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Another month, another holiday, another list of ten. In honor of Easter, I have decided to take this time to celebrate my ten favorite methods of resurrection in fiction! Originally, I was going to do my ten favorite resurrected characters, but there are just too many of them. And, for those of you offended, just think: I could have done worse. I couldn't think of too many freed slaves I love to honor Passover. Only really Mammy from Gone with the Wind. Yes, Dobby counts as one, but who actually liked him? I know; no one! And then people cried all sadly when he died! But I assure you, no one would like to see him employ any of these methods.

Fakin’ It

Offenders: Laura Fairlie (The Woman in White), Madeleine Elster (Vertigo), Sinestro (Green Lantern), Laura Bristow (Alias), Aunt May (Spider-Man)

This method of resurrection is a cohort of either very strong plotting or very lazy retconning. In novels and movies, it often serves a larger purpose than simply allowing the writer the shock and dramatics of killing off a character only to use him or her later in the story. The results of the death and the discovery of the deception are the source of narrative tension and therefore the story would be weaker with an actual shuffling loose the mortal coil.

However, this method is also famous in comic books and many television shows as a way for writers to bring back characters that they were annoyed at their predecessors for eradicating. A death certificate sometimes is less valuable than a Blockbuster gift certificate (the worst of all gift certificates). The person in question could have been secretly carried away from the plane wreck or had a secret compartment in the building just as the bomb went off. The writer could be particularly creative (read: ludicrous) and fabricate reasons like “Ah! But you killed a hard-light construction of me I engineered in order to drive you further to the brink of madness!” Yes, that is a real reason used.

In short, Fakin’ It is rife with dichotomies. The recently-resurrected could have instrumented the plan or been a victim of it. It is almost certainly the case if there is no corpse but cannot be ruled out even if there is one. And, most oddly, it has simultaneously been behind some of the greatest films and biggest eyerolls of all time.

Army of Me

Offenders: Ayanami Rei (Neon Genesis Evangelion), Hank and Dean Venture (The Venture Bros.)

You get to have your corpse and eat it too. Or something like that. I suppose you could eat the corpse. The beauty of this convention is that it proffers all the joy of the bloody death (no escape hatch or faked allergy to honey) without requiring some hokey way to have a character drive Charon’s ferry in reverse. The character does die and does not come back from the dead…but you still get to enjoy their company. Why? Because some lovely figure (be it the writer or head of a government agency or both) had the foresight to store a few spare copies of this person just in case. This method also then invites all fun introspections on “What is a self?,” which intro to philosophy college students can gush over for hours!

Messiah Complex

Offenders: Neo (The Matrix), Aslan (The Chronicles of Narnia), Sailor Moon (Sailor Moon)

Word to the wise: if you find yourself in a world with superpowers (oh, let’s say the guy you’re with can leap over skyscrapers or you have a piece of enchanted lipstick that turns you into a pyrokinetic superheroine), you really should not be all that cautious when approaching the subject of your mortality. Honestly, you should just assume that shuffling loose this mortal coil is a pretty much akin to landing in jail in the early stages of Monopoly. It will be an inconvenience, but it’s not the end of the world (neither, for that matter, is the end of the world). This point is particularly salient if you were to find yourself dying because you were nobly sacrificing your life for the greater good. That’s a “get out of jail free” card right there. There’s no way you’re going to stay dead. None. You pretty much hit the jackpot in Pascal’s Wager and won not only the glory for being such a noble, good being, but also that precious little thing called life.

Only Mostly Dead

Offenders: Westley (The Princess Bride), Norman Osborn (Spider-Man), Morph (X-Men: The Animated Series)

They say that if there’s no body, there is no death. Well, sometimes, if there is a body, there’s still no death. As Miracle Max explains, there’s dead and there’s mostly dead. Mostly dead allows for the shock of the death and perhaps even the loss of a heart-beat/heart, but without the irritating finality of death. Mostly dead is very similar to “Fakin’ It” (in fact Norman does a little of both), but more often than not lacks the possibility of preplanning by the writer (with the exception of Westley) and is a frequent enough device that it deserves its own category.



I’m a Dark Lord. ‘Nuff said.

Offenders: Sauron (Lord of the Rings), Voldemort (Harry Potter), Dr. Doom (Fantastic Four), Megatron (Transformers)

Word to the wise part deux: beings of unimaginable evil and power always come back after their first death, even more evil and more powerful. If you and your friends have just defeated the Great Terror Lord of Gonthrax, you should not be celebrating. If anything, you should be even more worried! All you have accomplished is chaperoning your calamitous caterpillar into the pernicious pupa stage of his metamorphosis of malevolence (where he will then reemerge as a bloodthirsty butterfly)! Granted, I do not know what the implications of this fact are when applied to the best-selling novel, The New Testament, considering we have the death of a powerful being with multiple supporters, only to reemerge a few days later even more awe-inspiring. Maybe Jesus was actually the first Sauron. And all poor Judas wanted to do was pull a Peter Pettigrew and atone for his alliance with wickedness.



I know, I know…I just committed a mortal sin; I confused Harry Potter with Lord of the Rings.

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Explanations!

Offenders: Daffy Duck (Looney Tunes), the crew of Sealab (Sealab 2021), Action League Now! (Kablam!)

How does Daffy survive a gun-shot to the face (or a visit to Hell at the end of some episodes)? How does the Flesh reconstruct himself after being blended, run over by an SUV, exploded, crush by a block of concrete, etc.? How do the denizens of Sealab continuously survive the undersea holocaust and rebuild their home (and don’t say there is no continuity, because they reference past episodes)? WHO CARES?! Look at all the stupid explanations there are for characters coming back to life: Horcruxes, clones, lookalike twins, magical flowers, bullets that send people through time, cocoons at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean – sometimes the best explanation is no explanation. You know what they say: if you don’t have anything half-credible to say, don’t say anything at all.

Hell-bent on Slaughter

Offenders: Michael Myers (Halloween), Jason (Friday the 13th), Freddy Kreuger (Nightmare on Elm Street)

This category is almost a subsection of Daffy’s category. Personally, I am not as well-versed on slasher movies as I should be; I’ve only seen the first one of each series. Of course, I have never really surmised that all that much energy is devoted to concocting reasons as to why that axe didn’t fully sever Michael’s head or how Jason survived the room of a thousand dynamites. All that matters is that these creatures have one reason to live: to exenterate the insides of every horny teenager on the planet. And, clearly, there are still horny teenagers out there. In fact, they’re multiplying in numbers! And sometimes this very increase in numbers is due to, you guessed it, horny teenagers! These guys can’t give up on their duty! They have a varsity-level commitment that I only wish I had back when I did track. Death to them is like a few broken bones to an Olympic gold medalist: enough of a reason to pause for a moment, but that’s it. Afterwards, they slap on some duct tape, grit their teeth, and continue the chase. And good for them!

(I can express such sentiments since, as a horny 23-year old, I’m pretty sure I’m exempt from their eviscerations)

I Had an Extra Guy!

Offenders: Pac-Man (Pac-Man), Mario (Super Mario Bros), Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog)

Man, wouldn’t the world be an interesting place if you had multiple deaths before you truly died? I know that The Onion did an investigation on the personal psychological implications of such a reality…but there is so much more. Would people sell their extra guys (or green mushrooms, etc.) in times of economic distress, leading the rich to become nigh-immortals? Or, in fact, would people be born with different amounts of extra lives, which in turn would decide their level in society?

Oh, the possibilities for anti-utopian novels are endless!

Lazy Writing/The Fans Demanded It/Cocoon in Ocean

Offenders: Hal Jordan (Green Lantern), Barry Allen (Flash), Bucky (Captain America)

Okay, so usually the writer will ultimately fall back on one of the aforementioned categories or a particularly special case of “cocoon in ocean” (yes, I already mentioned that, but it’s SO freakin’ stupid!). But some cases of resurrection are far more transparent than others. While I can half-buy into certain cases of averted death, there are points where the movie or telev – oh who am I kidding, comic book writer should just devote a few panels to his hand reaching into the grave and picking the dead character out of it before imbuing life back into him or her. Because, no, Barry Allen isn’t alive because of the Speed Force…that is unless Speed Force is “Geoff Johns wants it to be the Silver Age” in another language. What? Grant Morrison wrote that story? No, not believing it. Because, to be fair, Morrison is probably the only one who executed my suggestion. Seriously. Read Animal Man sometime.

It’s My Other Mutant Power

Offenders: Pretty much everyone who has every graced the pages of X-Men

I could pretty much populate this entire list with mutants. Fakin’ It? Yup, Magneto has done that so many times he should probably meet with Dr. Ruth. Clones? Uh-huh. Even if you’re an X-Men and aren’t Multiple Man, a cosmic, nigh-omnipotent deity will provide a few clones of you just to ensure you can die tragically and still come back to grace the shiny variant covers of issue 300. And don’t even get me started on the last category I just discussed.

I’m relatively certain by this point that one of the prerequisites for joining the X-Men is that the potential member in question has to have died at least once. That must be what X-Force, X-Factor, Generation X (oh, am I dating myself?), and all those other teams are force: acquainting the next class of mutants with the concept of their own mortality and their mortality’s mortality. The X-Men are the most elite group of mutants out there; they cannot be wasting their time dealing with death-virgins who actually get worried when a Sentinel beam fries Cyclops. Come on!





Did I miss any of your favorites?

Sunday’s Valentine’s Day. You know what that means: every restaurant is booked. Dammit! In honor of the event and to spite everyone who is being wined and dined, I present 10 movies that fuck with love and show how love fucks with you.

Note 1: SPOILERS. If you haven’t seen a movie and don’t want it spoiled, skip to the next one.
Note 2: These are not the top ten movies that do so. Only 10 from across time and genre. Though, I admit that two are only a year apart.
Note 3: Any of these movies are DEFINITELY worth a look. Many of them are among my favorites.

The Little Mermaid (1989)

“So much for true love!” – Ursula

Things you will have to give up for love may include any or all of the following: your voice, your family/life-long friends/acquaintances
with whom you’re able to have decent conversations at the supermarket, your kingdom, and your life.

Yes, love makes Ariel go stupid to an exponential degree. She forsakes her family, imperils her people and her kingdom, and abandons her friends all to go after a pair of legs and a dick that she has only seen for the grand total of probably a minute. Well, she also has a statue of him, but that just summons up Pygmalion allusions, all of which do her no favors.

Imagine for a second that you’re a merperson living under Trident’s sovereignty or even someone residing in the coastal town of the movie. You’re sitting there, eating your seaweed salad, and suddenly it's the climactic battle of the film and an enormous fat drag queen with a trident starts causing storms and spreading desolation. All thanks to Ariel's sex drive. Your wife may be fried to a cinder by a stray trident bolt, your home may be annihilated by some eighty foot tall waves, and you may have permanent psychological scars that will never fully heal…but at least it all ended with the spoiled little princess getting her man.

And yes, it’s totally healthy to leave everyone you’ve known and who has loved you your entire life (except a fatuous seagull) all for the sake of getting married.

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Betty Schafer: Come on, Joe.
Joe Gillis: Come on where? Back to a one-room apartment that I can’t pay for? Back to a story that may sell and very possibly will not?
Betty: If you love me, Joe.
Joe: Look, sweetie -- be practical. I’ve got a good thing here. A long-term contract with no options. I like it that way. Maybe it’s not very admirable. Well, you and Artie can be admirable.
Betty: Joe, I can’t look at you anymore.
Joe: Nobody asked you to.

Which relationship am I even talking about here? Norma and Joe? Norma and Max? Joe and Betty? Betty and Artie? Us and Hollywood? Whatever the case may be, none of these are healthy, fulfilling relationships. Joe is with Norma for money; Norma with Joe in a delusional attempt to feel young and attractive still. Betty is with Artie because it’s the “right” thing to do. Max is with Norma because of some misguided, blind devotion…or because no one wants to hire him as a director. Norma is with Max because right until the movie started, she needed someone to clean up all that chimpanzee poop.



Love is selfish. Love is a ploy created to get what you really want: be it money or fuel for your vanity or even just purpose. And even then, it still sucks. You get stuck in an old house with a crazy lady or worry that your lover is sleeping around or, worst of all, you can be Betty and Artie. They are the only couple who stay together at the end. Yet we know that Betty “loves” (or at least feels passion for and can get a good screenplay/job out of) Joe. Instead, she has to run off to Artie at the end – Artie who wants to get married for cheap and skip a honeymoon and probably whisk Betty away from the world of movies that she grew up in and loves and trap her in her own Hollywood mansion (albeit a tinier one). That’s the happy couple at the end.

L’Atalante (1934)

[I can’t find quotes online]

Roger Ebert calls this movie “poetic.” I guess it is…if you are alluding to a dreary, humdrum "way of life" poetry style that you can find in modern or post-modern works. Quite frankly, this movie is one of the most depressing movies ever made. We begin with a marriage (the traditional end to a narrative). But the movie only shows us that this coupling, this happy ending, is really neither happy nor the end. After the blissful union that is the typical “Hollywood ending,” what are we left with? Fights about feline hygiene and laundry. A husband jealous to the point of abusive and a wife who may be giving him reason to be. Marriage is like the ship L’Atalante, a small, claustrophobic world that we can’t wait to escape, if only for a few hours.

Sure this movie ends with the lovers reconciled and happy…but that’s just where we started. And there are many, many more trips on L’Atalante still in store for these two.

An Education (2009)

“You have no idea how boring everything was before I met you.” – Jenny

In this movie, Jenny, a nice British schoolgirl, meets David, a “bad Jew” who tries to indoctrinate her into a world of thievery, deception, and promiscuity. She is tempted, but in the end, good perseveres over not-so-good and Jenny leaves David. By the epilogue, we are informed that she’s met a nice British boy who has never been to Paris and who probably is a virgin and who will be Jenny’s rather darling husband.

YAWN. Yes, David may have been a shyster and an attempted bigamist, but I’ll be damned if he also was not one of the most attractive, seductive, and fun characters on screen in a long time. An Education manages to show us an actually “good romance,” but it also tells us that what is good for romance is bad for everything else. To have a happy life, you must choose the boring guy, the one you would never bother making a movie about. The only romance worth having is the one that can’t last and the one that will eat away everything else around you like corrosive acid.

David did not save Jenny from her boring life, he only showed her how boring the rest of her life would be. And the worst part is – that was the better of the two options she had.



Vertigo (1958)*

“Too late. It’s too late. There’s no bringing her back.” – Scottie Ferguson

Imagine the perfect mate; he/she’s stunningly attractive, magnificently cultured, and only has eyes for you. Are you imagining him? Good – because that’s the only way you’re ever going to see her (oh look at me being all gender-inclusive). In Vertigo, Scottie will for a few brief days get to know Madeleine, a woman so sublime and ethereal that he cannot help but fall madly and hopelessly in love with her. We ourselves can’t help but fall in love with her and want to see Stewart and Novak make mad passionate love on screen (since that would be the closest we’ll ever come to getting in on the action).

But of course, Scottie loses her. And then, thanks to an enormous (apparent) coincidence, he finds a girl who looks remarkably like her and tries to recreate his love. He doesn’t really care that he’s mentally tormenting a seemingly innocent woman and, really, neither do we. For love, sacrifices must be made.

Except there’s one problem: Judy, the girl off the street, was Madeleine. Which means that there was no “real” Madeleine, at least in so much that we ever knew her. Scottie’s dream girl was a lie. For all we know, the “real” Madeleine Elster farted constantly and got chili stains all over her grey suits. Of course, there’s no “real” Madeleine Elster since this is just a movie, but don’t think too hard. The more you think about Vertigo, the more you feel like you’re precariously holding onto the increasingly slipping ledge of your sanity.

In short: perfect mate = nonexistent. The best you can do is try to dress someone else up as him or her, but in the end, you’re being abusive or s/he’s deceiving you or you’re deceiving yourself. Love is a lie. A lie that hurts like a cold, blonde bitchslap.

*With eternal gratitude and apologies to my Hitchcock professor Lee Edelman. I’ve taken about 3 hours of brilliant lecturing and mutilated it into a few paragraphs in a blog and most likely did his whole argument a great disservice in the process.

The Sheik (1921)

“When an Arab sees a woman he wants, he takes her.” – Ahmed

Hurray for Stockholm Syndrome! This movie teaches us all that the best way to get the woman of your dreams (especially if she’s an independent free-thinking woman in the early part of the twentieth century) is to kidnap her and force her to live with you until she tries to escape and realizes that you aren’t the worst guy out there. Oh, and if she’s repulsed by the prospect of marrying a Middle Eastern man when she herself is white, simply inform her that you’re adopted and are as white a Klansman’s hood. True love truly is triumphant!

(Also, I just realized that this plot is a bit like that of Beauty and the Beast. Just changing “Middle Eastern” to “furry” and “white” to “not furry”)

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

“I wish I knew how to quit you!” – Jack Twist

The typical reaction after seeing Brokeback Mountain is to bemoan homophobia and think, “Alas, alack, and Alaska! If only those two could have loved each other openly and gotten married in California without fear of their heads being bashed in!”* But can’t we also just say, “Man, wouldn’t these two have been so much happier if that incident never happened on Brokeback?”

Yes, it’s technically not the nice thing to think…but it’s true. Ennis seemed suppressed enough that he never would have succumb to his urges without some Twisting of his arm (and pulling of his fifth leg and…okay, I’ll stop now). He would have gotten married, probably not gotten divorced since his wife would have no infidelity to suspect and everyone would be happier and Daddy would just occasionally buy Men’s Fitness magazines and disappear into the bathroom with them every once in a while.

As for Jack, he might have just had a lot more hookups over the years before still being turned into a human piñata. Even if this were the case, he’d be better off. More sex and less angst makes Jack a content homo. And hey, without the emotional ties of Ennis, he might’ve even just decided to move out of Montana/Wyoming/whatever useless state they were in and head out to San Francisco instead. Then not only might he have lived, but he would have had the opportunity to guest star in another Oscar nominated film, Milk!

As the poster said, “Love is a force of a nature.” It’s a big fucking hurricane that blows you off course and makes you stupid and miserable and eventually kills you and leaves the other guy with only a shirt to cry over.

*Granted, homophobia is worth much bemoaning and gays should be able to get married without fear of cranial restructuring, but that’s not for this entry.

Love & Death (1975)

Sonja Grushenko: You were my one great love!
Boris Grushenko: Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm dead.

I know most people would say Annie Hall might be a better candidate, but as Alvie says at the end, “We need the eggs.” It might be one of the better defenses of love and the inevitable heartbreak. Love and Death’s title shows that while we put the love first in our mind, ultimately death is what matters. Sonja’s overly romantic remark, which would be the emotional triumph of most other films, is sarcastically and rightfully retorted with Boris’s reality-check. Love isn’t a great powerful force that can overcome all in this movie; it’s a distraction from the real force: human mortality. And, as you watch the movie, you see that people will get their distraction through any means necessary: power, deception, money, and guilt trips. One great love is like a very shiny penny – it’s charming but ultimately worthless. The only real, eternal coupling is between Boris and the Grim Reaper.



City Lights (1931)

The Tramp: Can you see now?
A Blind Girl: Yes, I can see now.

There really is no more touching way to finish a love story than with the uncovering a ruse and the realization that the man of your dreams is just a dirt-poor ex-con. I guess this is sweet; she finally sees him for who he is and realizes how much he sacrificed for her. But he also deceived her into thinking that he was well-off enough to support her and her mother and who knows what she turned down waiting for Prince Charming? Let’s not even get into the fact that these two probably aren’t going to have all that happy of a marriage as they struggle to get by and she brings up his chicanery whenever they get into a fight.

Imitation of Life (1959)

Steve Archer: I've been trying to do something with my pictures. It's meant everything to me. Every minute, for a long time now.
Lora Meredith: No, it hasn't. Or you wouldn't give it up to sell beer.
Steve: I gave it up for something much better, something right now: You.
Lora: But you're asking me to give up something I've wanted all my life, ever since I was a child, and I can't do it!
Steve: If you grew up, you could.

You know what I like? Having to choose between the man I love and my career plus all my dreams I’ve had since my earliest recollection! Once I find that relationship with a guy, I’ll be set for life! What? No? Not every girl dreams of being carried off by Prince Charming who will then tell her that her own ambitions are infantile compared to her responsibility to him and his need to sire an heir?

The particularly horrifying thing about this movie is not simply the fact that Steve does not stray from his position that a woman cannot have it all; no, the most disturbing facet of this movie is that it endorses Steve’s ultimatum and wants the viewer to both validate it and condemn Lora as self-obsessed for simply not surrendering to the throes of her libido. The rest of the movie after this confrontation will obsessively create a world where Lora must be wrong and must be taught a lesson.

Also, this movie shows another danger of love: falling in love increases your risk of having children. And children, as illustrated by the duo of the insipid Suzie and the prickly Sarah Jane, are ungrateful little brats who will not realize all that you did for them until you’re in a coffin being pulled by four white horses. Fuck children.

(Okay, don’t literally fuck them, but you get the idea)

So for those of you not going out to dinner on Valentine's Day, I highly recommend any of these 10 movies. They will make you feel better about your current lack of a significant other.

As some of you may know, Sony is currently considering rereleasing classics in 3-D. Granted, I do not know what exactly they mean by “classics.” This article mentions Spider-Man and Casino Royale alongside
Taxi Driver, but as someone who tutors high schoolers, I do know that there are people who consider anything pre-Juno “old.” How far back would this go? Would we see the depth to which Hans Gruber plummets as never before? Would Norma Desmond seem to pop out of the screen as she gets ready for her extreme close-up? Will we finally get to behold D.W. Griffith’s racist vision truly realized as the KKK dramatically races to save the day in three dimensions of Reconstructionist Southern Glory?

I’m going to place my money on not going any further back than Star Wars, which I always have drawn as the unofficial line between “old movies” and “new movies.” Of course, I would not be surprised if they do not even tackle anything from before this century. Well, Lucas might…anything for a few bucks after all.

The instinctive reaction is to decry “O times! O morales!” in classical Latin accent and wait for the next few harbingers of the apocalypse to arrive. But then, I have to ask, is this really all that bad?

Let’s assume that you absolutely hate 3-D. Your mother was mutilated in a freak mayhap involving a 3-D camera and your invalid cousin went blind after taking the glasses outside post-“Honey, I Shrunk the Audience” and looking directly at the sun (further proving how evil EPCOT indeed is). Thankfully, no matter what the studio bosses do to adulterate your favorite film…it still remains unadulterated in other forms! There are still DVDs, Blu-Rays, revival theaters, etc. While film executives have a grotesque dearth of scruples, they aren’t going to annihilate any pre-3-D forms of classics. Hell, even Lucas released the original trilogy on DVD, with Han shooting first and everything!

Granted, I too am someone who gets annoyed at things that really do not affect me (*cough* the Oscars *cough*). So I’ll do you one better: I’m going to extol the benefits of this new money-making scheme!

Benefit #1: Who wants to watch John McTiernan go all bad-ass on a tiny screen?

“Yippee-Kay-Yay Motherfucker” roughly translates to “I am one hardcore badass and you should really only indulge in my asskickery on a big yippee-kay-yay-motherfucking screen!” I admit, I did originally see Die Hard via Netflix Instant, but I would love to see it on a theater with surround sound and an enthusiastic audience. This past fall, I had the enjoyment of watching the first two Toy Storys again on the big screen. Why? Because they were rereleased in 3-D! Did the 3-D really matter all that much or enhance the experience? No. But was it still much more preferable to renting it on DVD and staying in my living room? Does Bo Peep want to get into Woody’s pants? This proliferation of rereleased classics really signifies of resurgence of the revival theater…right in the comfort of your own over-priced, local cinema!

Benefit #2: Hey kids! Movies from the last century!

Like I said earlier, I make a semi-living tutoring high schoolers. Most are brilliant little young adults whose cultural awareness is on the verge of blossoming into a beautiful flower of refinement. Others, however, have provided such gems as, “I’m planning to get around to watching some old movies. One of my friends lent me Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” When reminded that that film is indeed from 2004 and upon asking him if he watches actually old films, he rejoined with The Usual Suspects.

But this 3-D phenomenon provides a bit of hope to banish such ignorance. They may never go out of their way to rent an “old” flick like Aliens or a complete archaic vestige of a by-gone era such as Spartacus, but what if they were playing at a local theater in 3-D? They may go out of sheer boredom, curiosity, or just because Legion or what-have-you has sold out. Once you overcome your abhorrence at the concept of 3-Difying Kubrick, you might see that this money-making scheme is not completely devoid of merit.

Yeah, I know it’s a silly idea; Legion would never sell out.

Benefit #3: Quentin Tarantino will make you love 3-D.

If there is one director who can take any ridiculous gimmick or trick and make it into an aspect of a cinematic masterpiece, it’s Tarantino. I was thinking of movies that studios might rerelease in 3-D and when Kill Bill came up in the great rolodex of my mind, I could not help but giggle with the rush of fanboyish pleasure over such a possibility. Like one of those optical illusions that simultaneously proffer a comely maiden and a hideous crone, good ol’ Quentin delivers cinema that is both pure and utter trash, but that becomes great cinema because of that very fact. I now want nothing more than to watch the shot of adrenaline scene from Pulp Fiction while wearing a honkingly large pair of 3-D glasses.

On a similar note, we may finally get a wide-release of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder in 3-D. For those of you who do not know, Hitch actually intended for this movie to be in 3-D and filmed it with that in mind (there are often objects between the camera and the action, to give you an extra sense of dimension...and voyeurism!). Of course, by the time he finished it and was ready to release it, the 3-D movie had begun its half-century-long dormancy. For 50 years we have been forced to watch the film in 2-D, which may be as great of a shame as watching it in black and white. Yes, I love black and white, but when something is filmed in stunning Technicolor, DAMMIT I want Technicolor!



So fear not, dear reader. The end is not nigh. The gods must more thoroughly drive us mad before they destroy us.

In fact, to those of you still bemoaning the approaching ubiquitous nature of 3-D movies, I offer you this little puzzle to calm your addled minds

The current point of 3-D is to try to boost ticket sales due to the evils of downloading cars and the like. They want to make going to the movies an experience that cannot be duplicated at home. Of course, what are theaters going to do once sales for Avatar-esque DVDs start to flounder as people realize that the experience can’t be duplicated at home and all they bought was a movie with an audaciously predictable plot (yes, the plot is predictable to the point of audacity). Granted, the people buying Avatar on DVD might take some time to catch on to this fact, but even my dog has figured out through trial and error that when he poops outside, he gets more treats than when he poops inside. This trend of 3-D, if movies become more and more geared around the 3-D technology, might ultimately defeat itself.