I’m Thirsting for a Good Movie

They look more animated here than in most of the movie.

Thirst is a South Korean movie from 2009, directed by Chan-Wook Park. The only other movie of his that I’ve seen was Oldboy, and that was fucking great. Full of beatings, amnesia, incest, murder, and mayhem, it was a cinematic treat and a delight for all ages. Thirst, however, is none of those things.

This is technically a vampire movie, although you wouldn’t really know it until about halfway through. The pacing is so goddamn lethargic that virtually nothing happens for the first hour. A Catholic priest named Sang-hyun is inadvertently infected with some kind of vampire blood during a transfusion (I thought hospitals screened for that kind of stuff), and slowly transforms over the course of the movie. But it takes so fucking long, and they try to portray it as realistically as possible, that it isn’t interesting at all. It’s like they were trying to make the Batman Begins of vampire movies. LOL OH LOOK IT’S SO REALISTIC IT’S TOTALLY PLAUSIBLE THAT THIS COULD HAPPEN IN THE REAL WORLD LOL.

20 Shittiest Anime of the Decade (2000-2009)

I’ve seen me lots of animu in the last decade. I started watching this stuff in late 2001, and it’s ruined my life ever since. That being said, I felt it was my obligation to impart upon you the fact that there are terrible anime out there. Sometimes it seems like it’s all moeblobs and slice of life bullshit. I’m not sure if anyone else has done this yet, so I’m giving you my list of the 20 Most Shittiest Anime of 2000’s. Keep in mind that even though I have ranked these, they are all equally shitty. My list probably won’t sit well with the slice of life fans or the moe-loving fapboys, but rest assured these anime all need to be sent directly to hell.

Dishonorable Mention) Most Pointless Award – Rebuild of Evangelion – Why Hideaki Anno, why? You impressed us with Gunbuster, you further solidified your directing talent with Nadia, and you amazed us with your opus Evangelion. After that you did… well, not really anything. You went on to make a bunch of really shitty live action movies. You failed and failed and failed. You weren’t able to succeed in the mainstream, and that’s OK. But when you returned to the world of anime, what did you do? You decided to make A MOTHERFUCKING REMAKE of your biggest cash cow. Hmmm. Out of ideas already? Apparently so. Either that, or you wasted all of your money on full body Asuka pillows and mosaic screened Japanese porn. Now, I will agree that Rebuild of Evangelion was extremely well made, but it was also extremely pointless. Evangelion was by far one of the most incredible anime of all time. And remaking it is retarded at best.

Dishonorable Mention) Worst Director Award – Mamoru Oshii – To all the fans of Oshii… fuck you. This guy is terrible. He’s a horrible director. He has no concept of pacing or intriguing storytelling. There is an old writer’s guideline that says, “Show, don’t tell.” Basically, it means you should describe what’s going on, and not just say that it happened. It provides for a much richer experience for the reader. Oshii’s work is all flawed by the same problem. He “tells” and doesn’t “show.” He wants to bring up philosophical ideas, and his method of doing that is by having two talking heads spout off paragraphs of dialogue at each other for huge chunks of time. This could potentially work in a book format, but in film, which is a visual medium, it fails miserably. Immediately, this becomes boring to all but the most insane Oshii-loving otaku. I swear to god, Oshii fans are practically a cult. To them, Oshii is like Jesus and he can do no wrong. He could film himself taking a shit, and his fans would call it the greatest piece of cinema to ever grace the earth. The truth is, 99% of everything he has put to the screen is garbage. Oh, and Oshii, nobody gives a fuck about Basset Hounds, so stop putting them in all your goddamn movies.