Nevermind...

So, I've decided to change my paper topic. I was having a lot of difficulty in researching for my other ideas, so I'm writing a compare/contrast paper on the roles of women in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (short story) and the film adaptation. The women, through their absence or presence, seem to have a profound impact on how Benjamin is raised and how he ends up living his life. I feel that the more loving, present women in the film helped him to have a more fulfilling life than the absent, objectified women in the short story.

Quantum Mechanics and Stephen King

I have to say that I'm glad that I chose this as a topic for my final paper because when again will I ever have the chance to write about Stephen King and quantum physics? I'm working on trying to make the paper as nontechnical as possible while not losing anything meaningful. Hopefully this will not turn into a huge convoluted mess.

The Most Disgusting Horror Movie of all Time?

An independent film was made that is being called the most disgusting horror movie of all time. It would've fit in perfectly with my first paper, the one about monster makers. In the movie, a crazy German surgeon connects three victims to make a human centipede. The most disturbing part of the film is supposed to be the realism. Writer/director Tom Six got a report from a Dutch doctor describing how this procedure could be performed. Here is the scene where the surgeon describes the procedure to his victims, and here is the interview with Six. The best part is where he explains he got the idea from a saying he uses to describe what punishment should be given to horrible people like child molesters. He says they should have their mouths stitched the asses of very, very fat truck drivers.

Trekkies

Last week, I wrote an article on a "Star Trek" club that's open to students and the public. Working on the article made me think of this class. The club meets once a month to watch episodes and discuss what they liked and thought, which is basically what we do during class. We have a common love/fascination of 21st Century Fantasy, and we have the opportunity to bounce ideas off eachother and share our thoughts. If you want to learn more about the club, here's my article: http://www.cw.ua.edu/2010/04/22/star-trek-club-is-more-than-%e2%80%98stereotypical-nerds%e2%80%99/

American Monster Movie

This title pretty much says it all. Recently there has been a big drought in Hollywood when it comes to a really solid monster movie. The last decent one was Cloverfield but we didn't even get a good look at the monster until the last 5 minutes of it. It hurts my heart when the only supernatural thing that people want to see in movies are vampires that bedazzle and big cuddly werewolves that look like collies.

Before Cloverfield it seems like the only way that people would see a monster movie is if it was actually a comedy like Gremlins or Little Shop of Horrors but I still think that if you put some big scary alien thing in the middle of a group of people they will be scared to death and there wont be anything funny about it.

Apparently this week Stephen Hawking says he believes that aliens do probably exist and if we ever do meet them then we are in trouble. For an example he used when new settlers wiped out the Indians when they came to this land. In that scenario we are the Indians. Maybe thoughts like these will inspire people to go back to the good old days of King Kong and Godzilla and come up with some mutated out of these world creatures that come down here and do the monster mash.

I really liked The Mist as a movie and the mist itsef was extremely scary but it bothers me when I can't even get a good look at the monsters that are causing all of this damage. The flies and pterodactyl things dont count because compared to those big monsters with legs that look like sequoias, those little things are ants.

Self Promo

As I was watching The Mist again I noticed that David's paintings looked rather familiar. The Mist is the only work by Stephen King that I've read, but I've seen the covers of The Dark Tower books before. I thought it was interesting to find references to other horror works in the beginning of the film. I've never seen another Stephen King-inspired movie, but I tried to find out if this happens in other Stephen King adaptations. I couldn't find anything, though. Sorry if this is all very obvious to the Stephen King fans!

The Fog vs. The Mist

I remember thinking when The Mist came out, "Hasn't this already been made like three times?" But no, that was The Fog. I saw neither of them in theater, and I didn't know that The Mist was based on a Stephen King book. I did know that The Fog was a remake of an older movie, and I thought at the time that The Mist was a cheap knock-off of The Fog. I thought maybe it was a new trend in horror movies. By now I've seen both of them, and I'm not a big fan of either of them.