X-Entertainment's Christmas Season & Advent Calendar, 2008.

04/18/2005: I saw Saw.

Ayyyy. Sorry about the lack of a new article this past weekend — I was outta town. The plus side is, I’ll be writing about where I went this weekend, so you get a trip report. You love trip reports. Anyway, it was a much needed two day binge of drinking, bad movies and complete removal from society, and if you’ve never endeavored in such ways, I strongly recommend it. Seriously, sometimes people need nothing more than to completely atrophy save for the few minutes spent lifting piles of junk food and alcohol to their mouths. I feel whole again.

Finally caught Saw, and I’m gonna have to almost maybe sorta give it a thumbs up. Admittedly, I wasn’t really paying any attention for the first twenty minutes — dunno how much I missed, but suffice to say, I DID NOT see that coming. If you’ve seen the flick, you know what I’m talking about. Gotta give credit where it’s due: Nobody walks into a movie like Saw these days not expecting the textbook twist, and yet, they still managed to completely surprise me. Also, Glover’s inclusion wasn’t anywhere near as random as I’d read. Sure, it’s not a huge role, but he served some strange Danny Gloverish purpose. Besides, throwing a genuine name in there and not making him the big part helps throw everyone’s guesses off. I don’t want to say much more in fear of spoiling, but if you can avoid your inner critic for a while, the flick definitely works.

My favorite part of Saw is near the beginning when you’re at the theatre and the guy with big hat sits down in front of you.

Seriously, sometimes people need nothing more than to completely atrophy save for the few minutes spent lifting piles of junk food and alcohol to their mouths.

Glad you got some much needed relaxation, Matt. Looking forward to the trip report — those always rank among my favorite X-E pieces.

Yes I wait hour after hour to make the first post. j/k I never got the chance to put the first post and i saw so many do it before so i thought why not. And I cant wait till the vacation report i love those they are my favorite part of the site.

Looking forward to the new trip article Matt. I came here yesterday to see if there was a new one…sadly, there wasn’t. So I read some old Halloween ones. Then I went to bed. It was a sl-ow night.

"Besides, throwing a genuine name in there and not making him the big part helps throw everyone’s guesses off."

Since when is Danny Glover the only big name in there, cmon, what about Cary Elwes! He was freakin Dread Pirate Roberts for christ sakes! If that doesnt make you a big name, nothing does.

I laugh every time I see the Christmas theme still up. But trip articles are one of my favorites, so I can’t wait!

Oh hells yes I sure do love trip reports!
Matt, did you see this story about the baby wholphin that was born in Hawaii?
I kept hearing from coworkers that Saw is okay, while all the reviews I read said it was horrible terrible bad. I swear, the Onion reviewers just like to hate on movies for no good reason…
Since we’re talking about movies, can I just say Sin City rocked woohoo!

Actually, I’ll probably miss the Christmas-y background once it’s taken down.

This is my first post in several months! I was just catching up, Matt… I loved the Baby Aligators article! Also loved the Star Wars in Times Square piece!

Matt, you’re totally right.. I love your trip reports. Some of my favorite articles from the past are trip pieces; Bar Harbor, Jersey boardwalk, etc.

Saw is pretty neat. I saw it for my first time recently, too. I’ve heard those sequel rumors lurking, though..

danny glover helped calm me down after seeing the Ring, I was super scared then I caught angels in the outfield on tv and it was so retarded that I forgot how scared I was

As coincidence has it, I too enjoyed a bad movie marathon of sorts this past weekend (no drinking though, simply because I was with my brother and his wife and they have some silly bug up their asses about substance abuse). A few of the movies we watched are "Logan’s Run", Hell Comes to Frogtown", "Garbagepail Kids: The Movie", "The Story of Ricky", and that god-awful John Travolta sci-fi flick that acted as a thinly-veiled scientology manifesto. "Hell Comes to Frogtown" was exquisite. It stars Rowdy Roddy Piper as the last fertile man on Earth who is recruited by the government to impregnate all the world’s remaining women who have been captured by mutant bi-pedal toads. A triumph, to say the least.

p.s. to yeti- story of ricky is ultra awesome!! gpks is not awesome. it makes me want to cry.

I’d be delighted to be impregnated by Rowdy Roddy Piper.
Seriously. Where is he when I need him the most?!?!?

Sounds like my kind of movie. The surprising part is, I’ve never even heard of it. This is probably due to the fact that I’ve had finals and projects and shit, and have not seen the light of day in over a month. I need to get out more.

A few months back the Kimmel Show was on vacation and they showed a behind the scenes episode that I caught. The TV Watchers were miserable from too much television and being stuck in a room toegether for what I understand is 14 hours a day, so be warned if you are considering applying.

If it were a read the internet all day job then I’d do it for half of what they’re paying. Tv sucks so I can’t do it.

Depends on what stations you have. I’ve got the dish, and it sucks compared to when we had cable. Atleast I can watch Star Trek and Macgyver on Cable. With the dish, all I get is 24 hour realty shows tied in with Days of our Lives and that awful Family Feud with Richard "AL" Karn.

roddy piper is a presenter for a new tv show over here in the uk called "celebrity wrestling"

Battlefield Earth, I think Yeti was referring to, was freakin hilarious! The worst acting I’ve ever seen from John Travolta, and that’s truly saying something.
And Saw? Oh yeah, that came out of nowhere. I never would have guessed that.

Looks like this could work out in your favor, Matt. Now you can combine your obsession with Kool-Aid with your obsession with movie serial killers. How convenient.

Now I am really anxious to see Saw…I love Cary Elwes. It’ll take forever to get to Korea though, I am sure….so far everyone here has done well and not actually said what the big twist was…

I bought a copy of "Nukie" this weekend. I had to pay $5 for it, instead of the $1-$2 I usually feel like paying for old, used VHS. But now I own "Nukie," and part of me has died.

Yeah, I haven’t heard what the twist is in Saw, either! Guess I should rent it soon.

On a side note, has anyone else stopped noticing the Christmas theme on XE? I honestly had, until a coworker just walked by and asked why I was looking at a Christmas website in April. Heh.

Yeah, I don’t notice the Christmas thing anymore. I’ve just accepted that it’s Christmas all year ’round at X-E and I find that strangely comforting…

As for the trip article, bring it on. Those are definitely some of my favorites. Honestly, though, I have a weakness for the old food articles. You know how in a movie, there’ll be some character having a dream where they’re in the desert or running through a forest or something, then they wake up and go, "Whew! Just a dream!" Just then, they look down and there’s sand in their bed or a twig between their toes? That’s how I feel about the old food. We go through life, beginning to wonder if maybe we just imagined the food of our youth, and just when we’re convinced of it, BLAM! - a rusty can of Chef Boyardee Fettucine on the shelf next to a rustier can of Fruity Bubble Gum Hi-C. So it wasn’t just a dream…

I can not believe no one has mentioned this yet. IMDB is noting one of our favorite actors birthday today.. Tim Curry!

Sometimes I think of Matt not as our large and slightly drunk god (see "Tell Me A Story" in the archives), but kind of like the creepy old guy in Phantasm. But instead of silver globes of death, he has flying cans of really old pasta, slightly bulging. Every once in a while, he bursts through random computer screens and says, "Yes, just tell yourself its only a website!" As for the upcoming article, like Dick Dale once said, "Let’s…. Go…. Trippin’!" Cue the surf music!

I came across someing that I dont believe is true but I wanted to know if anyone else has heard this or knows anything about it…In the movie The Never Ending Story there is a sence where the horse Artax sinks in the mud but apparently when filming the movie the flats that were supposded to bring him back up failed, and the horse really did drown and die. Has anyone heard this at all?

Saw could have been good, were it not for the surprisingly bad acting from Carey Ewles. I was really dissapointed with him after being excited to see him after such a long time. But really, his acting was unforgivable in my mind.

it’s easy to check, just watch the credits for no animals were harmed in the making of this movie, if it’s not there the horse died. Who thought up the idea of fake drowning the horse in mud anyways, was most likely drugged so it didn’t freak out.

"I’ve just accepted that it’s Christmas all year ’round at X-E and I find that strangely comforting…"

As far as the twist in Saw, nope, never saw it coming either.. not a clue! Also, I watched Creep the same weekend and Saw *destroyed* it on all levels save for one(IMO), the main character was Franka Potente from, Run Lola Run.

I thought that "Saw" was totally hardcore. I caught the midwest premiere of it last October at a horror filmfest here in Ohio, and the theater went berserk during some of the more intense moments (when Elwes finally freed himself from the shackles was particularly loud). The acting of the two primary characters was silly as all get out, but it’s still one of the better horror flicks that has been released lately.

Hey, ther’s a new Pope now! He’s a german and he shall be named Benedict XVI (I personally want one to name themselves after Cletus, the 3rd pope)

And today is also the 18th anniversy of the Simpsons’s first appearance on the Tracey Ullman Show.

Here’s a good poll I found on Fark: if you became Pope, what would your Pope name be?

Woo hoo, trip reports are awesome. With finals coming up, binge drinking and complete removal from society sound like good things to me!

I watched Saw about a month ago and wasn’t expecting a lot. I was surprised by how much I actually liked the movie, it was pretty intense and drew me in. I also didn’t see the twist coming, which I think is rare nowadays. Usually I can figure out what’s going to happen, but Saw definitely threw me off.

Is it bad that I actually kind of still like the Christmas background? I know it’s outdated and all, but there’s something about it that appeals to me, even during these warmer months.

The sequal to SAW should be comming out next halloween.
Saw was an awesome movie with its tiny budget but this next one will have a rather large budget.Get ready for some crazzy gore.

I don’t really like the idea of the next movie though. . .People trapped in a house by the jigsaw killer and they have to kill eachother in different ways.
We can only hope that it’s as good as the first.

Saw borrowed pretty heavily from japanense horror movies like evil dead trap, not to mention the black christmas ripoff with the eye in the closet. I still like it though.

The plot to Saw 2 sounds quite a bit like the plot to a little horror film I saw on HBO Zone called "Eye of the Beholder" (at least that’s what I think it was called, it wasn’t listed at IMDB) and Series 7. Both were pretty good (especially series 7)

IFC had a bad horror picture night a couple of weeks back. I Was a Teenage Zombie (kinda gross and boring) and Body Parts (simply boring). Body Parts is getting replayed this Friday on IFC.

"Series 7" is indeed a rockin’ good flick. On the same night I watched it, I also watched a horror flick called "Session 9" which totally knocked me on my ass. It stars David Caruso (among others) and it’s about a crew of workers that slowly go crazy and start murdering each other while de-asbestos-ing a deserted mental hospital. Really great, and creepy as hell.

ADJECTIVE: 1. Having great weight. 2. Unwieldy from weight or bulk. 3. Lacking grace or fluency; labored and dull. See synonyms at heavy.

I appreciate it when people look up words they don’t understand. Because that’s what I do, man, that’s what I do.

If you want a good, smart sci-fi/thriller movies, check out the first two Cube movies. They’re AWESOME.

This is my first post. I just had to comment on how much I disliked Saw. I’ll take seven any day of the week, which there are seven of.

Hated Saw. Brings all kinds of dishonor to the term "horror." For a more intelligent review go to:

He writes for Filmjerk.com too. Great critic. One of the better onliners around.

How about King Cheesaw from that one Godzilla movie? He was pretty snazzy. We need some American studio to make a real Kaiju movie. Not that giant iguana mess that was supposed to be the US version of Gojira.

King, The destructor is very pleased with your using the correct name of the King of Kaiju. Death by Snu-Snu will be arranged . . . with Jeri Ryan.

Are you even allowed to use "American studio" and "Kaiju movie" in the same sentence? I seriously cannot even picture genuine Kaiju directed by, say, Michael Bay. Okay, maybe I can, and maybe it’s the most awesome thing ever created. Imagine the collateral damage.
(Nate, if you read up you’ll see that Saw came out quite awhile ago, so you can’t blame finals for missing it. I skipped it because I thought the concept was really cool but too many reviews said Cary Elwes was horrible in it and I just couldn’t subject myself to that kind of disillusionment.)

I was surprised at how much I disliked Saw because I wanted so much to like it. I even convinced the video store clerk to find a copy for me eventhough they had been rented out, that’s how much I wanted to see it. I thought it was ridiculous and Cary Elwes was just awful. He’s actually the reason I wanted to see it because I will love him forever for being Wesley from The Princess Bride. The movie (and the twist) made so little sense to me that it actually made me mad. I think I could watch it again though and just enjoy it on a cheesy fun level now that I already know what I’m in for.

Cary wasn’t horrible in it, but I can’t say he was very likable. Odd, because I like him so very much.

Full disclosure: Saw Saw in the morning after a long night of partying. We all still had the giggles. Judging by how amused we were by Glover’s neck scar, perhaps I’m overestimating the film’s total worth.

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