FRIDAY THE 13th (2009) - KILLER CUT (Blu-ray; Paramount/New Line)

Mike LoManaco

EDITED FOR CONTENT ERRORS; THIS IS THE CORRECTED VERSION. THANK YOU.



Studio Name: Paramount/New Line Cinema (Platinum Dunes)
MPAA Rating: R
Disc/Transfer Information: 1080p High Definition 16X9 2.4:1 (2.40:1)
Tested Audio Track: English Dolby TrueHD 5.1
Director: Marcus Nispel
Starring Cast: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Aaron Yoo


HIS NAME WAS JASON.



LoMANACO'S PLOT ANALYSIS:

Do I really need to discuss, in any kind of length be it short or involved, my personal feelings on remakes of late? Didn't I cover this in the review of Last House on the Left? No -- a better question right now, at this particular time, would be...can you possibly imagine smokin' hot sexy college girls with bigger **** and nastier mouths on them than some found on College Girls Gone Wild? Well, in Michael Bay's production company's remake of the Sean Cunningham classic Friday the 13th, we almost have it. I'm not kidding here, boys; tight-bodied co-eds are rubbing oil on their gigantic fake melons while their **** bag boyfriends are taking them from behind as they moan like whores in their tents just outside good ol' Crystal Lake -- if that's not enough eye candy for you in a horror flick, there's always the subtle oral sex references from these hot babes, plus the idiotic muscle bound jock who gets ridden by a sexy chick as she bucks and climaxes on his torso like a woman possessed -- it's absolutely awesome.

Ahh...but I digress...I have to do a job, right? And that's review 2009's remake -- no, wait...I mean reboot -- of this little slasher classic which introduced the world to Kevin Bacon and the mini shorts that were wrapped up around his balls, they were so...mini. I originally wrote a review of the theatrical launch of the film when I returned from it, and was going to utilize that for the bulk of this review, but decided to write it from scratch after having some fun with the Blu-ray version; let me start by saying that I am a rabid Friday the 13th fan of the original franchise by Paramount. Whenever one would hit theaters, I would be there, rooting for Mr. Jason Voorhees in his goalie mask -- in fact, while many thought the series got dumber as it went along, I actually enjoyed the films as they progressed. The later films in the original series -- Part VI: Jason Lives, Part VII: The New Blood and Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan -- were just gobs of fun I thought, and really cemented what the films and the character were all about. With Thom Matthews as "Tommy Jarvis" who seemed to be the only mortal able to stop Jason, these tongue-in-cheek campy garbage flicks were just so cool to watch, and still are. I immediately purchased Paramount's From Crystal Lake to Manhattan: The Ultimate Edition DVD Collection box set when it was released, many Halloween-seasons ago, as it was a set fans had be clamoring for relentlessly, and while the video transfers on those discs border on horrid, it's still a set I revisit now and again, and it's nice to have all of Paramount's franchise titles in one collection.

Then, the saddest thing happened...Paramount sold the "Jason" name to New Line Cinema, who absolutely destroyed the franchise from Jason Goes to Hell on -- perhaps one of the worst motion pictures ever made, if not the worst, has to be Jason X, which puts the killer in outer space where he slashes up more sexy kids on some kind of "research mission." It's absolutely insulting to watch. The studio's apparent relationship conclusion with the character and the films culminated with Freddy Vs. Jason which was a half-hearted attempt to bring two of the most iconic serial killers in cinematic history together to duke it out -- New Line's own Freddy Krueger from their Nightmare on Elm Street series and their newly "remade" Jason Voorhees character. The problem was, New Line had absolutely ruined the Paramount "look" of Jason, and the timeline of events in the New Line Jason films were completely and utterly out of whack with anything that came before it. At the beginning of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, some sexy naked FBI chick is undercover at Camp Crystal Lake to lure Jason out (totally forgetting about the events that came before in Jason Takes Manhattan) and from there, an FBI attack squad surrounds the masked maniac and blows him to pieces with guns and missiles. All that's left of Jason is his heart -- which somehow, at the autopsy, gets into the coroner's mouth by his eating it and then Jason's "spirit" begins to jump into different bodies. If you think I am kidding about that plot -- rent the DVD.

While Freddy Vs. Jason, in all fairness, was decent upon multiple viewings, what it really did was spawn other such films, most notably the Alien Vs. Predator pictures. In a bit of an odd twist, the end of Freddy Vs. Jason depicts Freddy's head being carried by Jason out of Crystal Lake after a hand-to-hand battle between the two, when Freddy's eye opens up and winks...suggesting a follow up film was in the works. Supposedly, New Line bean counters simply couldn't figure out a way to bring these two back to fight without it being completely and utterly more stupid than the first film. With nowhere else to go, young writers and producers began hub-bubbing about remaking the franchise from scratch for a new, modern audience -- it was already attempted through projects such as Platinum Dunes' own Texas Chainsaw Massacre and other horror remakes like House of Wax, Amityville Horror, Dawn of the Dead, The Hitcher, House on Haunted Hill, The Haunting and The Hills Have Eyes, but unlike, say, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hitcher remakes, Friday the 13th was envisioned as a franchise "reboot" with sequels and all, a la Rob Zombie's Halloween and the recently-released Star Trek.

If you're a fan of the original Friday from the early 1980s, you will notice some parallel elements borrowed here by director Marcus Nispel with assistance by original creator Sean Cunningham. In fact, some of the kill sequences in this reboot/remake are borrowed from some of the films in the original series, up until about Part V. To be perfectly honest, this was actually one of the few remakes I was able to stomach, and it was a pretty fun ride, especially re-visiting it on home video. Many fans of the original complained about this "new and improved" Jason, whereby he's no longer a limping, hobbling **** in the woods who can't move -- this Jason is fast, nimble and taut, much like what Zack Snyder did to the zombies in his remake of Dawn of the Dead. However, I think it was effective. Instead of devoting a new film to explaining the whole Pamela Voorhees backstory and how she killed off the teens at Crystal Lake in revenge for letting her son drown, Nispel and his team utilize the opening cast and crew sequence in this reboot/remake to show a flashback scene involving Mrs. Voorhees and her decapitation by the surviving counselor; the sequence is effectively shot in a kind of bordering-on-color black and white, and according to the bottom of the screen, it accurately takes place in the '80s, when the first film was in actual real time. This was clever.

We then fast-forward to Crystal Lake in the present day, like the original template, where a group of absolutely idiotic college kids are walking a path in the camp searching for a marijuana patch so they could steal a bunch to sell. The real kicker of this sequence, though, is one of the girls that are in the group, where she proceeds to strip her shirt off and rub her massive -- and I mean massive -- **** with some kind of oil, teasing her boyfriend who's arguing with the geek of the bunch. From there, your stiffy will go from limp to Samurai sword in two seconds, as the two of them are in their tent, and the boyfriend begins to really slam this smokin' hot sexy chick from behind as she moans like a **** star. The scene is pretty wild. However, the geek of the bunch has wandered off because everyone else is getting laid, and he proceeds to search for the pot field. Acting like a total jackass upon finding it, he also runs into a now-grown Jason Voorhees, donning the "potato sack" over his head (a homage to Friday the 13th Part 2) who goes ahead and slices him up nice. The gore in this remake/reboot, whether it's the "Killer Cut" or the theatrical version, is pretty over-the-top and is a refreshing change from the heavily-edited kill scenes in the original series.

Needless to say, Jason kills this group of weed-smoking morons in a jiffy, with one sequence being particularly creative, even for a Jason film...Mr. Voorhees hangs the girl who was getting pounded by her boyfriend in the tent upside down in a sleeping bag and burns her alive, as her boyfriend steps into a bear trap left by Jason, his flesh and bone on display as he screams in agony, forced to watch his hot **** flame on. Pretty cool stuff.

FRIDAY THE 13th CORRECTED REVIEW CONTINUED BELOW...

Mike LoManaco

FRIDAY THE 13th CORRECTED REVIEW CONTINUED...

You know, opening sequence titles are not something that are usually talked about when discussing cinema -- but sometimes they're just unique, and in this reboot, I feel it was a clever decision to put the "FRIDAY THE 13th" opening title right after the entire killing sequence involving this first group of kids. Moving beyond that, now a second group of kids are coming up to Crystal Lake for a weekend, one of whom is a college frat jock-type **** whose family owns a house out there. And, once again, we have the stereotypical **** that every horror remake seems to require: Remember Paris Hilton and her ghetto "homie" boyfriend from the projects that drove the Escalade and blasted hip hop from its speakers in the remake of House of Wax? Well, here, we have the black friend tagging along with the snotty, whiter-than-white group of frat and sorority kids, a couple of which are, once again, smokin' hot pieces of **** wearing Daisy Dukes and denim ultra miniskirts...you know the drill. This black character's involvement with this group borders on ridiculous and irrelevant; at one point, one of the sexy white girls asks him a question about his "involvement" in the entertainment world as he's busy on his cell, and he makes some kind of comment about "Why do you have to go racial? Just because I'm black, I can't listen to Green Day?" But when she asks what kind of music he's "producing," he snaps back with, "Rap." Are you kidding me? And this is what's turning on hot white girls today? Whatever. :rolleyes:

At a local convenience store run by some freak (another prerequisite in a Friday film), the group of kids run into a muscle-bound heartthrob who is passing out flyers regarding his sister, who went missing in the Crystal Lake area years ago. Turns out, this happens to be one of the kids from the film's opening pot sequence. The remainder of the film has this guy looking for the sister, knocking on doors, asking all the freaks of the surrounding area if they've seen this girl, while back at the rich frat guy's house, the group are getting stoned and banging their brains out. After the kid looking for his sister runs into a real bizarre character working in a shed, there's an interesting moment in the remake, where Jason finds and puts on his iconic hockey mask; after killing the freaky guy, Jason takes off his potato sack and finds a goalie mask lying on the ground in the guy's "house." Where we had to wait until Part 3 of the original series to witness Jason putting on his mask, we get right into it in the reboot.

You know what happens after this...we have a faster-traveling Jason (played by Derek Mears, who fills the spot nicely after classic Jason actors like Kane Hodder) who carves his way through the annoying group of college kids at the house by the Lake, one of which is an absolutely imbecilic Asian pothead that you'll absolutely love to watch die. But for the first time, we also have the Crystal Lake Police who actually arrive at the house! You know how in the older films, the cops never came until after all of Jason's murders? Well, here, we have a cop actually show up at the house -- well, that is, before he's drilled into the front door by a Jason attack. What's interesting about the plot here, though, is that the filmmakers decided to add a different element to the Jason character and his Crystal Lake environment; in this version, Jason actually travels through underground mine-like caverns, where his weapons are sharpened for his next kills, and where he stores his bodies. Also under here is the sister the kid is looking for -- apparently, Jason has had her locked up like some caged animal all these years, and hasn't killed her. Could it be that it's because she resembles Jason's mother? At any rate, the kid and the last surviving **** of the college group find the sister under Jason's secret passageway and attempt to escape with her. But better than all of this is a sex scene that comes earlier, where the kid who's parents own the house they're staying at is being ridden by one of the hot girls they're with; she gyrates on this guy's pogo stick, videotaping the whole thing, while her massive heaving **** bounce all over him -- better yet, she moans and whispers about achieving climax while the idiotic jock mumbles ill-timed remarks about her "**** being so stupendous."

Ahh. I digress once more. The final sequence of the film has the "hero" and his sister, the sole survivors of Jason's killing spree, finally taking out the masked killer in a scene that blends Jason death styles from a couple of the original films in the series -- Jason is thrown into a grinder of some kind after a chain is wrapped around his neck and the machine sucks him in. However, as the two survivors throw his body into the lake, along with his mask, we're left open for a sequel -- a typical Friday the 13th end tactic.

You know something? I had fun watching this on Blu-ray, even after I had a lukewarm feeling about it in theaters. The violence is graphic, but not so much that it's a turnoff, such as in gross-out titles like The Ruins, and it was cool rooting for Jason again. There's an amped-up sense of tension and action especially when compared with the classic, but rather lethargic and embarrassing original film. The new Jason looks cool -- I mean, much better than what New Line did to him -- and he sports the classic long hair under the mask and the deformed face of a retarded wild hunter. I think they may have gotten it right in terms of rebooting this, what with Paramount now in conjunction with New Line for this attempt. I don't agree with the concept of rebooting an old franchise and then tacking on actual sequels to the reboots -- like Zombie is doing with his Halloween II and what is soon to follow with a Star Trek II. I understand this is supposed to be new series for a whole new generation, but there's something just wrong about creating a sequel to an already rebooted original; color me confused.

For those of you raised on Paramount's original Friday the 13th and the entire series after that, this sure isn't Paramount's Jason or Crystal Lake -- but it's miles better than what New Line tried to do with the franchise, and if for nothing else, watch this to see something more visually stimulating than Girls Gone Wild. These sexy chicks in this film have indeed gone wild...:eek::cool:

FRIDAY THE 13th CORRECTED REVIEW CONTINUED BELOW...

Mike LoManaco

FRIDAY THE 13th CORRECTED REVIEW CONTINUED...

VIDEO QUALITY: HOW DOES THE DISC LOOK?

This is my second experience with a Paramount Blu-ray, the first being Iron Man, and in keeping with that disc's visuals, we have a pretty great-looking transfer here. I literally detected no film grain to soften the image, and the whole 2.40:1 widescreen transfer looks slick, clean and at times, eye-popping.

Some darker night sequences on this 1080p encode slip into a buttery veil of softness, but there are some outdoor sequences with closeups of the idiotic college kids that bordered on almost LCD-like on my rear projection display...meaning, there was an almost off-the-screen surrealness to a couple of these shots, which I found most pleasing. Detail for most of the running time was as sharp as a tack, even in difficult night kill sequences (the softer ones I mentioned not withstanding) where you could almost make out drops of dew and moisture on the plants of Crystal Lake. Black levels were nearly spot-on, and there was a good degree of shadow detail.

All in all, one of the nicer Blu-ray transfers I have seen in awhile.

AUDIO QUALITY: HOW DOES THE DISC SOUND?

Unfortunately, this was a case of the video being more impressive than the audio; the defaulting Dolby TrueHD track in English, in a 5.1 array, was on the "low output" side for the most part, requiring me to raise my master volume quite high. Dialogue was weak in the mix, but there was a standout moment on the track where one of Jason's arrows he shoots at a kid in the lake comes ripping from the right surround channel -- this effect made me jump and take notice. However, the "stinger" score and the overall power of the TrueHD track wasn't that impressive overall. I expected more from a TrueHD mix accompanying a brand-new Friday flick. There wasn't much of a rear soundstage presence beyond the aforementioned arrow attack or rainstorm sequences, causing me to scratch my head even moreso. Does it have something to do with my player decoding TrueHD tracks to multichannel PCM and sending them down the HDMI trail to my receiver instead of going the bitstream route? We can debate this all week, but I'm told it shouldn't matter.

What I have always found strange is that on the audio calibration portion of the DVE: HD Basics Blu-ray, which plays in TrueHD, there is a moment when a ping-pong sound effect bounces from channel to channel like a bullet ricocheting off your soundstage. This sound clip is absolutely jarring if you have your volume up -- every time I play it, I swear I think bullets are really flying around my entire space; it's ridiculously real. I can't help but always think when I play this sequence that "Now THIS is what TrueHD should sound like...if it did, I would absolutely think it's night and day over Dolby Digital..." But on real world material, the TrueHD tracks don't sound all that impressive to me -- at least not like that demo clip.

Another comment I would like to make about the TrueHD track on Friday the 13th is that, strangely, when I watched a special feature on the disc about re-booting Jason for a new generation, the audio was in two-channel, which activated my receiver's Pro Logic II Movie mode listening preset, and this audio on the special documentary sounded louder, punchier and more aggressive than the actual TrueHD mix for the film.

Can you figure that out? Because I sure can't.

LoMANACO'S SUMMARY:

Upon second viewing, I came to enjoy the reboot/remake of Sean Cunningham's slasher classic that became a blueprint for films to follow -- although many say Carpenter's Halloween was responsible for that. It's not great by any stretch of the word, as remakes such as Dawn of the Dead or Hills Have Eyes were, but it is definitely better than New Line Cinema's take on the franchise ever was. The gobs of stupid, drugged-out, oversexed college morons Jason hacks through in this get tedious and relating to this demographic is definitely not on my wavelength, but it was a decent attempt at remaking and possibly rebooting an old thrill ride. Better than the remakes of House of Wax, The Amityville Horror, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (except for Jessica Biel’s **** in that) and The Hitcher just to name a few.

LoMANACO'S RECOMMENDATIONS:

There are a great deal of drugs, sex and swearing in this film, so don't watch it with your kids. If you haven't seen it theatrically and you're a fan of horror films, or if you were a fan of the original franchise, this is worth renting. I only suggest a purchase if you can find it cheap or used somewhere, as I did; for all the surface enjoyment I got out of it at home, I still don't think it warrants a full price purchase. Find a copy used.

Thank you for reading, Club Polksters.

Mike LoManaco

Okay...

After re-watching this again tonight, I need to make some additions, so to speak, to the initial review...

First of all, this "Killer Cut" edition of the Blu-ray (which isn't available in any other variant) contains two versions of the film -- apparently, the longer, more gruesome (supposedly) "Killer Cut" is the version that defaults automatically (along with the English Dolby TrueHD track) when the disc loads. In order to access the so-called "Theatrical Version" -- which I watched tonight -- you need to go into the menu and select it from the "Special Features" pulldown.

Now, the running time of the Theatrical Version seems to be a bit longer than an hour and a half, while the Killer Cut runs more than that, at almost an hour 40, if I can recall correctly. Still, I didn't really detect any added gore sequences or anything of significance which made the "Killer Cut" so much more "outstanding" to watch over the Theatrical Version. I couldn't tell which scenes were added for effect to justify the longer running time; the film is plenty gory in both versions.

Also, I wanted to add that there's a real interesting sequence for all you boys out there watching this (preferably without your significant other of the opposite sex) which depicts one of the slammin' hot-bodied blondes in the group of college a-holes going out on a water ski while her idiot boyfriend drives a boat belonging to their friend whose father owns the house they're staying at in Crystal Lake; while the boyfriend wasn't supposed to take the kid's father's boat out, he indeed does, and his way hot girlfriend is at the back of it, attached to a water ski apparatus, absolutely and totally bare-chested. That's right -- this smokin' hot babe's fun bags are floppin' all over the place as she skims the water in nothing but a bikini bottom. This was good for eye-candy galore. :eek::eek:

Additionally, on the video analysis side, there were some problems with the transfer that I didn't mention initially -- there were many shots in the film that appeared "out of focus" and vividly blurry. There's a moment where Jason drops a decapitated body in front of a couple of the last survivors towards the end, and the body is visibly blurry; now, I suspect this was a photographic issue or error in the film itself, not a problem with the Blu-ray transfer, or they might have been going for some kind of stylistic effect for whatever reason. It happens a couple of times in the film -- a background shot when the kid looking for his sister in the Crystal Lake grocery store argues with the a-hole frat boy who is hosting this impromptu party at his father's lake house exhibits the blurry, out-of-focus activity that I'm talking about here, and it's rather odd. It happens a couple more times, as well; I just wanted to mention it. And again, I experienced that strange, powerful and distracting "yellow push" in mainly facial closeups, which almost makes a fleshtone appear "yellow sun bleached;" if there's a sequence that contains some kind of sun reflection or if a character is bathed in sunlight, a strong yellow push occurs in which the skin or surrounding material almost looks distortingly "bleached" in it.

I also wanted to comment on the closing sequence of the film, which depicts the surviving sister who's being searched for driving a knife into Jason's chest while shouting "Jason! Say hi to mommy...in hell!" which comes off really cheesy, as Jason is "caught" by his neck and drawn into some kind of grinding machine...moments before this hammy, sappy end sequence, the brother and sister survivors of the film manage to get Jason's neck wrapped with a chain and the machine that's sucking him inward lifts him feet off the ground by his neck. I couldn't help but remember that this scene was an almost exact copy of the way Dana Kimmell nearly killed Jason at the end of Part 3 of the original series, where he's hanging inside the barn with the hay weight around his neck...it was an interesting parallel, even if this wasn't intentional.

I was also very disappointed with the ending itself, which I didn't really mention in the review; the way these two survivors actually kill Voorhees off was weak and didn't justify the violence and grotesque murders which came before it. His head is simply "twitching" in this cutting machine of some kind, with the blades spinning, but nothing actually happens to Jason that we could see -- you would have thought there would be some huge finale in the way he gets butchered by the last surviving kids of the group, but it just falls flat.

dorokusai

The threads have been merged, no need to create another as I doubt it was really that confusing.

Mike LoManaco

dorokusai wrote: »

The threads have been merged, no need to create another as I doubt it was really that confusing.

Thank you, Dorok, if it was you who fixed the situation; I only created another thread because the first one needed editing to the content due to the fact that there were some errors and confusion as it was based on the same review I wrote for another forum under a different alias.

This is the correct one. Thank you.

Mike LoManaco

Jstas wrote: »

Hey, dorok, you could have deleted both threads and no one would have cared! :rolleyes:

Why would you say something like this? Why be a dick? I'm just providing DVD and Blu-ray reviews for the forum; what is your problem?

If you don't have anything nice to say to someone, please move along and close the pie hole. It's really rude and offputting. :rolleyes:

Mike LoManaco

Sherardp wrote: »

Funny.

No, it really wasn't.

If the OP could actually cut down the reviews just a tad that would be awesome. These reviews are very long, sometimes just a tad too bit. I actually like your reviews just they seem long winded so I skip to the good stuff to determine if the buy is good or not. Short review is all you need bro. Leave all the other stuff for like a blog or something. No pun intended just my two pennies bro.

Just my style; I provide a good deal of information.

Keep up the good work though.

Thank you! And thanks for your input about the length; I'll work on it, depending on the title.

Also screen caps and the like help too.

You mean shots of scenes to see the transfer quality? I'll consider that.

Mike LoManaco

Jstas wrote: »

Because my mother never told me that if I couldn't say anything nice to not say anything at all. As far as closing the pie hole, take your own advice.

Wow. Incredible.

I'm not the one who said the asinine things you did, so I'm not shutting anything -- how's your mother going to kiss you with that mouth?

Mike LoManaco

F1nut wrote: »

Hehe.......

...and guess who joined the party just to make it worse...

Mike LoManaco

I've dispached a private message to Pat regarding the harassment and uncalled for commentary which has again plagued another thread of mine for absolutely no reason at all -- until that's addressed (which I have been promised it will be from this point on), I will only return with replies for those with positive communication.

Mike LoManaco

Jstas wrote: »

Oh, but it's ok for you to trash other reviews of people whom you have been at odds with previously? It's also ok for you to whine and piss and moan because someone expresses a thought or opinion that goes against yours?

I've watched your inane babbling and the way you treat others. I've watched every stupid little quirk you have from incessant and unrelenting "gratefulness" for those that stroke your ego to you inappropriately abbreviating screen names in your responses. I have watched how much you bug others and they have been as nice as pie to you. Yet those who would disagree with you are still met with the stinging acid of condescension and passive aggressive responses you put forth.

You claim a vast knowledge of films and "media" and you get basics wrong and screw up your references. You seem to never research anything either.

You're a fraud and your overwhelming desire to make nice and surround yourself with those who enable your little love affair with yourself is disgusting.

I wasn't going to reply to this ghastly inaccurate ghost of a human being passing himself off as a member of this forum, but THIS above needs some reaction...

When did I EVER piss on ANYONE ELSE'S WORK? And what RESEARCH did I not complete? What are you TALKING ABOUT? You're looking for a reason to attack someone completely anonymous to you, as you probably do all over the internet on various forums, but I will say this: You are utterly and completely WRONG about who I am and the fact that I am a "fraud" -- who do you think is writing the material? I DO contribute to various publications and just because I choose to keep myself anonymous DOES NOT mean I am a fraud. And your constant bantering about my "ego being stroked" doesn't help your inaccuracies either, buddy, because you're WAY off on that one.

"My little love affair with myself" had to be the topper that just sent me into stitches over here -- SO inaccurate and off base. You KNOW you're just being a dick because you CAN...you ADMITTED that in so many other words. And THAT is truly disgusting and sad.

I didn't include the note about reporting the harassment to see if you "care" or not -- it's to get a handle on **** like this and to curb behavior from members like you...which it WILL be.

BTW, you have been officially relegated to my "Ignore List," so knock yourself out with the lies, inaccuracies about my character and anything else you want to waste your (seemingly) worthless life with in order to make yourself feel better about who you are...which is what's happening with the venom you're spreading about someone you don't even know.

reeltrouble1

Papa Polk was a great ol' man
I can see em with a shovel in his hand
he said:

Patrick we're depending on you son
to pull the family through
our Mod it's all left up to you

everybody be cool and we won't sweat

RT1

Ricardo

Patrick C wrote: »

He is free to post his opinion.

Fully agree.

Jstas wrote: »

Hey, dorok, you could have deleted both threads and no one would have cared! :rolleyes:

This also looks like an opinion to me (BTW...who's this dorok????)

reeltrouble1

oh, he is the brother of worok which roughly translates into dirty water which runs through smelly earth......

RT1

shack

Ricardo wrote:

This also looks like an opinion to me (BTW...who's this dorok????)

Not all opinions are created equally...

Jstas

shack wrote: »

Not all opinions are created equally...

Opinions are like ****. Everybody has one, some just stink worse than others.

reeltrouble1

nope, they are all equal, it kinda like animal farm, they are all equal except some are more equal, you see, this is not a democracy, it's my rabbit hole and welcome to the corridors, you from the bourgeoisie are welcome, proletariats beware the dark.

RT1

reeltrouble1

Ricardo wrote: »

(BTW...who's this dorok????)

ok ok I confess, I wanted to marry dorok as our babies would have been extreme freaks, but the dowry demanded was unbelievable.

RT1

dkg999

Patrick - with all due respect, if this is the 10th review of his that has generated this much of a pushback, and we assume we have reasonable people on this forum (I know that's a stretch!), then I think maybe the problem is with the reviewer. That and someone presenting themselves as a "professional" reviewer, using the language they do, no footnotes that they have permission to use the images, etc ...... I would not want to see Polk Audio become complicit in any complications someone like this always seems to generate. JMHO.

Jstas

dkg999 wrote: »

Patrick - with all due respect, if this is the 10th review of his that has generated this much of a pushback, and we assume we have reasonable people on this forum (I know that's a stretch!), then I think maybe the problem is with the reviewer. That and someone presenting themselves as a "professional" reviewer, using the language they do, no footnotes that they have permission to use the images, etc ...... I would not want to see Polk Audio become complicit in any complications someone like this always seems to generate. JMHO.

That's a tad of a stretch, dude. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sticking up for him but Polk Audio, by the fact that even though membership is restricted, this is a public forum and users are free to do as they please. If LoMonaco causes an issue for himself through inappropriate use of copyrighted material then Polk Audio doesn't really assume any liability for that unless, for some crazy reason, they would actually endorse LoMonanco's reviews.

Polk Audio doesn't have to take down the "reviews" unless requested by the property owner and Patrick is correct. But honestly, even though I can probably say I "started it", my post didn't harass LoMonaco directly at all. I made a comment, albeit not a very nice one, but a comment nonetheless towards "dorok" and I was poking fun. Harassment? Hardly. I get pestered, dogged and harassed with far, far worse and rarely is anything done about it. But I guess if I threw hissy fits and told everybody to get out of my threads or I was going to take my ball and go home, something would get done about it. Or, I could just not care. Post all you want but abuse the forums here, that's a different story. Tags were abused regularly, they went away. I and quite a few others, feel that LoMonaco is abusing the forums for his own personal gain at the expense of Polk Audio and he is detracting from the overall environment and "club community".

But LoManaco as a "professional" is a dubious distinction at best because his actions here do not bely that of what a "professional" film critic really would do. He lets his personal opinions affect his objectivity and when he doesn't like a flick, he doesn't review it but waits until someone else does and then bags on everything from the director to the key grip to even the youngest extra in the cast. He also has this whole "it's my ball!" thing going on and he stands up and shouts freedom of expression but when someone else expresses something contradictory to him, he demands censorship. Then he posts these long winded reviews that really don't say anything at all. If I wanted to read that, I'd pick up Entertainment Weekly or something. I come here for honest opinions from REAL people, not pseudo-professionals living in their own bi-polar induced fantasy worlds.



As for reviews, here's mine concerning "Friday the 13th". It sucks. The whole movie sucks. It always has, it always will. No matter how many sequels you make, they will all suck. No matter how many times you remake it, it still sucks. You can put it on the best media in the world with absolutely bit-perfect mastering and it's still going to be the most sucktastic suckfest in cinematic history. And I've sat through some real garbage just because I paid to be there so that's honestly saying something.

And yeah, I'm a jerk.

lightman1

I love you Patrick.

concealer404

Patrick C wrote: »

Again,

If you don't like Lomanaco fine. Put him on your ignore list. But if you do not have something valid to say about his review. THEN DON"T POST!!!!!

This crazy. He has a right to post and right to be respected on here just like each and everyone of you. I am not sticking up for him. I am sticking up for this forum. This crap needs to stop. It happens all of the time. Stay on topic, add something with validity, or don't post at all.

again since no one can seem to understand this. If you don't like his posts or reviews don't read them and for God's sake don't respond!!

As you can see I am little heated. This is probably that 5th time I have posted something of this nature in response to the insanity that ensues after Lomanaco writes a review and knowing place, all to well, I know it won't be the last.

Thanks Pat. Pisses me off too.

Ricardo

When forum members are asked to stay away from someone's threads, I think these members are not the problem.

Just saying.

Mike LoManaco

Thank you so much, Patrick; apparently, the "notice" that this undue harassment -- by people who ADMIT they are jerks, no less -- was not taken seriously, as I said it would be. I've taken out the "professional" moniker from all my reviews, and still I am insulted and flamed as soon as a review goes up -- and, again, members like "Ricardo" feed into this and see absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that another member ADMITS to being a jerk about all this and has even claimed that when members bash and trash the reviews and are "repremanded" for it, it is with undue unfairness.

The whole thing is completely and utterly illogical and cruel at this point -- thank you for taking care of this -- at least in this thread. :rolleyes:

And, for the record, the problem is not the person merely posting a review to read -- it is certain members that come out of the woodwork every single time a review is posted to simply harass me and "beat down" what I've contributed...

Case in point: Look very carefully at what began the whole harassment bandwagon in this thread: The member (whom I have since put on ignore) who replied IMMEDIATELY to the threads being merged message with "even if you didn't merge the threads...no one would care!" THAT'S what started all this IMMEDIATELY upon the new thread's creation; NOT ANYTHING I SAID TO ANYONE. How is that MY fault? HE HAS ADMITTED to being a "jerk" and still, somehow, my contributions are pissed on.

At any rate, I am unsubscribing from the thread because I have said my peace about it and wanted to make sure the harassment was being handled --- which it is, and I thank you, Patrick. There are absolutely no constructive remarks coming out of the thread regarding the film or BD transfer, which it was SUPPOSED to be about, so I'm not reading any more of the cruel rhetoric.

Again, thank you Pat.

shack

My daughter got this one with her blockbuster online account and let me watch it last night. This movie sucked. Not worth even a rental IMO. Hell...it was a total waste of and hour and a half...even for free. I could have been watching reruns of Iron Chef.

There...I saved someone from having to read several thousand words...

Hey Patrick...will you ask Mikey if it is ok for me to post my opinion in HIS thread....

kuntasensei

Shack, you're not allowed to have an opinion. Opinions will be summarily deleted. But if you do decide to have an opinion, you should make your own thread. And then a second thread to correct that thread.

Welcome to the MikeLoManaco.com forum!

Ricardo

Mike LoManaco wrote: »

....and still I am insulted and flamed as soon as a review goes up........

..... it is certain members that come out of the woodwork every single time a review is posted to simply harass me ..........

Wrong.

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1142790#post1142790

MrNightly

You know... i love Club Polk and everything, but we kinda are stupid around here aren't we? Nobody likes Mike and his arrogant views. It's obvious (Hey Jstas... I can't believe I am saying this, but I actually agree with you for once ) that the only way to get him to shut up and leave, is to ignore him.

For good.

Just don't post responses to his crap any more. If someone is too good to post a review in a thread started by someone else, then it's time to move along, in my humble opinion. Mike kinda reminds me of the kid in school who couldn't share with anyone and had to play by himself. Even though he had cool toys at first, everyone quickly learned that he was a loser and wouldn't share and soon just flat out avoided him. (Maybe my school was different than your school, but still you get the drift!)

Ta Ta.

Ricardo

MrNightly wrote: »

.... that the only way to get him to shut up and leave, is to ignore him.

Who said we want him to leave?

dkg999

Ricardo wrote: »

Who said we want him to leave?

Totally agree! Every village needs the proverbial idiot.