Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 10 of Scream 2 (0:34:42-0:36:37)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!



SCENE 10 of Scream 2
Length: 1min 55secs
Primary Characters: Sidney Prescott, Derek, Mickey, Randy Meeks, Hallie, Sister Murphy, Sister Lois and Portia de Rossi's Eyebrows
Pop Culture References:

• The Empire Strikes Back (as Mickey and Randy continue their sequel talk)
  

Everclear on the soundtrack. This must be 1997.

(although to prove the "Everclear?"-ness of it all, I originally typed "Evermore", that New Zealand band that had that song that one time.)


These three - Sister Lois, Sister Murphy and Portia de Rossi's Eyebrows - are still an awesome bunch, aren't they? I'm so glad that Rebecca Gayheart wasn't cast as Tatum in the original or whoever else it was that she was meant to be cast as. I swear, I always lose my train of thought around Rebecca Gayheart because I always just jump immediately to this video of her greatest hits from Urban Legend, remixed the greater good of mankind. It's one of the greatest videos of all time!


Wait, where was I?


"Cocktails?"


"What took you so long?"

I love this moment because it reminds me of that bit in Scream where Randy and Sidney have that cute moment discussing Jamie Lee Curtis' award nomination for Terror Train. The sort of moment that just adds that little something extra towards making the audience believe they're so close. Meh, I like it and think it's cute. Plus Randy's adorable puppy dog "i'm sorry" look at the end is, well, adorable.


"Hey babe, wanna dance?"


"Oh I'd love to. Yeah, with that tall, wide-shouldered fraternity boy..."
Another moment of friendly banter that rings so true and identifiable. Add this to their brief moment in the hospital and I really wish we had gotten to see more of these two together. If only Hallie knew she was turning down Timothy Olyphant, there's no way she, nor anybody, would deny him now, right?


"Empire Strikes Back. Better story, improved effects."
"Not a sequel. Part of a trilogy. Completely planned."
So does that mean I'm not allowed to consider Scream 2 one of the best sequels ever made? I mean, it was planned... technically. Although Scream 3 was completely changed from its original plan so maybe that renders the "planned trilogy" concept of this franchise null and void?

Also, when did Randy get so flirty? I mean, he appears to start chatting up a woman while she's holding hands with another man!


I'm sorry Sister Lois! I hear you talking and yet all I can see is...


...such bliss.


"I didn't mean to break up the party!"
"Shit! I should've brought my drink."
More evidence of why these two are amazing.


Oooh, amazing little moment here. Sidney realising for certain that her worst nightmares are coming true and Randy finally accepting it, too. Their look here is golden. It must be after this scene that Randy went back to his dorm room and filmed the "if you're watching this then I am dead" video that features in Scream 3.

And all set to the recurring theme of Nick Cave and the Bad Seed's "Red Right Hand", the trilogy's unofficial anthem.

Scream:
Intro, Scene 1 Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, Scene 31 Scene 32, Scene 33, End Credits

Scream 2
Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9

Review: Rabbit Hole

Rabbit Hole

Dir. John Cameron Mitchell

Year: 2010

Aus Rating: M

Running Time: 90mins

Grief is given a hefty workout in Rabbit Hole, a searing drama that charts the parallel paths a married couple take after the death of their only child. It’s an unfair tragedy when a parent outlives their child, exemplified by the film being set nine months after four-year-old Danny’s death; you only get nine months to be excited about the imminent birth of a child, and yet the grieving never ends. Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart) know they’ll never experience another day of their lives that isn’t impacted by memories of Danny’s death, but they do what they can in such a pressing situation.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine
And given how much I've spoken about this movie over the past year, you probably should read it just so we can draw a line under it. I found it interesting that on one side of me at the screening earlier this week, one of my esteemed colleagues was crying and an emotional wreck once the credits rolled, and on the other side of me, yet another colleague, say laughing and doodling in her notebook. Maybe you should go and find out for yourself?

Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 9 of Scream 2 (0:28:51-0:34:41)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!



SCENE 9 of Scream 2
Length: 5mins 50secs
Primary Characters: Cici Cooper, Ghostface and Dawnie (Marisol Nichols)
Pop Culture References:

• Party of Five (Cici watches it on TV)
  
• Nosferatu (Cici watches it on TV)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer (By extension of Nosferatu as Sarah Michelle Gellar plays the titular "vampire slayer")
• Friday the 13th (Cici's friend jokes with the Ft13th theme music)
  

And so we come to the first post-opening death scene and the first major diversion from the original Scream. I actually love this sequence and it remains one of my absolute favourite scenes of the whole trilogy. There's something so simple and unabashed about it. It has plenty of film references and it plays with what we've learnt before (Cici runs up the stairs when she should be running out the front door), but it's just a good ol' fashioned taunt and chase slasher scene.

The fact that is features Buffy herself probably helps.


"I love those guys. Are they still together? I haven't seen it in, like, three weeks."
"No, they broke up again."
"Really?"
"Mmhmmm, Sarah found out that Bailey slept with Gwen. She dumped him, like, two episodes ago."
"I wish she'd get her shit together."
My memory of Party of Five isn't that strong - I wasn't much of a fan, but I watched it a bit because my brother was a fan. Tuesday nights on Network 10 if I remember correctly - but Bailey and Sarah are definitely characters, but IMDb is not showing me who Gwen was so maybe I've been wrong in assuming Cici is discussing that show.

However, the links to that show are both obvious (Neve Campbell) and less so (Jennifer Love Hewitt starred in the "rival" slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer with Sarah Michelle Gellar). And, furthermore, Jamie Kennedy who plays Randy would go on to feature on TV series The Ghost Whisperer with Jennifer Love Hewitt. I think they were even engaged at some point, yeah? And while it's not a Party of Five reference, the voice on the phone is Selma Blair who would go on to co-star with Gellar - and earn and MTV Best Kiss award! - in Cruel Intentions.


"Who are you calling for?"
"What if I said you?"
"What id I said goodbye?"
"Why would you wanna do that?"
"Why do you always answer a question with a question?"
"I'm inquisitive."
Teehee. Doesn't this just kinda ring like Buffy the Vampire Slayer dialogue? I've always felt it does.


"Do you want to die tonight, Cici?"
Love this moment! What with the big, bombastic music in the background (is that Marco Beltrami's music or is it taken from Nosferatu, because either way it's great.) One thing I've noticed is that the voice is much more placid in Scream 2. The voice is generally used less here than in the original, but where there was obvious anger in the voice during the Casey death scene and Sidney attack scene, the voice is never angry in Scream 2. Maybe Mrs Loomis is zen? Perhaps that's why she becomes so bug-eyed crazy in the big showdown at film's end?


We don't get an explanation for the noises Cici hears, do we? Or are we meant to assume it's Dawnie who makes her way downstairs whilst Cici is outside talking to campus security on the phone?


Gosh, remember when landline phones would crackle when you walked outside? Although not even my old home phone was as bad as this one appears to be. Silly Omega Beta House, choosing a residence with really poor reception if just a recipe for disaster!


Several reasons to love this moment.

1. It continues the entire franchise's close attention to framing. As with scenes in Casey Becker's and Stu Macher's house, as well as the Randy scene coming up soon and the Woodsboro set sequences of Scream 3, Craven and his team have a real knack for pushing the edges of the frame with stuff that keeps our eyes darting around.

2. Dawnie!

3. Thinking about Ghostface. The general theory goes that Mrs Loomis is outside with the video camera (the footage is seen later in the media class room with Gale and Dewey) and the telephone as Mickey waits for a way to get inside. Since Ghostface entering has no phone there's your proof that there were two killers. I love the look on Cici's face, too, as the phone rings and she's terrified. If only she'd picked the phone up instead of Dawnie, who knows what would have happened to her?


"You wish it was Ted. 'Don't forget to set the alarm'!"
I love that line reading; so taunting and evil. Having just said that it's Mrs Loomis outside on the phone, that voice really doesn't sound like it. The reveal sequence of Scream showed that not even Billy or Stu truly sounded like "Ghostface" as we hear him in his telephone calls, and when Sidney speaks through the voice altering device as she hides in the closet she doesn't sound anything close to the actual voice of Roger Jackson, so... hmm... look, let's just acknowledge it as "movie magic" and move on. Although, note that we never see Laurie Metcalf talking into the device, only Mickey, and yet we know she does in fact make telephone calls like the one to Randy. Oh plot holes!


I love the way the Nosferatu music creeps back in again at just the right moment. Just like Scream did with Halloween so that that film's legendary score ended up becoming the score of Scream.

And, of course, the in joke of Cici watching Nosferatu being the slayer and all. I think Buffy could take down Ghostface, don't you? She took on Dracula and one, right?




You know, earlier on in this very scene dissection, I said that this sequence in Scream 2 is the first that really diverges from the original's blueprint of opening scene -> intro to Sidney -> campus scenes -> Ghostface impersonations -> Gale being a bitch -> etc, but now that I think about it the scene shares a lot of similarities with scene 18 of Scream in which Principle Himbry bites the dust. Both are tide over scenes, meant to add horror oomph to a film that features a lot more story than most. Both feature the death of a character that doesn't have a personal connection to Sidney, and which hasn't had a major part to play in the film. Also features Ghostface playing seemingly innocent taunting games before bringing out the big guns knife. Plus, both feature obvious nods to their primary actors' most famous role (Happy Days and Buffy the Vampire Slayer respectively). I guess, if anything, it's like Sidney's attack scene, but with a murder payoff. Actually, yes, let's go with that.

One thing I like - and that mirrors the Himbry death scene - is that wherein Principle Himbry checks in the closet instead of behind the door, where Ghostface is hiding, Cici checks behind the door instead of inside the closet (which you can see behind her in the top shot), which is where the killer is hiding. It's this sorta stuff that makes the Scream movies smarter than most.


"Hello?"
Oh, Cici! Behind you!






Well this was never gonna work out well for poor Cici there, was it? Running up the stairs when she should be going out the front door (it's insulting). And, per the film's nudgewink style, the way that door is framed in the background all but screams "the killer is going to jump out of here, we're gonna make you wait for it." And then tada!


Close.


Not so close.

Hmmm.


Where did she think she was going? If she'd really tried she could've made a go of jumping off the balcony. It's only three storeys off the ground after all.


Even more pop culture references! Characters watch this scene in Halloween: H20, which stars Michelle Williams who was one of the stars of the Kevin Williamson created Dawson's Creek. Also, Smidge was originally cast in a similar blonde-who-dies role in Urban Legend, released one year later, but pulled out due to scheduling conflicts. She was replaced by Tara Reid. Hmmm. Make of that what you will.


Why hello there Mr Oops I'm In Shot and Nobody Noticed. I love that this blooper is so noticeable. It's like the wheelie board under Drew Barrymore as she's being dragged along; i can't not notice it! It helps distract from the silliness that is Cici's ridiculously long fall. She's falling from the third floor, not the tenth!


Splat! Goodbye Cici Cooper. It was great knowing you.

Scream:
Intro, Scene 1 Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, Scene 31 Scene 32, Scene 33, End Credits

Scream 2
Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8

Review: Hereafter

Hereafter
Dir. Clint Eastwood
Year: 2010
Aus Rating: M
Running Time: 130mins

If one must pinpoint a pivotal moment in Clint Eastwood’s septuagenarian career it would have to be the moment his character performs a morally questionable act of mercy upon a young boxer in Million Dollar Baby, who lies crippled in a hospital bed with little motivation for survival. That Eastwood has always been intrigued – or, even, outright fascinated – by death is not anything you couldn’t surmise with a quick glance of the man’s oft enviable resume, but since his character walked out of that hospital, euthanasia kit in hand, Eastwood’s films have progressed to even more morbid territory with more than a hint of acknowledgment that, yes, he is quite an old man and that death is nearer than far. Like, ya know, whatever.

Invictus feels like an anomaly amongst a roster of films that includes Letters from Iwo Jima, Gran Torino and even Space Cowboys. Now comes Hereafter, which finds Eastwood discussing the possibilities of life after death in his most obvious fashion yet. It’s such a shame then that the film feel as if it has being directed by an actual corpse, the finished product ending up as not only one of the worst films of this or any other year, but surely the nadir of Eastwood’s career.

Eastwood’s film follows three individuals who have all been affected by death; Cécile De France’s disaster survivor Marie Lelay, Matt Damon’s likeomgforreals psychic George Lonegan, and Marcus – played by twins Frankie and George McLaren – whose twin brother has died in a traffic accident. That they’re based in three separate countries doesn’t stop Eastwood and screenwriter Peter Morgan from contriving them into the same location by film’s end for group hug therapy at a book fair (A BOOK FAIR!!) that is so perfunctory that even Derek Jacobi can’t seem to muster up excitement to play himself.


Beginning with a scene set during the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami that killed 230,000 people, during which de France’s sexy, rich, talented TV host Marie survives – but the 8-year-old girl she separates from her mother, presumably, does not – Hereafter then continues for two hours to follow her as she takes paid leave from her French television news anchor position to write a book about her experiences with the “hereafter”. De France certainly plays Marie like a woman on the brink of complete and utter meekness and the angriest she gets is when the marketing posters of her spruiking Blackberry telephones are taken down all over Paris and nobody told her. It’s a good thing she could take a quick trip into the French mountains to visit a doctor at a chalet and sip tea in the courtyard or else she might have a mental breakdown at the mere unfortunatenesses of it all.

Over the other side of the ocean is Damon’s George, a man who actually really is a psychic. We know this because he sits in rooms lit only by lamps with low-watt bulbs. His brother is Jay Mohr and he wants to spin George into a get rich quick scheme, but upon meeting the bouncy Melanie (the severely-coiffed Bryce Dallas Howard) – in an Italian cooking class that runs the gamut from how to chop tomatoes to how to chop more tomatoes – he realises he’s just had enough of this life and takes his six month severance package and takes a holiday to England. As one tends to do when they’ve been laid off from their only source of income, naturally.

And lastly, in England, is Marcus, who is in desperate need of contacting his twin brother on “the other side” that he steals money from his foster parents and attends psychic readings that are omgsofunny because we all know psychics are fake, but, oh wait, George isn’t! Naturally they cross paths, not too long after the young boy survives the London tube bombings that killed 56 people and injured 700 others. And to think, I haven’t even mentioned the deadbeat counsel estate mother, a laughable representation of the book publishing industry and the strings-laden fantasy romance sequence that would be laughed off the screen if it were anyone but Clint Eastwood.


Hereafter’s five-hour running time is so glacially paced it’s maddening. Roughly nine hours into Eastwood’s subtle-to-the-point-of-non-existence film I actually found myself throwing my hands in the air in defeat as Eastwood donates several minutes to Marie reading a letter. That’s it! She reads. She stands and she reads. Not out loud, but to herself. Or how about the long sequence in which George is given a guided tour around Charles Dickens’ London house for, quite literally, no reason at all other than a sloppy excuse to get his character in yet another drab, poorly lit location.

12 hours of this could be acceptable if the characters spoke about anything worth speaking about, but they don’t. When George reveals one character’s past, they cry some tears and are then vanquished from the picture. Because treating childhood abuse victims with such abrupt nonchalance is what I expect from a gloomy and morose film such as this. All these characters talk such endless waffle that it’s hard not to imagine Eastwood’s editor Joel Cox and Gary Roach slumping over the control panels in the editing booth; why spout gooey mumbo jumbo for 15 hours when you can do it for 18 hours instead?

Hereafter is nothing more than 23 hours of wasted opportunity. Even if the opening scene – one scene that somehow garnered it an Academy Award nomination over the likes of TRON: Legacy, Scott Pilgrim vs The World and Monsters, which uses minor effects sequences to greater potential – is admittedly quite impressive, what is it actually good for? Five minutes of dazzling visual effects, albeit with the stench of tackiness, in service of a story that didn’t deserve the dust it was surely covered with.


There isn’t an exciting moment to be found within its 37 hour running time. Perhaps Eastwood and Morgan just chose the wrong characters to focus on? Surely not everyone who survived the tsunami had the same boring monochromatic vision. Surely not all psychics – legitimate or not – are this wet. Surely not all British twins are this inert and look like characters from Angela’s Ashes. There’s nothing tangible to get an audience’s mind running as to the possibilities of the hereafter that Clint so desperately wants us to feel. Eastwood offers nothing close to a spiritual experience with his nonplussed direction and his actors are nothing more than sounding boards, ironically lifeless ones at that, for Morgan’s preposterous nonsense.

Laugh out loud moments are dotted about in between the tired, rubbish philosophical gobbledygook. Noodles for brains and a cold, empty space where it’s heart should be, Hereafter uses disasters for its narrative thrust, but merely ends up being a disaster itself. For a film about finding solace in death, Hereafter proves to be even more of a lifeless shell than its shockingly obvious Blackberry and Virgin Air product placement would suggest. F

Scream to Scream, Scene by Scene: SCENE 8 of Scream 2 (0:28:00-0:28:50)

In this project I attempt to review the entire Scream trilogy scene by scene in chronological order. Heavy spoilers and gore throughout!



SCENE 8 of Scream 2
Length: 50secs
Primary Characters: Sidney Prescott, Hallie, Sister Murphy, Sister Lois and Portia de Rossi's Eyebrows
Pop Culture References:

• None
  

Not much going on in this scene, although Portia de Rossi's eyebrows do act their way off the screen...


... Well, they act Rebecca Gayheart's fake laugh off the screen at least.





Hah, love the look of bitchery on the face of the girl in the background who nearly gets hit by Sidney's stray hash cookie!


"Sidney! You made it!"
"Hi! No I really mean that. Hi."
I can actually see the workings of the original Hallie-is-the-co-murderer plot, that was originally to be, right here with the sorority sisters being all over Sidney and not Hallie. It really would have been interesting to see where that plot would have gone.


Gosh, these two should have had their own spin-off!

Scream:
Intro, Scene 1 Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7, Scene 8, Scene 9, Scene 10, Scene 11, Scene 12, Scene 13, Scene 14, Scene 15, Scene 16, Scene 17, Scene 18, Scene 19, Scene 20, Scene 21, Scene 22, Scene 23, Scene 24, Scene 25, Scene 26, Scene 27, Scene 28, Scene 29, Scene 30, Scene 31 Scene 32, Scene 33, End Credits

Scream 2
Scene 1, Scene 2, Scene 3, Scene 4, Scene 5, Scene 6, Scene 7