I finally got around to seeing Paranormal Activity, the low-budget ghost movie that’s making so much money. It’s spinning through the predictable cycle already charted by The Blair Witch Project ten years ago:

1) early fan buzz and glowing reviews, followed by

2) naysayers claiming the movie’s not scary, it’s stupid and boring, while critics begin to damn it with faint praise by saying the film’s “a triumph of clever marketing,” which leads to

3) a total raving backlash, with all agreed that fans of this piece of crap are idiots who don’t even know they’ve been had. And still to come,

4) a vague consensus that, in retrospect, Paranormal Activity was pretty good.

(more…)

Experimental film called The Debate

Don’t know if you were watching TV last Friday evening, but if you were, you noticed that all the network channels were running this bizarre experimental film called The Debate. It featured a 90-minute stand-off between two men of opposed characteristics—black vs. white, young vs. old, tall vs. short, handsome vs. hideous, and so on. Andy Warhol used to make this kind of film; one of his, called Sleep, is an eight-hour shot of a guy snoozing.
(more…)