Dream: Movie trailers

First, know that my dreams are often bizarre and always include celebrity guest stars. This one isn't as bizarre as most but oh, it's chock full of the famous folk.

All right. I can't even remember what order these were in, so I'll just rattle them off as best I can. The jist: I was watching some movie and noticing that the trailers were taking forever. They were those maybe four minute long trailers you sometimes see.

One was Reese Witherspoon in BLUE SEA. It was a documentary about the Blue Sea but it also had a romantic comedy plot thrown on top. Kinda like pineapple & ham pizza- it's ridiculous but some people like it. So in this, Reese Witherspoon plays a young marine biologist whose hand is bitten off by a shark. She then finds true love. The trailer showed the shark bite and I think she said "ouch." The action then cuts to a gorgeous camera shot under the Blue Sea, it's a sea that's about twelve feet deep all around. It's a deep cobalt blue and there's no vegetation, just silt and fish. A skull drifts by for some reason. The documentary narrator says "In the Blue Sea, life is harsh, but those living here have adapted to its unforgiving conditions. The temperature of the sea only rises by two degrees in the summer."

I hit NEXT on my DVD remote. This is already the fifth trailer, I'm getting sick of this.

The next one's a comedy / social satire about a world where a zombie plague has been overcome and the remaining humans use them for silly entertainment / labor means like in the end of SHAUN OF THE DEAD. This one's about a baseball league that positions zombies in the outfield. The trailer's not clear about what rules changes this brings to the game, but they show a batter hitting a zombie in the outfield and yelling "dammit!" Suddenly I'm in the trailer and I and a group of (researchers? physicists?) colleagues are posted at a research base in some arctic-looking cold place. I have no idea what we're doing there, but we're standing outside some garage-sized building watching some zombie baseball-related thing off-camera. Someone says let's go inside. Inside, there's a vent blowing heat and everyone stands near it. Jenna Fischer is there and we're having a conversation. I say "Oh, I'm so sweetly shy" and the conversation ends. Then quite suddenly a caller to our radio show calls in. I sit down at a desk and put on headphones. He's shipped me a fruit roll-up, which is what you have to do if you want to be a caller on our radio show. I say "Hi, you're on the air" and he begins to talk while I eat the fruit roll-up he sent. I don't listen to a thing he's saying. All my concentration's on the fruit roll-up.

There were others, I just can't remember them.

Revenge movies

I Netflixed DEATH SENTENCE with Kevin Bacon and it’s most of the way through. I recently saw THE BRAVE ONE with Jodie Foster and it’s pretty much the same thing. As I’m sitting here, I’m thinking about revenge movies and how they don’t give me what I want. Movies like the two I referenced above are gritty and semi-realistic, with good people torn apart by violence and going out to get revenge. They make their first kill and it seems to happen accidentally, even tragically, leaving the protagonist with a mournful realization of the impact of violence. At this point they can’t stop and / or the criminals are onto them, menacing them right back. Eventually, they’re chastised by detectives that are on their trail with speeches like "Do you really think going out and shooting (villain) is going to bring (loved one) back?" The entire time, the hero’s face is a mask of regret and despair.

I hate crap like this. Why? I love revenge. Or, rather, I find it to be a terribly useful coping mechanism. It’s something I’m told is one of the darkest things about me... I’ve got a gleeful perspective on hardcore revenge. If I see Jodie Foster shoot the guy that shot her fiancé, I don’t consider that revenge... I consider that a terrible waste. The guy got a relatively painless death and likely winked out of existence. Revenge like what I think that guy deserved was hours and hours of unbelievable Hostel-esque torture, during which his tears were spit on by a grinning Foster. Most revenge movies have the protagonist going through far more anguish than the people they go against. I want a movie where the good guy gets RE. VENGE.

There are movies where the good guy cuts unflinchingly through his oppressors, but they’re mostly glamorized action movies. KILL BILL, PAYBACK, GLADIATOR, THE CROW, etc.. That’s fun, don’t get me wrong, but they’re genre films on something I’d like to see a serious take about: a protagonist who takes revenge and enjoys (or at least gains solace from) it in a realistic and gritty style, based on the world we live in and without bullet-dodging and cartoony dialogue. Hammers, fingernails, drillbits and kneecaps.

Maybe I need to rent A TIME TO KILL. I could use that kind of unrepentant vigilantism. It would do me good.