I'm glad you got that off your chest - or rather mind. I absolutely agree with you, although I have not watched this movie. I find a lot of the new movies have so much violence in them that they become "unwatchable", and yes I'm sure that is a word too.
I too hated what Disney did to "The Little Mermaid" it was so wrong to make it into a syrupy blah. Leave the fairy tales alone, please. DO NOT ALTER THEM.
Untraceable is an example of the new torture porn genre, and it really worries me that the genre is SO popular. Another case of something extreme that was limited to a small audience, the Internet made more available, people got used to it, and the mainstream has picked up with a vengeance.
Torture porn freaks me out. The fact that it does soooo well in the theaters makes me worry about the future of humans.
I had never read the original Little Mermaid before. So, the whole thing was distilled down to those last two sentences? Be a good kid, or the little mermaid who was so good will suffer even more because of you?
Disney is incapable of appreciating spirituality or profundity of any sort: they have to take it and make it into slapstick and/or simplistic moral fable, drown you in cotton candy. They did the same thing with Winnie-the-Pooh, and Beauty and the Beast, and... and... feh.
Hmm, I think that was a rant. And do not get me started on what passes for horror or crime drama these days. CSIs do not trot about the landscape interviewing suspects either. And Law & Order (where Dick Wolf made his name) has so many violations of basic civil rights that I nearly always find myself rooting for the bad guy. "Don't talk to them!" I want to scream at the screen. "Don't let them in! You don't have to do that! And for the love of tulips, don't believe them when they say they want to help you!"
Oops... too late.
Also a huge fan of The Little Mermaid...one of the concepts that flies around my brain sometimes is a rewritten fairy tale for teens based on that story. The *real* story. Complete with the ending.
I blame Mel Gibson for the torture porn thing. No, really.
And I'm glad that Juno was good as I'm about to bump it to the top of my netflix list.
Alan Menken is a genius. I say no more.
There have been many studies where a focus group is subjected to showings of heinous, disturbing, or pornographic images, only to eventually find themselves laughing and joking at the images by which they were initially repulsed after repeated viewings. It's 'conditioning the human condition' - and yes, it seems like a downward spiral, catering to the lowest common denominator, etc.
I'm in complete agreement on Untraceable. The writer seems to have gotten lost on the way, whether sidetracked by the movie company's 'suits', or by just not being talented enough to create a believable final product.
One of the most implausible things in the movie for me? This woman - who spends much of her time witnessing the seediest and slimiest creatures in the world on the internet - had apparently not spent any amount of time teaching her young daughter the dangers of the internet (story's writer probably not a parent?) and that she kept her curtains wide open all night! Could she have expertly fired a weapon and been trained to do all the things she did throughout the movie? Sure. Would she be sent out with the SWAT team? Doubtful. But would she leave her curtains open all night? Come on.
I won't watch shows that feature torture and deprivation of liberty, I just find them disturbing. That said, there's an interesting Ellen Paige (juno) film called Hard Candy, she's also in another one that's pretty interesting called the Tracey Fragments.
I enjoyed Disney's Little Mermaid.
Juno was really good.
I didn't have any interest in watching Untraceable. Don't generally like thrillers.
I have to agree - I always hate when they show characters as suddenly being a part of a SWAT team. They do it all the time. Maybe you've seen it on Bones? CSI? The X-Files? Criminal Minds? Everywhere.
And why do they always show crime scene investigators interviewing suspects? That would never happen in real life.
Same with getting instant DNA and toxicology results.
Don't get me started on the number of times a cop, or two, will go into a dangerous situation without waiting for back-up, or even calling for it. And without having a warrant, of course.
I'm sure Untraceable was unbearable, but portraying a cyber-cop going in with a tactical team is routine in the movie/tv world.
Often I have exclaimed "I blame Disney!"
I've almost given up new movies completely because of the graphic violence and or sex. However, some of the older movies are so great that I could watch them often. A few days ago I rewatched an old Jack Lemmon favorite, "How to Murder Your Wife", great movie, crazy plot, nutty people, and wonderful laughs. Come to think of it, I'll watch almost any movie with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis,or Cary Grant in it and prefer them over most of the garbage made today.
Commenting by HaloScan
