judging a movie by its inanely crappy title

Pardon my recent vacations. I've missed you all too.

Now onto more pressing concerns:

Can someone in Hollywood PLEASE stop greenlighting movies with shitty titles? Exhibit 1: Definitely, Maybe. Horrible premise, problematic casting, and an excruciatingly terribly title. Would you go to a movie called "Definitely, Maybe" on the title alone? What the hell are you supposed to know about a movie called that? Think even more baseline: would you bother picking up a book called "Definitely, Maybe"? A magazine? A free newspaper? Even if just for the crossword puzzle?

Let's not even get into the problems that this title runs into in the correct-English department. Is it too much to ask to have appropriately syntactic titles as well?

The movie looks to be a grotesque redemptive feel-good have-faith-in-families love story where no one ends up angry and characters who should end up hating others likely don't. Ryan Reynolds (who?) plays a single dad to young Oscar-nominated Abigail Breslin. Wait a minute.... did this character have his daughter when he was 12? Ryan Reynolds looks about old enough to still get carded in bars. And he's sort of cross-eyed. Meanwhile, Breslin gets to play the precocious and too-smart-for-her-age little girl who has a better barometer for her father's well-being than he does. Reality check: are there any movies or TV shows anymore that don't have pre-teens who have a better handle on life than their elders?

movie advertising not targeted toward me

Study, if you will, the following teaser poster for the forthcoming Saw: Ad Nauseum....


I guess the Saw movie franchise is among the more successful recent examples of high-gloss torture porn (see also: "24"). It's not my kind of horror movie though.... I'm not terribly interested in movies whose sole function is to display unthinkable deaths with a showcase of creative makeup, special effects, and/or camera wizardry. Nor do I particularly seek out movies about serial killers with disposable amounts of time and income to create overly elaborate ruses in which they are able to creatively murder people by the tens and twenties. I do think that the horror genre is absolutely necessary for film, but I prefer horror movies that are more than simply one-dimensional. I don't mind a good dose of gore.... but how about making the movie worth watching, too? The Descent, my favorite movie of 2006, was marketed to be trashy shlock like Saw, but was in fact a masterwork of filmmaking and transcended the horror genre to remind me (and the rest of us) that these kind of movies can actually have depth while simultaneously scaring the crap out of you.

So, back to the poster. Is this supposed to be scary? Is this supposed to hail the arrival of a terrifying new horror movie about to hit the big screen? Let's see....

Swine with bad wig wearing a red burka and fetishist leather stiletto boots is chained to a motorized wheelchair fitted with cranks.

Is this supposed to fill me (i.e. the average movie-goer passing the theatre) with dread? How exactly does this poster even get a fan of Saw excited to the see the movie? Maybe I'm missing something, having never seen any of the movies. Is there some kind of terrifying pig-in-fetishwear twist I missed out on? Perhaps.

In the end, I see this poster and all I can think is, "what the fuck?"