another fine eli roth flick...if you didnt like the first then steer clear...some cliche along the way to the twisted depravity...like dragging along the depressed character no one wants along but doing it for her well being...ive seen that in at least four flicks this year...so far...cliche and plot holes add to the four letter cheese...shaka sez enter at own risk...when is part 3
ARBOGAST ON FILM <http://arbogastonfilm.blogspot.com/> AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE MYSTERY OF CINEMA THAT CAN END ONLY WITH MY DEATH MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2008Lorna doomed<http://arbogastonfilm.blogspot.com/2008/02/lorna-doomed.html> <http://bp1.blogger.com/_v94HclVn6hA/R8MWt2NZoLI/AAAAAAAAB0o/auF80jhreqQ/s1600-h/Lorna001.JPG>I came to HOSTEL: PART II (2007) with limited expectations and only one real requirement: I wanted to see Dawn Wiener strung up naked. And by Dawn Wiener I mean, of course, Heather Matarazzo, star of Todd Solondz's breakout hit WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE (1995) and a featured player in a string of subsequent indie flicks, includingTHE DELI (1997), BLUE MOON (2000) and SAVED! (2004). Matarazzo (Irish, as it turns out, but adopted by an Italian-American family on Long Island) has appeared in a number of A-list films as well (she's the court Jew of THE PRINCESS DIARIES and its sequel) but she carries the indie brand in that Parker Posey way, which is what made her casting in HOSTEL: PART II so neat. She isn't slasher meat, she doesn't fit in. It's as if Eli Roth had hired Dame Judi Dench and then stuck a wooden shaft up her jacksie CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST-style. Well, not really, but kind of. <http://bp0.blogger.com/_v94HclVn6hA/R8MW2mNZoMI/AAAAAAAAB0w/blIuXI82wS4/s1600-h/Lorna002.JPG>So I was kind of primed for the vicarious necro-erotic thrill of seeing this very real young woman hung up for hurting like a pinata but when the scene rolled around I already had one foot out the door. I wish Roth had given Matarazzo an actual part to play rather than a type to throw on like a Pashmina stole. As written, Lorna is the nerdy (and virginal) third wheel ("a waste of a +1") who shanks the fun of classmates Beth (Lauren German) and Whitley (Bijou Phillips) on their shared European adventure, even tagging along on the train to Prague so that she can fill in more pages in her travel journal. It's a shit part that could have been played by a bag of flour; this is not to say that Matarazzo doesn't have moments of sweetness and charm but the deck is stacked against her. She's not here to have a good time; she's just here to die. An overall feeling of generica infects the film which, however it tries (I guess) to send up the slasher subgenre, doesn't do anything different with the template; the Final Girl is the final girl, the Whore Who Dies is the Whore Who Dies and the Comic Relief Slouch is the first to go. <http://bp1.blogger.com/_v94HclVn6hA/R8MmY2NZoQI/AAAAAAAAB1Q/RMzX92BEoos/s1600-h/Lorna006.JPG> *What really hurts is that there is much in HOSTEL: PART II to admire. Milan Chadima's camerawork is fluid and dreamy, especially in scenes of the Harvest Festival, whose burnished color palette you can almost taste. No, it's not THE WICKER MAN (1973) and it doesn't have to be; these sequences give us a nice sense of the Old World brutality that is still very much a part of life in the New Millennium. The soundtrack makes *extensive use of haunting traditional songs performed by Varmuzova Cimbalova Muzika and there are moments in the film of surpassing beauty (Beth's unsettling awakening in the suddenly deserted spa)... but ultimately, as if by contractual obligation, everybody has to get on with the dull business at hand and tedium sets in where terror should be. <http://bp0.blogger.com/_v94HclVn6hA/R8Mj9mNZoPI/AAAAAAAAB1I/2JSk4curPxk/s1600-h/Lorna005.JPG>Imagine if Roth had done Lorna differently. Instead of playing her as a bumbling naif who can't get a man, imagine if he'd written her as a young lesbian (as is Heather Matarazzo in real life) who remains a clinical virgin because she has no interest in men. Imagine Lorna rebuffing the crude attentions of the local boys to keep company with an older American woman, a mother figure who supports Lorna's lifestyle (and in whom Lorna perhaps develops a somewhat complex romantic crush)... but who then turns out to be her killer. <http://bp3.blogger.com/_v94HclVn6hA/R8MVhWNZoKI/AAAAAAAAB0g/tiG80cxwnfk/s1600-h/HOSTELII002.JPG>Imagine if Roth had not cast some non sequitur Eastern bloc actress to do a cut rate Erzabet Bathory imitation but rather someone like Joanna Cassidy or even a 40-something like Elisabeth Shue, whose rough treatment of Lorna would come as a cruel betrayal even if you were kind of expecting it. Imagine Lorna stripped naked and hanging upside down and beholding the woman who had treated her with such parental tenderness stripping off her own clothes (and as such fulfilling, if in an entirely different context, one of Lorna's fantasies) to advance on her with a sickle in her hands to open her up and luxuriate in her pure blood. That would have been a scene. Thatwould have hurt. <http://bp2.blogger.com/_v94HclVn6hA/R8MdkGNZoNI/AAAAAAAAB04/YK8R0XJN874/s1600-h/Lorna003.JPG>Eli Roth is like someone who has the money for lobster but who's never been hungry enough to need to suck out the meat. The stuff he throws in the garbage would feed an army. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Joe Bob's Trailer Park" group. 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