An Update, Blockbuster and Jennifer's Body

My father is getting moved to an acute care facility today. It wasn't clear if we'd be able to make this happen while I was still in AZ. But luckily he's stable, and a recent procedure went well, so we can. He's still in critical condition, but I'm taking any little victory we can get.

He's under heavy sedation at night. I bring my laptop along and work while I'm at the hospital all day, so at night I've been taking the opportunity to catch up on movies.

I rerouted my Netflix to my parents' house. But the holidays have played havok with the post office, so I'm only intermittently getting envelopes. (I watched season two of DEXTER). Red Box is cheap and convenient, but NEVER has anything I actually want to see in stock. And then we got a coupon in the mail, with an offer for a month of rentals at Blockbuster for two bucks each, instead of the usual five.

Despite the hard time I often give Blockbuster, both of the reds failed me, so I went with blue.

Blockbuster always seems to have a billion copies of new releases, which is what I wanted. And two bucks is obviously more than a dollar, but I'd rather pay two bucks to watch a movie I want to see than one dollar to settle for something else. Good job, Blockbuster. Now THIS is a business model that actually makes some sense. But I also think it's a temporary measure. The wiser course in the long run may be to push the well-established Blockbuster brand into a VOD delivery system. If they could put a box in the home that delivers any movie or TV episode at any time -- the direction in which we're headed -- before their competition, they'll have a shot at longer-term survival. Netflix is already way ahead of them in some ways, and Blockbuster is reacting instead of innovating. But shit... if they don't at least try, within ten years they're going to be like typewriter salesmen in 1980.

I rented JENNIFER'S BODY.

JENNIFER'S BODY is a mystery to me. It has Megan Fox on the cover, the marketing promised nudity, gore and a lesbian make-out scene, writing by Diablo Cody, and was an R-rated horror-comedy.

Despite all of this, it underperformed rather badly.

Now... horror-comedy is REALLY fucking hard to sell, almost on par with drama. I know this because I love horror-comedies. EVIL DEAD II, DEAD ALIVE, RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD... these are some of my favorite movies of all time. I'll let the grad school guys sit around and talk about how brilliant CITIZEN KANE is... I'll be over here watching ARMY OF DARKNESS. When I first moved out from Chicago, it was my sincere goal to get some horror-comedies made. I wanted to add to the pantheon. But I soon found out that it's extraordinarily difficult to get one of these things set up.

And by "found out," I mean I tried for fucking years, without success. The problem is they're very difficult to market. And, if you can't convince people your horror-comedy is the movie they should see on Friday/Saturday night over something that's easy to understand (for instance, a high concept comedy with an A-list star), then they don't.

With that in mind, JENNIFER'S BODY's performance should come as no surprise. But it opened very close to ZOMBIELAND, which fucking killed. This also is an R-rated horror-comedy. So the question becomes... why did ZOMBIELAND perform above expectations, and JENNIFER'S BODY below? Is it just a whim of fate? Or is there a factor we're not considering?

I digress: I'd read a bunch of reviews of JENNIFER'S BODY online. They were overwhelmingly negative. They must have watched a different movie... I'm not saying it's perfect, but I was entertained.

Megan Fox is primarily known for her role in the TRANSFORMER franchise. If you really look at those movies, though, she barely has any screen time. It's hard to get a handle on her at all. (Besides Michael Bay's famously simple direction, "Just look hot.") I thought she was great in the title role. Playing a bitchy high school girl is something she can pull off.

And I really liked Amanda Seyfriend. Between MEAN GIRLS, MAMA MIA! and this, she's played three vastly different characters, and I bought her in all three movies. She's beautiful and talented. I didn't think all of Diablo's lines stuck the landing, the narration was unnecessary and I don't believe the framing device added anything. But this is a movie in which a crappy indie emo band sacrifices a girl to Satan in exchange for stardom, and they sing "867-5309" while committing the murder.

That's a fun night at the movies.