I have never seen a movie by director Eli Roth. That's not entirely true, I have seen clips from a movie by Eli Roth, since I saw (and loved) Inglorious Basterds which not only features Roth as the infamous skull-cracking Bear Jew, but also features his directorial handiwork on the film-within-a-film Nazi propaganda movie "Nation's Pride." If you haven't seen Basterds you might not get this but honestly, what is your problem? It's a GREAT movie and you should go right now and buy it on DVD, which coincidentally is now possible because the DVD came out today. But anyway, back to Eli Roth. So, I have never much liked horror movies, and his particular brand of movie — dubbed "torture porn" by New York's David Edelstein, which has stuck as the name of the genre, with him at the head — seemed like a clear miss for me. (Never mind that I have since learned that he is involved in the remake of the horror movie that pushed me over the edge back at a sleepover party when I was 11.) But then I got into a debate about it with a good friend, who bitched me out for taking such an extreme position without actually having seen his movies. She had a point. So, what I have seen: Inglorious Basterds (which I loved and in which he was not un-handsome), a commercial he did in support of PETA, the "Thanksgiving" trailer (okay, admittedly through squinted eyes — but hey, I turn off CSI too), an interview where he talked about having Quentin Tarantino over to his family's house for Passover, his interview with my friends Ronna & Beverly at the UCB in Los Angeles, his Twitter feed, and "Jew/Not A Jew" yesterday with Harvey Levin. So — my interest in highlighting him on Mediaite is an educated, informed and evolved one. Also, maybe he can introduce me to Til Schweiger. (more...)

I have never seen an Eli Roth movie. It's not by accident — even just knowing that he'd pioneered the particularly gruesome horror sub-genre of "torture porn" would have been enough to keep me away, even if I hadn't seen a Hostel 2 poster. (Ew. What is that?) (more...)