AFTERTHOUGHTS (62)
CLOVERFIELD DVD AND THEN SOME...


With Matt Reeves’ Cloverfield laying siege to store shelves on April 22, Paramount is giving you your choice of four U.S. retail exclusives…


Suncoast and FYE offer the DVD in limited steel book collectible packaging, while Best Buy offers a bonus disc (TJ Miller’s Video Diary), for those of you who can’t get enough of Hud.


Meanwhile, Target’s Deluxe Edition will include a music CD (Rob’s Goin’ To Japan Party Mix), the track list of which includes:

OK GO - "Here It Goes Again"
Goldfrapp - "Ooh La La"
Coconut Records - "West Coast"
Scissors for Lefty - "Got Your Moments"
The Vapors - "Turning Japanese"
Parliament - "Give Up the Funk"
Of Montreal - "Wraith Pinned to the Mist"
The Blood Arm - "Do I Have Your Attention?"
Bright Eyes - "Four Winds"

And finally, Kmart and Sears offer a free Cloverfield ringtone with the DVD.
So take your pick and bring Cloverfield’s beastie home. You know you want to…

Parting shot: A review of Cloverfield can be found in the Archive.

(Cloverfield DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com; steel book packaging image and TJ Miller’s Video Diary cover art courtesy of cinemablend.com; Rob’s Goin’ To Japan Party Mix cover art courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com.)

CLOVERFIELD
(Review)

When J.J. Abrams, Lost writer Drew Goddard, and Felicity co-creator Matt Reeves, get together with the intention of giving America its very own iconic monster ala Japan’s Godzilla, that’s just something you have to pay attention to.
And when the film itself is surrounded by a cloak of secrecy, preceded by a trailer that sparked fanboy insanity and birthed crazy-a$$ rumours that stretched from Voltron all the way to Cthulhu, and hyped by a viral marketing campaign that supplied a fascinating back story, well, Cloverfield was simply something that had to be seen.


We open in darkness. Color bars slam onto the screen. Text indicates that what we are watching is a tape recovered from an incident site of something code-named “Cloverfield,” a tape that is now property of the Department of Defense.
When the tape proper begins, it’s a quiet New York morning, following a pivotal night in the lives of Robert Hawkins (The Black Donnellys‘ Michael Stahl-David) and Elizabeth McIntyre (Odette Yustman, soon to be seen in David S. Goyer’s upcoming The Unborn), and right off the bat, Abrams and company slam us with two very potent realities.
One, there’s an immediate and overpowering sense of voyeurism, as we are acutely aware that this is a tape that has been seen and analyzed by the U.S. military and government. And two, there’s also the immersive feeling of being part of the action, of looking out through the camera’s viewfinder and being in that room, in the middle of these people’s lives.
All throughout the film’s running time, as we bear witness to a day at Coney Island—used subsequently as a potent emotional counterpoint throughout the film—then Rob’s going away party (he’s off to work for Slusho! in Japan), and the bizarre catastrophe that mars the evening’s proceedings, we never quite escape this double-headed contradiction, and this intriguing mixture of these two opposing feelings is merely one of the many things that makes Cloverfield work so fiendishly well.


The fact that Goddard’s script and Reeves’ direction exploits the first person handheld shaky cam narrative convention Cloverfield chooses so effectively, is also another reason why I was so impressed with the film.
To begin with, I wasn’t terribly enamoured of The Blair Witch Project, which used the same DIY documentary aesthetic and left me with a case of motion sickness and an overall sense of dissatisfaction at having spent so much time with a group of boring and uninteresting ciphers.
Given my less-then-stellar experience with Blair Witch, I was understandably anxious about this aspect of Cloverfield, despite my excitement at the film’s creative pedigree. So when the first 18 or so minutes managed to suck me in so completely that there was actually a part of me that got annoyed at the sudden shift in tone when the attack begins (I really wanted to chill out some more with these people), I knew that Reeves and Goddard had me.
And when the remaining hour or so shapes up to be a tightly wrought, adrenaline-pumping, emotionally-wringing cinematic experience, well, that’s just brilliant, isn’t it?


Naturally, the film’s depiction of an attack on New York, and the resultant fear and panic and shock that accompanies it, evokes the reality of 9/11, and actually shunted me back to the pivotal moment I saw the towers’ collapse on CNN (which I had stumbled upon completely by accident as I was channel-surfing).
It was an unsettling echo of that overwhelming sense of being witness to the real-time unfolding of a catastrophe that you could do nothing to stop, while simultaneously feeling a part of the tragedy by your being its witness.
And while Cloverfield presents a fictional situation, the first-person POV nonetheless slams you right in the middle of the action, making the resultant experience a very raw and visceral one. And getting us to care for Rob and his friends only manages to raise the stakes higher. (Even during his Felicity days, Reeves already displayed a sharp eye and ear for characterization.)


At this point, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the excellent cast here, who all give naturalistic performances that belie the inherent over-the-top craziness of the whole monster movie milieu: these are just people who suddenly find themselves at the heart of a devastating catastrophe.
Yes, it’s being caused by a monster running rough shod over New York, but the damage to both property and people (and the shock and trauma that serve as accompaniment) is still very evident and undeniable.
It helps, of course, that not only are these actors well-cast, they’re also not recognizable marquee faces, thus contributing to the authenticity of the experience. Most are TV faces—Stahl-David; The Class’ Lizzy Caplan; Carpoolers’ T.J. Miller; and Jessica Lucas, from Life As We Know It and Edgemont—while Mike Vogel, who plays Rob’s brother Jason, starred in Poseidon and The Deaths of Ian Stone.


And while they’re all commendable, the stand-out amidst the supporting players has to be Miller, who plays Rob’s goofball best friend Hudson “Hud” Platt. Hud’s a tag-along dopey sidekick who finds his calling as designated documentarian of Rob’s going-away party and takes it to heart, as it’s a very important job, or so Jason tells him, as he fobs off the thankless task to Hud.
It’s a testament to Miller that he performs the majority of his role off-camera—since he’s the one supposedly shooting—and still manages to leave an indelible mark on the film’s proceedings.
It’s also because of Hud’s manner that the idea of him dumping the camera—and thus shirking off his perceived responsibility as the evening’s documentarian—smoothly becomes something inconceivable, even when all the mayhem breaks out. Hud is someone who needs to have something to talk about, something to do, and the camera is quite possibly the one thing that keeps him focused and sane as the city around him ignites in creature feature insanity.
Which is a particularly good thing, as one of the other things that bugs me about this approach is why in the hell the camera guy never seems to just hurl the damned camera at whatever’s chasing him (thus effectively lightening his load and truncating the film’s running time).
Miller and Goddard’s script admirably address this concern, and Cloverfield is all the stronger for it. (The going-away testimonials which Hud eagerly records early on also serve as the smart set-up for the Blair Witch confessional moment you just know is gonna come around sooner or later…)


In fact, the only (admittedly not that major) rupture in my enjoyment of the proceedings is quite possibly when the gang runs into the military, since, a) the grunts are taking orders from a recognizable genre face (Twin Peaks’ Chris Mulkey); and b) they don’t seem to bother confiscating the camera, which military types are usually prone to do in this sort of situation, right?
Well, I guess they were just too busy mounting the big attack.
And like I said, not that major.


Now, as to whether Abrams and company were ultimately successful in their initial goal, of giving America its iconic movie monster, I’m not entirely sure. The thing is, it’s pretty freaky-a$$ looking.
Let’s face it, some dude in a green rubber reptile suit vomiting radioactivity (or even a giant ape scaling the Empire State Building) is a lot more pop culture-friendly than this bizarre, misshapen (and nameless) monstrosity.
But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, right?
In the meantime though, following in the wake of Bong Joon-ho’s Gwoemul and Frank Darabont’s The Mist, Cloverfield is clearly another towering entry in the annals of creature features, a pulse-pounding monster movie for our post-9/11, YouTube world of instant documentation, upload, and access, where creatures can exist and wreak havoc on both the silver screen and the World Wide Web.
And with any luck, in the collective pop culture consciousness as well.


Parting shot: Cloverfield hits DVD on April 22, and you can check out Afterthoughts (62) in the Archive to see your choice of U.S. retail exclusives…

Parting shot 2: Reviews of Bong’s Gwoemul and Darabont’s The Mist can be found in the Archive, along with episodic recaps/reactions to Lost.

(Cloverfield OS courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; images courtesy of 1-18-08.com, empireonline.com, filmz.ru, and wired.com.)

reVIEW (46)
SARINUI CHUEOK
(MEMORIES OF MURDER)

Before Korean director Bong Joon-ho made a decidedly bigger splash with his creature feature Gwoemul (The Host), he had already made a significant impression on the global cinema stage with his 2003 serial killer procedural, Sarinui Chueok (Memories of Murder).

Set in 1986 and based on a real-life unsolved case, Sarinui Chueok chronicles the predations of a serial rapist and killer in the Korean countryside, and the unfolding investigation as local detective Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho, seemingly ubiquitous in the best of Korean cinema, whom Bong would again collaborate with on Gwoemul) is made to work with city boy Inspector Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung), who’s just arrived from Seoul to help crack the case.
Despite a premise that sounds like a very run-of-the-mill serial killer thriller, what makes Sarinui Chueok stand out as a shining exemplar of the genre though is the manner in which Bong grounds the narrative in the time and place of its setting.

This is 1986, in the Korean boondocks, where crime scenes are routinely disrupted and compromised by unruly children, curious gawkers, the press, and runaway tractors; a pre-Internet Korea, without even the technology and equipment for a standard DNA check. It’s Grissom’s worst nightmare…
This low-tech procedural aspect, Bong’s film shares with David Fincher’s Zodiac, another brilliant serial killer thriller of recent vintage. But what makes Sarinui Chueok even more fascinating is how the narrative is truly of Korea, how the plot and script can’t simply be transplanted to, say, an American setting for an English-language remake.
This is Korea, where civil rights advocates will frankly be horrified at the manner in which suspects are treated and confessions extracted, making this the worst nightmare of any of the dozen or so Law and Order casts as well…

It’s this very particular national identity though that serves to make Sarinui Chueok Exhibit A in the case that you can always approach what seems to be a dead horse of a genre with new and vital eyes (something Fincher also managed to do with Zodiac and Showtime is doing with Dexter).
It’s also Exhibit A in the case of never making the mistake of aping the wrong conventions of a foreign film when you’re clearly not making one. (Think Rob Marshall’s Memoirs of a Geisha, which tried so hard to be an Asian art film, when it clearly wasn’t.)
In this latter case, Sarinui Chueok also shares its commendable distinction with Exhibit B, Sebastian Cordero‘s Cronicas (Chronicles). Produced by Guillermo del Toro and Alfonso Cuaron, Cronicas is likewise based on a real-life serial killer case, this time, in Ecuador. Though I do admit to finding Sarinui Chueok a far more absorbing film, Cronicas is nonetheless a very non-Hollywood approach to the genre that is very grounded in its Ecuadoran setting.

What also makes Sarinui Chueok such a memorable and distinctive entry in the annals of serial killer thrillers is its sense of humour; this is going to sound strange, but Sarinui Chueok is the funniest serial killer thriller I’ve ever seen.
Again, Bong takes that very particular Korean setting and sensibility, and finds strains of amusement in the proceedings, without overstepping the boundaries of good taste. Though there are chuckles and guffaws to be found here (mainly in the manner in which the investigation is conducted and the rural circumstances that surround it), we never truly forget that this is a gruesome case, whose details and deviant minutiae were alien, not just to the provincial townsfolk who were intimate with its disturbing leavings, but to the country as a whole.

And if you’re not totally convinced, then consider that Sarinui Chueok was the most watched film in South Korea in 2003, and is currently the fourth most viewed film in South Korea of all time. It also won Korea’s Grand Bell Awards for Best Film, Best Director, and Best Leading Actor (Song).
So if you’re looking for something different on the serial killer thriller front, or discovered Bong Joon-ho through Gwoemul, you should really check out Sarinui Chueok.
It’s effective, lyrical, and yes, funny, and that’s not something you can say about most serial killer thrillers.

Parting shot: Though the narrative is elegantly compressed in this film, the real-life case also mirrors the actual Zodiac case in that this was a terribly protracted investigation which was ultimately left unsolved: ten similar murders occurred between October 1986 and April 1991, and over 3,000 suspects were interrogated over its course.

Parting shot 2: Reviews of Bong’s Gwoemul and Fincher’s Zodiac can be found lurking in the Archive, where episodic recaps/reactions to Dexter also reside.

(Sarinui Chueok OS courtesy of soju22.net; images courtesy of seoulselection.com; Memories of Murder DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.)

AFTERTHOUGHTS (61)
LOOKING THROUGH THE PRISM

The nominees for the 12th Annual PRISM Awards—which honour “outstanding accomplishments in the accurate depiction of drug, alcohol and tobacco use and addiction in film, television, interactive, comic books, music, and video entertainment,” as well as responsible and realistic depictions of mental health issues—have been announced, and among those singled out are:

Control (The Weinstein Co. / Northsee Ltd. / EM Media / IFF-CINV / 3 Dogs and a Pony / Warner Music UK)
Feature Film – Limited Release

Lars and the Real Girl (MGM Pictures / Sidney Kimmel Entertainment)
Performance in a Feature Film (Ryan Gosling)
Mental Health Depiction Award

Lost (ABC Entertainment / ABC Studios / Bad Robot)
Drama Episode (“Through the Looking Glass” Pt. 1 and 2)
Performance in a Drama Series Episode (Matthew Fox)

Congratulations, one and all. For the complete list of this year’s nominees, go here.
As noted on the official PRISM Awards website (http://www.prismawards.com/), “… winners are selected through a submission and review process by members of the creative community and scientific experts. They are selected for their entertainment value, accessibility of their message, and scientific accuracy. The production in each category that best exemplifies these three objectives is presented with an award.”
The awards will be handed out on April 24, 2008, at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and will be taped for telecast on FX.

Parting shot: A review of Control can be found in the Archive, along with episodic recaps/reactions to Lost.

(OS’s courtesy of impawards.com; Lost images courtesy of abc, atnzone.com, and aol.com.)

reVIEW (45)
DANS MA PEAU
(IN MY SKIN)
(Review)

When the French want to make you squirm, they really don’t kid around.
In recent years, films like Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible, Fabrice Du Welz’s Calvaire, and Kim Chapiron’s Sheitan have played like violent, visceral assaults on their audiences.
Somewhere amidst all of that grueling cinema lands 2002’s Dans ma peau (In My Skin).

Directed and headlined by frequent François Ozon collaborator, Marina de Van, Dans ma peau introduces us to research analyst Esther, ambitious, hard-working, and in what appears to be a healthy relationship with Vincent (Calvaire‘s Laurent Lucas).
For all intents and purposes, Esther is normal.
But after she gashes her leg badly in a fall, an injury she doesn’t even notice till much later, Esther is gripped (and gradually overwhelmed) by an inexplicable compulsion to cut herself.

Given its grave subject matter of self-mutilation and the unflinching manner in which de Van approaches the material, Dans ma peau is one of those cinematic experiences that feels more like an endurance test than anything else, the kind of film I grow hesitant to view a second time.
Bereft of a traditional Hollywood cause and effect plot, and with its distinct refusal to shed light on the psychopathology of Esther’s dysfunction, Dans ma peau is clearly not for everyone, and is the sort of film that will repulse, revolt, and alienate many a viewer.
De Van disturbs, and ultimately, terrifies, her Esther gradually transforming over the course of the film into a single-minded obsessive, as we bear witness to the impact her newfound tastes have on her job and her relationship. (The dinner at around the midpoint of Dans ma peau has to be one of the most bizarre and unsettling ever committed to celluloid.)
Esther’s journey to reconfigure her psyche by carving into her own flesh has the lingering aftertaste of Cronenberg, a nightmare journey through the tantalizing realm of the organic. It also recalls Takashi Miike in its atrocious regard for the human body.

As I said, this certainly isn’t for everybody, but what is perhaps undeniable is the potent piece of transgressive cinema de Van has produced here.
I’m almost afraid to see what she comes up with for her feature length follow-up, Ne te retourne pas, with Monica Bellucci and Sophie Marceau…

Parting shot: A review of Chapiron‘s Sheitan can be found in the Archive.

(Dans ma Peau DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.co.uk; In My Skin DVD cover art courtesy of amazon.com.)

LOST
Season 4 Episode 5
“The Constant”
Written by Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse
Directed by Jack Bender
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Meanwhile, on the helicopter, in taking the exact coordinates Daniel gave him, Frank flies directly into a thunderhead. But the turbulence makes them veer just slightly off course, and suddenly, Desmond is 8 years in the past, during his army stint, and he believes he’s just had a particularly vivid dream involving a lunatic Island and a helicopter.
He’s doing some military exercises in the rain when suddenly, he’s back in the helicopter, and he can’t remember Sayid, and doesn’t understand why he’s on a helicopter…
While Sayid keeps a panicked, struggling Des away from the controls, Frank clears the thunderhead and lands the helicopter on the freighter, where the other Boat People seem none too happy to see them.
Des is taken to the infirmary, where he’s locked in, and he meets Minkowski (Fisher Stevens), who’s in four point restraints. Des is freaking, not knowing why he’s here, or who these people are, and Minkowski says, It’s happening to you too.

Back on the beach, Jack and Juliet are having a discussion with Daniel and Charlotte, wondering why it’s been a day and they haven’t heard word from Sayid when the trip to the freighter should have taken all of 20 minutes.
Daniel starts to talk about perception of time, and Charlotte says, We don’t want to confuse anyone.
Juliet says, Well, talk really slowly and maybe we’ll understand. (Yeah! Score!! You go, Ju-ju, take that snotty Brit b!tch down…)
Daniel says, So long as Frank follows the exact coordinates I gave him, everything should be fine.
Jack asks, And what if he doesn’t?
Daniel: Then there could be some side effects…

Thus does the episode shuttle back and forth between 2004 Island (or in this case, Freighter) Des and 1996 Army Des, as we tag along with Des’ 1996 consciousness as it ping pongs back and forth across the time continuum.
Poor Des gets a break though, when Sayid trades his gun for Frank’s NaomiPhone. Sayid rings the Beach, and talks to Jack, telling him about Des’ wonky condition.
Armed with his journal, Daniel jumps in and things really get interesting.
Daniel talks to Des and quickly determines that Des believes it’s 1996, so Daniel says, looking through his journal, All right. When you get back to where you believe you should be, go to Oxford and look for me. Tell me this (numbers, oscillate, 11 hertz, mumble mutter), and if I don’t believe you, tell me you know about Eloise.
So Des jots this down on the palm of his hand, but when he finds himself in 1996 again, his palm is of course, devoid of any writing.
Luckily, he’s got a good memory, as he tracks down a long-haired Daniel, who initially thinks it’s a lame prank (“Time paradox,” he scoffs), but when Des lays down the numbers and the Eloise bit, Daniel takes him seriously.

Daniel shows Des Eloise, who as it turns out, is a lab rat. Daniel uses the figures to irradiate Eloise, to make her “unstuck in time.”
After the radiation bath, Daniel lets Eloise into a maze, which she travels through to the other end, unerringly.
Daniel is jubilant, and Des doesn’t get it. Daniel says, I just finished this maze. I’m going to train her to run through it an hour from now.
Des then spends about 5 minutes back on the freighter, and when he finds himself back in 1996 (where much more than 5 minutes have passed), Eloise is dead.
Bastards!
It seems Eloise had an aneurysm since the poor rat’s consciousness was shuttling back and forth between the future and the present, and as the condition progresses, it gets harder and harder to return, especially if there is no anchor, no constant, something (or someone) important who exists in both time periods.
And of course, we all know who Des’ constant is.
So Des needs to make contact with Penny in 1996 and 2004, or he’ll wind up just like poor Eloise.

Des calls Pen in 1996, but her phone’s been disconnected, so he meets Pen’s da (Alan Dale, who plays bastardly patriarchs like nobody’s business), and asks for her phone number. (Incidentally, Da Widmore’s at an auction for a log of the Black Rock!)
In a swanky bathroom, Da Widmore gives Des Pen’s address (and wastes a whole lot of water, the d!ck).

In 2004, they find they’re in sort of a pickle, as the communications were trashed by some mystery someone, so they can’t call Pen.
Given a paper clip and spit, Sayid can, of course, fix anything, but they’re locked in the infirmary! Suddenly though, the door isn’t locked anymore, is in fact, open, so they get crazy Minkowski to bring them to the communications room (where Des sees a calendar that indicates it’s almost Christmas).
All the while, Minkowski’s nose is bleeding, and he winds up very dead, just like poor Eloise. (And I thought, That’s the extent of Fisher Stevens’ role? Oh well…)
Sayid does his best to fix the comm stuff, but they still need that phone number.

In 1996, Des goes to Penny’s, and though it’s painfully clear she doesn’t want anything to do with him, Des all but pleads, just give me your phone number, and I’ll call you 8 years from now, on Christmas Eve, 2004.
Pen says, If I give you my number, will you leave me alone?
Des says, Aye.
So Pen gives him her number (…; if I was Des, I’d be so screwed), and as he memorizes it, she asks, If it’s so important, why don’t you write it down?
To which Des replies, It wouldn’t matter.
And Pen kicks his arse out.

In 2004, Sayid fixes the comm line, just in time for Des to return with the number in his noggin. Sayid warns him the battery may go belly up at any moment, so be ready for that.
And Des makes the call.
And the phone rings for what seems a brutally long time.
And Pen answers!
And they talk and cry (and I’m beginning to bawl too), and Des can’t quite believe she’s at the other end of the line, and Pen says, I’ve been looking for you for the past 3 years, and Des says, I’ve been on an Island, and Pen says, I know all about the Island, I’ve been doing research, and when I got to talk to your friend Charlie, I knew it was all true, and they profess their love for each other, and the battery goes belly up.
Sayid apologizes, but Des says it’s all right, and he seems to remember his 2004 self now.
And back in 1996, as Des walks away from Pen’s, he smiles, as if instinctively knowing that everything’s all right, no imminent aneurysm, for now…

Back on the beach, Daniel’s looking through his journal, and he sees this: If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant.

Okay, brilliant episode, once again getting into the nature of time in the Lost-verse (as with Season 3’s “Flashes Before Your Eyes”), while cranking up the waterworks with the whole “must search for my constant” thing, as if to say love really can save your life, if only you let it.
The question that will occur to the time police though, is evident: why don’t either Des or Daniel remember the 1996 meeting (which gave Daniel the key to unlocking the secrets of time travel)?
Well, let me get it straight first.

When the helicopter veers off Daniel’s coordinates, the consciousness of 1996 Des is suddenly downloaded into 2004 Des. It’s this consciousness that gets shunted back and forth between the two time periods for the rest of the episode.
By the episode’s end, Des apparently remembers Sayid, but is this still the 1996 Des consciousness (which technically would have no memories of the 8-year gap) or did the 1996 consciousness somehow fuse with the 2004 consciousness when Des contacted his constant?
Or (and this seems the most likely), did the veering off-course jog the consciousness of 2004 Des back to its 1996 condition, which then caused it to take the place of the original 1996 consciousness, back in 1996?
So technically, the consciousness we were tagging along with was 2004-thinking-it-was-1996. Thus, when everything is set to rights, the 2004 consciousness gets toggled back to its proper setting.
Which would mean that it took Des over for that period of time in 1996, which, for his original 1996 consciousness (which was evicted to God-knows-where for the interim), would seem like a blank, a hole in his memory, as if he’d experienced a blackout of, what was it, a weekend?
Thus, no memories, other than, Gee, you know I lost a couple of days back in 1996?

And as for Daniel, when we see him in the episode 2 flashback, he did strike me as someone who may have had some sort of nervous breakdown in the recent past.
So maybe something happened to Daniel that caused him to have a breakdown, thus eradicating his memories of that encounter. (And maybe that also has something to do with that memory test Charlotte was giving Daniel with the cards in a previous episode; I think I may have neglected to mention that before.)
Checking out the official podcast and some interviews, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have indicated that in the Lost-verse, the universe “course corrects” itself to avoid and eradicate any potential paradoxes caused by futzing around with time, either through time travel, or attempts to avoid inevitable futures. (If memory serves me right, this is also what Mrs. Hawking explained in “Flashes Before Your Eyes.”)
So maybe the breakdown (if Daniel indeed had one) was the universe’s way of course correcting, obliterating memories that Daniel should never have had in the first place.
Ah, but then Daniel wrote that note to himself in the journal…
Smart.

Whatever the case with that theory though, I do sincerely hope we see more Daniel flashbacks in the (heh) future.
I also hope the whole “aneurysm threatening to go pop” thing is safely over now. I mean, I wouldn’t want Des to just drop stone dead the moment he hooks up with Pen. My friend Karen will so not like that.
(Honestly, after his phone call to Pen got cut off, I kept on thinking, Okay, he’s gonna keel over right now, isn’t he? But he shakes Sayid’s hand, and seems fine. So let’s let it be that way, huh? Des should get his happy ending with Pen, shouldn’t he?)

What also just struck me now (and really should’ve long ago, given that Alan Dale has played that sort of shady father figure in other shows before) is that maybe, Da Widmore is a major player in all of this.
I mean, it can’t be mere coincidence that he’s interested in the Black Rock log. Could he be trying to find some indication of the Island’s whereabouts in the log?

And is the Boat Person who smashed the comm stuff Ben’s spy? Could it be—as all indications seem to point to—Michael?
And if so, was it Michael who unlocked the infirmary door? Or was that Frank, who did claim to Sayid that he wanted to help?

Oooh, questions, questions…

COUNTDOWN: 43.

(Images courtesy of abc, sparklies.org, abc.go.com and aol.com.)

JOSHUA
(Review)

George Ratliff’s Joshua is a measured and terribly assured psychological thriller that follows Brad and Abby Cairn and their son Joshua, as their lives transform overnight with the birth of the couple’s second child, Lily.
Ratliff’s script, co-written with David Gilbert, takes a realistic approach to the idea of the bad seed and becomes the solid foundation to what is perhaps the most unnerving entry of this lot, which includes films like The Omen, The Good Son, and of course, The Bad Seed.
And not only are Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga exceedingly effective as the Cairns, but young Jacob Kogan as the nine-year old Joshua is a fantastic find.
Practically from the get-go, there is an alien otherness to his Joshua, some element in his performance that never once makes you forget that there is simply something wrong with this child.
Rockwell is the father who tries gamely to hold his family, his marriage, and his job together, while Farmiga (who already held her own with some formidable co-stars in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed) is the mother who struggles to keep her head above the treacherous waters of post-partum depression. Their performances and that particular plot point ground the film in a very real and tangible way, which makes things all the more tragic when the narrative takes its turns into “Good Heavens, what an evil child” territory.


Joshua is a chilling look at the changes that are wrought by the arrival of a new child into an already established household. It’s also a disturbing study of just how alien and removed a child can be from its parent.
Though we never get to see what life was like before Lily (the film basically opens with her birth), we do get a sense of how the new infant has managed to encroach on Joshua’s territory, and it’s really only in the light of this fresh arrival that the Cairns become acutely aware that their first child isn’t at all like a regular nine-year old.


I’ve mentioned this ‘round these parts before, that I’ve long been fascinated by serial killer cases. Thus, I’m well aware of the early warning signs of a sociopath in the making. (As are most movie-going types these days, I imagine, given the surfeit of serial killer thrillers out there.)
Still, when the beats are done here, there’s a genuinely troubling nature to the occurrences (some on-screen, many off-) that serve to magnify the cold and calculating threat that lies at the heart of Joshua.


Making quite a stir when it screened at Sundance last year, Joshua didn’t make a whole lot of money in its theatrical release, and I can sort of see why.
It isn’t a comforting film, Joshua. It’s disturbing in a far more insidious way than a movie like, say, The Omen. Stripped of any supernatural horror movie conventions, Joshua’s terrors play as frighteningly real and actually possible; we can’t all be the parents of the AntiChrist, right? But an intelligent sociopath is far more commonplace.
Joshua also plays into that fear of course, that you could do your best to raise your child reasonably well, give him everything you think he wants and needs, never lay a violent, abusive finger on him, and he’ll still turn out to be a sick little psycho.


This disturbed me a whole lot more than I thought it would, and that’s mostly on Farmiga and how her performance becomes this really painful journey to watch. There are several moments where you just want to scream irrationally at Rockwell’s character, “Can’t you see there’s something horribly wrong here?! Look at your wife, man!”
This is award-worthy stuff, but sadly, there’s that stigma horror films are unjustly saddled with, so this will join the ranks of Brilliant Performances in Horror Movies That Will Ultimately Be Ignored By Oscar And His Ilk.
If anything though, Joshua points to a dazzling future for Farmiga.


The other aspect of Joshua that simply gets beneath the skin is the final reveal, when the motivation for Joshua’s actions becomes icily clear. It’s certainly been there from the early sections of the film, constantly hovering in the background, and yet when it does rear its ugly head (in a flat-out disturbing rendition of Dave Matthews’ “The Fly”), it comes at you like an avalanche of maggots.

So if you like your psychological horror undiluted by any modern Hollywood safety standards, Joshua’s the boy to see.
Just be prepared, because he has no concept of the term “kid gloves.”


(Joshua OS courtesy of impawards.com; images courtesy of bloody-disgusting.com; DVD cover art courtesy of dvdactive.com.)