Author: Cody Clarke

How Half.com Screwed Me Over (And Then Finally Made It Right)

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Tried to order this movie for my girlfriend, ended up with the most frustrating online shopping experience of my life.

6/19/13 Edit: This article was originally titled ‘How Half.com Screwed Me Over’. That was back when Half.com hadn’t refunded me. Finally, they did refund me. It was a long ordeal though, as you’ll see. I’m glad they finally made things right, but I will be an extremely cautious user of the site from now on. (I will of course never buy from get_importcds again, and you shouldn’t either.)

I’ve bought and sold hundreds of movies at Half.com, and I’ve been an eBay member since 1999, and a Half.com user since eBay purchased it in 2000 or so. I have a 100% positive feedback rating. I’m basically their ideal user. And yet, they have decided to screw me over when I needed them most.
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10 Woefully Underrated Comedies

It’s not hard for comedies to slip under the radar. Like any ‘genre film’, so many are pumped out each year that it’s almost impossible to keep track of which ones are good. Unless something gets an alarmingly high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, or was made by people you trust no matter what the Tomatometer says, you probably aren’t going to see it. And then you’re going to forget it even existed. Here’s ten great ones that probably passed you by.

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Dan in Real Life (2007) | Dir. Peter Hedges | 98 min. 
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The Happening: A Filmmaker’s Film

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Shyamalan wants you to look at this image and see evil. That’s a beautiful thing.

The Happening (2008)
Written & Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
91 min.

Spoiler-free.

There exists a phenomenon in the arts where an artist, or a given work, is so bursting with subtle, glorious aspects that only fellow artists in the field or truly knowledgable critics can pick up on that when ‘civilians’ check it out, they see it as simply empty and stupid and boring. Their untrained eyes are so fixed on the surface elements that they miss the masterful sleights of hand underneath. This happened with The Happening. What’s unique here though is that filmmakers, for some reason, have yet to jump in and defend it and help civilians understand its wonderful aspects—probably because, for the most part, they themselves are just as clueless.
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Pieta: How To Pander To A New Audience Without Losing Your Soul

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Pieta (2012)
Written and Directed by Kim Ki-duk
104 min.

Spoiler-free.

Kim Ki-duk is one of my absolute favorite filmmakers. And I only even like about half his movies. Some of them are just awful. But the ones I like, I really like. And a few of them, I fucking love. 

A lot of people use the word ‘love’ lightly when it comes to movies. These people have most likely never truly been in love with a movie. When you truly love a movie, it becomes a part of your body. The movie finishes, and you look down, and suddenly you have another arm or something. And you’re like, ‘Well, that’s there now.’ You have no impulse to amputate it. It’s truly a part of you, just like every other part that makes up your whole. To rid yourself of it would be to rid yourself of yourself.
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Upstream Color: Great Story, Awful Storytelling

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Upstream Color (2013)
Written and Directed by Shane Carruth
96 min.

What’s more important, story or storytelling? I honestly have no idea.

A great story will stick with you for the rest of your life, whether or not it’s told well, because the beats of it, the brilliant bare components, resonate with your soul and become a part of you, and help expand how you see the world on a moral level. ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ is a great story. It’s so great we don’t even stop and think about how great it is. It’s just a part of us, as humans. You almost can’t remember a time in your life when you didn’t know it. And even if someone were to tell it to a little kid really poorly, its truth and importance would still come through.
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