dante’s inferno did you get your name from the film arcade?
Eli’s talked about it in interviews, but he also discussed it with QT in their commentary together on the HOSTEL dvd.
[quote=“Jjp”]
dante’s inferno did you get your name from the film arcade?
[/quote]
Actually my mother gave my name. Haha oh so funny not. But my nick is from a poem, also released as a book, which is called (somewhat surprisingly) “Dante’s Inferno” or “The Inferno”, or even “The Divine Comedy”. It was written by a guy called Dante Alighieri between 1308 and 1321. I’ve always liked the title “Dante’s Inferno”, but I’ve never actually read it.
I just saw the movie, and it wasn’t half-bad, actually. Much better than original, which despite a strong concept felt too much like a normal horror film (victims picked apart one by one, the final one at the end, etc). It wasn’t flawless, but Eli Roth has become a very good director, and not just a great horror director. I thought the movie was good even hadn’t it been a horror film. The parts leading up the second half was very well done, especially the Harvest Festival, which I thought had good writing and a strong visual/musical side to it.
And the first torture scene was intense! The thing that was so good was the anticipation. And the actual torturing isn’t necessarily as thrilling, but the few minutes before anything happens was nerve-cracking. And for some stupid reason, I didn’t guess that the long-haired guy was a member of the hunting club either, which left it all the more satisfying (or dissatisfying, depending on how you look at it) when I realized it.
And QT does in fact have a cameo. He and Eli are both represented in the “head-scene”. I don’t know which one is Quentin’s though.
Man I ordered this shit on demand last night just to see what “The future of horror” had to offer, and I was just completely pissed that I spent 5 fucking dollars on this piece of shit! I am now conviced that Eli is a talentless hack. He has a great personality and enthusiasm for films, but he’s just an awful filmmaker. His characters are so shallow, all they want to do is get laid, Jesus Christ!
Anyone out there interested in seeing a great horror film (I haven’t seen it but it looks great) check out The Orphanage, which is playing in select cities, it’s been getting great reviews.
Why would anyone want to pay to see people getting tortured all over again - I wasn’t offended, I love great gore when it’s done right like Fulci, but especially when it’s done with humor like Romero. Eli just dosen’t have anything to offer. Fuck man, five dollars! I want my money back!
I gotta disagree with you there. Part two was okay, it was mediocre. Was not horrible though. Of course he is not gonna be able to touch Romero and Fulci but then again barely anyone can in the horror industry.
Did anyone watch the Ebert and Roeper show, Hostel II was voted as the worst movie of 2007.
I think Eli is an incredibly talented director - not writer/director like Cronenberg or Landis, but just a good director. I don’t get why he would waste all that talent doing a sequel for some torture-porn movie. There’s already like a gazillion Saw movies with the same theme, I just found it pointless. And seriously how many times have you seen Hostel II?
It’s the kind of movie that you watch once and never see again. I found some of those torture scenes very gratuitous. Eli has no wit, it’s just show. I can’t belive he got an “R” rating for this thing, this should be an NC-17 rating.
And on his myspace he has this ridiculous blog about violent movies making people less violent, it’s ridiculous. He got away with a lot of shit, man and it’s not right.
I hope this torture-porn genre doesn’t catch up, I really hate it. I’ll stick to Carpenter, Romero, Landis…they were truly great.
It’s just FUCKED up to call Hostel II the worst film of 2007.
I felt like Hostel II completed Hostel
Wow, Eli really lost it here: (from his myspace)
<LINK_TEXT text=“http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea … =349592639”>Myspace Blog</LINK_TEXT>
ELI ROTH BLOG
Well, I finally made one of those 2007 Top Ten lists. Ebert and Roeper voted “Hostel Part II” as the WORST FILM OF 2007. Actually, I lied, I share the honor with my friend Chris Sivertson, because Roeper voted “I Know Who Killed Me” as his worst film of the year, while guest critic Michael Phillips gave me the esteemed honor. Roeper actually goes out of his way to say that he would have put “Hostel II” and other “torture porn” films on his list, but they were never screened for critics, so he didn’t waste his time watching them, because they’re just trash where women get tortured, and he doesn’t find that entertaining. It’s amazing he’s not wearing a Pope hat, splashing holy water on the DVDs. Richard Roeper - whose job is to watch movies last I checked - wouldn’t dare pollute his eyes by lowering them to the sewer of our movies…movies he has let others define before he even sees them himself. I feel sorry for Darren Boussman, whose film “Saw 4” wasn’t even given a chance to be on this list, because Richard Roeper was too decent a human being to even watch it. Thank God we have people like him keeping us safe by warning us against such evil. We should all write him a thank you note, but please don’t tell him that torture porn is a ridiculous term made up by critics who don’t understand or watch these films and that that sub-genre actually doesn’t exist.
What’s so unbelievable about the show is that this guy Michael Phillips actually goes on to say how talented I am, and that I could actually be “adding something to the horror genre instead of settling for dreck.” It’s pretty incredible - he says I’m “going to have a very successful career” and that if I want to “get myself out of the basement” I can do it, but that it’s up to me. It’s the weirdest compliment ever - it’s as if he chose my film so he could single me out and teach me a lesson. My question is: why would I ever want to leave the basement? The basement is a very special place for me. The basement at our house was where we all hung out. Every day we’d play Atari for hours in the basement after school, it’s where I watched every horror movie imaginable, and more importantly, it’s where I shot all my first films. My super 8 movie “A Clickwork Orange” was made in that basement. When I was 11 I chopped up my brothers with a circular saw in “Splatter on the Linoleum” in that basement. We shot probably 50 movies down in that basement. We were allowed to make as much noise as we wanted down there. We could blast our music. We could put up any posters we wanted - Jim Rice, Iron Maiden, “Mother’s Day”, St. Pauli Girl, all those cheesy posters we won throwing darts at carnivals in Maine - as long as there was space you could just tape it up. The walls were peeling, but instead of repainting, we’d hang a poster for “Pieces” over the spot where it was crumbling. It was great. Every weekend in high school at the end of the night - no matter what we were doing - EVERYONE went back to our house and hung out in the basement. I’m very close in age to both my brothers and all our friends would hang out together pretty much every weekend from 1:00 AM on. We’d raid the kitchen, fire up some Celeste pizzas, grab the cookies, and stuff our faces. We’d be down there all night watching horror movies and Skinemax, playing Nintendo NES, rocking out, filming movies, and playing street hockey with our dog Atlas. Atlas was the most amazing German Shepherd, and everyone knew him, and he knew everyone. You could take slap shots from across the basement and Atlas would catch the ball in his mouth. He loved playing goalie. Even yesterday I was hanging pictures in my basement in Los Angeles and Gabe said to me “Are you sure you want so many posters up?” and I said “I want it to be just like the basement.” He agreed. I actually went back to my parents house in Boston and got my torn up “Mother’s Day” video poster so I could frame it and hang it up in my have a piece of The Basement with me in California. So when Michael Phillips says that I could get out of the basement if I wanted to, to him I say: fuck that. I love it in the basement. The basement’s where you can relax and have fun and there are no rules, no bullshit, you can blast your music, hang any posters you want, trash your furniture, throw a football or play hockey indoors, and just hang out and have fun with your friends. And I would much rather spend my life in the basement than where this former theater critic is: up his own ass. That’s a dark, depressing place to be, and I feel sorry for the people who are stuck there because they’ll never get the enjoyment of watching these movies in the middle of the night with a group of friends.
And since I got such an overwhelmingly positive response to my “artwork” from 2nd grade, here’s another drawing from my book. I was probably 7 when I drew this. My parents actually saved my report cards from that time, and my teacher wrote them that I was incredibly smart and creative, and I had exceptional storytelling ability, but that I was too focused on “toilet humor and violence”. My parents’ response was “He’s an 8 year old boy.” I’ve been getting the same criticism for almost 30 years. What can you do. Some things never change. Back to the basement I go…
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It was just a little constructive criticism that Michael Phillips gave to him.
He retaliates against Michael and calls him, “a former theatre critic that has his head up his own ass” .
And he also takes a personal jab at Richard Roeper for not seeing his film! And it turns out the film wasen’t even screened for him!
<LINK_TEXT text=“http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/buenav … &subsec=47”>http://bventertainment.go.com/tv/buenavista/ebertandroeper/index2.html?sec=7&subsec=47</LINK_TEXT>
Richard Roeper on 10 worst movies of 2007 (why Hostel…torture porn was not included)
It’s not the critic’s faults that Eli made such an awful movie, the guys are just doing their jobs.
Oh, poor Eli. Looks like he turns into a crybaby when someone criticises his movie. You suck Eli. Stop using Quentin’s name to sell your shit and while you’re at it stop making movies altogether. This guy has the arrogant perception to think that people dislike his movies only because they cannot stand a little gore and violence. The truth is people dislike his movies because they’re crap, plain and simple.
Haven’t seen Hostel II but part I was fun.
But you’re right about Eli over-reacting. It’s the critic’s job to tell his opinion about the movie. Trying to apply some scientific univeral quality formula which gives the correct ratings for movies that you yourself don’t like or understand is bullshit. The only way to review a movie is to tell what you think of it and why.
Another thing is that a critic is supposed to write emotionally. Nobody wants the read dry text. Movie reviews also have to be entertaining to read. A bit of harmless sarcasm or fucking with the director is only a good thing.
But not having read the review I don’t know if it was well written or not. Of course it’s always a good idea to briefly mention that you’re not a fan of the genre if that’s the case…
Movie critics seem a bit like communists to me. They don’t go as far as to tell you what to think, but they CAN sway the opinion of the average, casual movie-goer.
I hate critics. I don’t watch them, read them, listen to them. I think every film that comes out should have an equal shot at each individual viewer. Let the people make up their own minds. What doesn’t appeal to the “critics”, could very well appeal to a lot of the “casual” viewers.
A movie does well if it has the critics’ approving “quotes” on the bottom of the poster. Just once nowadays, I want a film to come out that got shitty reviews, and for them to advertise it with the bad reviews… (BESIDES JACKASS). I’d go watch it just to spite the critics.
I don’t know about that. I find that I rarely disagree with critics, you just have to look at the overall picture sometimes (in other words: read more than one review). A great way to check out what most critics think of it, is to use www.rottentomatoes.com, which shows the general consensus.
And while some critcs give torture porn negative reviews just because of the violence, most reviews do it because the film is weak as a film (one-dimensional characters, weak story, etc.).
I am not Eli Roth’s biggest fan, I think he knows very little about how to scare people. He isn’t a good horror director/writer, he is a good shock horror director/writer. He can spill more blood better than some but that doesn’t make him good.
However. I have now sat through both Hostel and Hostel II and I think the second one was far more superior to the first. The second one had a bit of a story to it. It was, dare I say, quite clever and while I can stomach most things, I am still disturbed by that Bathory scene of the geeky girl getting murdered. That genuinly creeped me out. She was such a likeable girl, you knew she was the first to go, but it wasn’t a funny death. It was horrific, it was not funny anymore.
The rest of the movie was a bit of a blur after that, possibly because it was not that good, but it wasn’t like the first which was a teenage boy’s fantastic. Tits in the first half, death in the last half.
If Eli had have done this one first, it would have made more of an impact.
okay I just tried watching this. I thought it was a great moment. And I knew it was gonna be over the top cruelly violent. I was in for a surprise. It is disgustingly, stunningly brutal. So I stopped when the first torturing started. I will try to watch it all the way through somehow. I am not squeamish mind you, but this shit is just off the hook (no pun intended!)… wow… I am not surprised it just got banned in Germany… if there’s a movie that meets their criteria for a ban, it’s Hostel II
I wasn’t gonna waste my time with that shit but you’re building it up so much that I’m having second thoughts now.
I like the Hostel flicks and I generally like Roth. He is a committed horror fan. The Hostel flicks are a fun way to watch people get maimed for an hour and a half, same with the Saw series. Not really spectacular cinema, but I keep coming back anyway.
I still havent seen Hostel II, but completely loved Hostel so i’m sure this one is just as good.
Seb, don’t you think Eli’s sole mission is to make a movie which gets banned? I think that clouds his judgement.
I have enjoyed Eli’s work, but I can see how some people are put off by him. I liked Hostel II even though it was Hostel I with chicks. It had some good moments.