First, there were lots of breasts in 28 days. Nothing like nude female zombies.

Secondly: **SPOILERS**

I think it's fairly clear in both 'The Ring' and 'Ringu' as to why the mother characters kill the daugher characters, but one thing about 'Ringu' that I thought made it superior to (but not more frightening than) 'The Ring' is that it becomes quite clear in the Japanese film why the 'Samara' character is killed in that film by her mother. In 'Ringu,' the mother, is psychic, but the daughter has full-blown telekinetic ability, and she uses it to eliminate about two dozen reporters who are mocking her mother's psychic ability. Not feeling all too good about having unleased that on the world, 'Samara's' mother disposes of her (obviously, I can't remember - much less spell- the names of the characters in the Japanese counterpart.)

In 'The Ring,' Samara is killed for the virtually the same reasons. Anna Morgan kills her daughter because 'Samara' (who also appears to have some kind of psychic ability), having suffered years of emotional abuse, starts to unleash herself on the folks in the town where she lives. She's something of a plague, and so her mom eliminates her.

Interestingly, though, in a deleted scene from the American 'Ring' (left in tact in 'Ringu,') we learn that neither daughter character is drowned. Both mothers sneak up behind the daughters and smash their heads in with rocks. Then, they throw the bodies down the wells to dispose of them. So, their surviving is not accidental or the result of their mothers' inability to let them suffocate for long enough. And whoever mentioned that there is a deleted scene with Blockbuster in the American Ring is correct. You can see it, and the original version of Samara's murder, on the DVD.

Oddly, I have a date with a person named Samara today. How approprate to be talking about 'The Ring' beforehand.

This was my initial reaction to the ending of THE RING:

***MAJOR SPOILAGE***

The reason Anna Morgan, the woman who drowned her daughter in the well, was forced to do so because, in her husband's words, "she wasn't supposed to have a child." The film never goes into precisely WHY exactly, but if her husband influenced her enough to kill "the only thing she ever wanted" then perhaps his say-so was reason enough. It was this parallel to Rachel's (Naomi Watts) own life that really caught my attention.

Now, I have all kinds of sympathy for working mothers in movies and in real life. I have particular sympathy for writer/reporter mothers who I've seen naked kissing another chick in a David Lynch movie. But, come ON.
How Rachel wasn't wrangled up by child protective services halfway through the movie I do not know. That woman was never at home! Sure, Aidan was highly intelligent and incredible independent but he's, like, FIVE. Rachel wasn't motherly or nurturing in the least, she was very detatched (even if it was instigated by Aidan)--hell, he didn't even call her Mom. He called her by her first name.

At the film's finale we learn that Aidan's dad has died after having seen the tape, and the Rachel was spared. NOT because she vindicated Samara's murder by her mother, but because she made a copy. See, I was thinking that by "made a copy" they meant her having a child. Aidan. I mean, sure Aidan's father who died can also be said to have made a copy, but she did all the bloody work. By giving birth she MADE a copy.

If this theory was true it could be determined that Aidan--this copy--could continue on the terror Samara began. Because, let's face it. That kid Aidan was freaky. And why was he furiously drawing the ring, when neither Rachel, nor her husband or any of the other characters who had seen the tape did such a thing. There was so much about that kid that wasn't explored--which, I suppose will happen in those sequels I was unaware of.

Anyway, you can see I was totally reaching.

Edited by author 07-19-2003 04:06 AM
the licking pig flies at noon

The ice is slippery, yet the sun is high
(left the orignal, but realized the futile attempt at humor was just that)

Shrimp: I was getting your back, saying that the argument of "If you don't like this, then you are not smart" is not a good argument. Also, I was yerkin' Britt's chain.

Britt: I was just yerkin' yer chain. Is "Operation: Noble Frontbutt" still a go?

Brittney: I was referring to Mulholland Dr, but it was mostly just to see if I could get a rise out of you. Even if my allegation is true, I'd rather watch Lynch masturbate for 3 hours than 90% of the other stuff Hollywood puts out.

Matthew: I don't disagree about the hokiness of the stuff you summarized, but that's not the stuff that defines SIGNS for me. I've rarely in my life been as "drawn in" by a film as I was by SIGNS, and when a filmmaker can do that to a jaded bastard like me, he earns my utmost respect.

mikrophon: Nobody read "The Emperor's New Clothes" to me when I was a kid, so it always flies over my head when someone makes an allusion like that. So I'm not sure how to answer your question.

Sorry to derail the topic. I promise I'll watch Secretary this weekend!

Edited by author 07-18-2003 03:24 PM
I thought you were smarter than that.

Also, the emperor is wearing clothes, and only a fool wouldn't see that. You're not a fool, are you shrimp?

And, while we're summing up movies in terse, dismissive paragraphs (and I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. It's lots of fun and good exercise for the noggin!):

Mulholland Dr.: "Shit, the pilot didn't get picked up. What can we do to make our money back? I know! I'll pad it out to feature length with T&A and some old ideas that worked in my last couple of movies! There'll be lots of loose ends, but we'll just tell everyone it's supposed to be like that! I'm a genius!"

<EDIT!: deleted my bit about Signs, since Matthew said it so much better than I did.>

I completely agree with you about Secretary. It unveiled and examined a relationship that was complicated and had many layers. In the end it was basically a boy meets girl love story.

Edited by author 07-18-2003 03:07 PM
Shrimp: I don't think SIGNS tried to come across as clever or intelligent. It just wanted to be effective and scary, and it was for me. It attempted to fit snugly into the classic alien invasion sub-genre, and succeeded. Well, that's true of the first 90 minutes. But the last 10 -- oh, brother.

Here's what I wrote in my original post and then axed as being too off-topic:

This was especially bad in SIGNS. (SIGNS spoilers, here). In the end it was discovered that everything in the film happened for a reason: the kids has asthma so he doesn't die from the poisonous gas; there's glasses of water all over the house because water harms the aliens, etc. And as a result, Mel Gibson realizes that God is Watching Out For Him and presumably returns to the fold of the church. Get it? Good -- now stop thinking! Because once you start thinking about the other rest of the film, it's hard not ask "So, wait: did God send aliens to Earth just to prove a point to Mel Gibson? Were the millions of people who died in the invasion folks that God was *not* looking out for? That doesn't add up."

My thoughts on Secretary are perfectly summarized by this review: He spanks her. She likes it. Hmm. Well, then, maybe it's OK they keep doing it, huh? Maybe these two are meant for each other. That's as deep as "Secretary" goes.

Also, it was really hard for me to relate to a woman that submissive, but that's just a personal issue. More than anything else, I was kind of shocked by how the movie tried to make spanking and other blase S&M acts seem so...SUBVERSIVE!

Shrimp: I like you. I really do.

But I know you weren't talking about Mulholland Dr. in regards to "a director's masturbation."

I thought you were smarter than that.

I saw THE RING several months ago, and I remember liking it, but not being blown away. Now I can only vaguely remember how it ended, so it must not have effected me too much.

But I loved SIGNS, so I hate the comparison. I don't think SIGNS tried to come across as clever or intelligent. It just wanted to be effective and scary, and it was for me. It attempted to fit snugly into the classic alien invasion sub-genre, and succeeded.

Also, sometimes when a movie doesn't "explain *anything*" it's because there is nothing to explain. The movie just might be equivalent to a director's masturbation. Fun and rewarding for him, but ultimately useless and hollow for the rest of us...

My problem with THE RING was the same as my problem with SIGNS: they wanted to come across as a clever, intelligent thrillers, but they don't actually want you to think.

THE RING had this treasure hunt quality to it, with the investigators dashing off from one place to another and trying to find all the visual clues that were encoded in the tape: "There's the ladder! There's the tree!" And the end has a couple of big "revelations" that are designed to make you walk out of the theater and go "wow, that ending was totally unexpected. But when I mentally review the clues the gave in the film, it all adds up!"

Unfortunately, that's the *only* thing that adds up -- when you start thinking about other elements of the film (like, the overall plot, or how the characters behaved), it doesn't make any sense at all. The whole film is banking on the fact that many audience members will trust the characters when they exclaim "It all makes sense!" in the end and not actually try to verify this with their own analysis afterwards.

Contrast this to, say, MULHOLLAND DR, where the characters don't explain *anything*, thereby inviting you think about *everything*. After MULHOLLAND, I left the theater going "What the fuck was *that* all about?!" and then, after several days of thought, came to the conclusion that it all fit together. This is the exact opposite of what happened with THE RING, where I left believing that it made sense and then concluded otherwise after some thought.

d00d!!! s3nd th0s3 my w@y!

d00d!!@# 1 h4v3 n00d p1xx 0f m4gg13 GyLL3nh4LL!!@#

I think the American Ring was supposed to have an additional scene where Naomi Watts leaves the unmarked videotape on a shelf in Blockbuster. This was cut - maybe Blockbuster objected?

I found the Japanese Ring not as creepy as the American one. The "killer video" is enhanced in the American version, and it has several creepy scenes that aren't in the original.

Oh, and I liked Secretary and 28 Days as well. :)