Macabre film review - it's good, go watch it

 

A surprisingly entertaining, creepy and effective Indonesian riff on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre formula, it receives my thumbs up.

Adjie, his pregnant wife Astrid, and three of their friends set out on a road trip to Jakarta. Along for the ride is Adjie’s estranged sister Ladya, with the hope being that over the course of the trip the two siblings will reconcile. Early on in their journey they pick up a seemingly injured and lost woman named Maya who claims to have been assaulted. They give her a ride home and are invited in for dinner with Maya, her two creepy brothers and her strange and enigmatic mother Dara. Over dinner things quickly take a bad turn, and Adjie and his friends find themselves desperately trying to escape from Dara’s brutal and sinister family.

While the basic plot of the movie is a fairly straightforward Texas Chainsaw-styled horror set-up, it’s used to great effect and there are some creepy twists and surprises to spice things up. This is a good example of how this sort of movie works (with a bad example being, essentially, every sequel and remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre – barring the Jessica Beals one).

The violence is bloody and fast, with an excellent use of practical effects leading to some truly juicy gore. It also makes the gore fun, never lingering or overexposing the acts themselves (but gloriously displaying the end results), avoiding the trap of torture porn (where somebody getting stabbed is dragged out for five minutes with constant screaming).

The actress who plays Dara is freaking creepy as hell, talking in slow deliberate sentences and never blinking. She’s the sort of memorable villainess many lesser horror movies wish they could have. She contributes to the surprisingly effective atmosphere the movie has, with the house the movie takes place in being suitably creepy  (filled with mounted animal heads, walls with bladed weapons, and a few more sinister room revealed over the film’s duration).

The pace is pretty good as well, which is important for this kind of movie. Within the first half hour the characters have all been introduced and the action has well and truly got going. Many of these sorts of films seem unsure of how to build their tension and begin, leading to long stretches of pure boredom (the opening forty minutes of Wolf Creek are pointless; nothing happens). Macabre gets to the point with sufficient build-up, and remains creepy throughout. There are some points where it loses focus a little; the actions and whereabouts of the main few characters are ignored for a few minutes when potential new victims appear at the two thirds mark, but it quickly rights itself and always remains entertaining.  

The movie receives my approval, which is a change considering I've done nothing but bitch about movies for the last two months. 

The Mystery of the Explosive Swearing

Something happened today.

The other day I went to my (sole) local video store, the one from my ‘video store’ blog, run by a man I call M. It’s the first time in a long time I’d gone to see what videos are out, but it was $1 Tuesday so I was happy to browse. I picked some stuff up and watched them over night. Today I drove over to the video store to drop off the DVDs, and it happened.

I walked in and dropped the DVDs into the return slot, where M was behind the counter. As I was walking out, so was an elderly woman and what I assume to be her two young grandchildren (neither could have been older than seven or eight). As I was walking out, Granny, talking to the kids, said ‘Let’s go, this is a horrible place’. It was said light and matter-of-factly.

Suddenly M yelled out ‘Oh shut up you bitch’.

I was tempted to go back and find out what the hell had happened, but I was halfway to my car and I’m not one to poke my nose in other people’s business. No, I much rather come up with my own theories.

Now, to put this as plainly and bluntly as I possibly can, I’m instantly and instinctively taking the side of M. My experience and various other things lead me to heavily take his side on whatever just happened. He has never been anything other than polite and pleasant, always greeting people with a smile. In fact, in the decades I’ve been going there I’ve never seen him anything other than absolutely positive. He is always smiling and happy to everyone, and I’ve seen other patrons converse with him in light, positive ways. This is actually the first time I’ve ever seen anything negative like this in his store.

Secondly, and this is where we get to behavioural forensics, when he yelled at her it wasn’t just anger in his voice but open frustration. It was clear that he’d been having a big problem with her for a while and that was the final straw. Also the things he said, and how he said them, suggests that she’d been badgering him or causing problems for a fair while. Thirdly everybody’s body language – M was at his desk frowning, while Grandma was ferrying the two kids out, while the kids looked a bit puzzled as to why they weren’t getting movies. Granny was the one with the problem.

The place I live in is, essentially, a retirement community masquerading as a town. The vast majority of the population are retired or over seventy. We have several retirement homes and even a place that sells those gopher scooter things old people drive dangerously in. I’ve lived here most of my life, and from my extensive experience I’ve learnt that the elderly people who live here tend to be massive assholes. Arrogant, rude and self-important, the elderly people who live here seem to be under the impression that the world owes them a service. Apparently if you live past 65 you get to be demanding and belligerent, and have a free pass at downright insulting other people. I’ve seen old people blatantly cut massive lines at the post office (only to complain and get aggravated when somebody calls them out on it).

So the swearing situation, what caused it? I have theories

1.       She asked for a specific movie, he didn’t have it, so she got rude

I have a shockingly large number of memories of this having happened in stores, usually involving older men or middle aged women. Somebody will come into the store and ask if they have a movie in. When they get told that the store doesn’t have a specific movie (or if it’s out) suddenly, randomly, people will become aggravated and rude, taking out their odd frustration on the innocent workers. For some people it’s a weird sin for a movie not to be in a movie store. I’ve heard a lot of insults being thrown at video store clerks about not having movies, usually beginning with ‘how can you not have it, it’s a great/popular movie’ (Video Ezy was a constant scene for angry customers complaining).

Maybe the kids wanted a specific movie that the store didn’t have, so Granny got angry because she couldn’t appease them.   

2.       She demanded to have Cheap Tuesday prices on a Wednesday

This one is surprisingly likely, as the elderly have a tendency to demand things regardless of their specific criteria. For further proof, read the second half of this blog. On Tuesday every DVD, Blu-ray and game in the store can be rented for $1, with no limit as to how many you can take. On an ordinary week day, weeklies are $2 (of 5 for $5) and overnighters are $5 (or three for $10). So cheap Tuesdays are a better bet for overnighters. I’m guessing Granny might have demanded the cheaper prices despite it not being Tuesday, and became rude when she was told no. She probably complained about the prices and the store as well, bcause when told no the elderly mind instantly feels the need to cause problems.

3.       She complained that her grandkids saw inappropriate things on the covers of horror/sexy DVDs

It might seem far-fetched, but this actually happened in a big way in Adelaide and caused a few ridiculous laws to be passed as a result. In South Australia, a religious politician took his six year old daughter to a video store. She wandered into the horror section and got frightened by the covers of the DVDs. Her moral crusader of a father didn’t just complain, he created a bill that would require all R rated dvds to be placed in a separate section away from any children’s eyes. The bill got passed (in South Australia only thank Christ) so now video stores and anywhere that has DVDs have their R rated movies placed in a separate, out of reach area. Some even have their R rated movies out back, requiring patrons to request to view them, as though you were asking for hardcore farm porn as opposed to the Scarface 2-disc special edition.

Anyway, rambling aside, with two shirtless young boys let loose in a video store, it’s likely they looked at something inappropriate and showed it to granny, who then complained. And it’s not just complaining from these sorts, they want to see something being done about their imagined problems.

4.       Damaged goods, stolen movies, late fees and the like

Maybe granny had rented movies before and not taken them back, then refused to pay the late fees. Maybe she’d rented some movies and broke them, cracking or scratching the discs. Maybe she had a bad history and he refused to rent any more movies to her until she paid him back or returned videos.

5.       General nagging and complaining

This is one that, while relatively basic and only slightly annoying, can compound into full-blown frustration. Maybe she was just constantly complaining about everything, insulting his store, his selection, his prices and even him.

6.       Misbehaviour

Two shirtless little boys with a closing-in-on-eighty grandma let loose in a video store can cause problems. I can imagine those kids knocking over DVDs or making a mess while Granny does nothing. Maybe M complained about the kids mucking about and Granny was rude to him.

7.       All of the above

Sometimes in your workplace you can come across a truly horrible customer who does nothing but absolutely hassle you throughout the day. Somebody who is arrogant, rude and, more often than not, ignorant who lets their hot-headed stupidity and self-importance ruin your day, aggravating you beyond belief. I’ve certainly experienced this – working in admin means having to field calls from aggravated people who don’t understand what your company does and lets their anger out on you. I’ve been insulted for no other reason than somebody not knowing what they want, or an impatient git expecting the person who answers the phone to instantly know what their problem is and have a quick, easy fix ready for them.

So maybe Granny was doing all of the above, or at least some of the above. Maybe she was just aggravating M beyond belief with demands, accusations, insults and complaints until he had enough. That was certainly what his outburst sounded like, her final insult of ‘this is a horrible place’ being the final straw.

~

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this sort of thing happen at a store here. I witnessed a similar situation at my local Chinese restaurant maybe six or seven years ago. The Chinese place is run by a Chinese family, with the matriarch running the front. She speaks broken English, but she’s so positive and pleasant (if a little loud)

The front of the store had a glass window that advertised ‘Business Lunches’ at shockingly cheap prices. This was sort of like a banquet deal – if you came as a group (specifically a business group, they were trying to draw in the work lunch crowds) you’d pay a cheaper price. This deal, however, had not been running for many many years. They no longer did the business lunch deals (presumably because no businessmen/women would go into town for lunch since it’s so dire). Since the advertising was drawn onto the glass out the front, they couldn’t remove it, so they wrote on the glass that the deals no longer existed. While for most people this would be clear as day, for the octogenarian folk this apparently was easy to misconstrue.

I once went to get takeaway there at lunch. In front of me were an elderly couple and a kid. Grandma and Grandpa, with their young (six or seven) granddaughter, were trying to get the business lunch deal, despite the deal being clearly non-existent. But boy did they fucking try. They started complaining, started yelling and were insulting the lady who was struggling, with her limited English and thick accent, to get her point across; ‘The deals no longer exist and you can’t have them’. Grandpa, the one doing the bulk of the arguing, had the entirety of his case resting on the ‘it was written on the glass, therefore you need to give me that price’. He even started to bring up bullshit, non-existent laws about shopfront advertising in an attempt to scare her into complying. Didn’t work (old Asian ladies are tough man). The little girl was complaining about her tummy rumbling, Grandma acted like this was somehow the Chinese lady’s fault and Grandpa, as his final petty revenge, refused to leave until he got what he wanted, essentially organising a three person sit-in. I had to leave the restaurant (kinda hard to put an order in when there’s an angry old guy in the way) and came back about ten minutes later. The elderly folk were finally gone, and they didn’t get their food, which is something I took immense personal delight in.

A short time later the Chinese folks, to make things clearer to people with cataracts, used black paint to scour over the ‘Business Lunch’ part of the glass, so now there’s a patch of black on their storefront.

'Dead Girl' review

Also known as ‘unlikeable, unreasonable toolbags do stupid terrible things for shock value’, this movie sucks big time.

Two best buddies at high school go exploring at the local closed-down mental asylum, and discover a naked girl chained to a table, wrapped in plastic. So what do two teenage boys who look like they’re in their twenties do? They fuck her, of course. Then when they try to kill her (as horny teenagers who’ve just committed rape apparently do), they find out she’s a zombie. So what do they do then? They fuck her again. Then they get their friends to fuck her. Then they decide to make another zombie fuck doll by kidnapping a fellow high school girl. Things don’t work out well.

Yeah. It’s that sort of movie. The ‘look how shocking we are’ brand of horror. And it sucks horribly. It’s never entertaining, the characters are never interesting, and the protagonist is such a toolbag that there’s no sympathy to be had for him, and the final dumbass ‘shock’ twist just comes across as pathetically weak. Nobody in the movie acts the way a person acts. There’s some laughable teenage angst thrown in, but that just doesn’t excuse the sheer, insulting, unreasonable stupidity of the central premise.

Actually insulting is the best word I can use to describe this movie. It's so self important and shallow that it basically insults the viewer with it's lazy, faux indie style. Being confronting or controversial is no substitute for being engaging or entertaining, two words that don't apply to Dead Girl. I have no problem with movies that push boundaries or go too far, provided they're at least good movies beyond their premise. Dead Girl is its premise, and even that is weak.

47 Ronin sucks, but you knew that already

 

Featuring heavily in the posters and promotional materials for 47 Ronin is a picture of a shirtless, bald man covered head to toe in tattoos of his skeleton and organs, holding a flintlock pistol. Considering how much attention is shown on him in some of these posters you’d assume he’d be an important character, maybe a villain. You’d be wrong. He’s in the film for 15 seconds, has a single line of dialogue and takes part in no action, and is never seen again. He doesn’t even have a pistol on him. He’s not even a minor character, he’s a background one, an extra, and yet they shoved him prominently on the poster to the point where he overshadows the rest of the cast, who are actually in the movie. This is an odd, confusing move. I’m guessing the marketing team thought that the image of a man with his skeleton and organs tattooed over his entire body would be interesting and draw people’s interest. They certainly needed something to draw people’s interest, because interesting is not a word I’d use to describe 47 Ronin.

47 Ronin is a bad movie, and the worst kind of bad – it’s not entertaining in the least. There’s no real fun to be had here, you just slog through a movie that takes something that should be a fun romp and balloons it into a plodding mess where there’s no joy to be had. It's not even so-bad-its-good, it's just bad bad. It’s that painful, boring, disappointing kind of bad movie where you spend most of its length waiting for it to get good, only to realise that two hours have passed, the film has ended and you’ve wasted your money on it. That’s how bad 47 Ronin is.

The film has a major identity crisis. It takes influence from a true story, as well as the various Japanese samurai films based on the story, but then throws in a supernatural element that doesn’t mesh with the story’s themes of honour and sacrifice. It takes the serious tone of dramatic Samurai movies and then tries to shoehorn it into an American action movie, a mixture that just doesn’t work. It’s never fun and the movie takes itself way too seriously.

On the one hand it wants to be a serious Samurai drama. A lot of time is given to explaining and delving into the convoluted and complicated politics of feudal Japan, taking a look at the intricacies of its system of honour and duty. On the other hand this is a movie with monsters, ogres, demonic monks and a dragon, where witchcraft features heavily into the plot.

So what’s it about exactly?

In feudal Japan, the land is divided into various provinces which pay tribute to the Shogun, the ultimate ruler of the fractured country. The ruler of the Oki province, Lord Asano, takes in a white ‘half-breed’ boy, rumoured to have been raised by demons. The boy, named Kai, grows up hated by the samurai of Oki, including Asano’s son Oishi. However Asano’s daughter, Mika, takes a liking to Kai and the two form a bond.

Years later, Oki hosts a visit from the Shogun and various feudal lords. The ambitious, obviously evil Lord Kira wants to claim Oki for his own, and conspires with a witch, Mizuki, to curse Asano, causing him to shame himself in front of the Shogun. This leads to him committing seppuku, ritualistic suicide, to regain his honour. With Asano dead, the Shogun banishes the samurai of Oki and orders them to not take revenge, and also arranges for Mika and Kira to marry in one year, after which time Kira will gain control Oki. Oishi is imprisoned in a pit, Kai is sold into slavery, the rest of the Samurai disband and Maki is taken to Kira’s spooky mountain fortress.

A year later, Oishi and the surviving Ronin (dishonoured Samurai without masters), including Kai, band together to get revenge on Kira, rescue Mika and avenge their master. What I’ve described here is over half of the film. This movie plods along at a snail’s pace, taking way too long to get to the point, and at two hours in length it’s an ordeal. It’s often aimless, and badly edited so things seem to move forward abruptly and jarringly. Another issue is the way it handles its characters – it takes a long time to really get a feel of who people are, and the lack of development or personality in most of them means you won’t care either way. Coming as a surprise, I’d argue that Keanu’s Kai isn’t the main character, with Oishi largely filling that role. Oishi is the one who leads the ronin, bands them together, goes through some character development and remains the focal point of the movie. Kai, on the other hand, is just there for the American audiences – the white outcast who can swing a sword around and be the main love interest in a tale that, thematically, has no use for a romance subplot.

Frustratingly, the film, with the obvious exception of Keanu Reeves, is filled with talented Japanese actors and actresses, and yet squanders their use completely. People like Tadanobu Asano, Rinko Kikuchi and Hiroyuki Sanada (who are excellent in Ichi the Killer, Babel and Sunshine respectively) are given nothing to work with, and don’t do much. While Sanada does what he can with the gruff Oishi, Asano is given nothing to do but sit around looking untrustworthy as Kira. Rinko Kikuchi is the only one having any fun as the over-the-top-to-the-point-of-being-silly witch Mizuki, slinking around and whispering a lot. Keanu Reeves doesn’t even bother trying to act, but with material like this can you blame him?  

The cinematography is odd, as often the film can look nice, with the costume and set design generally complicated with CG background details. At other times the lighting is off or scenes look bland. The music and sound effects are weak, with vaguely traditionally sounding tunes that seem like tracks dropped from The Last Samurai filling in most of the scenes, while many of the sound effects sound off or weak, or simply missing (disembowelment should sound meaty and gross, like in 13 Assassins, but I guess as a M15+ movie they didn’t want to risk it).

So don’t see 47 Ronin. It’s simply not worth it. There’s no joy to be had. If you wanted to see a good, dramatic, traditional Samurai flick, check out 13 Assassins by Takashi Miike. It’s a slow, methodical Samurai drama that builds up to an epic finale. If you just wanted some Americanised ‘safe’ action flick with a Japanese taste, go for The Last Samurai, with pre-craziness Tom Cruise. Both are far better ways to spend your time than 47 Ronin.

Star Trek: Into Dumbness

Every time I watch either of the new Star Trek movies, I find more and more things I don’t like about them. The first time I see them I don’t mind them too much. They’re entertaining enough, and they look good (despite JJ Abram’s lens flare fetish). But after watching either one, a few days late I start to actually think about them and realise I don’t actually like them that much. It’s not hate, I can still sit through the movies, but each time I find more problems and niggling issues with them. Things from the script, the acting, the general look of the film – every time I revisit these movies I find more and more things I don’t like. And I’ve found a major one with Into Darkness.

The first reboot was a strange beast that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be a fresh new spin on the Star Trek universe, or if it just wanted to rely on referencing the original series. In the end it didn’t bother choosing, it flitted between trying to change things up while still refusing to move on from the established universe.

Even worse, instead of simply rebooting the universe, the film had to come up with a convoluted reason as to why Kirk and Spock had different personalities. Using time travel and alternate timelines, they made the original Star Trek universe and the reboot one actually both exist in parallel. That way they could shove Leonard Nemoy in there as Spock and have him talk to angsty Spock. In that regard it was basically Star Trek fanfiction (which explains the whole Spock/Uhura romance thing).

Now while I have a lot of problems with that first movie, it’s the sequel that has me, due to how freaking stupid it is. Into Darkness, not content to even bothering to try new things, simply remakes ‘The Wrath of Khan’, and does a worse job of it. Once again instead of using the Star Trek universe as a springboard for new storylines, they retread old ground and rely on referencing and paying extensive homage (is it homage if you just downright copy something from the source material?) to the original film.

Benedict Cumberbatch is revealed to actually be Khan, a genetically engineered supersoldier. He’s out to kill the military leaders for holding his people, other supersoldiers, hostage. Kirk is sent to kill Khan, and is given a shipload of torpedoes to do the job. It’s revealed that the military leader is evil and torpedoes are actually filled with Khan’s people, cryogenically frozen. They team up with Khan, who then turns against them and all sorts of other nonsense. It doesn’t matter much, the characters spend most of the film in a stationary ship not knowing what they’re doing.

In a painfully stupid scene, Kirk and co are having a heated discussion about their impending doom and what choices they have left. Things are dire and serious…and then Kirk suddenly gets distracted by Karl Urban, who is injecting some fuzzy blob thing with blood. Kirk asks what the hell he’s doing, and he says he’s injecting Khan’s blood into a dead thing to see what happens. This entire scene comes out of nowhere and exists solely, painfully, to foreshadow how the film is going to end. Once this scene happens, you know that somebody is going to die, but they’ll get Khan’s blood and they’ll be fine.  And, if you’ve seen the original Wrath of Khan, some people will know exactly how this death will come about.

After some action, Kirk enters the dangerous radioactive core of the ship to save everybody on board and ends up with massive radiation poisoning and dies while Spock watches on (a reverse of the same situation in Wrath of Khan). So now Kirk is dead, but not for too long. Karl Urban reveals that if they have Khan’s genetically engineered blood, they can bring Kirk back to life…somehow, despite the massive radiation poisoning that would have invaded all of his cells, and the fact that, in death, blood flow stops entirely, and brain death occurs in a matter of minutes, and that psychologically he’d never be the same. Anyway now Spock needs to capture Khan and save his buddy.

And here it is. The dumbest part of the story, the niggling issue I noticed this time around. My issue with this is a big, obvious one; they need Khan’s bio-engineered blood to save Kirk, right? Well they have, in cryo storage, over seventy other people with the exact same super-blood as Khan. Why didn’t they just take some blood from one of them? Like seriously, why? Khan was just one of dozens of super soldiers, and the rest are frozen, thereby unable to fight back. They could thaw one out, tie them to a chair with space lasers or whatever then take the blood they need to bring Kirk back to life. But no, instead the whole ‘bring him back alive’ thing is used to up stakes for some reason, since stakes are already pretty raised to begin with. What the hell? I’d accuse lazy writing, and with Damon Lindelof (who wrote Prometheus, World War Z and the vast majority of the tv series Lost) I think I’d be right.

Why the Preacher TV adaptation probably won't happen

Seth Rogen is rumoured to be penning the television series adaptation of the comic series Preacher.

I don't think it's going to happen. At least not a proper adaptation. Why? Well, to put it bluntly, it's quite vulgar, rude, crude, violent, mean, in-your-face and pretty damning of the whole 'religion' business. Heads are blown open, every bodily fluid is seen in excess, it deals with some heavy themes and is uncompromising in showing everything in gross detail. It's the sort of material that wouldn't make it to the screen.

So, after I've done the hard sell, you're probably wondering what it's all about. Jesse Custer, a hard-drinking hard-swearing Texan preacher disillusioned with his faith, is struck by divinity when an angel/demon hybrid, that has just escaped from heaven, possesses him. He finds he's been granted the power of the voice - he can tell people what to do and they'll follow his orders exactly. He's joined by Tulip, his gun-toting ex-girlfriend, and Cassidy, an Irish vampire, and the three of them go on a journey to find God, coming against the police, rednecks, serial killers, a secret society, wannabe vampires, the KKK, voodoo and an immortal gunslinger.

A lot of Preacher involves characters talking to each other, often about inconsequential things. It's almost a road trip movie (though with a lot more sex and violence). A lot of conversations harken to the love of Westerns (with the style, tone and setting the story is pretty much a Western anyway). There are a few conversations about Bill Hicks, John Wayne and westerns in general.

Jesse Custer is a likeable character, if just because he's basically a personification of all the ideals of the Old West. He's honourable, tough, strong-willed and yet courteous, confident and charming. He drinks hard, fucks hard put is always polite to the ladies. His backstory and profession work really well in building his character, making the 'preacher without faith' aspect of his character work pretty well.

While many are probably tired of vampires, Cassidy is a more entertaining sort. In a lot of ways, he's exactly not like a vampire. He has no pointy teeth, he has no special sparkling powers, barring regeneration and strength, and he instantly catches fire when exposed to sunlight. He mostly spends his time getting wasted. He's a lot like Colin Farrel actually. The series, at one point, takes the piss out of vampire stuff, mocking the whiny, brooding Anne Rice variety (Preacher was written long before the sparkling idiots of Twilight ever existed).

Tulip is, much like Jesse, tough and strong-willed. Something of a wanderer, she's the gunslinging girl of the group, always with a pistol on her, constantly getting into gunfights with other people. Her relationship with Jesse makes up a lot of the spine of the story, with Cassidy the unreliable support. 

Preacher is full of exceptionally gross-out content. In the second volume Jesse and co go to an orgy. Not to participate, mind you, but to look for answers. Being a comic book (written by Garth Ennis) it's pretty explicit, and though it doesn't go as out-there gross-out as some of Ennis' other works ('The Boys' can be easily accused of going way too far on many occasions). Jesse walks in on some people filming a porno involving a little boy. So he pummels the crap out of those there and uses the voice to make sure it never happens again, but that's the sort of content that's there. There are two side characters who call themselves 'Sex Detectives'. They solve crime and mysteries...through rape. Arseface is a teenage boy who shot himself in the face with a shotgun, imitating Kurt Cobain. Only he doesn't die, instead he becomes horribly disfigured, to the point that whenever anybody sees him they can't help but vomit. And yet he's almost painfully optimistic and cheerful (though he does attempt going on the shortest, mildest rip-roaring-rampage-of-revenge I've ever seen).

The bigger reason it probably won't happen, or might be edited substantially, is how it looks at religion (specifically Christianity) and the entire concept of God in an overwhelmingly negative way. Jesse and co are out to find God and get him (Preacher takes the traditional 'old guy with giant beard' description of God) to sort shit out, presumably by knocking sense into him. A lot of the content and tone of the series is likely to cause a massive wave of controversy and complaints.

The point is that Preacher is full of crap like this, the sort of gross-out, too-far things that comics can get away with because the images are still and comics don't have the mainstream exposure capability visual media does. Converting some of this stuff onto television of all things won't work properly. Things will have to be edited or cut. One could argue that cutting it won't hurt a series adaptation, since its not all relevant, but when you start to excise parts of a story's identity then you miss the point.

Another concern is Rogen himself. His writing skills are, actually, pretty decent for the comedies he's done (particularly if that's your sense of humour). The last time he tried to convert something else, things got messy. His script for the Green Hornet remake (in which he starred) was a total mess, leading to a forgettable, messy movie that went nowhere. That's the major concern. That and the pressures of television. TV, moreso than film, is where success can be very fragile. You can have the best production design, script, acting and directing but still end up getting cancelled while garbage continues to get vomited out year after year. The pilot episode itself can kill a show if moronic bigwigs don't get it (Locke and Key's tv adaption got killed in the pilot episode, though general consensus was that it was awesome). Preacher is the kind of series I can see getting killed in the pilot episode phase, where red flags for the content get raised by executives and the project get killed. It's happened before; this isn't the first time a Preacher adaptation had been in the works. The story has been around since the mid nineties, and there's been several attempts to get a version going but it always dies.

Anyway this is all just assumptions at this point. The extent of all this was that Seth Rogen tweeted he was writing a script for a Preacher TV adaptation, and that's all the information there is. It probably won't even happen, but if it does it may not make the transition well.