Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Streaming puppies, THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (46) and SHOCK CORRIDOR (19)

Streaming video is a pretty gnarly thing if you ask me. Sure, I fell in to the Youtube trap when it first premiered, I watched "Ghetto Leprechaun" and "Drinking Out Of Cups" like three hundred times just like the rest of you. But as technology has improved, streaming video has turned in to this bizarre world where weirdos and those with excessive free time can just set up a camera and broadcast live, well, anything to the world. There's websites dedicated to just showing live streams of whatever people are doing (and let me tell you, they are not safe for work, and some of these images will haunt your dreams). I can't get in to it though, I don't want to just watch reality on a screen, I need narrative and characters, not just schlubby people interacting. So, I've sort of given up on the whole concept ... that is until a good friend showed me this:

Be warned it's adorable.

OH MY GOD! THOSE PUPPIES ARE SLEEPING AND FIGHTING AND PLAYING AND IF IT ISN'T THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS! Maybe I should just give up on Criterion Quest and start scouring the internet for streaming videos of puppies fighting. I could call it Puppy Quest or Cuteness Quest or, oh god, those all sound so disgusting, but you get the drift. Streaming video I had you pegged all wrong, this shit is amazing ...

Phew, I'm glad I got that out of my system. I literally spent like two bizarre hours late last night, giggling over those stupid dogs. I mean I'd get bored but then they'd get all wired and start fighting and it would totally draw me back in. Though I will say this: streaming video of living things is still ridiculous, sure this somehow grabbed my attention, but c'mon, are people actually wasting there time thinking that other people are going to be interested in what there puppies are doing? Yeah right.

The Most Dangerous Game (46) was a Criterion film I purchased in mad spree of money spending when I realized the shorter length films in the collection weren't actually that expensive. I ended up with a bunch of hour or less movies that I'd never heard of and have only watched once or so. I decided to dig back in to this 46-minute dinger, and though I've only got through fifteen minutes of it or so, I've got a few thoughts. Old movies are hilarious in their lack of needing emotional cohesion. Literally, in the first twelve minutes of this film the main character (as played by the awesome Joel McCrea) looses his self-described "best friends" in a horrendous ship wreck, and exactly two minutes later he's drinking scotch and flirting with another shipwreck survivor. I don't think a single tear is shed. Though maybe in the 1930s men weren't allowed to cry, especially actors, 'cause it would give the impression of, er, limp-wrists being had. This is a pretty entertaining film in general though, and after I finish it tonight I'll give a more learned write-up of the film and all of it's many influential tendencies.

Shock Corridor (19) is Sam Fuller's second film in The Criterion Collection and an infinitely better one than The Naked Kiss (18). It involves a reporter who fakes madness so he can sneak in to a mental asylum and find out the truth behind a murder mystery. Unfortunately, once within the walls he's bombarded with loonies and their loony propaganda and everything goes down the shitter pretty fast. I remember distinctly a black man who thinks he's in the clan and a horde of sort of shuffling mental patients lurching after the protagonist Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) as he screams and ... such. It's not the happiest of films, but oh man, does it get weird quickly. Highly recommended.

Wednesday: Gulp, Salo (17) and The Most Dangerous Game (46) cont.

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