Sunday, January 10, 2010

Daybreakers: Too Infuriating to Write About.



Dear Michael and Peter Spierig,

I understand that you probably aren't wearing Edward Cullen underpants right now. You probably don't have the Twilight shower curtain either. But you didn't have to prove it either. Now, you may not have made this film as an attack against Twilight, but your fans certainly see it as such. "Yeah man, vampires are cool again. They ain't whiny fags no more." Lines like this can be seen most places Daybreakers is mentioned on the internet. The comparison does not interest me.

Anyone with half a brain can see that the Twilight films are complete trash, but Daybreakers isn't much better; and it offends me that large amounts of people will praise your film simply because it "isn't Twilight." I'm actually upset that I'm even mentioning Twilight because even though it's a pop culture phenomenon, I don't care about it anymore. It sucked. Move on, people. But everyone is drawing comparisons between the two films, and I really wanted to link to that picture of the underpants. Enough about how Twilight sucks. Let's talk about why Daybreakers sucks. I hate that that's going to be taken as a pun.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Precious, or the Illiterate Dnt Knw Vwls.



Dear Sapphire,

Now technically, you aren't the filmmaker, but since you wrote the novel Precious is based on I feel that you're responsible for its content, which is why I'm writing to you and not the director.

Precious is a character piece in which we are introduced to the titular character at a critical point in her life. She is pregnant with her second child, kicked out of public school, and her mother is still the same evil bitch she always has been. In an attempt to better herself, Precious goes to an alternative school that strives to teach her how to read and write, despite her mother's insistence that learnin' won't get you nowhere. What we get is lots of mother daughter conflict, and a supposed uplifting tale of obstacles overcome. Unfortunately, as Precious' teacher puts it, "your protagonist's circumstances are unrelenting," and just as she's finally making a new life for herself, she finds out that she is HIV+.

So the "uplifting" bit is out the window. Which isn't necessarily bad, but what is the point to all this? You've created these characters and situations, which are intriguing to watch, but is your story really saying anything?