re: definition of "surprise" (also now the "Orphan" thread by default)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v134/tracerhand/goldenyouth.jpg

'surprise is like waking to find your bed smeared with birthday cake and a church choir sitting in your living room'

seeing the trailer for Orphan made me sure it'd be a WTFfest, and this urged me to check it out. By 'it' I mean its wikipedia article. The last three paragraphs of the plot synopsis are beautiful.

When I watched the Burton Planet of the Apes I was reading at the same time, and just assumed I had missed something. Guess not!

The last three paragraphs of the plot synopsis are beautiful.

Good lord, you weren't kidding.

I heard about the plot twist the other day and almost wished I'd somehow been forced/tricked into experiencing it for myself

i, for one, really like the last line of that wikipedia synopsis

The film's content of an adopted child causing trouble has not been well received by the adoption community.[3]

^^ I can feel that, actually -- there's that whole ongoing trope of the mysterious evil Other child, and it's a totally natural extension of the anxiety of taking in kids that aren't yours, but it's gotta really grate if you happen to care about adoption

The Orphan twist should be really obvious, but most of the audience I saw it with was completely surprised.

I'm surprised that 1.) there's an actress named CCH Pounder and 2.) I haven't heard of her til now

image-search her: I guarantee you know who she is and will recognize her

I mean jeez, your honor, I hardly even knew her!

xp hahah I have seen her many times channel flipping

Has anyone else actually seen Orphan? I guessed the twist from the trailer but there was plenty of other ridiculous shit in it to surprise me (like her ability to cover a room from ceiling to floor with black light markers despite being four feet tall).

woops, missed that milo did! also, it's been awhile since I've seen child actors put through more fucked up shit than in this, and not just SPOILLEERRR casting a 12 year old to play a thirtysomething psycho killer.

i mean couldn't they find an actual female andy milonakis for the role?

Later that night, Esther holds a box cutter to Daniel's neck and threatens to cut off his "hairless prick" if he tells anyone what he saw.

woops, missed that milo did! also, it's been awhile since I've seen child actors put through more fucked up shit than in this, and not just SPOILLEERRR casting a 12 year old to play a thirtysomething psycho killer.

― da croupier, Tuesday, July 28, 2009 6:38 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i was just talking abotu this with my friend last night... so fucked to make a kid do that

I appreciated the girl four seats down yelling out "Esther got titties!"

the cutter is actually at the 13 year old actor's crotch at that point. even if that was a cutaway, this isn't the kind of movie that can say "through the magic of editing our underage actors had no idea just what a fucked up scene they were in."

xpost right as the movie started a woman and like five children that must have ranged in ages 5 to 15 came in and sat in the row across from mine. they didn't shout out much (it was early in the afternoon), just kept getting up to get food/go to the bathroom.

the story of how 7-year-old Aryana Engineer(?!) got the part of the crying deaf girl who has to fire a gun at her psychotic adopted sister.

http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/etoday/story.html?id=79f4ddc1-ae71-4044-a1ad-cc298aa73016

biggest shock of the movie was "produced by leonardo dicaprio," though. dude have too much money or something?

can't wait to see this tbqf

12 years old is not some babe-in-the-woods shit, croup, esp. in this day and age.

I'm sure a 12-year-old knows what a hairless prick is

there was a girl in my second grade class who threatened to do something like that to me but I think she was actually fucked up

12 years old is not some babe-in-the-woods shit, croup, esp. in this day and age.

thank you for the challop. have you seen the movie?

can't wait to see this tbqf

lool thinkin this too

don't take my comments about the gratuitously fucked up scenes involving child actors as a sign I wasn't entertained, btw. this shit was definitely bananas, though I did prefer Vera Farmiga's previous "my kid is the bad seed and no one believes me!" movie, Joshua, as far as actual spookiness goes.

have you seen the movie?

fucks no

http://www.lovefilm.com/lovefilm/images/products/3/6853-large.jpg

i can name like a dozen things playing right now that I'd rather see. Why did you see this?

this shit was definitely bananas, though I did prefer Vera Farmiga's previous "my kid is the bad seed and no one believes me!" movie, Joshua, as far as actual spookiness goes

this was creepy as fuck def ~~~ altho "home movie" has that trumped in terms of movies about creepy, evil kids maybe because josh ended up being just lame-o sociopath whiner and not like ~evil~

I enjoy thrillers and shit that looks bananas. Plus I see a lot of movies - saw The Hurt Locker later the same day. I can't name a dozen movies I'd rather have seen in the theaters, though. I mean Summer Hours can wait for DVD.

xpost haven't seen "home movie"! will check it out.

Did you see Up? Up was awesome!

whiney the kid in that wasnt really "evil" um just fyi?

There were some gratuitous murders in it, though! Or at least references to them.

I was just saying when there's rad pixar and guinea pig movies in 3D, why would you watch the movie the internet is intent on spoiling because it's so dum

maybe because I'm not some 12 year old babe in the woods

you are a hairless prick, tho

lol figured this wasn't actually about a desire to defend the treatment of child actors in Orphan

movie was awesome. People brought there 4 year olds to the theater of course.

Is that really a synopsis?

I didn't guess the twist, I mean, I thought about it, but by that point I thought it was as likely as several other twists. A key piece of evidence is this old looking bible, so at some point I thought it was as good a chance that she was like 200 years old and never aged. To be honest, while I enjoyed the twist and the events that take place immediately after, I left wondering if the movie would've been better if she really was 10 or whatever years old and just that fucked up.

sorry if those are spoilers, but it seems like everybody here has read that "synopsis" which doesn't leave much to the imagination?

lolz at that wikipedia article; do all contemporary movies get group written spoilerific descriptions on there now?

it's the weirdly passive present tense that cracks me up

i dont believe anyone who says they guessed the twist from the trailers... it's so obscenely stupid how could anyone think of it

Just past breaking the first girl's leg she could have been an evil child, but I thought the twist was pretty obvious after that.

I was guessing that she'd be older though - 50-60 or something.

i dont believe anyone who says they guessed the twist from the trailers... it's so obscenely stupid how could anyone think of it

Well they made a big deal about how she had a "secret," that there was no record of her at the hospital and there was a suggestion of carnality with the dad, it was either that or some Omen shit and they already made the Omen.

I missed the "carnality with the dad" trailer, ick.

wait'll ya see the movie!

actually the twist would have been cooler if it turned out she was a Small Wonder robot someone accidentally switched to "evil."

taking sides: this movie versus the Law & Order about the woman who moved from place to place changing her identity and then repeating high school

oh that L&O was awesome

also I was kind of hoping she was a "Small Wonder" robot

Vera Farmiga is v. v. pretty, BTW.

that episode, a tiny bit, and this movie, even less, relate to a true story of a young looking woman who travelled around pretending to be a high school student for many, many years.

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/scams/treva_throneberry/index.html

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/08/11/080811fa_fact_grann

^^^ made me think of this dude

theres also that svu about the 25 yr old girl who looks 16 and shes dating some 30 yr old dude and stabler is VERY judgmental about it

oh yeah, that New Yorker article was one of the best I've ever read.

vera farmiga's best child exploitation flick is 'running scared', that shit is madness

The Orphan twist should be really obvious, but most of the audience I saw it with was completely surprised.

― My vagina has a dress code. (milo z), Tuesday, July 28, 2009 5:08 PM Bookmark

I was thinking that it was the stillborn baby come back to life somehow.

heres also that svu about the 25 yr old girl who looks 16 and shes dating some 30 yr old dude and stabler is VERY judgmental about it

That episode was so weird.

those stories abt bourdin and throneberry are extraordinary reads - this ny times one on the throneberry case is good too http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/10/magazine/forever-young.html?sec=health

speaking of Bourdin, anybody seen the documentary about him and his impersonation of the lost child Nicholas Barclay in The Imposter?

I just Netflixed it and enjoyed it, though felt the speculation around the family's awareness of the real child's disappearance was given too much credibility in its framing by the filmmakers. It's entirely possible, but all circumstantial evidence based largely on the suggestions of a con man, and the P.I. doesn't consider the other reason they could have believed a stranger was their brother (a desire to believe). a theory used to amplify the tension of the documentary that probably could have been handled better in the film.

still icky as all hell though - such a bizarre case.