I liked the way it dealt with the question of Eli's gender, and the dreamy "be me" scene where she shares (unglimpsed) memories with Oscar. Given the scars she has, it's doubly haunting and effective IMO. (The book of course makes explicit everything she shows Oscar, which was not such a good thing given it was some…

I can get behind your first paragraph to some extent, but not the last sentence. If you consider a song to be lyrics, a vocal melody and bass line and consider any other personality beyond that to be "technicality" or "inscribed with theory" then I guess we have some kind of fundamental disagreement here. The…

Yes, it's minimally re-written except to change the offensive word "shit" to "thorns," and the chords are all dumbed down to be the standard chords that all starting acoustic players learn first. Ex, to transpose the original to be in the same key as the cover, the first chord on the verse is changed from the…

Did he? I know Reznor said the cover was far superior, as did most critics of the time, especially after the (admittedly quite good) music video came out.

Thanks, I'll definitely check that out when I get a chance.

Yes. I really hated that book and it seemed like it's a case where people who list it as an important, great novel are just doing that because that's what they heard, and not because they can actually articulate anything good about it. The movie, on the other hand, is pretty awesome.

One big one for me was hearing Yoav's version of "Where Is My Mind." The Pixies version always went in one ear and out the other and seemed like one of the least memorable songs on that album. Yoav's cover is absolutely gorgeous and made me realize that most of that is there in the original and I just wasn't…

I agree with everything you said here, and I love the remake, but I think they handle Eli's character so badly in the remake that I prefer the original. Every time she's on the prowl they turn her into CGI poltergeist girl, and it looks ridiculous. The original worked MUCH better for me in that regard. I also hate…

Something similar happened to me with her cover of "Enjoy the Silence," which she sings in this bizarre, creepy, minimalist style. I love the original and prefer it to her version, but hers puts all the focus on the lyrics and makes it sound like Porphyria's Lover. It makes it sound like it's about a guy that just…

The Cash cover made me appreciate the original's mild quirks of composition far more, since changing it to use the standard guitar chords on the prechorus made it so much less interesting to my ears. :/ I loathe that that lazyass cover is frequently held up as "so much better than the original."

I saw Parts the Clonus Horror first (it was on MST3K!), and was kind of blown away when I saw The Island, as it copies nearly all the main plot points from it (it's about a clone being grown to be harvested for organs by a rich dude, and he escapes from the clone farm and confronts him). It looks like there was a…

You forgot "They Came From Within/Shivers"!

Same here, I don't really like the Gary Jules version anymore (especially after it got overplayed to the point of being used for a frickin Gears of War cutscene!!), but I now have a great love for Tears for Fears. "Head Over Heels" is one of the best pop songs of all time. I love several of their other songs too,…

I think it's vastly superior to the book, as the book is full of leeringly gross descriptions of the murders.

So uh, is that book any good? That movie has been towards the top of my "Must Watch" list after reading Nightmare USA and seeing it compared to the awesome "Witch Who Came From the Sea." I had no idea it was an adaptation.

I was going to say "Up in the Air and Juno were good, what happened to this guy," but then I realized that was a different 80s action comedy director's kid.

Oh, that IS interesting, you're right. That is unfortunate.

I can't quite reconcile the two halves of this post, but regardless, I wasn't saying the person was making a straw man argument, just that often on this site (ex articles about the new Ghostbusters) it seems like half the comments are referring to MRAs and how they'll react to this trailer (or whatever the article is…

Hmm, I never use any of those sites. Breitbart is the crazy right-wing news outlet which makes Fox News look moderate, and Daily Mail is like the trashiest tabloid in the english-speaking world, right? :P Guess I've been missing out on a large segment of internet culture.

Ha, I'll give you facebook. I tend to log in about once every four months and see all kinds of just insane political rambling from all the people I went to high school with or whatever. Fair enough.