I've previously talked a) about how much I enjoyed Ring and b) about equine pathos (whereby the portrayal of horses being injured is used to lend stories tragicky spiritualistic heft). Well, just saw the American version of Ring, the which I'd fully expected to be bad for reasons of innate anti-Hollywood snootiness plus because Gore Verbinski's next film was Pirates of the Caribbean, which I still find so incongruous that I call bullshit on my brain whenever it reminds me of the fact and have to aiemdeebee it. It was pretty fun self-righteously hand wringing about the badness of it all and I'd been happily shooting fish (wise-beyond-his-years kid who makes spooky crayon drawings - pow! - superfluous Naomi Watts underwear shot w/in five minutes - kablam! - switching the male character from an academic to a brodaciously grungey camera op - doosh! and etc.) for over an hour when THIS came along, nudging the whole enterprise into a world of actually kinda valiant badness I'll admit I hadn't banked on (**SPOILER/question** can you ever bank on a horse threshed by a ferry rudder?). So hats off, Gore.
