Or it's him, sleepwalking or something. Or he is Freddie Kruger before he snaps completely / becomes a murderous spirit. (I've no idea if that works with canon.)
This is the perfect movie for me.
1- It could be a sequel to Fight Club called Ex Club.
I am not sure what you are getting at, but I would like to see Shôwa kayô daizenshû get an Americanized version (The Complete Japanese Showa Songbook) If American cultural politics could handle it.
"One of a gang of karaoke loving middle aged women is murdered by a young man. Her friends track him down and kill him. His friends track them down and kill the killer ..... and it escalates!"
There is a fuckton of stuff going on in this novel/movie: there is the socio-economic contrast between the financially successful working divorcees and the futureless unemployable despised twenty-something guys (none of whom, neither woman or boys, have any romantic relationships);the relationship of everybody to pop, either as nostalgia or fantasy. One could big concept it as "MRAs vs Real Divorcees death-match" except that neither group are self-aware, socially connected, or ideological enough to see that.
There are also an actual middle-aged guy MRA-type, and a young college attending woman who sort of referee, comment on, and instigate the war.
Hilarious bit of Japanese dark crazy.
Your names don't work here, though, because the women are all around 35, important because there does remain a degree of sexual tension (mutual hatred and fear of being judged/rejected) between the two groups.
Eventually things spiral out of control with a rising arms race and a growing feeling among the two groups that this all out war is bringing their respective memberships closer together.Initially David Fincher's "Fight Club" popped into my head as I watched the increasing mayhem in "Karaoke Terror", but I realized pretty quickly that this was a superficial comparison. While that film explored the liberating effect of violence on disenfranchised men Shinohara's film takes a look at these groups of young men and older women move away from the masturbatory world of karaoke and in a face to face confrontation with what they fear, hate, and desire the most: each other.
Those looking for a campy, ultra-violent movie won't get much out of "Karaoke Terror", but those who are open to a pitch black comedy with something truly interesting to say about the gender and generation gap in modern society will, like me, come away from the film being thoroughly impressed.
Do twenty-something guys really care more about what mature women think of them than women in their own age range? I think so.
Off topic: Hey Parsimon, do have a stand at the Baltimore Book festival? It's going on just down the hill from where I live, so if yes maybe I'll drop by in the afternoon.
On topic: My first thought was that the protagonist turns out to be the killer in some sort of fugue state, but that's clearly too obvious.
The stated and implied continued contact with/awareness of the various exes is enabled/encouraged by social media, so the movie births a thousand and one Maureen Dowd columns/Buzzfeed listicles, right?
Better add a second- or third-act aria wherein one of the exes (fielder's choice: the mousiest one or the "awesome"-est one) reads Protagonist the riot act about male privilege something it's all his fault something Barbie promotes an unrealistic body image something, à la the "Cool Girl" thing that every bloody website on God's green earth has quoted.
The killer should be taking their marching orders from a thinly-fictionalized 4chan, and is murdering people for LOLs.
Check your anger, sir. I'm trying to strike a blow only for making a billion dollars.
Or it's him, sleepwalking or something.
That's the theory that begins to emerge in the second act, before a plot twist at the end. One of the girls gets creeped out by his email and contacts the police. They find physical evidence linking the protagonist to some of the killings and arrest him. Under interrogation, confronted with the evidence against him, he begins to wonder himself if he is the killer. But one of the exes knows better. She senses that there is someone still out there trying to kill her. She helps him escape police custody in time to help her find the real killer. Then one of two things happens: it turns out it really was him all along, or the real killer was waiting for him to break out of jail so that he could continue the killing spree and pin it on our protagonist. Additional possible twist: the real killer was... the ex who helped him escape, who is planning to commit suicide in such a way that he will be blamed for it.
Cut me in on the residuals, whoever writes this.
Somehow I thought at first that this post was going to be an extremely unfeeling and weird way for ogged to reveal that something terrible has befallen his ex or exbeforelast.
13: Plot twist: our protagonist runs an eclectic web magazine and, faced with his bizarre cinematic predicament, "Asks the Mineshaft" what he should do. His commentariat begins to suspect he is a murderer and turns on him, tipping the police off to every arguably creepy statement he's made over the last decade.
15: "Hillary -- and her campaign is enabling this -- is a lot like the protagonist of Sofia Coppola's new movie, Text Ex: she is reaching out to all her exes, all the disappointed constituencies of her failed presidential run and Obama White House compromises, via social media: She just wants to check in, she says, just to see how you're doing. Are you all right? No reason, really, she was just wondering whether you were seeing somebody or maybe had been murdered."
He finds this sufficiently strange that with some misgivings about being a nut, he starts contacting people he's slept with...
If he's worried about being a considered a nut, he should either says he's contacting them to warn them he may have given them the clap or to accuse them of having given it to him.
Is 13 as revealing about me as 14 is about Knecht? Maybe!
20: "[T]he clap"? Tell us about General Patton again, Grandpa.
Given how common the "authorities don't believe him or even suspect him of what the true killer is doing!" storylines are, I think it would be a great twist ending if it turned out that actually the whole thing really was a coincidence. Sure it looked odd, but actually the guy just slept around a lot so there was a big pool of people and things just lined up that way by chance.
20, you want to talk about people who sound old, check out ogged. Susan Sarandon? Sigourney Weaver? They're drawing Social Security! Their exes don't need to be murdered, they're dying of heart disease as we speak.
For a more art-house/Oscar-bait spin, and as long as we're casting old folks, I suggest the main character be homosexual. The love affairs were decades ago and kept secret, which makes the murders all the more mysterious. How did anyone find out about the connection?
To make a ton of $$$ though it is probably best that the protagonist be a man and the exes hot young women.
Oh wow, I just now realized that Tim Robbins and Tom Robbins are different people.
5: AcademicLurker: nope. We did the Baltimore Book Festival half a dozen years ago, and it was very fun (the food and wine was good!) but not hugely lucrative for the effort involved. Did get rid of a lot of books, though.
You should totally go, though. Looking at the schedule of participants: the Baltimore Science Fiction Society's tent will probably have a shitload of classic and not-so-classic SFF for cheap, and they're fun to chat with, and, um ... I was trying to see if anyone was doing a bookbinding / fine bindings demonstration, as they have done in the past, but I'm not seeing that on a quick perusal. Still, you should go.
This sounds vaguely like the plot of So I Married An Ax Murderer.
Is 13 as revealing about me as 14 is about Knecht?
Hey, I initially had the same concern as 13: has something happened?
On the age question, I can't make out how old the protagonist is supposed to be; I'd assumed oggish-age, early/mid-40s. Now, it's true that many of your garden variety movies along these lines, usually having to do with with the kidnapping or terrorization of family members of Our Hero, have the lead role played by an older gentleman (Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson) -- that's generally because the concern is for the 20-something child. But this isn't a kidnapping movie, exactly.
Actually! This is somewhat more interesting, involving co-equals, exes or flings rather than children or wives. I feel that the best direction to go in would be an emphasis on the relevance of one's past lives, the extent to which these exes are still, in a sense, members of one's family.
F'r instance, how is the protagonist's wife and family responding to his concern for his exes?
Or is that too non-actiony? We'd need to develop the nature of our protagonist and his relationship with his wife: is he just supposed to be checking out, going rogue and not speaking to her, when these exes/flings are murdered?
It would be a completely different movie if the protagonist were in his 60s-into-70s, along with the exes and flings.
The movie really has to decide whether it's a midlife crisis in disguise.
Or is that too non-actiony?
Yes. How about the protagonist narrowly saves the life of one ex and the killer drops a book. Protagonist sees his own picture there and reads that he is the stepfather of Hitler 2.0, biological parents unknown.
9: For extra realism, the protagonist gets selected because not-4chan confuses them with someone else. (Actually, I will be a bit surprised if something like this hasn't happened within the next ten years.)
23: Reminds me of William DeAndrea's _The Hog Murders_, where --- it's an old book but it's a big spoiler --- gur frevny xvyyre jvgu gur nfgbavfuvat enatr bs ivpgvzf naq zrgubqf vf whfg fbzrbar gnxvat perqvg sbe nppvqragf (naq VVEP nygreangvat qrgnvyf bs gur nppvqrag fprarf).
33 definitely needs to be looked into, and I rather like 33.last.
I just realized that the plot sounds like a more interesting variation on somethingfrom Crossfire.
33.1 is a good question.
Susan Sarandon? Sigourney Weaver?
If you cast one of these women as the nexus, they're basically a totemic love goddess, while the guys play Ocean's Eleven again, with Channing Tatum thrown in to solidify the female lead's sexual agelessness. There is comedy gold to be mined in Sarandon or Weaver heaping affectionate disdain on Clooney and Murray, with Tatum throwing their age into relief.
If a guy is the nexus, it's a stretch to call him the protagonist, because the story will really be about the women, either one their own, or as a group. Too big a role for the dude and the women just become props.
For box office appeal and moral righteous, some exs should be ( but not be played by ) Kardashian sisters.
http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/is-bret-easton-ellis-writing-american-psycho-2
38.last: Usually the wife and family, in these things, are spirited off to stay with their mother or aunt or something, for safety reasons. That generally means that they're not part of the story. I suggest that if the protagonist's tale is that his* wife and family are not part of the story, he is way, way compartmentalizing.
* It's interesting to switch out the genders, but I don't see how it comes out differently. Ultimately the notion is that the exes are no longer supposed to be part of one's life, and if they are, that's wrong.
(Yes, sure, I googled and whatnot, but I still don't recognize this person, much less register him as anything in particular.)
Because the murderer has some omniscient awareness of this guy's past, ie this isn't just based on cyber-stalking, we get some "outing" plot twists:
A) sad and embarassing twist: various sheep on his family farm are mysteriously murdered in same manner
B) good and redeeming twist: the "kindly" old priest from his childhood parish is mysteriously murdered in same manner
42: my brain insists that he is the same person as Stockard Channing. Does that help?
This sounds vaguely like the plot of So I Married An Ax Murderer.
Also that of Sea of Love.
42: Channing Tatum is the best thing going right now young-male-movie-star-wise, although probably a little lowbrow for you, parsimon. You might try Magic Mike, which is splendidly weird Soderbergh, although 21 Jump Street is my favorite.
45: I also throw Tatum O'Neal in that hopper of easily-confused names.
45, 48: I too have this problem, and I have seen many (well, ok .... 3?) Channing Tatum films. (I have never seen a Tatum O'Neal film; have definitely seen the lovely Stockard Channing in many things.)
Remarkably, a gaffer named O'Neal Stockard worked on Paper Moon, Six Degrees of Separation, and Step Up.
I only recently realized that _Orange is the New Black_ & _Orphan Black_ are two shows. The show I was imagining in combining references to them was really intricate & I look forward to someone's YouTube mashup.
37.b is a fun book, and the detective's reveal is genuinely clever.
This is pretty much the plot of the Australian TV comedy series "Laid".
Oh wow, it really is. Will try to watch that tonight.
I assumed that the twist would be that the killer is the guys wife, who suspects him of having an affair with one of his exes but doesn't know which one, so she's playing safe by killing them all.
WHY HAS 19 NOT RECEIVED THE PRAISE IT DESERVES?!??!
I'm definitely not thinking about this because I hope one of Lee's exes is the point person in the scenario, but I'll bet it would be like the Beltway Shooter thing, all a coverup by someone who'd also slept with one of the exes and wanted to kill him/her off without arousing undue suspicion and so created ogged's pattern to throw police etc. off the scent.
I think Stockard Channing is also Glenn Close and possibly other middle-aged actresses with masculine names.
Stockard Channing is also Glenn Close
Wow. She really disappears into the role.
||
Goddamnit. My infirmed father, 83 years old, moved to a nursing home in Virginia. Virginia needs a picture ID for him to be allowed to vote. He's too old to drive, so he doesn't have a drivers license. Still, he needed to be taken to the DMV to get the identification card. But he didn't have his proper birth certificate the first time, so now he needs to go back.
He's barely mobile, so its a pretty big deal to take him anywhere. Also, he's in somewhat fragile health, so a trip to the DMV isn't as low risk as it might be.
Fuck Republicans. Fuck them with a hammer.
|>
Spike, is there such a thing as absentee voting due to ill health? Or does that also somehow require a picture ID (how would that be?)
50: And Stockard Channing's real name is, if memory serves, Susan Stockard.
I sometimes have fantasies of sending her a note of apology for the time in 1996 I went backstage after The Little Foxes to get her autograph and asked to have a picture taken and unthinkingly put my hand on her back as one does when being photographed with someone but less so a complete stranger who is also famous. It still makes me cringe when I think of it.
Some nursing homes in my state offer photo IDs for their residents for just this reason. Not sure if Virginia does this.
Glenn Close puts me in mind of the line from "The Little Hours" by Mrs. Parker: "Now to me, Edith looks like something that would eat her young."
63, it might, since old people in Virginia will tend to be Republicans. Also, a college ID would prevent you from voting.
I think they have a voting precinct at the retirement community. Not sure how the photo ID requirement and absentee voting requirements mix.
Most states require photo ID to grope Stockard Channing now.
66: Maybe the administrators at the retirement home know. It's the kind of thing that may well come up for them time and again; they may take pleasure in being helpful, unless they're sourpuss types.
unless they're sourpuss types.
Or unless they are Republicans and recognize that my dad will be voting the straight Democratic ticket.
At any rate, he's got my mom to walk him through shit like this. But she has better things she could be doing, like hustling croquet.
69: Dude, obviously in your representation to the administrators you should pretend that your dad is a stone cold tightass who seriously supports what's-his-name.
Here's my plot:
There's a nearby parallel universe where Earth is populated by intelligent theropods. They have the the ability to open passages into universes, but, as a highly developed society, follow the Prime Directive. A group of criminals, a group of dinosaurs that follow a cuckoo-like evolutionary strategy, have violated this and broken through, where some of their children have inhabited the minds of some of humanities leaders.
And then things happen.
Autocorrect suggested:
There's a nearby parallel universe where Earth is populated by intelligent therapies.
70: See if he'll adopt a genial-yet-threatening "Will you pray with an old man,[brother/sister]?"
OT: Did anyone else listen to this weeks TAL episode? Am I mistaken or did they go the entire episode not making it explicit that Goldman Sachs was literally trading on the Feds reputation?
Not that it isn't an amazing bit of radio itself.
Wireless communication is sort of amazing if you think of the scope of human history.
Scope is sort of amazing if you think of the wireless communication of human history.
scope ambiguity: for the minty person in your life who's probably an alcoholic, but you're not sure.
I'll bet it would be like the Beltway Shooter thing, all a coverup by someone who'd also slept with one of the exes and wanted to kill him/her off without arousing undue suspicion
Wait, what? I thought the Beltway Sniper was a run-of-the-mill nutter.
81: I'm not making this up, right, that he was staging random attacks so that it wouldn't draw suspicion to him when he killed his ex-wife, which was his real goal? Apparently I'm not. I always thought that was the part that made it make the most sense and I always wonder about the domestic abuse and misogyny that might be hiding under other "random" crimes.
I mean, that's probably just a theory, but I think there was some evidence for it. I don't know that either shooter ever gave clear and believable testimony about their motivations, which fits your theory.
82: I dunno. I'm a bit sceptical about that, not least because he never actually seems to have got round to killing his ex-wife. Is the idea that he was just really easily distracted?
Also this doesn't seem to make any sense at all:
"They said, 'Ms. Muhammad, didn't you know he was shooting people around you?' They said, 'The man he shot in the hand with the laptop, that's right down the street from you. The gentleman that was shot at the store in Brandywine -- that's two miles away from you. You were the target.'
And the people he shot in Arizona, Washington, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and so on?
The prior art in this case is Agatha Christie, "The ABC Murders"; random murder of a chap with the initials A.A., then another chap called B.B. and so on - eventually turns out that the killer was an enemy of C.C. and killed the other two first just as a distraction.
If work gets less busy, I'll look up whether there's anything to make the theory more plausible. I thought at the time that there was, but I was also being stalked by a vindictive ex at the time and may have been suggestible (as I still am now, I suppose, but not as actively or scarily.)
It's an extremely interesting theory, but at least from that article she doesn't have any backing for it except for what the ATF guy apparently told her, and that in turn doesn't seem to be backed by much.
...This is interesting, from Wiki:
"Investigators and the prosecution suggested during pre-trial motions that Muhammad intended to kill his ex-wife Mildred, who had estranged him from his children. According to this theory, the other shootings were intended to cover up the motive for the crime, since Muhammad believed that the police would not focus on an estranged ex-husband as a suspect if she looked like a random victim of a serial killer. Muhammad frequented the neighborhood where she lived during the attacks, and some of the incidents occurred nearby. Additionally, he had earlier made threats against her. Mildred herself made the claim that she was his intended target. However, Judge LeRoy Millette, Jr. prevented prosecutors from presenting that theory during the trial, saying that a link had not been firmly established."
I would find that theory more plausible if Muhammad was conducting the attacks by himself, rather than with an accomplice. Constructing an elaborate smokescreen to conceal your real target works better if there isn't someone else around who can tie you to the actual crime. Of course, maybe he didn't plan to leave him around when he was done.