You gotta have heart

I'm more than midway through "Slasher: Guilty Party," the second season of the Canadian horror series whose debut season I praised, and I feel a sense of nausea creeping in. Like season one, "Guilty Party" includes graphic violence done by a merciless, mysterious killer. Also like that debut season, entitled "The Executioner," season two features morally ambiguous characters who have done bad things but seem sincerely remorseful, or at least had decent reasons for doing the bad things.

What "GP" lacks, to its serious detriment, is likable characters. Retreat center co-founder Antoine may be the series' closest thing to a hero, and that shows you how dire the situation is. Sure, Antoine killed a dude once, but that dude was a murderous homophobe, and Antoine practically killed him in self-defense. Not surprisingly, Antoine's commitment to nonviolence and serenity breaks down just as easily in the presence of the titular guilty party, a group of onetime camp counselors who return to the scene of a crime -- now the site of the commune-like retreat center -- to bury their big secret once and for all.

Most slasher films deliver gory comeuppance to characters in an as-you-sow-so-shall-you-reap, Old Testament kind of way. Antoine pays for knocking off a gay-bashing asshole and concealing evidence of another crime he didn't commit by ... getting drilled alive, chopped into pieces, and stowed in the same trunk where he had stashed that evidence? C'mon. It seems even less fair when Gene, the grumpy but otherwise reasonable snowmobile driver who escorts the ex-counselors to the retreat center, gets chainsawed in half at the start of the whole bloody story.

"The Executioner" satisfyingly combined the typical slasher morality play with the engaging puzzle of figuring out whose sins were bad enough and biblical enough to get them splattered. "GP" may be trying to say something grim and unpleasant about human nature, or an uncaring universe -- or something -- by making some kills so random and awful, but Lord knows what. After watching several of the ex-counselors suffer excruciating fates, I'm actually rooting for the remaining amoral bastards to escape with their lives, so that at least the whole damn season isn't red-smeared nihilism writ large. I definitely have "Slasher" fatigue. 

Enter the widely lauded PG-13 horror-comedy "Happy Death Day." Recognized quickly by critics as the cinematic love child of "Scream" and "Groundhog Day," "HDD" is playful, good-natured, and populated with a mix of nice people, somewhat bitchy and superficial people, and genuinely bad people -- just like, y'know, the actual world. Also, unlike "Guilty Party," whose artistic intentions aren't particularly clear (is it trying to be a dark meditation on human nature? Or just a mashup of gnarly kills and hippie cliches?), "HDD" is clearly out for a good time. Jessica Rothe has It Girl written all over her throughout a funny, captivating, and even moving performance as Theresa "Tree" Gelbman, a bratty sorority sister with, it turns out, not only untapped depths but some bad-ass inner strength.

Overall, "Guilty Party" and "HDD" are quite the study in contrasts. The latter, with its goofy day-on-repeat premise and sweet romantic subplot, succeeds in being undeniably fun. "GP" engages some serious ideas and themes, like homophobia and rape, but considering its lack of a moral center, I don't know that it earns the right to do so. Season one of "Slasher" had plucky Sarah and genial real estate agent Robin, and it riffed on religious themes about as skillfully as season six of "Dexter." In "GP," there's no true protagonist. "HDD," for its part, is fashioned around Tree's gradual transformation from insufferable queen bee to empowered, relatively humble quasi-feminist. Thanks to Rothe's talent and likability, Tree's journey of self-discovery feels real.

Like other notable horror-comedies (e.g., "Tucker and Dale vs. Evil" and "Cabin in the Woods"), "HDD" flips the script on some horror tropes while employing others to delightful effect. This film loves slasher movies, college flicks, and movies in general. The inevitable, "Groundhog Day"-inspired sequence in which Tree parlays the lessons of repeated death and revival into a personal campaign to be a better person, set to Mother Mother's irresistible "Love Stuck," works like an IV drip of unfiltered sunshine. I couldn't help but grin.

Some of the finest horror films out there ("28 Days Later" and "Let the Right One In" come to mind) deal frankly and unabashedly in emotion. You gotta have heart if your movie is gonna stick with viewers; ripping characters' hearts out of their chests ain't enough.

Yet another reminder of why I love pop culture

I was recently introduced to "Rick and Morty," an adult-oriented animated show that most geeks worth their PS4s discovered years ago. I don't need to add yet another glowing review, or detailed analysis, to an internet swimming with both. However, one of the show's most-discussed moments reminded me, quite compellingly, why I love pop culture so much. So I figured I'd write about that.

At the end of an episode titled "Auto Erotic Assimilation," in which Rick visits an old flame who turns out to be a body-snatching hive mind, the mad scientist retreats, heartbroken, to his garage-based lab. (If you haven't seen this episode, get thee to Hulu and watch it right now! And then come back here and read the rest of this post.) He removes a small, blobby alien from cryogenic deep freeze and insta-thaws it. The little creature is clearly distressed, as it likely was the instant he froze it to begin with. In a rare, and unexpectedly moving, show of compassion, Rick gently pets the poor creature.

It quickly becomes apparent that he's soothing it because he's about to zap it out of existence with one of his laser-y contraptions. After doing so, he sets the machine up to zap him -- but before it can, he slumps onto his desk. The killer beam barely misses his head. As he sleeps off yet another hangover, night turns to day, and we see Rick's son-in-law, Jerry, merrily weed-whacking the driveway just outside the garage, without a care in the world.

The tonal shift of this scene from the madcap, raunchy antics that preceded it is remarkable. The sad, beautiful song "Do You Feel It?" by Seattle indie band Chaos Chaos soundtracks the entire scene, and it perfectly complements the existentialism and emotionality on display. Wordlessly, this stunning scene humanizes Rick, helping us empathize with his loss of love and the frustration he feels as a genius surrounded by lesser minds. It also shows that he isn't simply a madman with zero regard for the welfare of other living things.

Part of what makes the scene great is the ambiguity baked into it: Did Rick mean to save his own life, or did he simply pass out before the laser energized? Did he unfreeze and kill the creature to "set it free" (rather than continuing to keep it cooped up like a lab rat)? Did he kill it because he planned to end his own life as well and wouldn't be around to take care of it?

Whatever his motivation, his tenderness toward the seemingly simple being adds depth to the character of Rick and to the show as a whole. This scene makes it obvious that Rick and Morty's interdimensional adventures, while often wacky and fun, come at a price, at least for Rick. It turns out that dating outside your species, galaxy, and reality isn't any easier than sticking to OkCupid. And being possibly the smartest human ever isn't all wine and roses.

I love how pop culture, at its best, can draw us in, get an emotional hold on us, and then upend our expectations, taking us somewhere, emotionally and otherwise, we never thought we'd go. The ending of "Auto Erotic Assimilation" blindsides you in the best way. Even within the context of a show about infinite parallel realities, this masterful scene knocks us off-balance and makes us wonder what kind of show it is, exactly, that we're growing increasingly attached to.

"Watch Out" and the way humor works in horror

Humor and horror can make for a queasy mix. Too many straight-ahead horror movies treat human lives like trash, thanks in part to the "Saw" and "Hostel" franchises but going back to Z-grade slashers and gorefests from many decades past. Trying to blend humor with horror tropes can make a fairly insensitive, dehumanizing horror flick seem downright mean-spirited.

When dark humor works well in horror, however, the results can be thrilling, as in remarkable films like "The Cabin in the Woods" and "Get Out" and honorable mentions such as "Ginger Snaps" and "Tucker & Dale vs. Evil." In the best-case scenario, humor makes the horror more palatable while also developing and humanizing the characters and delivering a more memorable, and meaningful, narrative. When horror-comedy works, it really works; when it doesn't, well, sometimes we get "Leprechaun in the Hood."

"Watch Out," a short film available on Hulu via the NBCUniversal Short Film Festival ("a bicoastal program seeking the next generation of writers, directors, producers and actors, while celebrating innovative storytelling from diverse backgrounds"), isn't "Cabin in the Woods"-level awesome -- but hey, few movies are. However, it deftly presents itself as one thing -- straight horror -- before downshifting to some surprisingly light-on-its-feet comedy, then lingering in the Venn diagram overlap space for a bit longer than you expect.

"Watch Out" takes a simple premise -- definitely a "Why didn't I think of that?" kind of setup -- and makes considerable hay. The film succeeds primarily because it follows the No. 1 rule of horror-comedy: Violence itself is rarely funny, but people's responses to violence, and its direct aftermath, definitely can be. Situational and/or character-based dark comedy goes a much longer way, most of the time, than trying to make plain ol' gore hilarious.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Compared to the epically overplayed "Chanukah Song," Adam Sandler's "Thanksgiving Song" (originally a duet with Kevin Nealon, as you'll soon see) is pretty damn underrated. Enjoy it as it was surely meant to be enjoyed: preceded by an irritating 30-second ad. And may you all have the merriest Turkey Day imaginable!

A reunion about nothing

Who knew? Everyone but me, apparently. The Seinfeld cast reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm might actually get me to watch that show. Once it's on DVD, that is.

SIFF Report #1: "The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle" and "Paper Heart"

The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle is a movie about work and, secondarily, about corporate malfeasance. Its oddball corps of janitors, pictured above -- sweet, dimwitted Methyl (Tygh Runyan), puckish O.C. (Vince Vieluf), former data-entry slave Dory (Marshall Allman), goth goddess Ethyl (Tania Raymonde), and their boss, cross-dressing Gulf War vet Weird William (Richard Lefebvre) -- have adventures, affairs, and clashes with each other, and everyone learns a life lesson or two along the way. One thing all the characters learn is not to eat too many cookies.

Indie darling Natasha Lyonne plays Tracy, who works for a company called Corsica whose hot new product is a cookie that heats up in your mouth when it interacts with your saliva (for that home-baked feeling). The substance that brings about this miraculous chemical reaction still needs to be tested on humans, so Tracy begins leaving batches of the individually wrapped cookies out for the night crew, our trusty team of janitors, to nosh on while they work, have sex on conference tables, and so on. Unfortunately, the cookies turn out not only to be addictive but also to cause a reaction in certain people that's a lot more dramatic than their makers intended.

Seattle-based writer-director David Russo plays what could have been horror-movie material for laughs in this fanciful, scrappy, satiric work that recalls the nutty, sharp-toothed humor of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. I'd already seen one of Russo's short films at Bumbershoot; it was an arty stop-motion thing that somehow seemed to move in three dimensions -- across the length of the screen, but also towards and away from the viewer.

Dizzle shows that Russo can concoct a ragtag band of characters and a pretty compelling plot without losing the aesthetic he established in that short. The feature includes several cookie-induced hallucination sequences that could stand alone as exercises in inventive cinematic style, but they also fit nicely into the larger film's loopy vision. (The gorgeous opening credit sequence, which follows a message in a bottle through various seasons and seas, is a perfect example.) Shot in Seattle, Dizzle has a pleasingly anarchic spirit and a lot of energy, and considering that its budget must have been pretty low, it looks great. Much like Kaufman's Being John Malkovich, Russo's film immerses us in a world that looks a lot like our own but has surprising new rules, and by the end I was a little sad to leave it.

Paper Heart, the quirky romantic comedy I'd been anticipating pretty eagerly, is an endearing, low-key semi-mockumentary about a geeky comedian/musician, Charlyne Yi, who doesn't believe in true love. She clearly believes in the kind of love that sustains a friendship, since she has a best friend, and she seems to get along well with her family, so that sort of love makes sense to her, too. It's just the falling-in-love variety she has doubts about. After conferring with a number of comedian friends more famous than she is (Seth Rogen, Adventureland's Martin Starr, and Demetri Martin, among others), she and director Nicholas Jasenovec (played in the film, apparently, by Jake M. Johnson) set out on a cross-country road trip to interview regular folks about love.

What ensues is a series of chats with happy couples, possibly not-so-happy couples, Elvis impersonators, romance novelists, and kids on a playground. Charlyne often asks couples how they met, or how they knew their love was true, and their responses resemble the "interviews" sprinkled throughout When Harry Met Sally..., a canonical work in the romcom genre. Along the way, Charlyne becomes friendly with Michael Cera, star of Juno and Superbad, and Nicholas raises the inevitable question: Is Charlyne finally head over heels?

The film succeeds because of its overarching sweetness, and because of Yi, who has pretty much got to be every nerdy boy's dream girl. She's smart, opinionated, fun, odd, and complicated, and she's also pretty in a very real way. As Louis Menand once wrote in The New Yorker, there are three kinds of love stories: the kind where you, the viewer, fall in love with both lovers; the kind where only one of them wins your heart; and the kind where you don't really care all too much about either of them. Though Michael Cera fans will enjoy his usual stumbling, sensitive-boy mannerisms, Yi is the real find here, and her lightly sardonic toughness and rare moments of vulnerability play beautifully against the intentionally gimmicky premise.

What I especially like about the movie is that it presents a heterosexual man who doesn't have conventional masculine tendencies and a straight woman who's both strong and feminine, and there's no direct commentary about the shift in traditional gender roles. It's very 21st century: Geeks are chic now, and geek love has the transcendent power to mostly avoid fossilized ideas about what a man and a woman should be like in relationship. On a similar note, the romance novelist Charlyne interviews uses the term "H.E.A." to refer to her genre's stock ending. (It stands for "happily ever after.") Without driving the point home too obviously, Heart reveals how naive that old saw is without denying that the right partner can make your life more complete. And that's always nice to see.

R.I.P., George

In other news, Crooks and Liars draws our attention to David Brooks' truly ridiculous op-ed piece on Obama. Looking for stuff that is worth reading? The New Yorker has been running strong political profile pieces (PPPs?) lately, including one on Nixonian dirty trickster Roger Stone (check that freakin' photo!) and another on MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, also known as the boil on Bill O'Reilly's ass.

Dueling inscriptions

Bought a copy of The Movie That Changed My Life: Great Writers on Their Favorite Films at Horizon Books on 15th Avenue East, partly for the content -- Joyce Carol Oates on Dracula! -- and partly for the fantastic inscription and counter-inscription. On a page that's a bit shorter than the others, and thus seems to have been inserted, is the following, handwritten in red pen:

D.

One might be a good bus book. The other, an interesting curiosity by one of our favorite authors.

V.

P.S. Don't leave the rat poison lying about in the garage.

This alone might have merited buying the book for a paltry $7, but wait -- there's more. "D." wrote back with a vengeance -- in fact, he or she (I have some strange intuition that it's a she) typed a response below the handwritten note from "V." And here it is:

I couldn't get into this one either. Sorry. I guess I'm just not interested in the opinions of people I don't know on movies I haven't seen. I've only seen 2 or 3 of these. I started "Bambi" but couldn't get into it, and I browsed a couple of pages in others, but didn't get anywhere. Thanks anyway.

In more than a year and a half of living on 15th, I'd never wandered into Horizon, always waiting for some excuse. Today, the friend I'd had brunch with at 22 Doors wanted to venture in, so we did. And I think it's safe to say the back-and-forth inscriptions made my day, and possibly even my week. I also picked up a 1984 Roger Ebert book, A Kiss Is Still a Kiss, that I'd previously borrowed from Michael but really wanted to own. Among the gems it contains: an interview with Woody Allen in which he, Woody, explains why women are "closer to what life's supposed to be about" than men, and a piece wherein Ebert accompanies Muhammad Ali to a screening of Rocky 2, which the legendary boxer picks apart both thoughtfully and hilariously, as is his way. Though I still love Ebert's writing, it's nice to look back at his golden years and recall how on fire he was back then.

Saw Margaret Cho at the Paramount last night and enjoyed her performance -- amazing that she can talk about sex for what feels like more than half the show and always find new angles and new absurdities. Her bits about recent political scandals, including Eliot Spitzer and Larry Craig, were also great, as was a joke about Iran. I'd try to recreate some of the best moments here, but Cho is so much about inflection, body language, and facial expressions that it'd be pointless, and probably offensive. Her delivery is what lets her get away with as much as she does; in that way she's like Sarah Silverman, though Cho's humor is more consistent, albeit with fewer big laughs. (She gets a lot of smaller ones and misses less often than Silverman, who can be positively flat or absolutely incandescent within the same minute.)

Breezed by the "Roman Art from the Louvre" exhibit at SAM last night, which I realize is heresy, but it was after 12:30 a.m. and I was tired, and the statues just looked liked... statues. I also checked out Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream yesterday afternoon, and realized a few things:

1. Molly Moon's is as hip as Wallingford is ever going to get, outside Babalu
2. Cardamom ice cream is excellent
3. A little salted caramel ice cream goes a long way
4. Lemon is not to be passed over; despite its ordinariness, it's probably one of the best flavors
5. Owner Molly Moon Neitzel's dog, Parker Posey (who appears in the shop's logo, which I've posted above), is very cute
6. Kids with chocolate ice cream smeared all over their faces are always entertaining
7. Wallingford -- the neighborhood I lived in when I first moved to Seattle, way back in January of 2002 -- can be pretty wonderful