Is that… a Captain Hammer shirt? Now I need to see sing along blog again.

It was cool to hear your analysis of this. I’m working on a review Ringu right now! I guess we’ve ripped off so many of their movie we kind of had it coming XD

That wasnt her broken legs Spoony, thats just how Japanese girls walk.

For a second I thought it said “Paranormal Activity 2: Tokyo Drift”.  Anyway, these movies in this series are getting old fast.

great vlogs on the thing and this ridiculous sorta sequel lol…very amusing reviews :)

AFAIK, this whole long-haired girl thing comes from an old habit from feudal Japan: Women used to wear pony-tails till they die, in which case their hair ribbons would be removed.
Still, there’s no excuse why the Japanese use the same type of ghost over and over if you can have awesome stuff like giant cat necromancers, demon walls, living umbrellas and humanoid turtles that rip out your intestines through your ass XD !

Good morning, Spoony and fans.

Just spent the past month or so going through found-footage movies listed on Wikipedia’s page for that genre.  And I thought I’d point out a few noteworthy items, in the event you’re interested:

The St. Francisville Experiment-YouTube has an officially sanctioned, free version of the entire movie you can watch.  I only bring it up because it’s the most half-assed found-footage movie I’ve ever seen.  If you ever find yourself in need of something to bitch about, this is it.

The Poughkeepsie Tapes-you mentioned this ages ago as something you wanted to check out.  It doesn’t come across like a movie so much as a fake documentary on the crimes of/hunt for a serial killer.  Personally, I quite enjoyed it.  But then, I majored in psychology, so my perspective on this is different.

Lake Mungo-speaking of fake documentaries, this one is about an alleged haunting by a recently deceased girl.  More creepy than scary, but the “big scare” at the end was unusual.  So there’s that.

Grave Encounters-Personally, one of my favorite found-footage movies as of now.  It’s about a “Ghost Hunters”-like show taping in an allegedly haunted, abandoned mental institution.  First 20-30 minutes are nothing impressive.  But once the crew has their proof of ghosts, packs up their gear, and heads out the front door to go home, the movie gets unusual and (for me, at least) entertaining.

Looking forward to Paranormal Activity 3. Have the first two on DVD.

Yes, salt repels evil spirits.  My parents used to do it every so often at my old house (for very good reason; That house had a slight off-ness about it) and once at our new house.  I haven’t done it in a while, but you drop salt in an inhabited area over your shoulder or walk around said area with incense saying a bible verse and clean up the salt the next morning.

My info might be off, but my research is all observational and not investigated through text.

I know it may seem odd, but it’s the norm in my house.

Paranormal Activity 2: Electric Boogaloo?

A couple brief notes:

Re: Crucifix: Japan is really relaxed and pragmatic about religion. For instance, most people practice both Shinto and Buddhism. Plus, Christianity is seen as cool or fashionable in Japan, the same way eastern religions are seen in America. So a Shintoist believing a cross would repel demons isn’t that unusual.

Re: The Grudge: The image of a stringy-haired ghost girl is very common imagery in Japanese culture, as others ITT have noted. It’s just an easy shorthand for “creepy female supernatural being” that horror creators can fall back on.

The more you know…!

The superstition that salt wards off evil supernatural beings –like witches, vampires, ghosts, fairies– and bad luck is an old European folklore, too, not just Japanese. Look at Chinese Hongkong fantasy movies, they use salt against vampires and demons in those movies, too.

Salt, garlick, and certain strong-smelling plants like common tansy, were all believed to protect against supernatural influences. It’s not a coincidence that all these things were used medicinally in the olden times, as they had certain antiseptic properties. And keep in mind that until modern times, table salt (natrium chloride NaCl, one of the most common minerals and very cheaply available today) as well as other earth salts as i.e. potassium chloride, were of great importance but also rare and expensive. In Roman times, soldiers were sometimes paid in salt… that’s where the term “salary” comes from!

Salt is not just as a vital part of nutrition for humans and animals but also used in baking, to preserve foodstuffs from rotting by drying, salting and pickling, and important in a long list of industries and manufacture, i.e. curing leather and dying cloth. Not to mention the chemical industry and fertilizer.

Wars were fought over possession of natural brine wells and salt mines. Whole town and counties became rich due to salt. Many names of places and towns in Europe that go back to Celtic, Germanic, or Roman times, still contain the syllable “sal” or “hal”, which means “salt”. Salt was magic stuff. Some salt which contains natural iodine could cure goiter (a feared illness), while some other salt didn’t, so sea salt was in high demand, but to produce salt from brine or sea water you needed either a lot of sun and not to much rain so that the water in the shallow brine pads would evaporate (plus you had to rake the salt crust to produce the wanted kind of crystals), or you needed large amounts of wood or coal to heat up the salty water and evaporate it. Even mined earth salt wasn’t always clean, and if it was dirty or contained impurities you had to first dissolve it in water, clean it, and then evaporate again. Whole other industries were dependent on salt in the times prior to refrigeration or canning, such as fisheries and butcheries (making raw salted ham needed a lot of salt).

Salt taxes led to smuggling and incited uprisings, such as the corrupt French salt tax system of the 18th century (which played a part in inciting the French revolution) and the British salt tax in India in colonial times, which forbid the people of India by pain of imprisonment to produce salt even though India had exported salt prior to falling under British rule.

The British East India Trading Company had managed to destroy the Indian salt industry by making it illegal even to pick up natural salt lying around on the shores of a salt lake… all because colonies of the Empire were supposed to cheaply export raw materials to the Homeland but import manufactured goods, and the salt production in the British Raj would have been a strong competition to the British Isles, which is why it was heavily taxed and all production was either destroyed or came under direct control of British rule, creating a monopoly. The salt laws were so hated that Gandhi chose them as his focal point in his nonviolent protests: He announced the Salt Satyagraha. He and his followers marched, on foot, for 24 days to the coastal village of Dandi, and picked up some salt. For this and for daring to incourage Indians to produce salt Gandhi and many of his followers were arrested and jailed. And the rest is history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Satyagraha

I saw the still and clicked hoping to see Spoony dancing. Terribly mind you. But the video was still entertaining.

Nice shirt, corporate tool.

The points you make are just. But If you take somone that never watched PA 1 and watch this movie, I think this person will love it. In my opinion what mess up this movie is that unlikely the first PA they have show that there was paranormal stuff happening for sure, so early on the movie, which take all the mistery of what is really going on, away. The scary effect is much much more effective when you don’t know what is coming. The first one was a fine art, it was great and the continuations of it are really bad in comparison to it.

 About the iconic “grudge girl”, I don’t know why everyone refer to this character as the “grudge girl” if The Ring (2002) has came out first and the Grudge girl is obviously a ripoff of Samara.

*Me sitting home alone…in the dark one week after seeing The Ring. The phone rings*

Me: “Hello?”

Caller: “…Seven Days…”

Me: “…um, You mean that 1998 Sci-Fi show that lasted four seasons starring Anthony LaPaglia’s younger brother, Jonathan, as ex-CIA agent Lt. Frank Parker, who can travel back in time exactly seven days? What about it?…”

Caller: “…um…. w-wel- uh…um…” *hangs up phone*

Me: “Heh, what an odd phone call..”

Also, the croking gurgling thing the Grudge girl does fits her more than all those knockoffs as her’s exsplained as being the sounds she made while trying to breath after her neck was broken.

You seriously payed for this crap?! Holy shit you’ve been had… Paranormal Activity is the worst “horror” movie I’ve ever seen. No wonder people pirate movies when there’s so much shit out there. I mean, who’s gonna believe the ads and trailers when you know there’e crap like this out there? blame the shitty movies, not the people who don’t pay!

Spoony,
why would you think Paranormal Activity Tokyo Night isn’t canonical?

There is text right before the movie starts that says “Based on the film Paranormal Activity by Oren Peli”. 

Also the Japanese trailer for it shows footage from the first movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hURDigyUF8s

Shutter… Great Korean horror from 2004, Ye america did a remake 2008… Stupid hollywood
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0440803/