THE DUKE ON THE RING 2
Wanna see a scary video? Something that’ll haunt you till the end
of your days, every tick of the damn clock serving to remind you
that whilst you’re another second removed from those ghastly
visions, you’re that bit closer to some hideous, unspeakable
demise?
What I’d recommend is Hated – GG Allin And The Murder Junkies.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that squatting and taking a shit
right off the damn stage. Sometimes when the telly gets switched
off for the night, just before the screen goes black, I catch a
glimpse of GG standing at the front of that town hall, baseball
cap and beard from here to Pluto, hollering about “Come up here
and say that to my fucking face, you cunt.” I still see GG getting
pissed on for his birthday.
That’s the flick to go for.
On the other hand, if maybe you want something derivative and
ridiculous and fatally shite, whilst still managing to have a
couple genuinely cool moments, then fuck it, why not endure The
Ring 2?
Tell you the truth, I was gonna wait for the DVD when it came down
to catching the sequel to the remake of Ringu that has nothing to
do with Ringu 2 or indeed Rasen, a.k.a Spiral, a.k.a The One What
Was So Shit They Went Ahead And Pretended It Never Existed. For
one thing, ever since the dissolution of my romantic
entanglements, I ain’t set foot in a cinema. The last thing a
fella wants to be doing is laughing out loud at an obscure
reference that wasn’t even very funny in the first place and then
turning to your right and noticing that there ain’t even anyone
there to ask “what you laughing at?”
The last thing he needs to be doing is reaching out to grab a hand
during the scary bit and feeling the fingers grip nothing but the
stale fucking air.
There were, however, some facts, figures, percentages that
conspired for to ensure I did indeed attend the 6.30 screening of
The Ring 2 on Sunday past. Facts, figures, percentages much like
this shit here, in fact;
For one thing, what the hell else was I gonna do? Also, I liked
Gore Verbinski’s The Ring quite a bit. For sure, it was a
pointless, cynical waste of the man’s talents, but it managed to
rise above these seemingly insurmountable odds on account of the
tone of the thing being just eerie enough to keep a fella
unsettled throughout, and also it was very blue, which is always a
bonus. In addition, it added some stuff we hadn’t seen yet,
specifically a horse getting its CGI guts spat out the bottom of a
boat, and Hannibal Lecktor from before he was Lecter frying his
guts senseless in a bathtub. The crawling out the telly was nicely
handled, too, even if it couldn’t hope to replicate the shock a
fella felt when seeing Sadako do the same thing a couple years
earlier.
Probably the biggest draw of all, though, with regards The Duke’s
heading for to view The Ring 2, was the fact that Hideo Nakata,
the motherfucker who got the cinematic ball rolling in the first
place, was stepping in for to helm the sonna bitch. Nakata’s Ringu
is undoubtedly a masterpiece, and for all its faults, Ringu 2 at
least had a handful of genuinely creepy moments, and the tone was
spot on. Dark Water, itself in the process of being remade, was
overlong, but again, it was atmospheric and eerie and had a great
bit with something about banging on a water tank.
If anyone can do The Ring 2, it’s Nakata.
Thing is, who the fuck really wants him to?
We’ve had Ringu, Rasen, Ringu 2, Ringu 0, not to mention the Asian
TV version. We’ve had The Ring Virus from Korea, we’ve had the
source novels lining the shelves of supermarkets, the manga
adaptation, we’ve had the American version… what the fuck more
Ring do we really want, if truth be told?
Not a great deal. There ain’t much more can be done with it all,
is what the evidence would seem to suggest.
And sure enough, The Ring 2 is fucking well dreadful.
The last thing a fella expects when sitting down for to view a
Hideo Nakata flick in a multiplex, a rare enough occurrence as it
is, is that he spends more time wondering why the really rather
attractive blonde-headed lass a couple seats in front is
determined to swallow the very face of the fella beside her,
despite his overbearingly obnoxious antics, than thinking about
what Hideo’s flung up yonder in the 2:35.
He burps really loudly, and she jumps on him. He farts, couple
times in fact, and though the other handful of folks in the room
tut and mumble about “ignorant cunt”, the blonde-headed lass just
wants to fling her arms around his neck and her tongue down his
throat.
At one point, just after a fairly abhorrent arse-gas, I’m sure I
heard the sound of zippers being unzipped.
To quote Bill Hicks; “And I’m not gettin’ laid…”
Still, it gave a fella plenty to think about, which is always
something. Good to know that in a room where The Ring 2 is the
primary focus, there’s still some thinking to be done somewhere
amidst the horrors of it all.
Turns out poetry and songs about “You deserve more than a couple
of chords, aw shucks, you make a fella feel like a big ol’ hunk a
infatuated” ain’t nothing more than a waste of time. A fart and a
burp and the tweeds are at the knees before a man even has time
for to laugh about his own flatulence.
So yeah, The Ring 2. What a load of old soggy-arse arse-sog.
Right from the off, what occurred was that The Duke noted a
disturbing lack of anything remotely disturbing or unsettling or
vaguely interesting. It was bright, it was colourful, it wasn’t
blue in the slightest. It’s filled with useless stupid sequel
speak, folks yacking about “not again!” and “not this time
Samara!” and all sorts of balls just in case you forgot that
before The Ring 2 came out there was this other flick called The
Ring.
And incidentally, what the fuck was the thinking behind adding
“The” to the title, and then making a big fuss out of the top of
the well, since that’s obviously what those crazy Japs must’ve
been banging on about. Who the fuck could make sense of their
gibberish anyroad?
It was “Ring”, not “The Ring”. Ring, as in Ring Ring, oh, that
must be the phone. Not The Ring, as in a big circle. For fucks
sakes.
And if you think I’m gonna call it The Ring Two then you best take
that thought and shove it sideways tween your arse-cheeks.
But never the bejeesus;
The Ring 2 could best be described as a rancid bag of sterile wank
flung at a fellas face on the way home from a hard day’s work down
the mine. Maybe some other critics use different phrases, like “a
fucking insult to humanity” or “I would write a witty line but I
shot my brains out half-way through this turgid pish.”
Sometimes it fools you into thinking it’s not as bad as it seemed,
like the bit where the bathwater starts flowing up to the ceiling,
or the bit with the spooky reflection, or when Sissy Spacek
appears for five minutes for to bulge her eyes and holler in a
manner only the truly demented can get away with.
Ten seconds later, though, somebody says something stupid, or does
something stupid, or Naomi Watts throws the evil cursed videotape
into a fire and the fucking thing starts screaming, and then it
melts in a way that looks like it’s opening its mouth.
Again and again, opportunities are squandered.
Here’s an opportunity, the flick announces, now let’s forget all
about the arse you flung on there a couple minutes ago and get on
with the business of salvaging some damn thing, for Gods sakes.
Here, how bout a scene where a buncha freaky deer start attacking
Naomi Watts’ car. That’d be great. Remember they did it in The
Omen except the deer were played by baboons on account of
something to do with union strikes or something? Also, the
sinister youngster is sitting up-front in the car this time, and
not in the back seat, like back in 1976.
No-one can fuck up the freaky deer scene, Nakata, at least not
someone who hasn’t, say, fucked up The Resident Evils or The
Aliens And The Predators. Probably that sonnabitch would end up
tossing a load of CGI deers up there onscreen and expect us to be
scared by them. As if, Hideo Nakata. As if we’d be scared by a
buncha fucking pac-men deer.
Next thing a fella knows, the screen’s awash with pac-men deer.
Did it work in The Snow What Killed The World? Did it work in The
Exorcist The Beginning The Prequel The Remake?
It did the balls not. So why would it work now? Why? You’re a
smart fella, Nakata, you know a lot about witches. Which is handy,
since you’re gonna need a fuckload of voodoo hexes for to keep me
half concerned about whatever shite’s going on here and now.
Also, what The Ring 2 wants to do is have a big ol’ hunk of The
Possession flick hanging off its filthy hide. Just like Phone
started off being about a scary possessed phone, and then half way
in decides no, it’s about a scary possessed kid who’s really more
annoying that scary, truth be told, so The Ring 2 ditches the tape
and the urban legends and so on for a spot of freaky child antics.
If you thought The Ring 2 could compete in a sub-genre dominated
by The Exorcist, Amityville II – The Possession, and to a lesser
extent Witchboard, then think the fuck again. The thought you want
to be thinking is “No. It could not, I’d wager.”
There’s some good stuff, though, just that you have to work like
fuck to find it. It’s like a magic eye picture, except instead of
pixellated fuzzy grey oddness there’s pixellated CGI deer, but
then eventually, holy fuck, there’s something worth paying
attention to. Wow, you might say, it’s a sail-boat.
But Nakata lets that boat sail too close to the rocks, man. For
sure, it’s navigated by Naomi Watts, but she’s powerless should
God decide to fling a shark in the dingy. For every day spent
drifting along the pleasing oceans of upside-down bath-water,
there’s a week spent flinging the filthy jelly-fish of stupidity
out the way.
Just as they get a nice thing going with maybe Naomi is some kind
of child abuser, they fuck it up with some nonsense or other
couple minutes later. Just when they have the sense to steal the
“going into each others dreams” idea from Freddy 3, they fuck it
up in the next breath. Just when there’s a bit about ghost zombie
beasts crawling out a cool as fuck swirly well, there’s some shit
or other to fuck it up.
Not to mention the deeply offensive notion that some folks are
just born bad, and most likely should be flung the fuck down a
well anyroad, regardless of the resultant spooky jerking around
the telly TV, or indeed, the stains on a man’s soul.
And the fella farts and burps and spits a throatful of phlegm out
his face, and she bounces on him again.
And I’m not getting’ laid…
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line or Leave A Damn Message
of your days, every tick of the damn clock serving to remind you
that whilst you’re another second removed from those ghastly
visions, you’re that bit closer to some hideous, unspeakable
demise?
What I’d recommend is Hated – GG Allin And The Murder Junkies.
I don’t think I’ll ever forget that squatting and taking a shit
right off the damn stage. Sometimes when the telly gets switched
off for the night, just before the screen goes black, I catch a
glimpse of GG standing at the front of that town hall, baseball
cap and beard from here to Pluto, hollering about “Come up here
and say that to my fucking face, you cunt.” I still see GG getting
pissed on for his birthday.
That’s the flick to go for.
On the other hand, if maybe you want something derivative and
ridiculous and fatally shite, whilst still managing to have a
couple genuinely cool moments, then fuck it, why not endure The
Ring 2?
Tell you the truth, I was gonna wait for the DVD when it came down
to catching the sequel to the remake of Ringu that has nothing to
do with Ringu 2 or indeed Rasen, a.k.a Spiral, a.k.a The One What
Was So Shit They Went Ahead And Pretended It Never Existed. For
one thing, ever since the dissolution of my romantic
entanglements, I ain’t set foot in a cinema. The last thing a
fella wants to be doing is laughing out loud at an obscure
reference that wasn’t even very funny in the first place and then
turning to your right and noticing that there ain’t even anyone
there to ask “what you laughing at?”
The last thing he needs to be doing is reaching out to grab a hand
during the scary bit and feeling the fingers grip nothing but the
stale fucking air.
There were, however, some facts, figures, percentages that
conspired for to ensure I did indeed attend the 6.30 screening of
The Ring 2 on Sunday past. Facts, figures, percentages much like
this shit here, in fact;
For one thing, what the hell else was I gonna do? Also, I liked
Gore Verbinski’s The Ring quite a bit. For sure, it was a
pointless, cynical waste of the man’s talents, but it managed to
rise above these seemingly insurmountable odds on account of the
tone of the thing being just eerie enough to keep a fella
unsettled throughout, and also it was very blue, which is always a
bonus. In addition, it added some stuff we hadn’t seen yet,
specifically a horse getting its CGI guts spat out the bottom of a
boat, and Hannibal Lecktor from before he was Lecter frying his
guts senseless in a bathtub. The crawling out the telly was nicely
handled, too, even if it couldn’t hope to replicate the shock a
fella felt when seeing Sadako do the same thing a couple years
earlier.
Probably the biggest draw of all, though, with regards The Duke’s
heading for to view The Ring 2, was the fact that Hideo Nakata,
the motherfucker who got the cinematic ball rolling in the first
place, was stepping in for to helm the sonna bitch. Nakata’s Ringu
is undoubtedly a masterpiece, and for all its faults, Ringu 2 at
least had a handful of genuinely creepy moments, and the tone was
spot on. Dark Water, itself in the process of being remade, was
overlong, but again, it was atmospheric and eerie and had a great
bit with something about banging on a water tank.
If anyone can do The Ring 2, it’s Nakata.
Thing is, who the fuck really wants him to?
We’ve had Ringu, Rasen, Ringu 2, Ringu 0, not to mention the Asian
TV version. We’ve had The Ring Virus from Korea, we’ve had the
source novels lining the shelves of supermarkets, the manga
adaptation, we’ve had the American version… what the fuck more
Ring do we really want, if truth be told?
Not a great deal. There ain’t much more can be done with it all,
is what the evidence would seem to suggest.
And sure enough, The Ring 2 is fucking well dreadful.
The last thing a fella expects when sitting down for to view a
Hideo Nakata flick in a multiplex, a rare enough occurrence as it
is, is that he spends more time wondering why the really rather
attractive blonde-headed lass a couple seats in front is
determined to swallow the very face of the fella beside her,
despite his overbearingly obnoxious antics, than thinking about
what Hideo’s flung up yonder in the 2:35.
He burps really loudly, and she jumps on him. He farts, couple
times in fact, and though the other handful of folks in the room
tut and mumble about “ignorant cunt”, the blonde-headed lass just
wants to fling her arms around his neck and her tongue down his
throat.
At one point, just after a fairly abhorrent arse-gas, I’m sure I
heard the sound of zippers being unzipped.
To quote Bill Hicks; “And I’m not gettin’ laid…”
Still, it gave a fella plenty to think about, which is always
something. Good to know that in a room where The Ring 2 is the
primary focus, there’s still some thinking to be done somewhere
amidst the horrors of it all.
Turns out poetry and songs about “You deserve more than a couple
of chords, aw shucks, you make a fella feel like a big ol’ hunk a
infatuated” ain’t nothing more than a waste of time. A fart and a
burp and the tweeds are at the knees before a man even has time
for to laugh about his own flatulence.
So yeah, The Ring 2. What a load of old soggy-arse arse-sog.
Right from the off, what occurred was that The Duke noted a
disturbing lack of anything remotely disturbing or unsettling or
vaguely interesting. It was bright, it was colourful, it wasn’t
blue in the slightest. It’s filled with useless stupid sequel
speak, folks yacking about “not again!” and “not this time
Samara!” and all sorts of balls just in case you forgot that
before The Ring 2 came out there was this other flick called The
Ring.
And incidentally, what the fuck was the thinking behind adding
“The” to the title, and then making a big fuss out of the top of
the well, since that’s obviously what those crazy Japs must’ve
been banging on about. Who the fuck could make sense of their
gibberish anyroad?
It was “Ring”, not “The Ring”. Ring, as in Ring Ring, oh, that
must be the phone. Not The Ring, as in a big circle. For fucks
sakes.
And if you think I’m gonna call it The Ring Two then you best take
that thought and shove it sideways tween your arse-cheeks.
But never the bejeesus;
The Ring 2 could best be described as a rancid bag of sterile wank
flung at a fellas face on the way home from a hard day’s work down
the mine. Maybe some other critics use different phrases, like “a
fucking insult to humanity” or “I would write a witty line but I
shot my brains out half-way through this turgid pish.”
Sometimes it fools you into thinking it’s not as bad as it seemed,
like the bit where the bathwater starts flowing up to the ceiling,
or the bit with the spooky reflection, or when Sissy Spacek
appears for five minutes for to bulge her eyes and holler in a
manner only the truly demented can get away with.
Ten seconds later, though, somebody says something stupid, or does
something stupid, or Naomi Watts throws the evil cursed videotape
into a fire and the fucking thing starts screaming, and then it
melts in a way that looks like it’s opening its mouth.
Again and again, opportunities are squandered.
Here’s an opportunity, the flick announces, now let’s forget all
about the arse you flung on there a couple minutes ago and get on
with the business of salvaging some damn thing, for Gods sakes.
Here, how bout a scene where a buncha freaky deer start attacking
Naomi Watts’ car. That’d be great. Remember they did it in The
Omen except the deer were played by baboons on account of
something to do with union strikes or something? Also, the
sinister youngster is sitting up-front in the car this time, and
not in the back seat, like back in 1976.
No-one can fuck up the freaky deer scene, Nakata, at least not
someone who hasn’t, say, fucked up The Resident Evils or The
Aliens And The Predators. Probably that sonnabitch would end up
tossing a load of CGI deers up there onscreen and expect us to be
scared by them. As if, Hideo Nakata. As if we’d be scared by a
buncha fucking pac-men deer.
Next thing a fella knows, the screen’s awash with pac-men deer.
Did it work in The Snow What Killed The World? Did it work in The
Exorcist The Beginning The Prequel The Remake?
It did the balls not. So why would it work now? Why? You’re a
smart fella, Nakata, you know a lot about witches. Which is handy,
since you’re gonna need a fuckload of voodoo hexes for to keep me
half concerned about whatever shite’s going on here and now.
Also, what The Ring 2 wants to do is have a big ol’ hunk of The
Possession flick hanging off its filthy hide. Just like Phone
started off being about a scary possessed phone, and then half way
in decides no, it’s about a scary possessed kid who’s really more
annoying that scary, truth be told, so The Ring 2 ditches the tape
and the urban legends and so on for a spot of freaky child antics.
If you thought The Ring 2 could compete in a sub-genre dominated
by The Exorcist, Amityville II – The Possession, and to a lesser
extent Witchboard, then think the fuck again. The thought you want
to be thinking is “No. It could not, I’d wager.”
There’s some good stuff, though, just that you have to work like
fuck to find it. It’s like a magic eye picture, except instead of
pixellated fuzzy grey oddness there’s pixellated CGI deer, but
then eventually, holy fuck, there’s something worth paying
attention to. Wow, you might say, it’s a sail-boat.
But Nakata lets that boat sail too close to the rocks, man. For
sure, it’s navigated by Naomi Watts, but she’s powerless should
God decide to fling a shark in the dingy. For every day spent
drifting along the pleasing oceans of upside-down bath-water,
there’s a week spent flinging the filthy jelly-fish of stupidity
out the way.
Just as they get a nice thing going with maybe Naomi is some kind
of child abuser, they fuck it up with some nonsense or other
couple minutes later. Just when they have the sense to steal the
“going into each others dreams” idea from Freddy 3, they fuck it
up in the next breath. Just when there’s a bit about ghost zombie
beasts crawling out a cool as fuck swirly well, there’s some shit
or other to fuck it up.
Not to mention the deeply offensive notion that some folks are
just born bad, and most likely should be flung the fuck down a
well anyroad, regardless of the resultant spooky jerking around
the telly TV, or indeed, the stains on a man’s soul.
And the fella farts and burps and spits a throatful of phlegm out
his face, and she bounces on him again.
And I’m not getting’ laid…
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line or Leave A Damn Message
