1. 'the birds'. finished watching it last night. we had stopped it at the perfect point — the scene right before everything goes nuts.

its an interesting film — the build-up is slow and tedious; the first act is far too long. but once the film is out of the gate, it is quite enjoyable.

the last couple of scenes are the most striking ones for me, mainly because of what they represent — the first survival horror movie.

for those of you unfamilar, the sub-genre of 'survival horror' is 'a prominent video game genre in which the player has to survive an onslaught of opponents, often undead or otherwise supernatural, typically in claustrophobic environments in a third-person perspective.'

i think it works in gaming because of the association of the player with the main character of the game; this association is more difficult to obtain in movies because the characters are not controllable by the audience/player.

but its exactly what 'the birds' is. it was of very little surprise to me to see that 'the birds' was 1963, 'night of the living dead' was 1968. there is no way that 'the birds' did not influence 'night of the living dead'; simply replace birds with zombies/ghouls.

i was unable to find any text suggesting 'the birds' as the start of all of this, but its clear to me.

(it is important to note three differences to previous horror and monster movies: the claustrophobic environment, the swarms of enemies and [my inclusion] the mindlessness of the swarm. earlier horror and sci-fi movies rarely if ever combined these into a single film.)

beyond being impressed at what the movie represented, i had some issues with motivations — the setup for the playground scene was a stretch a bit, the decision to take the convertible was equally as questionable. what bothered me the most about these actions was that i felt that hitchcock knew better; they could be easily fixed. its just that someone didnt sufficiently think to explain away the decisions in the story, thus the setups look contrived.

overall, though, highly recommended especially to see where some of these ideas that are so commonplace now orginated from. b+

2. the other thing. i just got spam that, i kid you not, is mostly a paragraph of 'anna karenina'. mike has emailed me with some weird spam he has gotten recently; this certainly takes the cake for the weirdest spam i have gotten in a while. (with a subject of: 'If you don't love everybody, you can't sell anybody' and an opening of 'Hail!')