Word: cult
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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What is it about violence that we find so alluring? The cult of the slasher film, once considered a perverse, transgressive genre, has morphed into the unapologetic torture-porn fad. The genre of television detective drama has collapsed into gore-fests like those featured on “CSI.” Violence has become the stuff of the banal, and yet retains its mystic and exotic appeal. Valentin Groebner, one of Germany’s up-and-coming historians, takes a look at this phenomenon, grounding it centuries ago in the visual culture of the Middle Ages. Groebner?...
Maybe Watchmen is one of those cult films that don't expand beyond the true believers. It probably won't make even alternative-movie history. Containing its own popcorn breaks--hit the concession stand whenever Dan and Laurie start their mooning--this ambitious picture is a thing of bits and pieces. But oh, those beautiful bits. And wow, those magnificent pieces...
...Cult-like as my extracurricular pursuits tend to be—we wear matching hoodies, make annual pilgrimages, and spend a lot of time in nonsense chanting—I understand that they are not going to provide me with answers to the big philosophical questions. The Hasty Pudding Theatricals doesn’t know why we have toes or where HUDS gets all that squash...
...From the start of the Watchmen cult, film people knew two things about the comic book: (1) that it simply had to be made into a movie and (2) that it couldn't. An epic superhero saga, spanning 45 years, with six major characters who all sport double identities and crucial, intertwined back-stories, does not lend itself to the narrative turbo-thrust of a standard action film. Indeed, the superest hero of the bunch - Dr. Manhattan, once known as Jon Osterman - is not an action hero; he's a passive one, a contemplative godhead, a sinewy blue nude Buddha...
...Maybe Watchmen is one of those cult films that doesn't expand beyond the true believers. It probably won't make even alternative movie history. It certainly contains its share of popcorn breaks: hit the concession stand whenever Dan and Laurie start their mooning. But it bravely pursues its agenda with a monomaniacal grandeur, on the order of Speed Racer and Synecdoche, New York. (Loyal readers will understand that I mean this as a compliment.) Both admirable for and cramped by its fidelity to the Moore vision, this ambitious picture is a thing of bits and pieces. Yes, the bits...