Time For A Rant

It seems like a long time since I posted anything that wasn't a film review, Hell it has been a long time since I posted much of anything really. Often finding myself just not being in the head space for doing a post. At one point I was determined to review every film I watched, which being a raging film geek like myself proved quite difficult.

But today I just wanted to go on about people for a bit.

To preface all this, I understand that people have their own lives to live but in recent times I have found people to be so much more selfish and ignorant to other people than they used to be.

I pride myself on trying to be a good friend to people. Case in point - my friend Stacey passed her driving test today, and as I was coming to Thetford to visit my Mum I tried to nip round to her flat with a congratulations card I bought. This was no big deal for me, I didn't feel like I was going out of my way to do it. It's just the sort of thing people should do right?

Well if it is, I'm the only one doing it. Where did this wave of selfishness come from?

Example - my BlackBerry was sent away to be repaired and I had none of my numbers on the courtesy phone so using Facebook (and I feel this place is a prime reason for what I'm talking about) I put up a couple of statuses and sent a message to the people I text most, and to say the response rate was poor was an understatement.

I get that message and I take the what? 30 seconds? To quickly send off a text. But no, this seems to be too big a deal for some.

Although I still find it a useful tool (mainly for collecting photographs together as you're not going to get all your Facebook friends to jump over to Flickr lets be fair) although it is grating on me. Since when does the fact you have a Facebook profile mean you don't have to send a birthday card or something like that? Obviously I have 89 friends on there and they aren't all going to get birthday cards but people just seem to use it so they don't need to make an effort anymore.

That isn't saying I don't use Facebook as a shortcut sometimes. Take the chat application on there. It is a fast and easy way to keep in touch with people but you have to ask yourself what the point is when people don't even reply on that. Can't be bothered/too busy to talk with someone? Fucking TELL THEM. It requires about 5 seconds of effort but even that seems too much these days.

I know I was brought up slightly earlier than most of my friends but I refuse to believe that its a generational thing. Although it is probably getting there. It just seems in the last year or so people I know, or people friends tell me about, hell even customers where I work are more self involved and rude than before!

As I said, I know people have their own lives but it takes the piss royally. Take this story, based on true events. The names have been changed...

W has a friend, lets call them X. It's X's birthday on a Saturday and although W has had a heavy night the night before and feels like shit he goes out for it, but takes his friend Y and heads out early unless he falls asleep at home. A venue is pretty much decided on. W and Y sit in this place for almost 3 hours, not really feeling 100% (and by the way texting X to let them know they are there) only to see X and their contingent walk past (and looking straight in at W and Y) and go somewhere else without a word.

And when they are called on it the next day X lays a guilt trip on W.

That is an actual example of something that happened to me. And they said to me that I seemed to want something more from them, a pressure of kinds. And THAT, pardon the upcoming pun is the X Factor - reliability. That isn't something you should have to pressure people into. People should treat people how they would like to be treated.

The above isn't an isolated event but its a particularly potent example of how people just live in their little bubbles with their own little agendas and its not just one person, two people but everyone. I should also point out that the friend isn't the only one, I'm not just picking on one person a lot of people can be guilty of it. I could have actually used as different case study but that wasn't my story to tell.

I seem to have to walk a fine line. I don't want to become a pity case because of my Father passing away earlier in the year. I get generally uncomfortable when people show sympathy and that, I appreciate it but don't know what to do with it. But I feel people around me (and people around others) should just make an effort. And I don't want that to be mixed up with "Feel sorry for me!"

Send a text, make a phone call, send an email. Hell, I know this is 2010 and human contact seems to beginning to get frowned upon - but go out for a drink with someone, catch a movie, you can even sacrifice a goat if you want to!

So that is my rant about that. Apologies go out to the people in my life who are reliable. They know who they are.

Till next time.

Film Review: Paranormal Activity 2

SPOILERS ABOUND.

Last year Paranormal Activity arrived seemingly out of nowhere to cinema screens and made a huge splash as well as a shed load of money for Paramount (made for around $11,000 it went on to make over $100 million in the States alone) and even more impressively I found a horror film that actually made me jump on multiple occasions.

Dealing with what you didn't see over what you did, PA1 masterfully ramped up the tension and delivered real shocks and a hell of an ending.

But, of course it made over $100 million so a sequel was bound to happen. But how do you follow on from a film shot with handheld cameras with only 2 main characters (And one of them is killed off at the end)?

Simple it seems. Prequel, baby.

Starting around 60 days before events of the first film this focuses on the sister of Katie from the original and her family (Husband, step daughter, dog and baby). Spooked by what appears to be a break in the family invest in 6 hidden cameras to be dotted around their house to prevent it happening again. What we see on screen is a combination of that 'footage' and camcorder hijinks normally to do with the baby, but is used as things get worse in the house.

Appearances from Katie and Micah from the original are made and groundwork for what happens to them is laid quite nicely surprisingly. They are in about 3 or 4 scenes total, more of a guest spot than actual starring roles.

The slightly silly plot that sets up the reason for the demon visitation this time around is that if you make a deal with a demon they can claim your first born child. References to Kristi (Sprague Grayden) and Katie's mother are made, and eventually a transfer of the hauntings to a blood relative sets up the events of the first film.

So with the plot out of the way...how is the paranormal activity?

The use of sound is still there, but a lot less of the footsteps this time. The subtleties are still there, a door opening, the babies carousel moving slowly on it's own. The big jumps are still there but a lot less for me this time round (2 in fact - the first thump and all the cupboards in the kitchen both got me), I'm sure another would have happened in the climatic basement scene but it seemed a bit too much like REC for me but in a basement instead of an attic.

Something else that bugged me throughout was that they deviated from casting unknowns. I find that these films worked a lot better when you don't recognize anyone in them. Obviously, you know it's not real but it adds a sense of reality to it that you wouldn't get if Bruce Willis showed up.

As I watched it I thought the lead actress who played Kristi did indeed look a bit like Sprague Grayden who was in Six Feet Under and played the President's daughter in Season 7 of 24 but thought that it was just a similarity but the credits revealed otherwise which will really take me out of the film the next time I watch it.

But overall it was a worthy, albeit rather pointless sequel. The few questions that were left from the original like 'Why did the demon return when it did?" and "Where did the photo come from?" didn't REALLY need answering but they were answered in a very satisfactory way without getting silly.

Silly, though, is a worry I start to get should a third in the series emerge (and Paranormal Activity 2 made $20 million on it's FIRST DAY OUT in the States, it seems like a inevitability). Surely they can't use the CCTV or camcorder stunt again, but on the other hand - they can't film it like a regular film. That takes away the franchises gimmick.

Of course there may not be a sequel- the demon Katie has the baby, the debt is paid and common sense may win out over money for once. But if they do I'm wanting it called Paranormal Activity 3: Babies Day Out.

***

An unnecessary sequel but aren't they all? PA2 still provides some great shocks but let's hope they leave it there.