what a great contest!
were we talking about this here? Lars Von Trier's the Kingdom I and II? i'm always raving about it, so i can't remember.
jon the crime spree guy from crimespree magazine is having a contest where you can enter to win a DVD of THE KINGDOM, series I. woo-hoo! not to be confused with the horrid stephen king version, kingdom hospital.
this was orginally made for Danish television. Von Trier planned to make a Kingdom III, but one of the main actors died. not sure that's the only reason it didn't happen, but it was one of the reasons.
"The brilliance of Lars von Trier's television serial The Kingdom was so clear from the outset, it bypassed television in both the UK and the USA and was granted a cinema release in its own right. In native Denmark, it is said the streets were empty each night of broadcast and roughly half the population tuned in to see each installment. Never has the fantastic and the grotesque been so accessible, mainly because it's never been presented in such an familiar, tried-and-tested context.
The opening credits tell us that the hospital -The Kingdom - was built on unsettled, spirit-infested marshland, which contain forces too powerful to lie dormant any longer. When the film's title card cracks and smashes open, allowing blood gushing out from behind, it's not hard to guess Something Bad is just around the corner.
It's a hospital drama flowing over with the usual romances, staff clashes, blackmail plots and troublesome patients; in other words, juicy, often hilarious soap opera entertainment of the first degree. It is also an eerie, unsettling and, at times, downright terrifying supernatural mystery, filled with phantom ambulances which contain neither paramedics nor patients, the ghost of a little girl who haunts the corridors of the hospital and the most terrifying pregnancy since Rosemary's Baby."
the kingdom contest!
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11 comments:
I've never even heard of this. But anything Lars Von Trier does is gold.
oh, then you're in for a treat. although i think it was filmed according to his dogme manifesto. so if that drives you crazy, then you might not want to see it!
scratch that. i don't think it could have been dogme, although it has a lot of that in it.
I'm one of those weirdos who loves the dogme technique.
That's once seriously disturbing picture. Perfect example of "the horror of the familiar" concept. Frankenstein was based on that concept (in the novel, the monster looked nearly human. Not a green mutha with a flat head).
jason, i agree about the horror of the familiar. especially creatures that look nearly human.
BTW-I was really creeped out by your description of the bad guy in Sleep Tight. Horror of the familiar would apply to him, I think.
jason, that's really interesting. it's so nice to hear that, because the killer is usually the hardest character for me to writer. the killer and the female protagonist. there is such a fine line between avoiding an over-the-top, i'll-get-you-my-pretty! killer, and one a reader might feel too much sympathy for.
Sympathy? I felt sympathy for the dead sister in Sleep Tight! Oh man, I don't want to spoil it, but yikes.
I'm not familiar with Kingdom I and II but it certainly sounds like something "right up my alley" :)
kelly: :D
jeff, i hope you entered the contest. i do think you'd like the kingdom.
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