Register Now!

Media

  • scannerscanner
  • scannerscreengrab
  • modern materialistthe modern
    materialist
  • video61 frames
    per second
  • videothe remote
    island
  • date machinedate
    machine

Photo

  • the daily siegedaily siege
  • autumn blogautumn
  • brandonlandbrandonland
  • chasechase
  • rose & oliverose & olive
The Hooksexup Insider
A daily pick of what's new and hot at Hooksexup.
Scanner
Your daily cup of WTF?
Hooksexup@SXSW 2006.
Blogging the Roman Orgy of Indie-music Festivals.
Coming Soon!
Coming Soon!
Coming Soon!
The Daily Siege
An intimate and provocative look at Siege's life, work and loves.
Kate & Camilla
two best friends pursue business and pleasure in NYC.
Naughty James
The lustful, frantic diary of a young London photographer.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: kid_play
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Super_C
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: ILoveYourMom
A bundle of sass who's trying to stop the same mistakes.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: The_Sentimental
Our newest Blog-a-logger.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Marking_Up
Gay man in the Big Apple, full of apt metaphors and dry wit.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: SJ1000
Naughty and philosophical dispatches from the life of a writer-comedian who loves bathtubs and hates wearing underpants.
The Hooksexup Video Blog
Deep, deep inside the world of online video.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: charlotte_web
A Demi in search of her Ashton.
The Prowl, with Ryan Pfluger
Hooksexup @ Cannes Film Festival
May 16 - May 25
ScreenGrab
The Hooksexup Film Blog
Autumn
A fashionable L.A. photo editor exploring all manner of hyper-sexual girls down south.
The Modern Materialist
Almost everything you want.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: that_darn_cat
A sassy Canadian who will school you at Tetris.
Rose & Olive
Houston neighbors pull back the curtains and expose each other's lives.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: funkybrownchick
The name says it all.
merkley???
A former Mormon goes wild, and shoots nudes, in San Francisco.
chase
The creator of Supercult.com poses his pretty posse.
The Remote Island
Hooksexup's TV blog.
Brandonland
A California boy capturing beach parties, sunsets and plenty of skin.
61 Frames Per Second
Smarter gaming.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Charlotte_Web
A Demi in search of her Ashton.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Zeitgeisty
A Manhattan pip in search of his pipette.
Date Machine
Putting your baggage to good use.

The Screengrab

The Movie Moment: Audition (1999, Takashi Miike)

Posted by Peter Smith
SPOILER WARNING: If you haven’t seen Audition, stop reading and rent it. Like, right now. We’ll still be here when it’s over. 

Halloween and horror have always gone together, and it took some time to choose the scary movie to spotlight here.  Should I write up an old standby, I wondered, or something more modern? But in the end, there was only one logical choice — Takashi Miike’s Audition, made in 1999 but already a horror classic. I first heard about Audition in 2001, during its American release. A certain amount of hype had risen around the film. I was skeptical — genre fans are prone to hyperbole, praising every buzzed-about title like it’s one for the ages. But in the words of Joaquin Phoenix, "the nerds were right," and Audition has become one of my Halloween traditions. 

 

Audition starts slowly, taking its time to get to the scary stuff, as Miike takes care to establish his characters and the plot. This is the story of Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a middle-aged widower working in the entertainment industry. Deciding to marry again, he contrives a process to "audition" women as possible mates, masquerading as a movie casting call. Here he meets Asami (Eihi Shiina), a demure twentysomething who makes a strong impression on him. When I first saw the film, I wondered what direction the story might take. Would this become a stalker thriller? Would it turn psychological? Or was Miike going for slow-burn horror? 

But all my thoughts of classifications and subgenres flew right out the window about forty-five minutes into Audition. After a promising first date, Asami disappears for a few days, and Aoyama finally calls her for another date. After Aoyama dials the phone, Miike cuts to Asami’s small, sparsely decorated flat, which appears to contain only a telephone and a large canvas duffel. She kneels silently, intently, as the telephone rings — four, six, eight times. Finally, on the tenth ring, the mysterious bag suddenly lurches and emits an unnatural roar. 

 

"What the hell was that?!" I thought. Had I been eating popcorn, it would’ve gone flying. All of a sudden, I saw what the fuss was about, and I realized what Miike had been doing up to that point. Setting up the story and establishing the characters was about more than delaying the scares; it was softening us for the kill. And kill it did — I was hooked. 

Thankfully, the rest of Audition didn’t let me down, with Miike taking the horror to even more twisted places. The only reprieve comes near the end of the film, during an already famous scene in which Asami tortures Aoyama with acupuncture needles. Suddenly, Miike cuts to the couple in bed, in a hotel room where they vacationed before everything went wrong.  On that first viewing, I feared the worst — had Miike wussed out with an it-was-just-a-dream ending?  But I needn’t have worried. No sooner has Asami proclaimed to Aoyama her love and devotion than the soundtrack is flooded with Asami’s chillingly girlish mid-torture taunt, "kiri-kiri-kiri-kiri…" ("deeper, deeper"). If horror is about toying with the audience, then Audition is undoubtedly a masterpiece. — Paul Clark

 Older Movie Moments here. 
+ DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT
Posted Oct 26 2007, 03:00 PM
Filed under: , , , ,

Comments

No Comments

in
Send rants/raves to

Archives

Bloggers

  • Paul Clark
  • John Constantine
  • Phil Nugent
  • Leonard Pierce
  • Scott Von Doviak
  • Andrew Osborne

Contributors

  • Kent M. Beeson
  • Pazit Cahlon
  • Bilge Ebiri
  • D.K. Holm
  • Faisal A. Qureshi
  • Vadim Rizov
  • Vern
  • Bryan Whitefield
  • Scott Renshaw
  • Gwynne Watkins

Editor

  • Peter Smith

Tags

Browse All Tags

Places to Go

  • A Film By
  • Ain't It Cool News
  • The AV Club
  • Box Office Guru
  • Box Office Mojo
  • BuzzSugar
  • Bright Lights Film Journal
  • CHUD: Cinematic Happenings Under Development
  • Cinema Scope
  • Cinematical
  • Cinemarati
  • The Daily Telegraph
  • Dark Horizons
  • Deep Focus
  • Film Comment
  • Filmmaker Magazine
  • Film Stew
  • Film Threat
  • Green Cine Daily
  • The Guardian
  • Hollywood Reporter
  • IndieWIRE
  • LA Weekly
  • The Los Angeles Times
  • Metacritic
  • Movie City News
  • Movie Poop Shoot
  • New York Magazine
  • The New York Press
  • The New York Times
  • The Queer Film Review
  • Rotten Tomatoes
  • Rouge
  • Salon.com
  • Salt Lake City Weekly
  • Screen Daily
  • Senses of Cinema
  • Slant Magazine
  • Slate
  • Starpulse
  • Variety
  • Village Voice Film Section
  • The Washington Post

People To Read

  • Mike D'Angelo
  • Roger Ebert
  • Steve Erickson
  • Scott Foundas
  • Erik Gregersen
  • Eric Henderson
  • Grady Hendrix
  • MaryAnn Johanson
  • Dave Kehr
  • Filmbrain
  • Lawrence Levi
  • Victor Morton
  • Brian Newman
  • Theo Panayides
  • Gitesh Pandya
  • David Poland
  • The Reeler
  • Jonathan Rosenbaum
  • Michael Sicinski
  • Anne Thompson
  • Vern
  • Lee Walker
  • Jeff Wells
  • Ryan Wu
  • Matt Zoller Seitz

Film Festivals

  • Berlin
  • Cannes
  • Cinequest San Jose
  • Hamptons International
  • Hong Kong International
  • Karlovy Vary
  • Los Angeles
  • New York
  • Raindance
  • Rotterdam
  • Seattle International
  • Sundance
  • Telluride
  • Thessaloniki
  • Tokyo Film Festival
  • Toronto International
  • Tribeca
  • Venice International

Directors

  • The Tim Burton Collective
  • Dreams: The Terry Gilliam Fanzine
  • Alfred Hitchcock: The Master of Suspense
  • The Kubrick Site
  • LynchNet: The David Lynch Resource
  • WellesNet

Partners

College Humor
The Onion
Cracked.com
Fark.com
Ask Men
Heavy.com