Scooby Day

Somehow, Scooby Doo ended up become a central part of my cinematic day on Tuesday.

It started in the morning when I was randomly going through Netflix. I had started out trying to find the sports movie section, something I never actually accomplished, either because it doesn't actually exist or because I don't know how to use Netflix properly. (Still trying to find a baseball movie to watch in conjunction with opening day, a feat I eventually accomplished through iTunes. You'll read more about that tomorrow.)

While poking through I came across this:

Which I thought was absolutely hilarious.

In case you don't know Enter the Void, well, you should read this post, as it gives you some idea what it's about. But let's just say Scooby-Doo and Enter the Void couldn't have less in common in terms of subject matter or target audience. I do know why Netflix linked them together, as they both deal with the supernatural in some respect, particularly ghosts. But that's kind of like saying Donnie Darko and Monty Python and the Holy Grail have something in common because they both involve killer rabbits. If anyone at Netflix were doing the cross-referencing on these things, they'd realize that they are also playing Gaspar Noe's other two films, each of which is more shocking than Void, and so should have a plenty good idea about the content of his work. One of those two films involves a lengthy and graphic rape scene and someone getting his head bashed in with a fire extinguisher, while the other features actual pornography, including an ejaculation directly at the screen that was designed for the film's 3D theatrical run. Yeah.

Though I do suppose a suggestion of Enter the Void "because you watched Scooby-Doo" would have been far worse.

I thought this was so funny that I posted this screen grab to my Facebook Flickcharters discussion group, which engendered many likes, laughs and incredulous comments.

The second part of my Scooby Day came after we had returned from morning errands and my younger son was having his nap. My older son was actually with me yesterday as this is the second of two weeks of school holidays between term 1 and term 2. As the younger one had awoken before 6 that morning (we just had daylight savings over the weekend), I was in no shape to engage my older son and actually slept on the couch while he watched an episode of -- yep -- the Scooby Doo TV show he had gotten from the library.

But that's not where it ends. There was actually a third part of my Scooby Day.

Watching this episode gave him an appetite for more of Mystery Incorporated, but apparently, none of the three other episodes available on this DVD. ("Too scary," apparently.) So he asked, "Can we watch more Scooby Doo on your computer?"

By this he meant Netflix. However, as of a few months ago, Netflix is not only available on my computer. Now we can get it through our TV, thanks to an intermediary device called Fetch TV, which also gives us access to a bunch of free (and paid) OnDemand programming. As of a few months ago we can get Netflix, Stan (an Australian streaming service) and YouTube through our TV, so I switched over to the Netflix app and searched for episodes of Scooby's TV show. There were none, but the aforementioned Scooby-Doo movie and its sequel, Scooby-Do 2: Monsters Unleashed, both came up in the search. After thinking about it for a moment, I decided these probably were not inappropriate for him.

For some reason he chose the sequel, even though he hadn't seen the first, and even though he was fully aware that was the choice he was making. That made the difference between me watching it and not watching it. While I might have rewatched Scooby-Doo -- I rather liked it, actually, and not just because I saw it at the drive-in -- Monsters Unleashed was a higher priority, as I'd never seen it despite liking the original. Liking the original did not prevent me from realizing that the sequel was probably terrible, which is probably why I've never bothered before in the 12 years of its existence. But I always figured it was something I would see eventually. Why not now? So I shook off my nap and promptly settled in for an unexpected viewing of Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.

Indeed I did not end up really liking it, but I was going to give it a positive star rating until the final 20 minutes or so, which get bogged down in especially dated-looking special effects and dumb histrionics involving sort-of-real monsters. (Which I thought violated the core principles of the show, in which everything apparently supernatural is ultimately revealed to have a logical and earthbound explanation.) The reason I even liked it all was tied to the performances of the actors, who continue to give their all in impersonating the famous characters. I was again especially taken with the work of Matthew Lillard as Shaggy and Linda Cardellini as Velma, who continued to both be adorable.

My son liked it without reservation. Actually, he did acknowledge it was a bit silly. But I saw this as a clear victory, since the movie is live action and he has traditionally shown some antipathy toward that.

It's Wednesday now, and I do not expect Scooby Doo to make any appearances today.

Unsafe

I've been dreading watching Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void again. Dreading it.

Maybe not as much as I've been dreading watching Gaspar Noe's Irreversible again, but dreading it nonetheless.

Ordinarily, if you were dreading watching a movie a second time, the solution would be simple. You just wouldn't watch it a second time.

But that's what makes Noe's movies so unusual. You don't really want to watch them again because of the ways they've unsettled you, but you are also magnetically drawn to them. They're like a drug you know you shouldn't take because it gives you a terrible trip, but there's also something unforgettable about that terrible trip. Something transcendent, even.

Ironically, it was not quite getting this sensation from Noe's latest, last year's Love, that pushed Enter the Void up to the top of my rewatch list, that prompted me to cue it up on Netflix Thursday night.

Love was compelling on a basic level and it was easily recognizable as a Noe film. Its X-rated eroticism was actually pretty sexy, and it goes to the margins of being haunting. But it falls short of the mindfuck that is both Enter the Void and Irreversible, the other of which I will probably now be prompted to watch at some point in the coming months as well. And even ejaculating penises grow repetitive after a while.

I suppose one might argue that parts of Enter the Void grow repetitive, but that's part of their hypnotic charm. "Charm" would be the wrong word, though. Definitely the wrong word. "Spell" is better. "Fever dream" might be even better. "Nightmare" might ultimately be correct.

I won't tell you a whole lot about Enter the Void, mostly because I don't recommend it for just anybody, so selling any particular person on watching it is not my goal. Also, it's worth not knowing exactly what's going to happen to you when you start watching it.

But I'll tell you what happens RIGHT when you start watching it, when the mood is set via the complete credits of the movie assaulting you right off the bat. No, it's not the slow northward crawl you get with most credits. It's a strobing, stroke-inducing blast of information in different fonts of different sizes, different production company logos, different languages, and even probably some hieroglyphs. Then there's the intense, driving music that also pummels you. It's Noe's unique way of preparing you for the shocks to your senses that are about to follow.

Ironically, what then follows is completely different in tone and speed. The movie starts with slow, dreamy POV shots of an American drug dealer living in Tokyo, first as he gets high (and stares up into the swirly colors of the ceiling for about ten minutes), then as he goes to a bar to deliver some drugs to a partner.

And that's when things go really off the rails.

And don't even get me started on that car crash.

What both Enter the Void and Irreversible -- you know, the one with the brutal extended rape scene -- do so well is that they create a feeling that you are unsafe. They are suffused with ominous foreboding, the kind that manifests itself in the score and in all the visuals, the kind that seeps into your skin. Noe's is a dark, sad, violent world, where good people come to bad ends. It's also invigorating and bracing and impossible to forget.

Once I tackle my second viewing of Irreversible -- oh Lord, that rape scene -- I'll need to go back and watch Noe's first feature, I Stand Alone, his only feature I have yet to see. It came out in 1998 and, I understand, is just as hard to watch as his other films, with the possible exception of Love, which may dangle you over the edge a couple times but never drops you.

And for a new Noe film, it'll be quite the wait. Never have fewer than four years elapsed between his films, and it was seven years from Irreversible in 2002 to Enter the Void in 2009.

So will Noe again leave me feeling unsafe, in whatever film he makes in 2020 or 2021?

I'm already dreading it.