Letters to the Editor
-
The wonders of movie marketing.
From the ads I would have assumed this was a yecchy Alien ripoff. Or perhaps a yecchy horror film with social significance; David Cronenberg's Rabid was an eerie predictor of how we would all look at AIDS. But it's based on a stage play? How are the gorehounds and mouth-droolers from GoreZone going to react when they find they've been ripped off? Cover the theatre in fake blood?
-
Where are the Bradford Dillman's of yesteryear?
For the record, I saw the Bradford Dillman "Bug" in it's original release; on a double bill with "Shanks", starring Marcel Marceau. This odd double bill, by the by, was the last gasp of the legendary William Castle. Alas, both films stank..
-
Where's Morgan Freeman?
Aren't Ashley and Morgan a package deal in Hollywood? Damn you March of the Penguins!!!!
-
William Castle's "Bug"
Not only was the 1970s "Bug" a lousy movie, it wasn't zippier at all, unless 30 minutes into the new one Judd and Shannon fall into a coma and stay there until the end of the film. Just the inclusion of a nipple -- anyone's nipple -- makes the new "Bug" vastly more exciting than the old one.
-
"Humorless"
Now I haven't seen BUG, so I can't say whether I agree with Stephanie Zacharek's thumbs-down, but I have to say I'm getting rather tired of critics using the word "humorless" as a pejorative. Why on earth does everything have to be funny or light-hearted? It may be true that BUG is "a somber, arty exercise in deep denial of its exploitation roots," but so are THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and JACOB'S LADDER and NEAR DARK and DIABOLIQUE and DELIVERANCE and twenty-five other "quality" horror classics, not to mention the works of Kafka, Faulkner, and Cormac McCarthy. Some things are simply meant to be taken seriously, you know. Why do I get the sense that Zacharek would have been more forgiving of the "inane self-seriousness" of this material if the movie had been made by a French or Japanese filmmaker? This is Friedkin, after all. Look at his filmography. If you want laughs, go watch Capt. Jack Sparrow.
-
It's a bad play adaptation.
"Bug is a humorless picture, a somber, arty exercise in deep denial of its exploitation roots."
I can tell you this is not how it played on the stage, but live theater has different storytelling rules and can present such arch material in a far more knowing and humorous way.
Stephanie misses the point by barely addressing how this is an adaptation of a play. Like so many play adaptations, it fails to get past the different expectations and conventions for live theater and film.
Adaptations which work alter the source material to fit film narrative or use a style which lets the audience accept a more stagey material.
It sounds like Bug does neither - Letts probably shouldn't have been allowed to adapt his own work.
It also has deceptive marketing which passes off a surreal play as a more straight narrative.
Yet Stephanie's review reads as if she fell for the marketing despite knowing the source material.
All of her complaints are rooted in this disconnect betwen stage and screen and what sound like a bad peformance of the play, period. This explains why it's a mess, and why it ignores film exploitation traditions - because the play wasn't rooted in them.
It would be like trying to do Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" as a some sort of "28 Days Later" knockoff because the plot includes people transforming into beasts. The end result would be equally confusing and irritating.
-
OMG, bloodsucking aphids!!
He was bitten by an APHID?! Hey, for such a reputedly 'humorless' movie, I'm LMAO already!
OK, I even Googled this just to make sure--yep, aphids don't bite people! They bite plants. They subsist entirely on plant juice. They're basically tiny green plant-lice. And they don't lay egg sacs deep into people's tender postcoital skin--they lay them on the undersides of leaves. Wooo, scary! But it was interesting to read that ants often tend aphids like cattle, even protecting their eggs. See, they can't even do anything to ANTS. And there have been lots scarier movies about ant invasions.
Sounds like it'll be a So Bad It's Good hoot some night on cable.
Thanks for the chuckle.
-
Austinite
"OK, I even Googled this just to make sure--yep, aphids don't bite people! They bite plants. They subsist entirely on plant juice. They're basically tiny green plant-lice. And they don't lay egg sacs deep into people's tender postcoital skin--they lay them on the undersides of leaves. Wooo, scary!"
Hey, you know what? Gregor Samsa can't turn into a cockroach, either. (I just Googled it to make sure.) And your neighbors will never turn into Ionesco's rhinoceroses. Don't be dumb. This is a movie about paranoia. You know that scene at the end of THE CONVERSATION where Gene Hackman is tearing apart his apartment looking for hidden transmitters? This movie is a little like that, only the "bugs" are insects, not transmitters. (Or are they? There seems to be some existential sleight-of-hand going on here, and maybe those bugs are just in the minds of the characters.)
Either way, it doesn't matter if aphids really eat humans or not. The only thing that matters is that the characters think they do. Were there really transmitters in Gene Hackman's apartment? Who knows? What matters is that he thought so.
Still, maybe I'm wrong. (I haven't seen the movie.) But if you want a more reasonable review of the movie, go here:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070524/REVIEWS/70525001
-
see name
god have mercy on us all. by FAR the worst movie i have ever seen!!!!
after seeing this movie i felt that i had to tell someone how absolutely awful it was. and what do you know almost every review talks of how great it is and its amazing dialouge and based off a play and blah blah blah. this is the site that had the lowest rating for it so.... Dialouge? it made me uncomfortable to even listen to the actors talk right from the begining, like watching some kid stand in front of a class and stumble through a presentation he forgot to start until the night before. i kept waiting for ANYTHING to start happening and when they went to show the "eggs" in his tooth it shows blood cells and then moves to another clip of maggots you would find on a dead animal? WOW they have sex and it shows outside the hotel is day, then night and then goes back inside? what was the budget and how did they find someone to actually air prieviews on any tv network? the only way this could have had any thing good to say is if the man they stabbed stood up before the explosion or..... i dont know guess i just am an idiot. whatever, they show ashley judd toppless... i guess that is gonna save it right? if you even think about leaving after the first 30 min. do so, i promise it does not get any better.