MY TOP SIX DISAPPOINTMENTS OF 2012
By Jenny Orosel
6-The Netflix DVD for CABIN IN THE WOODS didn’t have the audio commentary
A small complaint, but I was really looking forward hearing what Whedon had to say. Damn, you Netflix! Damn you!
5-SINISTER (2012)
It could have been a great movie. But instead of taking the “found footage” subgenre into new directions, it was predictable and seemed like most of what they did had been done before. That said, I realize I am one of about six people in the world who didn’t like SINISTER, so perhaps someone had urinated in my Cheerios that morning. I might give it a chance again sometime, but my disappointment was so strong it will be a while before I’m willing to sit through it again.
Has director David Cronenberg abandoned “body horror” forever?
4-2012 was the year I gave up on two of my favorite horror directors ever returning to the genre: David Cronenberg and Peter Jackson.
Sure, Cronenberg’s still has style. But first he went all action movie with A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005) and EASTERN PROMISES (2007). This year came A DANGEROUS METHOD (technically 2011) and CHRONOPOLIS (2012), two almost exclusively cerebral movies and polar opposite his signature “horrors of the flesh” philosophy that made films like SHIVERS (1975) and VIDEODROME (1983) classics of the genre. No one can do that kind of horror the way he could, and I miss that.
THE HOBBIT? No BAD TASTE or DEAD ALIVE!
Peter Jackson followed the LORD OF THE RINGS TRILOGY with KING KONG (2005) and THE LOVELY BONES (2009). He’s shown that he’s interested in dark works, but both are so well-polished and well funded they lean more toward LOTR than, say, MEET THE FEEBLES (1989). Now I find he’s going to follow his HOBBIT trilogy with a TINTIN movie (2015). I lost all hope for another BRAINDEAD (1992, also known as DEAD ALIVE) or BAD TASTE (1987). And that’s a shame, because he seemed to be the last director out there who had a childlike sense of fun about grit, slime and general grossness.
3-AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ASYLUM (2012)
I loved the first AHS season. I will be the first to admit that it wasn’t anything groundbreaking. But it was a great combination of ghost story and soap opera, a sort of PEYTON PLACE for the horror crowd, and fun Wednesday night entertainment after the Tiny Human had gone to bed. The second season tried way too hard to be Important with a capital “I”. There were Statements to be made, and Issues to make people aware of. Unfortunately, they tried to put too many into the series and cluttered it up so much that, even compared to the archetypes of the first season, there was no character development beyond what was barely needed to get from scene A to scene B. By the time I gave up on the show halfway through I felt like I was being yelled at by someone who read one Yahoo news article and now thinks they’re an expert. If there’s a third season I hope they bring back the guilty fun of the first.
Ray Bradbury and friend
2-Ray Bradbury wasn’t immortal.
Growing up in Los Angeles, he was a fixture of the city. He never passed up an opportunity to help out a library, and even after his stroke when he was mostly deaf and partially blind, he gave a lively and inspiring lecture at the Encino library on Venture Boulevard, and as the night wore on and he was visibly exhausted, he still took the time to give a kind word to each of his fans and sign a book or two. He wasn’t just an example of how to behave as a writer, but as a human being. I cried when I heard he passed. Godspeed, you Prince of Awesome.
1-SONS OF EL TOPO still hasn’t been filmed!!
© Copyright 2013 by Jenny Orosel
(Jenny writes the regular column “Meals for Monsters” here at Cinema Knife Fight)
