Q. Cupcake Shamalamadingdong

[napoleonherself]

Well, we just saw The Village. It isn't as abysmally bad as Ebert says it is, we think, but it's still pretty bad.

If you want to have fun discussing all the logical holes in it for the hour after it's over, I heartily recommend seeing it. There are also some good performances, but the real treat is all the stuff that makes no sense. Like, where the hell do all the farm animals poop in this tiny, tiny valley?

OMG MY CURRENT MUSIC IS THE BAD COLOR

Now if you'll excuse me, I've just taken my half-Ambien (more like a third because I can't bite them exactly in half, but eh), so I should brush my teefs and get me ready for bed.

Edit: Spoiler warning on the comments to this post kthx. RUN AWAY IF YOU DO NOT WANT THE OHSOEXCELLENT MYSTERIES SPOILED

Comments

[wing-zero-ew.livejournal.com]

Oh give me a break. Suspension of disbelief is hardly an excuse for a movie this ludicrously constructed, and for that matter, is rarely an excuse for anything except sloppy filmmaking. But, for the sake of argument, I'll go over your counterpoints one by one, as I have some time on my hands today.

The oil torches are needed to provide light for us, you say? Bollocks. The oil torches serve an important 'plot' requirement of sorts, in that they form the spoooooooky and ominous border. They aren't needed to be there at the perimeter at all; we could easily have gone the entire movie without ever needing to see them. They're thrown in BILC (Because it looks cool), which is pathetic, and not cinematographically necessary.

Candle making is easy, you say? Bollocks again! Candles, in a society like this, have to be rendered from animal fats, a messy, smelly, noxious process that, before petrochemicals replaced it, proved expensive and time consuming. Candles are far too valuable to place willy-nilly all over the house and homes, they produce smoke and start fires, making them unwise to leave unattended, etc. This is why people carried a single candle with them to bed, saved tiny stumps of wax to keep using, and generally had to be in bed at dark until the invention of the electric light, which was seen as a huge boon to mankind as it effectively freed the species of the tyranny of darkness.

You ask if I've lived an Amish life; I counter by asking if you've ever lived on a farm, or in any place where, for that matter, one's water is obtained from the ground directly. If so you would know that enormous and elaborate precautions have to be taken to provide fresh drinking water from the earth, that buildings and communities have to be planned around uncontaminated sources of H2O, that true, usable wells capable of providing sizeable volumes of water are far, far too deep to be pumped by any means save mechanical.

For that matter, what planet do you hail from, where sizeable amounts of *rainwater* can be obtained seasonally in Pennsylvania, including during the height of, oh, I dunno, winter? Snow converts to drinking water at a ratio of 10:1, for those unfamiliar with the melting of ice. Snow on the ground would be horribly fouled with animal waste and soil, and hence completely undrinkable. Cisterns, a good idea but not present in the village that we see, would prove to be a source of easily contaminated water, feeding intestinal parasites and disease unless properly chlorinated or otherwise treated with a degree of ecological sophistication unpossessed by these rubes.

The problems with paint and supplies are, as I said, two-fold: first, a level of either unthinking stupidity on the part of the writers, or, secondly, a problem that any rational being trapped in this hellish, deceptive existence could use as evidence that they were currently interred in a very, very, low-tech version of the Matrix. While societies emphasizing stupidity and conformity are remarkably good at stifling dissent, there will always be the rogue individuals neither scared of spooooky monsters nor of the contempt of their neighbors. The ruling cabal of this village seems to lack the intellect or intestinal fortitude to truly put down any organized resistance; the best they can manage is to terrify the weak-minded, the inbred, and the children with boogeymen they've constructed out of Todd McFarlane's sketchbook.

While we're at it, there is that inbreeding issue. From the picture of the ruling council and information present in the movie about some people having had small families when they moved, etc, we can glean that the membership of the initial nutjob party was somewhere in the neighborhood of, oh, 20. This is far too small of a sample to form a sustainable, genetically intact community, as evidenced by the blind, mute (virtually, in the case of Lucius, and mentioned about the dead kid), and retarded members cropping up raipidly
as a result of their genetic concentration. Within a couple of additional generations we can expect them to all be drooling idiots soiling themselves in the dark.

[wing-zero-ew.livejournal.com]

As for the curiosity of people like Tom, again, perhaps you need to check up on the trends of this, the real world, and see just how dedicated a group of people with time on their hands and the insatiable need to violate social norms in a non-destructive fashion can be. For reference, I point you to the various urban exploration sites google references, which document at great length the exploration of 'boring' areas by those who find such often pointless meandering exciting and worthwhile. These people represent a technologically savvy and sometimes intellectually fixated group who use the latest technology, ranging from satellite tracking devices to the full modern array of portable electronic toys and gadgets to uncover the great mystery of storm drains and grafitii. These are people who will gladly embark on an 8 hour crawl through disused storm sewers merely to ensure that, yes, the grate on the other end does not in fact open onto a parallel universe full of goodness, light, and unfettered access to alcohol.

Besides such people, whose dedication to uncovering the conspiracies underlying sewage routing through major urban areas I heartily applaud, you have an array of investigative reporters, for whom this story would be a career maker, interested and angry locals, real-estate speculators, enviromental activists interested in the preserve, anti-environmental saboteurs interested in destroying it, vandals, punk kids looking for a place to screw, drunks, the homeless insane, police, local authorities both civic and county, etc, etc, etc. All of these people would have a keen interest in determining just what lies inside that boundary, which is quite conspicuously guarded, funded, and otherwise made all the more alluring.

The price of land in the 70s is irrelevant, and I'm curious as to when the dollar 'collapsed', exactly, to justify this expenditure. Moreover, if it had, the billionaire's fortune would not likely have survived either. If your refer to the dollar going off the metal standards, then you clearly weren't taught much about economics and misunderstand the exact nature of a currency-based economy, where the actual value of money is determined by acceptance of its value, rather than the arbitrary amount of gold or silver held by the treasury. Going off the metal standards in fact enabled the United States to rise to the pinnacle of global finance, and you would be hard pressed to find any modern, industrialized nation that does not in fact use such 'fake' money. The 70s were, for all their turmoil, a very mild distruption in the economic process of the nation, not comparable in scale or severity to the Reagan 80s, the great Depression, or earlier gold and speculatory crises.

At any rate, the land value at the time of purchase is, as I said, irrelvant. The value *today*, on which taxes must be paid, is all that is relevant. The 'preserve' is not a government managed institution as you insinuate, because that would put it under the surveillance of the Forest Service, the National Parks people, and other busybody agencies that have an imperative to, amongst other things, make money. Even the most 'preserved' of the national forests and parks allow various and sundry money making opportunies, including but not limited to, hunting, fishing, logging, mining, tourism, camping, and various vehicular rentals, assuming they do not sell large tracts of the land for real estate. In order to actually ensure privacy, the land is in fact privately owned. But this presents another problem, for routine assessment of private property is necessary and required for tax purposes. Assayers, surveyors, etc, would all be on the property at the least upon every major revision to the state tax code. California may not believe in propety taxes, but believe me, as a former resident of this state, Pennsylvania does.

[wing-zero-ew.livejournal.com]

Combine that with the incessant needs of ever-expanding populations, highway building, utility companies wanting to run power lines, transmission corridors, broadband to the household, fiber optics, cellular phone towers, airport construction, etc, and you would have a serious problem. Eminent domain is the club by which any and all interested parties would quickly tear ass into this unused property, which claims to be an animal preserve but in fact serves no legitimate ecological purpose, and does not admit scientists, observers, or eco-nuts who would rise to the defense of such a place if only it were real. I don't know offhand why you think the Sierra Club would be involved in this lunacy, but they are in fact far too down to earth to support a wacky billionaire and his crazy scheme on the basis of his world alone.

Walker's hypocrisy in saving the life of his daughter's boytoy over a seven year old dying of infection, or disease, or what have you, does not indicate a careful mind weighing consequences, it indicates nepotism. He is a cult leader, his followers are brainwashed sheep, and ultimately he deserved to hang from the nearest tree, dressed up in his froo-froo Halloween costume, after being castrated with a rusty spork.

[jen-aside.livejournal.com]

Alright, alright, forgive me for ever failing to properly question the integrity a suspense/horror movie!

Oy, even if I wanted to, that's too much to counter.

*goes back to watching Star Wars, the epitome of flawless screenwriting*

[darnn.livejournal.com]

Seriously. What the guy below said. You dismissed suspension of disbelief too easily. If you picked at everything like that, you wouldn't have any fun.