Friday, December 31, 2010

2011: the Horror Sequel That Can't Be Stopped

Hello, Moviesucktastic fans! This is Scott, your friendly neighborhood podcast host/film critic. With the New Year rapidly approaching, a mere number of alcohol-soaked hours away, I find myself pondering the completely arbitrary and pointlessly ritualistic changing of the calendar year, and what it means about the events that have occurred over the past twelve months. For this truly is a holiday meant for reflection and anticipation, a weighing of the past's influences and whatever the future might hold.

Normally, the changing over of the old year to the new one is represented by the iconic images of Old Man Time and Baby New Year. The white-bearded elderly soul, back bent and crippled from the trials and tribulations of his past experiences, hands off the baton of responsibility for forging through yet another year to the innocent diaper-clad newborn, and scampers off on withered legs and a crooked cane without even attempting to warn this naive cherub about the horrors that await his brief and harrowing existence.

ⓘSAW †he dirty soul ☠Part I☠Image by CornĂ©rStonĂ© via Flickr
Being a movie fanatic, I prefer to personify the New Year by comparing it to a film that contains the essence of what the holiday represents. In this case, with the complete nightmare that this past year has become, I don't seem to be able to shake the feeling that January 1 is coming upon us with all of the harsh brutality of a Saw sequel. Just look back at the massive amounts of abject misery and mindless destruction that have occurred over the length of 2010, and ringing in the New Year raises the same levels of terror and dread as waking up strapped into some psychotic cancer patient's homicidal shop project and hearing a prerecorded message explain exactly how gruesome your impending demise is going to be.

This past year has been so screwed up, they might as well have replaced last year's Time's Square ball drop with a bicycle-riding Jigsaw puppet rolling on to every television set in America:

"Hello people. I want to play a game. This coming year, your house values will be driven down by reckless and opportunistic lending practices. Unemployment rates will hover indefinitely high while new jobs are shipped overseas, and soulless corporations alter their business models to exploit the fear of downsizing to squeeze uncompensated productivity out of their underpaid workers. As you struggle to keep your head (and mortgage) above water, your ineffectual political leaders with put on lavish shows of false concern and hollow efforts of economic restoration as your quality of life rapidly deteriorates. Live or die, the choice is yours. Actually, you have no control over it whatsoever; you're basically doomed. Have fun." 

Instead of being a time of hope and celebration, this New Year's is like surviving one horrible Jigsaw trap, with other victims viciously destroyed before your eyes while you cling tenaciously to life, only to get shoved through a time-locked door where yet another perilous struggle for survival awaits you. I'm to the point where I'd rather wake up with a spring-loaded mechanical trap strapped to my face and a key surgically implanted in my scrotum than face whatever mindless, spirit-shredding madness 2011 has in store for us. Instead of slowly descending during Dick Clark's uncomfortably humorous countdown, that giant geodesic sphere hanging over Times Square should plummet to the pavement, eject hundreds of spring loaded spikes, then tumble at full speed down Broadway like a giant spiked bowling ball of death and destruction, impaling the crushed and mutilated corpses of the helpless inebriated onlookers, rolling over the unsuspecting crowds in much the same way that 2011 will eventually bulldoze over what's left of spirits.

So, this is Scott from Moviesucktastic, wishing you a Happy New Year, a fun New Year's Eve celebration, and a quick, painless death at the hands of our destructive sociopath Baby New Year.

Game Over.   
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