Look At My Briefs -- 10/29/09

Today is the anniversary of the start of the Great Depression. The best...no, the only way to celebrate such an event is with another edition of brief comments on various subjects I like to call Look At My Briefs.

It's official. Every movie ever made will eventually be remade. I suppose we can expect to be seeing remakes of Gremlins and Weird Science at some point. After writing that sentence, I did a quick search and hey, lookie here.

Thanks again America for sparing me the annual ritual of pulling out my own hair in frustration over yet another Saw movie opening at #1. I love it that a thoughtful, psychological, low budget horror film in its fifth week of release whose support came from what was basically a bottom-up grassroots movement beat out the big name studio crap offerings of both Saw and The Vampire's Assistant. I'd have actually been happy if the vampire movie had beaten Saw VI but the fact that some indie flick with no recognizable actors won the day makes this whole thing even sweeter. By the way, if you are a fan of the Saw films, you're wrong.

It takes a long time before this guy stops coming up with excuses for hating the song "Imagine" and finally hints that he hates it because it's an, "ode to atheism." It's difficult to trust the judgment of anyone who ignores songs like "Up, Up and Away" or "MacArthur Park" to slap "Imagine" with the Worst Song Ever label but it gets even more difficult when the guy doesn't just come out and admit it conflicts with his religious beliefs.

With Halloween approaching, which scary movies to watch this weekend is a subject of much debate in households across the nation. Some go with classics like The Exorcist or Halloween (the original, not the stupid remake). Others go with modern day gore fests like Saw or Halloween (the stupid remake, not the original). As for me, and I seem to be the only one on the planet who thinks this, nothing scares me quite like Sunset Boulevard. Yeah, I know, stop laughing. To this day, I'm terrified of the ending (stop reading now if you've never seen it and, if you haven't, you should be at a video store renting it). The immortal image of Gloria Swanson's Norma Desmond, a woman who has completely lost her mind descending the stairs as the crowd simply stares, no one knowing quite what to do, scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. I suppose that's why it still chills me today and maybe I would have reacted to it differently had my first viewing happened when I was an adult but still, it's a creepy scene. You can watch it on YouTube and judge for yourself.