizing theater employee without the benefit of 3D glasses. Take that, James Cameron! Third, what other film can get away with doing the same seen in a bedroom with slight variations for half of its duration?
* Almost completely absent in the film is proper undergarments to support the heroine’s chest. Think of the back pain that actress endured to produce this fine work of art.
*At one point, the male characters pectoral muscles and deutsch-baggery combine to open a portal into hell and out pops out the entire cast of Cheers. Or maybe that was my dream when I fell asleep during the movie.
* The filmmakers made something out of nothing, i.e. used cheap special effect to make you think there was a DEMON. I imagine this demon looking either like Big Bird or the orangutan from Murders in the Rue Morgue. Either way, they fired up my imagination. By now, it has become clear that the Paranormal Activity of the title also applies to how this movie got to be at all popular or scared anybody.
*I believe it’s the first film where none of the characters seem to question how am English student and a “day trader” can afford a huge house in San Diego. Seriously, didn’t that day trading craze end like ten years ago? At any rate, as a bum myself, I instantly identify with these characters, or at least I would if they didn’t look like Abercrombie and Fitch models.
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Source: Cinemaniacal
