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Buck Theorem's Hide-outNothing bothers some people. Not even flying saucers. - The Beast of Yucca Flats
April 07 Back to the Fleming source...CASINO ROYALE
Ian Fleming, 1953
- What is most alarming about Fleming's novel and Bond, and what causes reservations about the romp, is the misogyny. Yes, we know Bond is a man's man and that he's a bit of a sexist from the film, and ergo ditto Fleming, but nothing quite prepares for his aggression and immaturity concerning women. Vesper is a "bitch" even before he has met her; she's going to be a hinderance with her feelings and girl stuff. Why couldn't she stay in the kitchen? Or more exactly, when Vesper has been kidnapped by professional, ruthless killers:
This was just what [Bond] had been afraid of. These blithering women who thought they could do a man's work. Why the hell couldn't they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men's work to the men. ... For Vesper to fall for an old trick like that and get herself snatched and probably held to ranson like some bloody heroine in a strip cartoon. The silly bitch. (pg.116)
Or: for Bond to spiel such a stream of impassioned invective, like some cartoon ex-Etonian stereotype from a bygone age. The silly buffoon. Caresses, it seems, are for Bentley's and for a villain's gaze upon the naked spy he is about to torture. Not for a "damn fool girl getting herself trussed up like a chicken, having her skirt pulled over her head as if the whole of this business was some kind of dormitory rag." (pg. 124) And let us not forget that, even if by proxy, it is Vesper that almost brings about Bond's emasculiantion. That's women for you. But even this isn't quite the extent of Bond's immaturity. Whenever something goes wrong, he tends to blame others: if it isn't Vesper, then perhaps it is the fault of "M" and the Secret Service for not warning him of the superior villainy of his adversary. When initially beaten at baccarat, and when tortured and told how he cannot win, Bond seems just to give up in an instant. Is this truly an efficent, pragmatic and dependable spy we thought we knew (we can omit the superhuman elements)? And no, this doesn't necessarily imbue him with a more complex humanity: upon scrutiny, it is the immaturity that rises to the surface. More surprising, having been nearly emasculinated, Bond lays in his hospital bed and has an existential, ethical crisis. Having been forced to identify with his adversary in the increasingly sado-masochistic torture triste, Bond finds himself questioning his whole stand. Is he really on the side of good? Are his actions and motivations uninpeachable? Does patriotism justify his career? Was Les Chifre truly the face of evil, and would patriotism justify his actions? How can Bond assure himself of his own righteousness? Bond seemingly starts to grow up, or at least belatedly starts to grasp the complexity and subjectivity of behaviour, politics, morality, his whole profession and so on. When a man has almost been made a eunuch, he begins to reflect. But this, indeed, does give Bond some true shading and certainly this chapter sets literary Bond apart from his cinematic interpretation. Elsewhere, there is much to enjoy in this boy' s own romp. The concentration on a baccarat game rather than world domination. A streamlined narrative focused on a handful of set-pieces and an uncomplicated prose: Casino; torture; hospital; Vesper. Then there is the appealingly cartoonish portrayal of secret agents and evil organisations; and, yes, a formidable protagonist. Fleming proposes a seductive world of exotic locations and foreign menaces, something drawing from the Cold War era and looking towards the brave new world of affordable international travel and luxuries a decade or two ahead. Even now, it's a neverland that still captures culture's imagination. The 007 premise, it seems, is still durable in its datedness and still capable of appeal and being contemporised for new centuries. Casino Royale, 2006.... http://bucktheorem.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CB37E4BB9C94BFDC!329.entry Growing up with Bond.... http://bucktheorem.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CB37E4BB9C94BFDC!293.entry February 09 Favourite SongsFavourite songs are the ones that hit you the very first time and that you want to play every time you think about them.
Three songs for girls....
Belle and Sebastian, "Lazy Line Painter Jane"
This was a blind buy, I recall: Hey, let's try out Belle and Sebastian, I thought. This was their second EP, and I guess I was sold as soon as that organ played. I've always loved slice-of-English-life pop ~ I have been a Stephen Duffy fan since he was TinTin and I was fifteen ~ and this was the real thing. Quirky, perky but sad and dirty too. Wordy and arch and ultimately true and genuinely effecting. I can be picky about duets, but the guest vocals by Monica Queen give the song wonderful bruises. There's a girl on a bus... making love? Having a baby?? It's all here: Jane's family and reputation, work and boredom, her ups-and-downs, her hopes and tragedy... And then the song unleashes one of the greatest old fashioned organ solos since... well, since Del Shannon, I say. It really has to be played as loud as possible, being such a huge, celebratory sound. Sublime.
Sonic Youth, "Little Trouble Girl"
And I've always loved slice-of-American-life grunge too. Being British, it's a bit of an imaginary place, and never more so when dressed up in the retro-feel of what I take to be a neverland of diners, drive-ins, Cold War comforts and paranoia, Space Race spookiness, conservative smiles and stripey tops, beanies and pigtails, lollipop girls and wholesome guys. And so on. "Little Trouble Girl" has gorgeous singing from the gorgeous Kim Deal and Kim Gordon, and it's dreamy; a beautiful ode to mother-and-daughter love, but tainted darkly by both feminine jealousy and maternal disappointment, and the moment when the daughter claims her own womanhood at the expense of her bond with her mom. "I'm sorry mother, I'd rather fight than have to lie", she says. That's truthful, painful and full of love.
Sonic Youth have always had romance songs with sexual identity-with-politics and Fifies-Sixties pop to the fore, and the album "Little Trouble Girl" is from - "Washing Machine" - is full of similar gems. Shalalala. There's a great Mark Romanek video for this too.
The Knife, "Pass This On"
From the opening of electronica-with-Carribbean leanings, I knew this was going to be something. And then when that opening line came in... Perhaps a lot of my introduction to "Pass This On" was influenced experiencing it first via the video. I suspect that that first line would have hooked me anyhow, but there is no doubting there was that extra surprise when sung by the transvestite in the video. The video looks like it took place in a place off of David Lynch drive. (Awesomely seductive video; the Karin Dreijer impersonator, looking through youtube comments, appears to be Rickard Engfors.)
By rights, this shouldn't be a "favourite", as I reckon favourites ought to be recognised over time. But when a song hits, sometimes you just know. I never doubted "Wicked Game", for example. "Pass This On" shouldn't necessarily be creepy, but there is something not quite right about it. An older woman falls for a friend's younger brother, giving us the killer line and Karin Dreijer's killer delivery, "Did he mention my age, love? Or is he more into young girls with dyed black hair? I'm in love with your brother." She reads it as one breathless line, and that Swedish accent helps no end. Dreijer is also unafraid to give some high-pitched weird backing-vocals, playing against her otherwise passionately flat key performance. The effect really is hard to describe... why does it sound spooky? You go back to it trying to unlock its mystery. The vocal melody aches and the synths zap, chime and limbo with the certainty that keyboards too can be the perfect foil for unrequited passion and strangeness. I bought the album "Deep Cuts" within the week and was soooo happy when it met all my expectations and then some. January 24 Bad Movie "Classic"THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS Coleman Francis, 1961 To the "bad film" aficionado, there is nothing quite like the consummate incompetence of an old B-monster B-film. "The Beast of Yucca Flats" is a fine example of that complete ineptitude. Every scene aches with poor timing, bad narration or dialogue, weak or nonexistant acting and action... you see better on youtube these days. But it takes a special lameness to elevate a film to cult bad status, and "Yucca" has it. Hmm, being English, I briefly but stupidly misread the title as meaning some menace of a housing estate of some kind; but nope, Yucca flats is open terrain used for - uhoh - ATOMIC TESTING!! What will it be next? Ants? Scorpions?? Coyotes??? No, it's Tor Johnson! He's a - ahem - Russian agent defecting to the USA, carrying a suitcase full of secrets that actually provides the film's one notable special effect. Wait, first, a pre-credits sequence that has a breast-bearing woman being murdered in her room by over-sized hands. Well, we would guess these are the hands of "The Beast", and although we don't see his face, those hands and that butt which blocks out the screen but alludes to necrophilia look big enough to be Tor's. This poses a chronological and narrative quandary: since Tor spends all his time raging from a cave out on the flats, whose home is this and at what point did he commit this murder? And who the hell was she? The only plausible explanation is that this is Tor's murdered wife, mentioned in narration... but those hands are so big... can't... compute.... we soon discover that, no, the scene was just there for the titillation. To the "ominous" sound of a ticking clock - and boy, those clocks sure ticked loudly in those days, huh? - this has to be the most quiet and sleepiest murder ever put to screen. Actually, this will be typical of the entire film: people don't seem to die; rather they fall into states of chronic drowsiness. Hmm, same as the dialogue, which seems to get more disinterested as the film goes on. You can also see and hear the man with the stick trying to prod the actors to, you know, do something. But not the narrator. Oh no. Not him. He's got things on his mind. Important things. Frightening things. Prophetic things. Appalled. Random. Things. Progress. Science. Inhumanity. Fate. Coyotes. Flying Saucers. Well, it's hard to tell why he mentions flying saucers, but one obviously fluttered through his mind when giving his droll running commentary. "Nothing bothers some people. Not even flying saucers," he says. Man, that's so good, I'm making it as a reusable by-line and quote for a long time to come! According to (the wonderful) jabootu.com, the soundtrack for "Yucca" was lost and so what we have is quite a disembodied experience. No natural ambience, just sound effects trowelled on and dialogue recorded with a tin can found on the flats replacing a more costly microphone. It all fits together with all the finesse of Robot Monster's expressive hand gestures to his dialogue: almost. But what this does mean is that we get the priceless narration, which surely marks out "Yucca Flats" from its bad movie peers. "Flag on the Moon. How did it get there?" he says, apropos of nothing. Oh, wait, this is some cool, detached reference to Professor "Tor" Javorsky's "secret plans" with which he arrives at Yucca flats. But uhoh, Russian agents are waiting with their sneaky plan of trying to kill him a the airport with open gunplay and follow-on car chase. The most somnambulistic car chase in cinema. Geez, even the cars looks like they can't be bothered. They seeming chase all day into the night... no, wait, it's day... no: night... no: day. There's finally a stand-off: guns fire randomly and unconvincingly; some guys fall asleep... oh, they are dying... Tor simply walks away. At a snail's pace. He looks like walking is going to make him pass out. He's a big guy; a big Swedish former wrestler... hmm, wonder if that will come in handy later? But what do you know, Tor "flees" from his assassins into an atomic testing zone!! His briefcase smoulders. Symbolically. And that is the best visual and effect of the film. Ah, to be fair, not even director/writer/narrator Coleman Francis can quite ruin the natural stark beauty of "Yucca Flats". And we'll see a lot of them. Otherwise there's a moment of random cleavage from character Jim Archer's wife, but we don't see her again and otherwise it's the flats for us. The beast kills a young couple who stop out on the highway, or at least grapples them into heavy slumber. I could mention how badly staged this is - Tor seems to be in the backseat one moment, without the woman noticing, then he's outside... oh what's the use? It's quite painful watching Tor - all Beasted up with what looks like randomly applied flour patches on his face - trying to lumber across the flats with the woman under his arm. He looks likes he'll have a hernia at any moment, and you keep waiting for him to drop her. No monstrous striding for Yucca Beast, just some awkward lumbering. You'd think that there might be some military presence, the flats being the site of atomic testing and all, and you might expect to see them, what with all that "killing" going on. Surely they've seen the "Beast Kills Man and Wife" headline? But nope, what we have instead are dumb-ass Jim and Joe from the Sheriff's department. Their plan seems to be focusing on a single plateau - they must have had a map of the vast flats and just stuck a pin in someplace - which just happens to be where Tor-Beast is hiding out, fondling his female's hair. Now, the whole scenario concerning the unreachable plateau is the subject of much head-slapping from almost every review on "Yucca". But not this one. It's just plain stupid though. Anyway, Jim and Joe get to Tor's corpse bride... wait, no, she's alive (??!), and they... wait, no, she's dead (!!?). Next up are a family who stop at a gas station - "Boys from the city, not yet caught in the whirlwind of progress, feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs." - And, hey, there's a coyote. Tor could do with a radioactively enhanced coyote. Sure! "Coyotes... once a menace to... travellers...missile bases... run them off their hunting grounds." Oh. Oh well. That's out then. Anyhow, after the thrilling gas station visit, the family go out onto the open road and get a flat tyre in the Beast's general vicinity. Well, it looks like the exact same spot as the attacked travellers earlier... The two boys wonder off like tumbleweed and when their dad Hank goes in pursuit, the cruel hands of fate, or "man's inhumanity to man" intercedes and - for no good reason - he is mistaken for the killer. This'll be the shot first, questions later philosophy of Jim and Joe who are flying around Yucca, searching for The Beast. It's not quite "North By Northwest", since (a) it is absurd they would open fire, and (b) they aren't really flying, now are they? Just a camera tilting up in a close-up of the plane window. Anyway, he gets back to his wife, leaves her there, takes the car to get help (!!), and.... bah. The kids just happen to stumble on the Beast, who dynamically WALKS after them and somehow herds them into his formerly inaccessible cave. Beast returns home and expresses his rage at finding the woman gone by throwing a rock and making bad I'm-A-Monster grunts. ARRGH! fumes Tor. The kids get out, the Beast WALKS in threatening pursuit, Jim and Joe attack him, there’s a bit of a struggle in which The Beast exhibits some strangely Swedish wrestler-like manoeuvres. A little bunny rabbit - apparently unscripted and seizing its chance at improvised scene-stealing brilliance - hops up to the body of The Beast who then comes awake again - Tor Johnson apparently seizing his moment at unscripted and improvised pathos - kisses the bunny and expires. Hmm, Jim and Joe didn't really check he was allll dead then. "The Beast of Yucca Flats" oozes desperation. It's desperate to pad out its barely-an-hour running time. Desperate to create tragedy, creeping menace, narrative, action.... desperate to make one minute look credible. It's tough to sit through all in one go. Take a pillow. But it is enjoyably bad, although it can't even muster enough energy to be wonderfully bad, like "Robot Monster" and Tor's other crowning achievement, "Plan 9 From Outer Space". I guess they tried. But when a small desert bunny out-does everything else in a monster film, you know that film is in trouble.
January 12 A Karloff 'Classic'THE APE William Nigh, 1940, USA ~ a.k.a.: "Gorilla" There is nothing I love more than staying up way past midnight and putting on an old black-and-white horror or science-fiction film. I forgive so much in this light. I love it when you doze off a little and then you pop awake and the theremin is going and the probably-not-very-good-monster is being all threatening. "The Ape" is a Boris Karloff quickie and, of course, he is the best thing about it. Watch Karloff lay on the gravitas whilst the audience chuckles at everything else. Marvel at the hilarious ape costume! Hear the hokey dialogue! Watch closely as a guinea pig falls off a table as actors leave the scene! Gasp as Karloff pioneers stem cell research! And how is dumping a couple of wandering guinea pigs on a table certifiable evidence that an anti-paralysis serum works anyway? Come on, Dr Adrian-Karloff, we only have your word that the critters were paralysed in the first place. Paralysis, you see, and local ignorance are the real monsters here. And people who tease apes. Certainly they are more unnerving prospects than the ape that breaks out of the circus - and will you see the associated bonkers twist coming?? Dr Adrian is inevitably driven to extreme measures in a Forties' rural town, trying to find a cure for a wheelchair-bound local young woman, Frances. There is nothing forward-thinking here when to be in a wheelchair is seen as making you less than 'normal' and a virtual outcast. Geez, they hardly think she's capable of being wheeled to the circus, and certainly her beau is going to be whole lot happier if she could, you know, actually walk. My copy of "The Ape" - aka "Gorilla" - skips, pops and crackles like old vinyl. Somehow that seems totally in order. What I do enjoy about these B-flicks is the glimpse of the era, the general location work: I love the insanity of a scientist working away in an apparently fully-functioning, guinea pig equiped laboratory in his back room; I get a kick from the all-American, gun-toting (!!) kids shooting an ape and then running like scaredy cats; I relish the creepy housekeeper Karloff employs; I get great amusement from the entire stupidity of the whole scenario. It pleases my sense of the absurd. What were they thinking? I mean, the whole ape outfit is worth the watch alone. Let me warn about a big spoiler first before saying this: how could anyone mistake Dr Adrian wearing ape skin as the genuine article? What complicates this is that the original Gorilla is so obviously a man in a monkey suit anyway - the mind boggles. It doesn't quite top "Robot Monster" for most bizarre maltreatment of gorilla costume, but it's a lurking contender. Written but Curt/Kurt Siodmak, who wrote far grander pieces with "The Invisible Man" and "The Wolf Man". Hmm, apparently based on a stage play by Adam Shirk too! "The Ape" is not a good film, but as a novelty from a long-gone era, it's worth the watch if, like me, you like revelling in the daftness and whackiness of old thrillers like this. January 10 Signed and Unsigned recommendationsI Monster
I have liked this outfit for some time now, ever since I picked up the 7inch glam rock rethink of "Hey Mrs", and which I still love. "Daydream in Blue", which I seem to hear all over, is apparently their most famous tune, but it is also arguably their most conventional, a little triphop summersong. They are very generous on their myspace, offering up medleys so you get to here more tracks than just your standard four. Actually, their myspace is packed full of goodies and anyone who likes men in suits bearing the heads of giant flies will take to this. Occasionally their retro-futuristic music is fun, sometimes truly dreamy and gorgeous. They often sound like Burt Bacharach On Mars, or a space station lounge lizard act, which to me is sublime.
JAMES MORRIS MUSIC
More spaced-out than spacey, James Morris is making some great bedroom ambience. Like some warm-up act for the radiator lady from "Eraserhead", James Morris has a deliberately home-recorded feel where the hiss matters, where a guitar plays but the words are lost in mumbling and distortion, or singing over himself. It's like when someone is playing music next door but you are only half awake listening and you're having an anxiety dream of some sort. Is there something threatening in there? I am not too sure, and the occasional jangliness belies something sunny, but the love of rough ambience carefully obscuring real songs is wonderful. I think he knows exactly what he is doing Buck befriends BondCASINO ROYALE Martin Campbell, 2006 Ah, the new Bond. Some critic said that it has the best opening sequence... since when, compared to what, I don't recall (Mark Kermode mentioned it.) Well I sat there in the cinema, finally deciding to pay up and serve my curiosity, and, hey what's this? Arty black and white? Noir Bond? And - BAM!! Brutal fight in public toilets. And, BOP! A dry one-liner and the opening song kicks in. Well, the Chris Cornell and David Arnold song is underwhelming but nonetheless, the hair on the back of your neck ought to be bristling. And then - cobra fight! Very retro-Bond. And then - that freerunning chase in which the muscles of your jaw are loosening. I don't believe an opening hooked and shook and excited me so much since "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers". I had been urged to see "Casino Royale" because of an reawakened interest in the early Bonds I had last year mixed with good reviews for the new one. I had just recently watched "Dr. No" and "From Russia With Love" again (Christmas presents). I was surprised at how measured the pace of "Dr No" actually was, how economical it was with its absurd villain, how it was straight-faced about its ridiculousness. Slick and even faintly sinister. "From Russia With Love" even better, arguably due to two brilliantly iconic fight scenes: the claustrophobic train fight, which takes a couple of minutes but apparently three weeks to film, and which hurts; and the showdown with Rosa Klebb - a frenzied, insane old lady pinned by a chair like a wild animal; lethal spiked shoes. Unforgettable. Famously, Bond descended into a campness and overblown hokum because, well, the public liked it. Whenever the series has famously tried to return to a more earnest and bruised agenda, it has famously been called a failure. Even "The Man With The Golden Gun" was deemed mostly a minor effort for its relative modesty (I think I quite like that one, actually). And apparently action fans, like horror fans, like one-liners and puns with their ultra-violence. I have never really understood that. At least with "Casino Royale", the few one-liners seem a part of the fabric; they don't capsize the drama ~ this too is like the early Bonds. And here, Bond's ego, misogyny and barely hidden brutality - all points of critical interest and fault-finding - are all points of character and plot. Like any typical mother, "M" simultaneously chastises and cultivates him as he tears around exotic locales in an attempt to undermine and reign in a man who funds terrorism and plays poker. Some think that the key card game doesn't make good drama, that it's boring and goes on and on. But it is the mundane, forced ritual of the table, the mindgames played there and the skill required, that are meant to absolutely be 007's forte. Indeed, it is the conflict between his needing to maintain his sharp cool at the table whilst being interrupted between hands by various attempts on his life that surely create drama and tension? "That last hand nearly killed me," he says, and indeed we feel the quip is earnt. There he is, playing poker with knuckles that have the skin torn off. Leaving aside the conveniant fact that nobody seems to notice this, let alone question it, isn't it an apt symbol of what Bond is about? And Daniel Craig's Bond is a scary propostion. You wouldn't want to get on his bad side. Aside from those steely, seemingly unblinking blue eyes, he has a physique and cold determination that makes you believe he can sprint for miles in pursuit of his quarry, or take some serious torture in his stride. And the gratuitous product placement even becomes absorbed into the ethos, for Bond is also all about that surface glitz, that cultural passport that knowing the right brand names allows you. OK, at this stage - and this is meant to be an origin story of sorts - he is a rough diamond. He needs a well-cultured girl to tell him what a real suit is, and when he first preens in front of the mirror wearing it, and that Bond bassline slithers beneath the moment, we can almost feel his vanity and awareness doubling up. Craig makes Bond vital again and I bet those that didn't believe he could do it are shaking at the prospect of a house visit. No no, really, everyone seems mighty happy to have Craig prove the sceptics wrong, and not least the sceptics themselves. How Bond became nothing less than a British institution is quite odd, and surely the series has run on goodwill and the reputation of better earlier efforts? Hmm but how "British" Bond actually is open for debate: he's positively European and American friendly now, if you check out "Casino Royale"s listed country/s of origin. ...But now, we have a film in which everyone seems to have wanted Bond to matter once again. I was convinced. Too long? Possibly, but I can't say I wanted it to end. I held my breath in the brilliant action sequences and wallowed in the slower patches. The romance? Well, they tried to make it a key to his personality, and it didn't insult the intelligence. Eva Green, Caterina Murino and Ivana Milicevic all looked incredible and had the chance to play with Bond girl conventions. Even the bad guy was underplayed... someone with a foreign accent and an eyelid that weeps blood. Mads Mikkelson quietly stands his ground against Craig without ever seeming to want to upstage him. Menace rather than madness. It's an almighty reboot, and perhaps the best action film of 2006. I am already thrilled at the thought of seeing it again, and that is the sign I was thoroughly entertained. It is going to be really interesting to see what they do next. Finally, the excitied interest in the next Bond will be warranted. Will they remake the earlier Fleming titles, but stick closer to the original plots? Will they hold on to their self-confidence and sidestep a lot of that Evil Genius Plots World Domination stuff? One can only hope. I am waiting expectantly. And trying to look both impeccably cool and brutish as I do so. December 30 American GothicAMERICAN GOTHIC ~ a look at first venturing into the box set
And for an early Chrismas present, I get the "American Gothic" box set, which is something I have wanted for a very long time. It had a recent satellite repeat screening... somewhere... but the presentation was so soft, despite being digital, that I decided to wait for the DVD. Well it isn't so sharp that you can cut yourself on it, as you can on so many recent releases, but this was ten years ago, and anyway, the slightly soft chocolate-filter look is all part of the "American Gothic" aesthetic - a deliberate one going against traditional the "X-Files" supernatural look. The first thing to note is that although one is going to be very grateful for Playback releasing this under-rated series, it seems a shame that there aren't many more treats in the package. But most glaringly, the episodes are alllll out of order. The final episode of 22 called "Requiem" is set as episode 18 (!) and the fact that four episodes were never screened in the initial US run means that they are thrown around anyoldhow. There is an overall story arc, and this slightly randomiser way of synchronising the episodes throws it out. Online sources run the correct running order: (http://tvmegasite.net/prime/shows/gothic/epguide.shtml).
First off, the pilot is one of the best first episodes ever conceived. From the start, you can tell it means business, and it does so throughout its run. It's a genuine horror series, and non of that arch-supernatural-sci-fi TV stuff. That opening scene where Caleb Temple's tenth birthday turns into a horrible family tragedy and tops it with the shock that the law can't be trusted here is a throat-grabber. It's a genuine, full-blooded set-piece ... For the rest of the story of Sheriff's Buck's crusade to win over Caleb to his dubious, well, satanic agenda, the series proves consistently subversive: all the good guys do bad things and the bad guys do good things. In the meantime, we get to wallow in great performances by Gary Cole, Jake Weber, Brenda Bakke and Lucas Black, amongst others. Cole has never been better and - as creator Shaun Cassidy says on the commentary - Lucas Black is one of the greatest ever child actors (Cassidy says THE best, and I agree he is a considerable contender for that title), and Caleb Temple is one of the best young characters ever put to screen. As soon as he makes a four-course meal out of simply saying, "I'm blowin' out the candles now, Daddy," as soon as he overturns the table against his rampaging father and when he grabs the bow in his sister's hair to wrap around his fist to smash out the window, we know this kid can take care of himself and means business. Later, he'll utter "Why?" as if tearfully and defiantly confronting all of humanities mistakes, or he'll start a house fire grinning like the antichrist's kin. Which he may well be, but it is a small tour-de-force performance. Elsewhere, Cole and Bakke get to chew away on innuendo and sinister plotting without ever falling into pantomime. There are so many small treats to relish: the Elvis pillow and the blood writing on the door which conjure Twin Peaks' obscure supernatural leanings. Sheriff Buck swinging between sinister threats and smarmy charm. Troubled Doctor Crower proving more than a match for our Sheriff.
It's the real deal. "American Gothic" is a treat for horror fans who prefer their horror to be a little more literary than TV influenced. Just, you know, try to watch it in the right order. December 28 Buck's 2006 round-upEND OF YEAR FILM ROUND-UP It's time for end-of-year best-ofs and retrospectives. I was kick-started on this by seeing that "Sight and Sound" critics voted "Cache/Hidden" top dog of 2006, and for all my reservations about Haneke's intents, he makes great psychological horrors. "Cache" and "Borat" were probably the biggest shockers of the year, in different ways and for different reasons, obviously, and they showed what their respective genres really could do. Did "Cache" doth protest too much? Was "Borat" a case of the Emporer's New Clothes? Intellectual, moral and discursive challenges abounded from these two, and their reputations will stick for a long, long time, I'm sure. How "Borat" will appear come ten, twenty years time will be fascinating to see, if it is remembered at all. "Cache's" immediate long-term prestige is probably a foregone conclusion. But I was shocked that there were so many films on the list that I didn't see, although I guess many were festival entries. But I did get to a couple of festivals to see a couple of coming-of-age flicks, and they were both highlights. In fact, rather than Top Ten, I am going to do this instead: My most MEMORABLE MOMENTS IN A CINEMA had to be: Seeing "The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros" at the London Film Festival and chatting with the director Aureaus Solito in the lobby afterwards. Watching "Slither" and at the end, seeing a group of under-15s huddling around to talk loudly and proudly at how grossed out they had been. Hearing and feeling an entire audience jump out of their seats during "Cache". Ditto audience's mounting horror and disbelief during the "Borat" wrestling tour-de-force. Taking a Russian and Polish friends to some old-style cinema to see "Superman Returns": I had forgotten what it was like to go to a non-multiplex picture house. The screen was surrounded by a black frame sprinkled with little lights meant to look like stars. Wow! The sound seemed to come from some elaborate loud-hailer device. There was even an unwieldly 'interval' in the middle which freaked out the students no end (it just confused them). The place was frayed rather than grubby, and one of a dying breed. It was kinda neat. PLEASED that "The Squid and the Whale" got a large critical and commercial response. A real triumph of a good product attracting the attention due to quality. A prime example that American character drama can be slick, accessable, intelligent and true, even with the most soap operatic of premises. A film that felt too short. Funny too. A real little gem.MOST SMART AND INTRIGUING HOLLYWOOD FEATURE which I saw was "Good Night, And Good Luck". Critic Demetrious Matheou wrote: "Confirms Clooney as the heir to Warren Beatty: a matinee idol with brains, brimming with liberal commitment." And I agree with every syllable. It felt adult and worthwhile, and packed with elegant performances. "Thank You For Smoking" gets and honourable mention.FAVOURITE CROWDPLEASER: "Drommen/We Shall Overcome" - so you know how these things go and that the good guys win (The English title variation states as much) but sometimes predictable narrative can still be rendered with smarts and nuance. So the good guys win, but the struggle here certainly takes its toll. ANIMATED HIGHLIGHTS of the year were (1) "A Scanner Darkly", which I suspect will be a sleeper cult hit who will gather status as the years drift on. For good and bad, it captured the essence of Philip K Dick brilliantly, including (and this is where the 'bad' comes in) the anti-climatic come-down ending. Those are the Dick endings that haunt you, but they are also the endings that only seem to really hit you the second time you watch a film. The animation was something else and captured all the otherworldly drugginess that is usually shown in lame "trip" sequences. It was as much about loss of identity and reliable reality as Lynch ever was, and just as scary for that. (2) And yes, I am going to put up "Monster House" as a highlight. Despite a gratuitous ending, any Joe Dante fan should lap this up. It was just so great to find a kid's animation that wasn't trying to be so hip and knowing and post-modern. No, this was a great minor horror with some real nastiness, a neat script and real charm. It touched my soft spot for American Suburban Horrors. Funny too. AND TO MENTION: "X-Men3: The Last Stand": Of course it is customary now to lament that Bryan Singer jumped the X-ship for a grand homage to Superman, and it is a shame never to know what he would have delivered. What we do have is Brett Ratner directing and a sense that someone said, "Well, if Singer's not here, let's just round the whole thing up for no good reason." But although X-Men has always been full of doom-mongering, and although taking note of mutant mortality ups the stakes, mutants get thrown into the mix and bumped off seemingly at random and without much reflection. Angel has a fantastic introduction as a kid, a scene that taps into the heart of the struggle with being "different", and leads to nothing but Angel spreading his wings. Similarly, the bald kid who can nullify mutations - and doesn't everyone in sci-fi living in a room-cum-laboratory wear white?? - gets to ... do nothing. There is enough plot for two or three X-mens here. The bald kid and the mutant "cure"; a hint of Sentinals; Dark Phoenix; the Morlock uprising; Angel's coming-out... there just seems too much. It's all handled with great gusto and action sequences, and it's a fun superhero flick, but perhaps we had expected something a little more nuanced because of its predecessors. Less sense of build-up and more bangs. It also edges towards the more cosmic end of X-Men stories with Dark Phoenix, but just rounds things up with a little stage-tragedy. For my money, Kelsey Grammer was a surprising, inspired and wonderful piece of casting (who would have thought he'd play a blue furball?) and, inevitably, gave an effortless depth to his character and stole every scene without having particularly much to go on. Too much, too quickly dealt with. "Silent Hill" : Christophe Gans gives great visuals here, and despite awesome atmosphere and a good little conclusions, fails like so many horrors at the last hurdle. That is, I don't believe a spooker needs acres of narrative if the visuals generate nightmare logic and ambiance (hence my tolerance for "The Grudge" franchise, for example), and inevitably "Silent Hill" soon becomes tedious as soon as it rounds up with backstory, explanations and blood-splattered finale. Or maybe it is just the backstory here is tired and familiar and comes at the expense of all else. "The Descent", for example, showed that location, execution and subtext could elevate the thinnest of narratives into something special. All "Silent Hill" made me think was, hmm, bet I will enjoy playing that (I haven't yet)."The Hills Have Eyes": Sabotaged by gratuitous backstory. All of sudden, once the mutant starts droolingly accusing humanity of heinous immorality, you realise the film is hollow. I didn't buy that preachiness for one minute; don't believe Alexandre Aja cares about those matters one jot, not even in any schlocky B-movie sense. Despite some serious gore and violence, some great visuals of car-park craters and Atomic Testing towns, and another great rendering of the horrible mid-set piece seige, Aja can't quite knock up that closing intelligence that would really knock his horrors into crossover appeal. For all its shabbiness, this doesn't supercede the Wes Craven original. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning": - where they put in all the bits that people only thought they would see in Hooper's original. Backstory sabotage again. It scores for being more like "Wolf Creek" than "Friday the 13th", but you still walk away knowing it wasn't much. "DEMENTED" - your average French mood piece about a disintegrating rural family, but I am a sucker for this kind of thing. Bolstered by a couple of brilliant moments, good acting and a startling anti-performance by the lead kid. My GUILTY PLEASURES, as ever, were b-horrors. You know, the brief chills from "The Grudge 2", "Silent Hill"... Er. No excuses really. CAN'T WAIT TO SEE: "Pan's Labyrinth", because I know it is going to be stunning. "Brick", because I missed this at the cinema and was really intrigued. Shane Meadows' "This is England", because I know it is going to be stunning. December 04 Torchwood againTORCHWOOD: "GREEKS BARING GIFTS": Oh dear. After a couple of decent missions, Torchwood is back to its own particular method of dealing with alien threats: priority angst; rookie professionalism. It's a good job that the aliens come one at a time, because God knows it's easy enough to infiltrate Torchwood's inner sanctum. All you have to do is tempt one of them, after hours, with a bit of alien technology and then seal the deal with a bit of inter-species but same-gender sex. The alien took the guise of a comely, sassy and smirky woman who was less femme fatale than "EastEnders" strumpet. She targeted Toshiko with combination of a gem that allowed telepathy and a little lesbian action. Actually, I wouldn't necessarily have said that Toshiko would be my first choice to penetrate Torchwood, since she has proven to be the most consistantly professional of the lot ... although it must be said that Owen has shown himself capable of messing around but still focusing on the assignment at hand. Otherwise, the Torchwood team were acting as they always seem to: like a hormonally-vulnerable, self-involved sixth form common room. This story, they managed to ruin Toshiko's careful workload by playing basketball by her computer. And then, when she complained, just saying she was uptight. Well she had the gem and she could read their thoughts - quite a decent and subdued imagining of things people might be thinking, this - and even though she had vowed to tell the team about the gem, I can go with the idea that the shock of actually hearing others' thoughts might have changed her mind initially. But then, it just got silly when she had her "Unbreakable" moment of stopping a potential killer. I must say, it was jolly nice of him to leave the front door open so that she could creep up on him. Once the alien hussy got inside Torchwood, she strutted around with menace - tilt chin down, smirk, stare at everyone from under your brow, walk as if you are about to break out into a "Guys and Dolls" number - before being defeated by convenience. Capt'n Jack can reprogramme any ol' alien technology, see? Afterwards, Toshiko had a soul-searching moment beneath the helicopter camera that continually prowls over Cardiff. What should she do with the mind-reading gem, she asked? Lacking any apparent solid proceedure for dealing with alien technology, she crushed it underfoot. There are some things man should not.... etc etc. As I said, it's a good job the alien threats come mostly one at a time. Hmm, the fairy threat proved too much and Torchwood just, well, just gave up trying to outwit them and gave them what they wanted. They can resolve cannibal hicks by using guns, of course, but most of the other problems are of their own doing. Focusing on character fallabilities is fine and character-building, but when the entire episode threat hinges on that, it stumbles and trips headlong into clumsiness, and what you get is all the depth and consistancey of a slightly warmed, underdone soap opera with genre sprinkles on top. And hey, did the Cyberwoman actually kill the Pterodactyl then?? November 29 Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)A CARPENTER CLASSIC:
ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13
John Carpenter, 1976
The story of John Carpenter, as any fan knows, is that he used to deliver stripped down, witty, genre-savvy thrillers and horrors, accompanied by spare and dated but wonderful synth-scores. I think "Dark Star" (1974) is one of the best science-fiction comedies ever made. I think "Halloween" (1978) has some the best direction ever, and I can watch it endlessly for composition and suburban mood only. Inbetween, Carpenter made "Assault on Precinct 13" (1976), which is much his zombie homage as re-imagining of "Rio Bravo". It reminds me of Walter Hill before Walter hill kicked in. But that early work especially...
Carpenter starts with a shoot-out that lacks any of the satisfying punch that an opener might rightly want. It's fast brutal and ugly; the parties involved are anonymous, disembodied voices. It starts as it means to go on, in shadows and washed-out hues of blue, with measured pace and menace and the menacing monotonous synth riff that frequently falls into white noise. A fresh black cop babysits a station just about to close down; on the streets, silent gangs decide to exact some revenge and kill a little girl, whose father kills the murderer and then takes refuge in the non-functioning station. The gang surrounds the station and stages a kamikaze assault; inside, the cop, the girl and the infamous criminals who just happen to be there find themselves forced to unite to defend themselves.
It's simple and pulpy, peppered with hard-boiled dialogue, humourous asides and offbeat treats - such as the criminals playing "potatoes" to decide who gets to go on an escape mission. The film benefits from excellent performances from its leads, who strike the right balance between playful and earnestness. Darwin Joston as Napoleon Wilson looks like a prototype for "Escape From New York's" Snake Pliskin. Laurie Zimmer excels as the level-headed and capable desk-girl turned soldier, standing up to and alongside the guys without once compromising her femininity. The characterisation and integration of sexual and racial issues is both distinctly Seventies and subverted. As Rumsey Taylor notes:
In this way, the viewer never feels insulted and never quite knows who will do what. There are shocks - the death of the girl - and small moments that surprise our sense of cultured morality. Should we really root for convicted murderers? We certainly take as much relieved pleasure as they do when they start popping off the shotguns. The father exacts revenge, but it leaves him catatonic rather than heroic. And when the other desk girl suggests they throw him outside, since he is what the gang wants, and the others stare at her and she says "Don't give me that civilised look!", the conflict between morality and the sacrifices one might make for survival is kicked right out in the open. Hadn't we already thought of that plot option? And what about the potential and underplayed romatic frission between Napoleon and Leigh? She seems like an otherwise sensible woman... Appropriating and playing with genre types and expectations, "Assault on Precinct 13" is both entertaining and loaded with social commentary, like all the best b-features and pulp fiction. The gangs are rendered with a near supernatural aura... silent and near-invisible, climbing through windows like vampires, acting en masse like zombies. We are far from the fast-talkin', wise-assin' gangsters from a hundred films and shows. Yet, this never once unbalances the realism, pushing into something more allegorical. It's a rare trick for a crime thriller, and neatly accomplished. Even better, Carpenter totally subverts the idea that quiet, orderly streets mean peace and discipline. This are silent communities where the ice cream man keeps a gun at hand and where the empty streets mean you won't get any help. November 28 Paul Schrader's Film CanonLet's Make A Canon!
In Film Comment September/October, Paul Schrader takes on the entire concept of a film canon, and film's value as the culmination of, well, all artforms, really. It's an informative lesson in critical history. He concludes that film is a transitory artform. It's a transitory phase towards something bigger... not sure what yet. The digital age is putting the film and TV businesses in a state of insecurity, but that is probably more a financial anxiety rather than artisitic. There's a huge amount of stuff out there, and as much good as bad.. You can see this as both positive and negative, but I choose the other. I am relatively, easily pleased and see no need to scorn anything that doesn't quite match with my love of Bergman, Cassavetes and other pioneers. On the other hand, I will happily dismiss out of hand any review of "Sin City" that begins or ends with an out of hand dismissal of comics as a genre.(1) Does that mean I am a comics snob, or that I lack refinement? I probably belong to Schrader's category called the "nonjudgmentals". You ought to throw yourself between the punk and the classical, the B-Movie and the arthouse experiment, is my stand-point. I happen to think that "Halloween" is as brilliantly filmed as, oh, anything by Tarkovsky (damn, I am even thinking of an argument for their use of framing and panning both being equally seminal). Of course, horror will always be ignored when the bar is to be raised, and there are no horror titles in Schrader's Gold/Silver/Bronze lists that he offers, although he obviously likes the genre himself.
But I tend to believe that to think of film as just transitory is to undervalue its very status as the culmination of every artform we know of: popular, experimental, alternative; photography, audio-visual, theatre, costume... everything. It is also to step aside from the incredible and complex influence that film has upon modern personality and culture, both as art and entertainment. Schrader doesn't ignore this, but in trying to see the vaster picture, in trying to see the future, the immediate importance of cinema is a little over-looked.
A Horror Canon?....
So what titles would I offer as the highest representation of horror, worthy of a canon? "Halloween", "The Innocents", perhaps "The Haunting", or "The Shining". But I would wave and jump for "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer", "Night of the Living Dead," "Kwaidan", "Onibaba", "Don't Look Now". "Don't Look Now" pushes the ghost and supernatural genre into art. "Kwaidan" and "Onibaba" are sumptious supernatural paintings come to life. "Chainsaw" and "Dead" and "Henry" are champions of the misleading amateurish, low-budget look/aesthetic: in these films, it's a weapon, and you don't even think there's art design. I will argue that if anything, they are horror's translation of Cassavetes' agenda. I certainly think any of these is narratively as strong and stronger than Schrader's Gold winner, Fritz Lang's "Metropolis": brilliantly rendered; weak story. And I think I would rather push for "M".
OK, but what about...
Other thoughts on Schrader's winners (and there are many I have not seen yet, I confess, and too many to list here). Of course "Citizen Kane" is in there. But I wonder...
Schrader says Bergman's "Persona" over "Fanny and Alexander". Well, there are so many to choose here...
Wong kar Wai's "In The Mood For Love" over "Fallen Angels". I love "In The Mood For Love", but perhaps it errs on the side of preciousness where "Fallen Angels" has that and more.
I would choose Truffaut's "Les Quatre Cents Coups" over "Jules et Jim", perhaps for the same reason.
"Blue Velvet" ... oh yes, although "Eraserhead" is more unique.
"The Big Lebowski".... er, hmm. Really? Over the Coen's "Miller's Crossing"?? I won't go with that. The latter transcends genre and content into something like pure art far more successfully than the former.
Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" rather than "Once Upon A Time in America"...? I would choose the latter, but that's a tenuous preference as both raise the bar.
Tarkovsky's "Nostalghia" gets Bronze placement, but I would say "Mirror" is superior and should get higher awards.
"Children Of Paradise" only gets Bronze? Awwwww.
It's great to see "2001: A Space Odyssey" holding the card for science-fiction as a Silver winner, but I wonder if Gilliam's "Brazil" doesn't deserve serious consideration. Possibly even "Akira".
And I am sorry, but I am not sure I can excuse any canon that misses "Come and See/Idi i Smotri".
I will also offer "The Return/Vozvrashcheniye" as a film that will achieve canonical status in the long term. I hope.
I also want the same for "City of God" - if "The Godfather" is there, than that Brazilian masterpiece is a real contender. Personally, I would love to see films such as "Toto Le Heros" and "Leolo" acknowledged as masterpieces also. I could sit down and argue for them.... well, not today. And if you have "Jules et Jim", I might go for "Before Sunset/Sunrise" as romatic classics.... And "Au Revoir les Enfants", my friends.... and... and....
Is just that...?
Is it just that there is too much to choose from? Have the masses claimed cinema so much their own with Top Tens in every other edition of any film magazine? Geez, I am the worst offender here. I don't have any credentials as a professional critic or artist, but I have fun blogging some 'favourites' lists. Now a serious canon has been reduced to that somewhat icky phenomenon: "100 Films You Must See Before You Die". I find that title just as patronising as any highbrow canon (and it's so, so FilmFour...). And yet, both have their place, and canons and Best Ofs can be a great way of pointing you in the right direction to things you might like or find valuable to your imagination and feelings. And films can be that valuable. With that in mind, with this blog, I offer my humble opinions and invaluable recommendations.
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(1) - Nick Pinkerton spends a good chunk of his "Sin City" review proclaiming comics as juvenile, something one should grow out of. For me it just weakens any argument he has - and he has legitimate points to make, of course. Comics are as complex and varied a medium as any other, and to dismiss them as something he is glad he threw out means his tone is pretty dismissive and - at risk of offending him (I learnt my lesson with my "Borat" run-in!!) superior. It's a non-starter for me, but not nearly as bad as Jeff Reichert simply writing: "Oh, and did I mention that it’s JUST A FUCKING COMIC BOOK?"
Um, this is a footnote and unless I get called to defend my criticism of their criticism, I'll leave "Sin City" for another day.
N. Pinkerton: http://reverseshot.com/legacy/summer05/sin_rs.html
November 27 comics onlineClowns, Ballads, Whisp... Recommended online comics I guess I am happier with recommendations than using my, er, opinions to put down the labours-of-love that are online comics. I have said before that I believe we are in a Golden age of comics, and the online revolution and revelation has had its effect on graphic storytelling as everywhere else. Serialisations that come like weekly TV shows from people holding down jobs by day and writing and drawing by night. Wannabe professionals turning out work that, on occasion, rivals anything on the comic shelves. In fact, I’ll wager there’s more diversity out there, since the hardcopy stuff is still dominated by Marvel and DC icons. Can’t say I have found anything offensive enough to take a hatchet to either. I’m pretty easy to please and find most stuff temporarily pleasing. But here are a few that have had me finishing one chapter, going away knowing I can look forward to and relish the next part when I sit down again. The ones, then, that I feel deserving of second reads and not just the fast-click of the forward button.
“WHISP” by Damian Duffy & Dann Tincher http://www.webcomicsnation.com/eyetrauma/whisp/series.php?view=archive&chapter=3120&mpe=1&step=1 There is something very kinetic in the text of Duffy and Tincher’s “Whisp”. The way a cigarette thrown out of a car window bounces off of the title captions like a karaoke guide, or the way the smoker’s coughing marked out in various cartoon fonts is broken up by a caption box of his thoughts. Or how dialogue boxes overlay one other until someone stops it with “Will you listen?” Elsewhere, TV dialogue distracts a man listening to his wife’s complaints: TV dialogue is bold black; the wife’s text is grey, less legible. Text doesn’t necessarily need to kick around with action, to riff visually, but when it works, it’s like a great rhythm section. It also keeps you hooked whilst you try to wonder what’s going on and who is who in “Whisp”. You know that it will be the second reading, possibly only when it’s completed, will reveal everything clearly. That’s not a bad thing either. I’m reminded of Bill Sienkiewicz’s work. Blue-black-white impressionistic artwork sets a downbeat mood. It’s frequently nightmarish. Smart and real dialogue keeps the hook as flashbacks reveal intriguing little stories. Whisp is a narcotic that seems to have memory-time-bending properties, even precognitive. Very Philip K Dick. But this is junkiedom as hell, without even the slacker humour of, say, “A Scanner Darkly”. Curt Blake is a Whisp addict, in prison for apparently killing someone called Markham; Blake says he is innocent. There’s some political intrigue with an election candidate… Slowly the style and the characters and the flashbacks start to pull together. Slowly you find yourself drawn in and fascinated. This is trippy and adult stuff where you find yourself wanting to decode all the clues, and I image it will be full of greater rewards when completed.
“SAMURAI CLOWN” – Quinn Fleming Also a cut above, crackling with stylisation, broad colour-scheming and benefiting from a mature approach is Quinn Fleming’s “Samuai Clown”. Your average gangster scenario with a twist: Utamaro is an on-the-skids clown (“I haven’t made a child laugh in three years”) who finds himself accepting the role of mob assassin and gets mixed up in a gang war. Minimalist, bold-stroke artwork supported by good dialogue and a welcome underplaying of its central gimmick, “Clown Samurai” flits through its familiar genre narrative without adolescent geek-cool affectations. It’s closer to “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” than to Tarantino. There is also the occasional stylistic surprise, such as the burst of colour as our protagonist lies in a flowerbed, and then a page to contemplate a tricycle. And as an example of that maturity I mentioned, take the scene where the doctor is supported by the mob as long as he confesses his liaison with an underage girl every time he is asked.
I’m looking forward to see where and how this one goes on.
“BALLAD” - DEADMOUSE http://www.moderntales.com//comics/ballad.php?view=toc Now this is special. Something to remind me of a David Lynch interested in funny creatures, of the work of Svankmajer, and the bolexbrothers “The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb”. Something truly Gothic and unusual. “Ballad” is a fascinating, ongoing comic by Deadmouse. All fairy-tale cruelty and black-and-white Gothic artwork. If you sit with patience, the mystery and magic start to seep in and you’ll be hooked. Certainly you might find yourself wanting to pay the minor membership fee at modertales.com just to read the later “Ballad” episodes. It’s gorgeous, surreal and often horrible. An egg-head servant boy (creature? Zombie?) is resurrected from the dead back into the service of his malignant young sorceress, beginning a tour of Deadmouse’s warped vision of those kind of pictures that accompany old children’s texts. Other short stories – “Pumpkin”, “Mermaid”, “Oshidori” - show Deadmouse drawing from the same dark matter as Grimms, Giger, Victorian children’s literature and post-modern horror. A Bite of LaymonRICHARD LAYMON: “BITE”
When I was about, oh, fourteen, I made a shift from science-fiction to horror literature. I was on holiday somewhere by the English coast, and in the creaky rotating wire rack in the beach-balls-and-postcards shop, there was a book with the most surprisingly graphic cover: A decapitated head at the bottom of a flight of stairs, a shadowy figure with an axe at the top. At least, I am sure that is what that particular edition of Richard Laymon’s “Night Show” showed – I remember the head the most. No one stopped me buying such an obviously repellent book. It was certainly as nasty as I wanted. I read a few of his books but wasn’t a grand fan. But a year ago, on the long dark search for good, bloody hell, just some decent horror writing, I started reading Laymon again. And now I am a fan.
What I always liked about Laymon (1947-01) is that he is a writer who seems to know his limitations and just gets on with all the mayhem and ugliness. This, I want to stress, is rare. The writing is stripped down and straight-forward, the dialogue believable and full of hooks. He'll start right in the middle of the horror, but then spend ages drawing out the suspense of one scenario. Or he'll kill of the characters you think you're rooting for and move on to other hapless victims. Laymon is nihilistic, cynical, brutal and uncompromising and happily beats genre motifs down into his own preferred ugliness. And then you find there is often more happening than you suspected. For example, you will read "The Woods Are Dark", but it is only when you reach the end that you discover you were reading H.P. Lovecraft homage all along, rather than just a "The Hills Have Eyes" variation. And he shocks too.
"Bite" seems like it will be an average vampire novel, and we start right in. Cat knocks on Sam's door; they haven't seen each other in a long, long time, but he still pines for her. She needs his help to kill a vampire who is feeding off of her at night, she says. Sam says, well, okay. Is Elliot a vampire? He sure behaves weirdly and brutally, and he comes donned with a cape and metal fangs. But... is he really a vampire? They kill him and set off to dispose of the body, and that's when the couple's troubles really begin.
Every minor dilemma gets a couple of chapters at least: Laymon draws out the problems and twists of disposing of this body on a skeletal narrative, but it drags you in. And then suddenly "Double Indemnity" gets mentioned, and you realise that you are reading Laymon's version of film noir. Cat is a severely victimised woman with all the credentials of a prime femme fatale, but is she? Are we being lulled into believing her incredible history of abuse? We are stuck with Sam's perspective, and suddenly we can't trust anyone or anything. Bad luck - or is it? - has them meeting up with bully biker Snow White (or is he a biker?), who proves to be their true nemesis. Do we believe Snow White's hostage Peggy when she says he is torturing and threatening her young brother? Is there a boy at all? Sam and Cat are taking on the American road, but we know it's filled with dangerous eccentrics and victims-in-waiting. Sometimes this couple are smart; sometimes they are dumb. They negotiate every plan of action. Suddenly the novel's immediate opening proves a false lead: Laymon isn't interested in fast and furious horrors, but in the drawing out of an improbable scenario, keeping it the right side of plausible and turning the screws and throwing in a number of surprises. "Duel" and "Detour" come to mind. If Hitchcock liked monster horror, and made a vampire the McGuffin... Vampire noir, anyone? November 25 Buck is LynchedGrowing up with...
DAVID LYNCH
Any cinephile will have a couple of films they'll say introduced them to what cinema was really about. Well, they'll probably say "Changed My Life". Unfortunately, there is probably an entire generation who will grade "Reservoir dogs" and/or "Pulp Fiction" as the film that changed their lives... and they're perfectly wonderful flicks, but we have also had to put up with Tarantinoesque leanings for, oh, ever since.
My first understanding that someone was behind a camera, that there was some kind of author behind what was on screen - in the same way Alan Dean Foster seemed to pen every cinematic tie-in of the era - were Sergio Leone's "Dollars" film. Those crazy close-ups, that obvious dubbing, that stunning music... there was a style that was independent of almost everything else I was seeing as a youngster. It's called auteurship, but I wouldn't really consummate my love of Leone until I became an adult and suddenly realised why I had always watched those films whenever they were on TV.
No, the film that happily rewrote everything I ever knew I saw when I was thirteen, and it was David Lynch's Eraserhead. How fortunate am I?? I stumbled upon it, and I had never seen anything like it. Well, people can still say that upon seeing it, even now. What I was watching on my television screen was nothing less than the world I knew so well from my nightmares, which I suffered from greatly. Not so long back, my mother reminded us of the times I would scream the house down, and I remember my parents sitting with me and calming me back to sleep. And "Eraserhead" seemed so very much a visitation from those bad dreams. Slow, oblique, horrible, nightmarish, oddly adult, otherworldly, totally compelling. It was the benchmark for me way into adulthood - and I read a number of critics and forum contributors who still cite it as the film by which they test the taste of others. It may well be that David Lynch is therefore the very first director's name I ever knew. I remember you couldn't find it on VHS, and I remember maybe when I was sixteen or around there, seeing a rare VHS copy on a shelf and badgering my mother to buy it for me there and then, which she did. I am not sure I ever hassled my mother for another film as a kid. It was a prize and I loved it, and I still do. I even have the CD of the soundtrack. I place high value in dreaming, and although cinema is waking dreaming (indeed), very few directors can convey dream-logic and the fibre of nightmares successsfully. Anything Lynch does is tapped into that... even "Straight Story" is making its slow trawl through dreamy landscapes and slightly off-centre characters. Ingmar Bergman is another who effortlessly conbines dreamstuff and realism. Horror is meant to be the hotline to waking nightmares, but so often fails miserably. "Phantasm" and "Paperhouse" are some of the greatest embodiments of dream-logic ever put to screen, with honorary mention to "A Nightmare On Elm Street" (a litany of smart effects don't necessarily make for dream-logic). But the thing about "Eraserhead" was that it showed me that a film didn't have to be entertainment. It was my introduction to art.
At some point, I saw Lynch's early shorts "The Grandmother" and "Alphabet". The latter is a truly discomforting experience, and as usual, it can be hard to pin-point exactly why. "The Grandmother" was truly nightmarish also, as if the camera had simply wandered into childhood anxiety dreams by means of ugly animation (tortured cartoon segments that left out all the fun of the genre). Egg yolk coloured pools of bedwetting shame. Barking, primal, terrifying parent creatures. A fragile ghostly boy left to grow his own comforting Grandmother... a hauntingly little whistling and humming song in the middle.... It still stands up. Lynch, I felt, was the friend of my nightmares, and I am sure I found that reassuring at first, and then genius when I grew up.
So I felt completely in-the-know when "Blue Velvet" exploded on the scene. In my mid-teens and coming out of my shell, I felt more worldly-wise. "Blue Velvet" wasn't like the Lynch I had seen before. It took place in a world I knew from television and general drama. Nevertheless, Frank Booth was terrifying. All that unleashed Id and male malevolence, you see. Dennis Hopper barked and threatened and then looked like he was going to burst into tears: would he kill or cry? So, he resembled a monstrous exaggeration of my father. Machismo was unstable and not to be trusted. I felt that Julee Cruise singing "The Mysteries of Love" was the most beautiful song I had ever heard. I loved Isabella Rosellini. Harry Dean Stanton singing "In Dreams" became one of my favourite cinematic show-stoppers ever (Orbison's ode to grief is the very first song I ever loved, courtesy of my mum's LP collection, which was a bonus). And of course, "Blue Velvet" is dreamy and nightmarish, but dressed as noir, which means it's a initially a more familiary terrain.
Oh yes, I was a big Lynch fan. I could see "Testuo: The Iron Man" as Lynch-Manga, and I was starting to spot his unique and influential qualities. When "Twin Peaks" was promised, we were salivating. I remember a few of us gathered around at my house to watch it. It wasn't a disappointment. It is hard to convey the influence of Lynch and Mark Frost's series. At least the UK had "The Prisoner" and "The Avengers" had the surreal happily stashed in cult TV. But when the "Twin Peaks" phenomenon seized Western Culture, the offbeat and the surreal became TV mainstream. If nothing else, it allowed for what may well be the most offbeat and brilliant of all children's fantasy series: "Eerie Indiana". A large proportion of the willfully weird and eccentric and post-modern on TV can be traced back to the thrill and success of "Twin Peaks" incredible first season. And every now and again, the characters would stumble into the nightmare scenarios that I knew so well and trusted Lynch would deliver.
I remembering readindg somewhere that Lynch said that after "Blue Velvet" he wanted to make a comedy ("TP" had a lot of humour, but that was a different ball game), and he did with "Wild At Heart". Absurdist, hyperviolent, more traditionally a road movie thriller. I didn't like it so much when I first saw it. It seemed like Lynch parodying himself. Perhaps it still is, but it works. More than that, what I was missing at the time is that it was a very faithful translation of the novels of Barry Gifford. Absurdist, hyperviolent, elliptical, episodic, surreal. And again Lynch delivered an unforgettable macho monster in the shape of Willem Defoe's repellent Bobby Peru. It wasn't necessarily the true stuff of nightmares, but it was a great cartoon noir.
So when "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" came out and received universal hostility and venom, I wondered why. This was, I felt, obviously a return to the nightmarish worlds of Lynch's earlier work. No levelling cookie humour here. Slow, dreamy, opaque, horrible and beautiful and, yes, scary. It was like Lynch had come back from a holiday. He walked back into the shadowed corner and hasn't come out since, and sometimes he sends postcard. They look like noirs, but in fact they're supernatural thrillers. Like all good surrealists, Lynch doesn't trust reality. Like Philip K Dick, he doesn't trust identity. He champions that moment when you suddenly forget what your routine is, or when you get on the wrong bus even though you take it every day, or when deja vu bothers you. I still find that he taps into the promise of an unreliable and unstable reality that anxiety dreams offer, and the scary shapes and scenarios offered by nightmares. His influence has been absorbed into culture, and now he lurks on the edges, and the fans still wait and want. I am grateful that it was "Eraserhead" that dismantled everything I knew about art as a kid, and at that most impressionable of ages too. I think it was wondeful luck. I still love it; it's still a full marks winner and then some. November 24 My CD player is happiest currently playing....BAND OF HORSES: "Funeral"
A song of delicacy and incredible longing. The music is sad but the voice is soaring, calling out stream-of-conscious lyrics. If it has you with the verses, you'll be levelled come the chorus two minutes in. One of those songs that can take on depression on its own terms and make it beg for more.
XIU XUI: "Boy Soprano"
If Patrick Wolf were more industrial... Distressed, mumbling and politicised vocals over a mixture of soaring synths and extraneous clunks and beeps. Occasionally, something Gothic wants in on the guestlist. The best part is when those beeps start formulating their own melody like a gatecrashing 80s Atari game trying to audition.
MATES OF STATE: "Fraud in the 80s"
Like the best of all 80s pop, this track demands attention immediately with eccentric electronic noises before it sweeps you off your feet with a synth lick and back-and-forth vocals, then a chorus that makes you want to bop. It's a great 80s homage and if you're a sucker for the "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City" playlist, this should prove a glorious indulgence.
MAZARIN: "Another One Goes By"
Both downbeat and celebratory, sounding something like The Shins. It's a quietly beautiful song and it's the vocal melody that really makes it. Jangly, melodic, real nice. (And after their third album, they're 'disbanding' due to conflict with another band bearing the same name!) November 23 Buck bonds with 007Growing up with ...
JAMES BOND
Growing up in the seventies and eighties, it's inevitable that I grew up with Bond in some way. Bond sign-posted special occassions, such as Bank Holidays and Christmas. There was always a 007 to catch up on or remind yourself of, always heralded with "Bond. Is. Back." It was near enough a patriotic duty to watch the Bond... practically mandatory... and I guess it is still meant to be. I was a kid when I saw "The Spy Who Loved Me," "Moonraker" and "For Your Eyes Only" at the cinema (1977, '79' '81) What do I recall remembering about them? Richard Kiel as Jaws, an arachnid-like underwater base; "Star Wars" tendencies and a "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" security code gag; A parrot and some snow. When you're young, you're quite innoculated to the tackiness of these 007 outings, you go with the silliness and the puns - which I was used to from the "Carry On" films and Saturday night TV. I remember watching "Octopussy" ('83) when it came out, renting it on VHS of course, and watching it maybe two or three times in a week. Dear Lord, how weak and camp it actually turned out to be.
Of course, these weren't my only points of reference for Bond: I knew all the earlier stuff. "You Only Live Twice", for example. I was intrigued at the conundrum of the title, and knew I loved the sweeping strings of John Barry's music and the longing in the theme song. And I loved it equally when the Trash Can Sinatras did a heartbreaking cover of it. I remember thinking Roger Moore was the "funny" bond ... I didn't know what 'tongue-in-cheek' was, but I knew that "From Russia With Love" wasn't it. No, Bond number two related far more to my knowledge of steely, humourless Cold War-esque Seventies thrillers. I knew Bond was exotic, because he travelled and kick butt in countries that were only now being promised to us with the incredible opportunities of Concorde and and developing holiday industries. I knew Bond slept with any attractive woman onscreen and that they all had dirty names, not that I could quite work out why or how. I knew he wasn't part of the real world.
Apart from the mini Austin Martin car I possessed (pop-up bulletproof shield and ejector-seat! - the latter doomed to be lost...somewhere...), I also owned a book of Bond. Probably called "Book of Bond", I forget. It was a book without a wraparound jacket, so I was left with the serious black hardcover to contemplate. Inside, the book was packed with all the things you had to have or do or know to be a spy. I was young and impressionably and took much of this as rote and truth, and it panicked me that you had to have, do or know these things. It was threatening and anxiety-provoking because it seemed to be an anology for all the adult things I would have to do, and couldn't, and was expected to succeed at. Masculine things.
And Bond is nothing if not an mythical machismo. Being British, of course, it is suave and viper-like. It cuts you down with a deadly karate move and a neat one-liner, set off with either a sadistic smirk or raised eyebrow. And in a suit. It's very British, that. You reserved and repressed yourself until the right moment, and then struck at just the correct point in a surge of precise violence. I'd seen "The Avengers" and I adored "The Prisoner", so I knew all this. Americans, however, were earthier men, in cowboy and soldier outfits, chomping cigars with shark-like teeth a'la James Coburn, Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. Or Magnum P.I. I like, and probably still like Bond best when he is silent, suited and deadly. Bond versus Oddjob... well, that was glorious. Lethal Englishness against the inscrutability of the East.
I also knew that "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" was meant to be the crap one, because it had that other Bond who only appeared once. But that's a general fallacy, it seems, and I note a lot of reclamation of George Lazenby's outing in later criticism by more serious aficianados. Truth is, Lazenby does seem to be the perfect embodiment of the morphing from hallowed Connery to variable Moore. He looks and acts like he handle himself in a fight, and yet comes burdened with those puns that diffuse the horror of his murderous manner. "He branched off." Despite this, it was a film that, for all its silliness of brainwashed colour-coded national females stereotypes and so on, tried to have the sharper edge of the first Bonds. Oh yes, and tried to shade him in with an ill-fated wife. Diana Rigg makes the film, and when she turns up late in the adventure on the ice rink and smiles, you realise how sorely she's been missed for the middle chunk. The other fluff can't compete. And Lazenby was unfairly dismissed. "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" still seemed to possess the Bond qualities that I liked most: good action; a certain edge of threat, rather than the TV-humour, tacky moments and excesses of, say, "Live and Let Die". Does the franchise's humour and campness increase as Bond's misogyny and sadism falls out of favour towards the Twenty-First Century? And yet Dalton was chastised for returning to the earlier seriousness... Brosnan settled a happy medium for a while.
And now there is that new Bond... with added pain again. It seems this time, it's being embraced. Zero tolerance and no-nonsense retaliation is thoroughly in vogue. The difference is that I have long since stopped being mildly excited at the promise of a Bond. I might go see "Casino Royale", I'm not sure. Last year, I read an A-Z of "Goldfinger", full of details on the development and history of the film, and my curiosity was aroused again. I have decided at some point to add the first three 007s to my collection, but I think my interest proper now in the series ends with "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". Is Bond evergreen and seemingly endlessly remakeable because the legend and market tells us so? The brand is still strong, and the critics are saying "Casino Royale" 2006 is best one in a long time, and perhaps my curiosity is sparked again...
But really, I was always more of a Harry Palmer guy. Now, that Ipcress dilemma seemed closer to home and far more disturbing for it. November 20 Torchwoodc - Torchwood: "Countrycide"
Well, maybe the Torchwood team has been in training since the "Cyberwoman" debacle, because this episode they seem pretty much on the ball, as if they could handle themselves moreorless in a crisis. Signs of protocol slipping in. Last story, Torchwood's storm-ahead method only managed to get them to the right spot at the right time when the story was resolving itself, so they had no chance to add to their litany of ineptness. Throwing them out in the countryside seems to have helped as well - not so cocky without all your flashy lighting and urban-friendly wisecracks, are you Torchwood, huh? But no, they looked like they knew how to go about handling mysterious disappearances. Except, you know, for leaving the keys in the Torchwoodmobile so it could be stolen. And bringing Ianto along. But this time around, I'm ready to call the keys incident human error rather than ineptness. At least they were quick to realise it was prelude to a trap.
Wow, all the sexual tension worked and mattered too, rather than just window dressing to give the show an "adult" tag. I first thought Owen was going to be the tedious,cocky light relief, but actually he is probably better than Capt'n Jack and second only to Gwen as best character. This is because Burn Gorman and Eve Myles turn in performances that have proven consistant, smart and occasionally surprising. And I am sorry, but Ianto has "walking-dead" written all over him. More often a whiney liability, and ... well hell, why is he still on the payroll after the cyber-girlfriend cock-up? Maybe the others just keep him around to make themselves feel competent. I'll bet my "Ianto Is A Cry-Baby" mug that he doesn't make it to the end of the series.
So, "Torchwood" goes "Texas Chainsaw" and "Wicker Man"... Russell T Davies says that he wanted to do "The Hills Have Eyes". Cool, but the fact he starts talking about "supernatural mutants" in "Torchwood Declassified" brings to mind a question bugging me about the rift in time premise.... er, have we actually seen any effects of this yet? Oh, a Weavel. And some alien hardware. Does a crashed spacecraft count? Er, and a Pterodactyl?? What's he doing saying "supernatural"? Well, there were fairies last story, which were "older than time" etc.... Where are the aliens? What about this rift in time??
The twist here is: it isn't aliens. No, its a bunch of lip-smacking cannibal grotesques, the kind you find in lesser American slashers. Ah yes, WE are the monsters. Bah, but I'm not complaining because "Countrycide" was the best episode yet in terms of execution. Hell, I was gripped. I'm a sucker for something-in-the-woods, mystery-of-ambadoned-country-house scenarios. It felt like proper horror. Proper gore and suspense, too. Real fear of the unknown until explanations inevitably kick in. I am even curious about the affair-at-work subplot...
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b - TORCHWOOD: Small Worlds
Well, it has taken until episide five for all the affectations at "cool" to settle down, and here Peter J Hammond surely shows the other writers how it ought to be done. More focus on the threat than aimless running around... and I am at least moderately convinced that the Torchwood team were functioning professionally, even if all they achieve is the uncanny ability to turn up just when things are reaching resolution without them. But what the hell is Ianto still doing on the team??
But better pacing means something creepy sets in. For me, the best subtle moment was in episode one when Gwen stumbled onto quarantined area and spotted a male figure in the distance and approaches it, talking away and getting no answer... and the closer we got the more we realised the figure wasn't human. Here, there was enough about the fairies to keep you waiting and wanting to see them, enough keeping them to the shadows, enough low-key allusions to fairy tales (a red school jumper; a not-so-nice step-father) and a decent past-and-present nod to child-abduction to keep things gripping. Even time for an eerie ochre-tint train flashback. Surely this is how Torchwood should be. Hmm, perhaps unfair as, really, Torchwood simply prop up a decent story... but that's fine.
But you see, this is no surprise since Peter J Hammond created what is one of Buck Theorem's all-time favourite fantasy scare series, "Sapphire and Steel" in the early Eighties. Since his skills at pacing pre-date music-video hipness, it seems his general attitude somehow reigned in the "Torchwood" excesses so that all the jazzy visuals had a point (the swooping cameras and fairy-vision, if you will). Unfortunately, his conclusion that in the war between the domestic and the supernatural, sometimes you won't win and sacrifices must be made for the greater good is lost since Torchwood didn't really succeed at much in the four stories beforehand. Bloody hell, it was nice not have the Torchwoods causing their own problems. Nevertheless, a new series benefiting from an old professional.
PS: Hey, and don't think I've forgotten that Capt. Jack can snog people back to life.... there's no getting around it and the only reason why I can see he wouldn't do it every episode is to obtain extra angst.
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a - Torchwood"Cyberwoman"
Hmm, it's frustrating when you want so much to like a series. We're four episodes in with "Cyberwoman" and I have yet to see any evidence that Torchwood is professional in any way. Perhaps they are all so bedazzled by Captain Jack's frequent resemblance to Tom Cruise that they all feel they have to act like they're in "Top Gun": all cool and... stuff. Unfortunately, every dilemma faced by the Torchwood team so far has been caused by... themselves. I would like to see one episode where they act like an efficient secret organisation that can deal with alien threats. They are too busy playing whacky basketball with their pet Pteradactyl to formulate any kind of protocol, it seems, and so you have problems such as squabbling during crisis moments.As it is, I doubt they can have a coffee machine in the place without someone taking the filter home and instigating some alien-assisted percolator revolt. And they should probably sort out their lighting. As it is, their secret base lighting is so colourful and frantic that their generator must be the size of a cruise ship. It's just wasteful.
...This week, it was the turn of the Member Who No One Remembers (Ianto) to cock-up and cause catastrophe from within. Despite the groans I suffered once I realised that this would be the dramatic starting point AGAIN, there was the Dr Tanizaki and the half-cybernetic woman who you know will be trouble any minute, which was all very promising. I love Cybermen... and this Cyberwoman was a gorgeous menace. But Torchwood acted as they always do under threat: with a lot of running about and stupid decisions and a little sexual frission. Any sane organisation would have Ianto locked up for his own good let alone theirs within minutes. But for a secret super-important operation, Torchwood have never been very good with security risks. Maybe next episode, they will remember that they really shouldn't take alien artefacts home with them, or let emotions turn them into blubbering idiots when faced with a potentially superior alien threat. You know, maybe they'll act like professionals. Once they do that, once Torchwood as a concept itself convinces me, I can accept a whole bucket load of ridiculousness elsewhere.
Oh yeah, and Weevils. Let's see some Weevils. November 18 "Drømmen" - teenage defiance and civil libertiesDrømmen/ We Shall Overcome Niels Arden Oplev
screenplay: Niels Arden oplev ad Steen Bille Starring: Janus Dissing Rathke, Anders W. Berthelsen, Bent Mejding
So having enjoyed trying out a film festival for the first time at the NFT last month, I thought I would try another and ended up at the London Children's Film Festival at the Barbican. It's a shame then that I was in a theatre sprinkled with an audience of, at the most, ten people, and a few of those were working or curious staff, and there was only a single youngster with family. Which does seem a shame. Kids can cope with subtitles if the film is good enough. Anyhow, I saw Danish film "Drømmen", which I am told translates as something like "The Dream"; but in England it's called "We Shall Overcome". Titles that conjure images of either mawkishness and tub-thumping. Well "Drømmen" has some sentiment and some preaching, but not to the extent that it sabotages a good drama. A film that runs through its predicatable developments and cliches without insulting the audience or turning hollow is like comfort cinema. Without challenging any formula, "Drømmen" serves engaging drama. It's a coming-of-age drama where farmboy Frits is starting school, 1969. All his expectations and fears are met in force when he gets to peek on the girls on the shower and then literally gets his ear torn off by the headmaster. This bloody physical abuse sets in motion a web of little dramas and almost everyone in the small town is involved. We know it will all be okay in the end, but it's by no means all comfortable and steps short of being completely reassuring. Frits is first seen running, slightly slow-motion and dream-like, running his fingers through the cornfield, followed by the wonderful opening credits sequence where he is swinging on a rope. All this promises something looking like "Io non ho paura/I'm not Scared". And indeed the outdoor scenes do, but Niels Arden Oplev keeps the cinematic tricks and ambiguity to a handful of moments; such as the wonderfully almost-odd opening with Frits' father have a breakdown. Rather, concentration is on the moral and social quandry that almost every character has to face because headmaster Lindum-Svendsen has gone too far this time and, what's more, the kid isn't going to stand for it. Frits' awakening comes in the form of civil rights awareness when an illuminating and educational television set enters the house (take that, TV-dissenters!) The glow of black-and-white footage shines on his face and then the smile drops, for what he sees is reports of American civil-rights rioting and the speeches of Martin Luther King. No gently humorous naive family gatherings around the newfangled set here; although we do get one around an LP of King's speeches. It is, of course, King's speech that gives the film its title(s) and even now, anyone who has ever felt oppressed by the drudgery and unfairness of working life, let alone bigotry and persecution, will be reminded how powerful and reassuring words really can be. Fired by his research on the subject, Frits becomes more and more assertive, re-naming himself Martin and swapping a Beatles hairdo for a floppy mohawk. He is further influenced by the new "Call me Freddie" teacher, who has civil rights and progressive ideas written all over him. Frits' schoolmates ostracise him for speaking out and not taking his punishment; he is a little stumped about what to do with the girl he has a crush on; Freddie tries to help him out by making him the singer in his "School of Rock" lesson ... and at home, his mother swings between blaming her struggling husband for causing all their troubles and defiantly standing up to anyone that needs it. Emotionally disturbed father is inspired to moments of strength by the dilemma.  by BuckTheorem "Drømmen" is a kids' film, or a youth film, but one of its real strengths is in how it shows convincing adult figures trying to do the right thing by their child, and yet against seemingly insurmountable odds and at the expense of so much. At times they are heroic, at others weak and contrary. It lays out the world of buerocracy in clear terms that introduces a young audience to the difficulties adults have to face when confronting justice and red tape. The frustrations and reactions of Frits' parents are sympathetic and authentic throughout. Frits himself is heroic not because he fights down the bullies (he doesn't; he runs off sobbing, verifying their accusations that he is a cry-baby), but because he learns to endure and develop an idealogy. That the way of pacive resistance is embraced by the entire class come showdown might be stretching credibility, however much closing text tells us this story is influenced by actual events, but by this time we happily allow it. We allow all the moments of light-relief eccentric grandparents, subversive hippy teachers saying "throw down your music books", and all the other bildungsroman staples we know so well, because when they are played so well and coast on a genuine theme of youth rights, it's gripping. The last third holds its pace to twist the screws, and there is a lot of guilty pleasure in wallowing in the showdown victory. It helps that the cast is casually great in that way European films have. As Sight and Sounds' Kate Stables notes, Janus Dissing Rathke as Frits "demonstrates a staggering range" for a young actor, and reveals a whole novel's worth of shadings of anger, grief, delight and misery on his face. As the hated headmaster, Bent Mejding is so villainous, no Bond nemesis could hope to compete. Would an adult film colour him im with more complexity? It doesn't seem to matter, especially when Mejding doesn't abuse the chance to chew scenery and keeps to a more subdued performance, creating a monster of tradition who utterly believes he is right. It is also probably due to the fact that the real scenes of abuse in the headmaster's office are never really seen. It's quite an odd choice, given how much dramatic mileage they would have - maybe that would have been too obvious; maybe that's a concession to the fact it is a children's film. One can only imagine what Ingmar Bergman would have done with such moments. The development of social conscience from teen defiance is nicely drawn; the challenges of 'selling-out' once adulthood and monetary needs set in creates a nicely balanced drama. Every time Frits goes to his stream to wash his injuries, it's like a self-induced baptism (and you can throw in the shower scene too) from which he emerges wiser and stronger. It is rare in a film that you watch a character truly growing up, but you can see it happen here. Children deserve and appreciate good solid drama when it engages, respects and inspires them. "Drømmen" is sensible, frequently truly cinematic, nicely played and thoroughly gripping. Let's not settle for abuse and injustice of any sort, it says. And that's a great inspiration for young viewers and a solid reminder for adults.  by BuckTheorem Buck Theorem Sings!ANIMALS IN PAIN
That's the name under which you'll find songs I appear on with friends. I do the words and singing part, for good or bad. It's guitar-based and mostly mellow. Nothing fancy. And you can hear them here! Geewizz!
and more "Borat"MARK KERMODE vs "BORAT"
I'm not getting away from "Borat" yet, it seems. I said I was going to enjoy a little iconoclasm, something with which to judge both my approval of the film, but also my discomfort with its seeming Anti-Americanism. I think some of the outraged reaction has been sought out and stoked by the press for easy copy. I don't think the Americans come out looking as - excuse me - retarded, backwards, whatever as I was led to believe, regardless of Cohen's agenda. I think it does provide a view of the casual prejudices that underpin conversation and attitudes. etc. I think it's Sacha Cohen's performance that wins the side for me.
Mark Kermode? He says it's "sub-'Jackass', snot-nosed, sneering, ... you know, looking at American people and saying 'aren't they all stupid? Aren't they all rednecks? Aren't they all hicks? Let's offend them and annoy them and let's go and throw a bag over Pamela Anderson; and when everything else grinds downs, let's have a fat bloke wrestling somebody else in the nude.' I'm sorry, you've all been hoodwinked."
And that convinces me far more that perhaps "Borat" isn't a great work of sociology. But I already felt it's peers were the Jackass and South Park crews... Kermode's didn't find it funny. I didn't laugh at Borat chasing people in the street for greeting kisses, but I did when a car salesman, without dropping a beat, recommends an alternative vehicle for a women who shaves her pubic region, because, well, he didn't drop a beat. But I didn't believe this proves him stupid: I think Jim Sell the salesman was trapped in a prank, at work, with a difficult customer... And the naked wrestling? Well the funny thing is that the plot hinged upon it, and it pretty much goes all the way as a hilarious metaphor for all the macho-showdowns in a million films. "Borat" is a combination of smart and dumb, which is why I find myself with a swinging judgement. I don't think Mr Kermode is wrong, nor fully right.
He's still damn cool though. The Kermode/Simon Mayo film show is a weekly treat.
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Hey, this is worth a look... some reactions from the participants in the film.
more "Borat"BUCK IN BORAT SCRAP!!! Well how about that? I am new to this blogging and didn't think anyone was reading anyhow ~ ahah, but I guess you can type in certain topics to a search engine and one shouldn't expect virtual immunity. In reference to the last footnote of my "Borat" blog, http://bucktheorem.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CB37E4BB9C94BFDC!262.entry
in which I stated I wasn't convinced by Robert VerBruggen's article ... hmm, maybe I was hasty. I think I should have explained myself better... but it was just a footnote and it was time to go out and trim the Triffids. Mr VerBruggen rightly took me to task... http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com/2006/11/response-to-my-borat-op-ed.html
The argument is that Sacha Cohen as Borat lets off the city folk and tries his pranks predominantly on the rurals to expose anti-semitism. But I think Borat just tries whatever and wherever he can to expose what he can. We see evidence of that throughout the film, but there is a limit to what ends up on the screen. If there are no scenes of anit-semitism in the city, I am prone to think there wasn't the footage. That is, that Borat tried his pranks and didn't get anything funny and/or useable for the film. It seemed an odd agenda to instigate... I thought he was reasonably and slyly democratic in his targets... or maybe he said, "No No, save the anti-jew stuff for the rednecks!" And anyway, if I am right at all, and he did try in the city but with little success or humour - and let's face it, that is what he is really going for - then perhaps it reflects well on American cityfolk. And why would that be a bad thing? Oh, I am sure anti-semitism exists amongst the urban, but as I say, it all depended on who he could dupe and where he could get into. Can you get permission (and cash enough) for filming in a New York bar, and then rouse the clients in a sing-a-long, as easily as you could in a less small town? There is only so much to pack in the film and he had a lot of prejudices and stereotypes to expose, not only anti-semitism. Maybe he didn't keep his thoughts to the rural areas; he just couldn't get the urbanites to express theirs. And as for Borat keeping his backwardness to the rural areas, as Mr VerBruggen says, I am not so sure... Sacha Cohen seems a very consistent performer to me, and again, you get the material from what worked. It would be interesting to know what pranks he tried and failed because the people wouldn't follow through.... oh, actually the feminists refused to play ball.
What does Borat gain from being more anti-rural? If Borat condescends the country folk more than city folk, and maybe indeed he does, I've stated that I wonder if that simply isn't a matter of filming ecomonics and access. What he gains moreso is a vision of an America of rednecks. Critic Merk Kermode has expressed his discomfort with Sacha Cohen's going out and targeting "rednecks", which plays far more on English prejudice against America (and perhaps particularly an anti-Bush America), which is as tangible and narrow-minded as any casual bigotry exposed by Borat. This would be a bigger problem for me - oh, we say, it's like shooting fish in a barrel - but I am not so sure the Americans in the film come off all badly. The country folk welcome Borat warmly enough for him to ingratiate himself to some degree, and even if he exposes their homophobia and all the rest, that welcoming quality can't be dismissed. Again, when he gatecrashes a church gathering, I am not sure Borat exposes anything as much as the evangelical Christian's frenzied acceptance of another convert. No, it's not Borat's apparent failure in unmasking anti-semitism absolutely everywhere that I am concerned by as his willingness to coast on Anti-American sentiment from Britain and within America itself... is there a little self-hatred or a little anti-rural attitude in the film's success there? And here I have been slightly garbled myself, I am sure. It is obvious I rate the film both as comedy and more serious satire, and Sacha Cohen as a performer, but in my writing to twitchfilm.net (see top of this blog) my concerns about it's own prejudices were there from the start. It's not an anti-Kazakh, anti-Jew, anti-queer film - if anything it's anti-American. Was that just an accident of premise - subverting the American road trip mythology? - or an actual agenda? How interesting if Borat could have done a little European tour, one imagines. Or an American city-based sequel for balance. A CONCLUSION OF SORTS; AN APOLOGY.... In the spirit of debate, I am grateful to get a tooth into some points, and I guess writers can be glib about the adjectives they use about others when at the safety of a keyboard. I wouldn't have a fraction of Sacha Cohen's nerve. I apologise for annoying and being condescending to Mr VerBruggen... I wrote in the spirit of weilding fish-knives of insight, and yes yes, I know I could be wrong about all of this, but I'm merrily typing away in the spirit of interest, curiousity and debate. I probably forgot he was a real person, typing away. I have learnt a lesson: I made generalisations instead of an argument... but as I said, at the time I thought it just a footnote. Responsive respect is the sign of smart discourse. Nevertheless, the tagline for Mr VerBuggen's piece promised he would debunk it as "a work of sociology", ("Borat may be funny, but it's not a work of sociology") which I was looking forward to because I always like iconoclasm, but the article wasn't that at all. Even if Borat fails to give a balanced depiction of anti-semitism across a complete sectrum of American society, that isn't evidence that it's not a work of sociology. That makes it a flawed work of sociology. PS: I don't count the portrayal of Kazakhstan in this argument. Borat's hometown is a totally obvious and fictional, full of funny and ludicrous stereotypes and grotesques... there are a hundred sketch shows that do this (England's "Little Britain" being immensely popular for this). Creating a fictional backwards bigoted Kazakhstan for gags and premise is not the same as trying to expose the backwards bigotry of real and mostly unsuspecting Americans for gags and satire. .....Hey, PS: Now I am not so sure that Borat kissing random people in New York was so harmless, or a safer prank. I certainly wondered how he wasn't flattened all over the pavement and subway, or arrested. I am not sure that he exposes homophobia with this particular stunt inasmuch as he exposes people's unwillingness to have their privacy invaded when going about their business. It may have something to say about alienation, but I am not sure the stunt works when he just chooses random people in public places, as isn't that an issue about keeping your hands to yourself? ...And the benign mocking of Atlantan black's fashion statements - an expression of proud identity - surely was a hazardous venture also? If insult had been taken.... Hmm, but I don't think it necessarily insulted them, more a consensual gag with Borat the court jester, showing how delicate and smart Sacha Cohen can be in performance. November 15 "Ring" - Koji SuzukiRING / RINGU
Koji Suzuki,1991
HarperCollins edition 2003, translated by Robert B Rohmer & Glynne Walley
Well I'm one of those horror fans that finds so much of its literature very badly written... it's great to find something competent with a bit of artistry. Sheesh. I decided to try Koji Suzuki's "Ring", being a fan of the film. Hey, I thought, a return to great old ghost stories. But it's a shame that the book isn't very well written at all. Something lost in translation? Maybe. But the way the characters think and go about things is so, well, clunky and half-baked. Motivation and psychological insights seem coloured in with felt tips and a slimline edition of "Author's Bizarre Generalities". For example: here is journalist Asakawa trying to get some information from a wife at the end of the phone:
Where to start with this? It's a daft observation that doesn't hold up to any scrutiny (either the journalist or the wives are particularly stupid), and it's weak as a satirical comment on misogyny; the female characters are vapourous and token. Publisher's Weekly notes that the novel has "somewhat pedestrian and unintentionally comic prose style that seems derived from manga comics"(1) And at it's most average, Manga always feels made-up-as-it-goes-along with off-kilter and melodramatic and half-baked motivations; Suzuki himself says:
He compares it to composing music. To Mozart. Or we can be generous like bookslut and say that, in this case, "Ring left most of its inner workings disguised and the deeper lives of its characters largely undisclosed."(3) But most inexcuseable is the totally confused psychological doublespeak that Suzuki used to incoporate and justify the character of Ryuiji, an avowed, self-confessed rapist who likes to nostalgically recite his first rape to his pal Asakawa. Asakawa has the strangest reaction to his long-term sex-offending pal, someone he can just catch up with casually at any point. His first reaction upon being told? "Naturally, Asakawa never told anyone about Ryuiji's crime." [pg. 120] Uhuh. We are to accept that journalists don't report rapes, just as housewives are easily duped by cliches? The same journalist who then thinks, "Someone who says he wants to watch the extinction of mankind doesn't deserve to live a long life."? [pg. 122](4) And even later than this, suddenly thinks he shouldn't let this friend hang around his wife and daughter? Presentation and psychology is incredibly garbled and immature. Is this trying to say something about patriachal Japanese society? Or is the plot simply in need of someone truly vile and disposable? Someone armed with knowledge of both technology and the paranormal, no less. It's less Mozart and more Cannibal Corpse. Despite the air of Japanese sophistication, Shaun Hutson would be proud.
It has to be said that all the video stuff is rather quaint now, quite cute. There's no problem with the novel, as it was written in 1991 and now stands fine as a period piece. The film adaptations just about get away with it, coming in just as VHS is disappearing into thin air (Haneke's "Cache" doesn't get away with it, somehow). Will there be a time in horror when VHS tapes are like antique icons of evil, like ancient amulets and so on; and evil-doers will spend a long time on wild goose chases hunting for that ever-elusive antique video player to unleash untold, slightly chewed-up mayhem?
[4] Akasawa's statement here is in reaction to Ryuiji's priceless exclamation that, "While viewing the excitinction of the human race from the top of the hill, I would dig a hole in the earth and ejaculate into it over and over." [pg. 117]
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STEPHEN KING... reprints, and an old story.
Koji Suzuki is Japan's Stephen King, they say... everytime Suzuki is mentioned. I say it's just a lazy comparison due to Suzuki's current high profile and something to stick on dust jackets. Speaking of dust jackets, I see that Hodder have reissued some classic King in rather atmospheric and appealing new designs. Counter to popular trend, King's name does not cover half of the cover, and although clear, is restricted to a neat little strip halfway down, which oddly - and I guess, artilly - sometimes covers the picture's focus. For example, on the cover of "The Shining", Torrence Jnr. has his scalp cropped off, and you have to look twice to find the infamous car on "Christine". They are rather stunning designs. I've attached them here as way of a little gallery.
But I won't be rushing to gobble up King's new opus, "Lisey's Story" anytime soon. It's about a celebrated award-winning author... oh wait, let's just leave it there. Despite "Misery" being rather good hate mail to obsessive fans, King has always been tedious in his repeatedly casting writers as protagonists. Not that this can't work - "The Shining" is a brilliant piece on writer's block - but he just does it all the time. He casts his young writer in "IT" as the best shag out of the gang in its group-sex scene; he has visited his own characters in text; he has writer's creations coming back from... oh just pick up every other King title. When King does it, it's like one foot dragging back with vanity and/or limitation. The synopsis for "Lisey's Story" does read like some self-indulgent literati, post-modern effort, and I am sure he can bring the premise back down to earth. But despite it being a thinly veiled and winning love poem to his wife, it does smack of him trying ever-so-hard to be taken seriously. I always think he's the Steven Spielberg of horror. ...of course, I really should shake this prejudice and see for myself, for "Lisey's Story" might be his best. But, you know, it's always about... nhhh.
...but I read "Salem's Lot" not so long back, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The fact that King made his own miniseries apparently in reaction to his dislike of the Kubrick interpretation, and that that miniseries resembled like a weak King cash-in says that sometimes King's creative radar isn't always on the ball. If there is any similarity between King and Suzuki apart from popularity it's that perhaps it sometimes take others to extract and reinvent their material to being out the best in the concept.
November 13 European cinema in a state of crisis or change...?I won't worry yet....
even though Further to the mistreatment of "The Return" (see http://bucktheorem.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!CB37E4BB9C94BFDC!195.entry) by Channel 4, I see it's their habit to bury alternative films in the graveyard hours... two in the morning for the very respected "Mysterious Skin". Ah, but we live in the era of dvd recorders. It's so, but my beef was with the lack of support given to international films by general television, and it really is inexcuseable for Channel4, who used to, you know, fund British output. No wonder British films seem to struggle so (though this year is good, as the London Film Festival showed). This is in the era when in the past couple of months I read anxiety-led articles in Film Comment and Sight and Sound about the European market in crisis.
It's bizarre, because I can't imagine a previous era had an audience that was so aware, that indulged in specialising in niche genres catered for my specific internet sellers and forums. Funding and distribution seems to be major problems, although surely there is definitely no shortage of talent or variety. Mr Busy, in December's S&S, writes of how the industry feels the digital era will kill European cinema off. The way I understand it, the digital era will democracise the whole scene, we'll all be downloading, and the whackier and smaller, independent end will be starved and die. This would leave only the big chiefs who will have the money to survive, the biggest clout in how things proceed, and as we all know, will have the biggest stranglehold on downloading and distribution. Mr Busy offers a more Utopian digitalised vision: if you can legally download "Superman Returns", he suggests, then why shouldn't we be able to see the latest European offering without relying upon sales agents, distributors, cinema owners and chains? This might also mean catalogues of rarities and alternatives should also expand too, even though dvd seems to be doing a healthy job of reclaiming film's entire backlog.
I'm far from an expert on this, but I believe that with an optimistic outlook, it would mean that I would not have had a minor struggle to find a copy of "El Bola", or rely a lot on ebay for rare international titles, and that in theory, I should have more Russian rarities to choose to download from a Russian site than I know what to do with. November 12 "Borat" - is nice, yes?Borat:
Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Larry Charles, 2006
Triflic started the "Borat" debate rolling over at Twitchfilm, and I couldn't help piping up...
... and then last night, as "The Prestige" was fully booked and the nice cinema ticket attendant suggested so sweetly, "Borat?", I decided to take her advice and go see so I could actually back up what I was talking about. Of course, latest news is that a couple of the frat guys in the film are suing the film makers for defamation of character or something. They say the film makers got them drunk beforehand, promised the film would be shown only in Europe, that they signed waivers when drunk. Hmm, truth is, I don't think anything could have salvaged these frat boys reputations, long term... they were bound to dig themselves a grave anyhow, with or without the help of a tricksy sly film unit. If anything, it was the sequence where Borat did less to provoke his unsuspecting audience.
But Sacha Baron Cohen does have balls of steel ... and you will be warned that you will just about get to see them too. It's hard to level charges of, say, homophobia at a film with the most seriously gratuitous naked male wrestling probably legal in cinema, that's even before Americans react violently to Borat's customary kisses on cheeks. But to be fare, he is doing this to complete strangers on the street or on the train half the time, so his invasion of their space is the first cause for what seem like bursts of homophobia. And then there is Borat's unsuspecting participation in Gay Parades and, er, well... But these scenes do void any charges of homophobia. But back to the balls.... to sing a mutilated American Anthem at a Rodeo, to insult so many, to go rampaging in an antiques store and naked through public ceremonies.... it's a wonder Cohen isn't facing charges of indecent exposure, assault, or a little investigation for Un-American activities.
It is, of course, an amazing sham. The biggest blindspot is the cameraman. It looks like a documentary, but there are the occasionally reaction shots and multiple angles that beg explanation. We never get to see who's filming, no glimpse of Larry Charles (- and hey! he does "Curb Your Enthusiasm"!). And all the stuff with Pamela Anderson... well, there has to be clearance. It is hard to differentiate the sleight-of-hand from the genuine.
The racism charge rages on. I think what I have already written still stands, but I read that Borat is actually speaking Hebrew, which just ups the gag and ramifications even more. Similarly, the supposedly backwards Kazaks are presented as a unified, happy community - and as far as I can ascertain from comments And yet the people of the Romanian town of Glod, which stands in for Kakakhstan, are apparently also suing the film for portraying them negatively.[*] I'm not so sure that it isn't actually the feminists that look better for leaving early on Borat. And the scary black 'hood guys take Borat in happily for some fashion tips. And more than that is the somewhat incredible scene where a homeless down-and-out Borat wanders into an evangelical Christian ceremony, where they are running around and gibbering in seeming religious ecstasy, and they take him in for salvation without apparently noting his funny accent and moustache. If he was attempting to expose their racism, in this context they came out as accepting; if it was narratively dictated, it's hard to tell. Similarly, the dinner party manners society tries with Borat until he starts bringing shit and prostitutes to the table. And then there is the wonderful driving instructor who, if genuine, knows exactly how to deal with a Borat in the car. I'm not so sure the Americans come out looking so intolerant and bigoted as I had been led to believe. It's all complicated, and rightly so.[**]
But up front, it's a funny film. It is both base and sophisticated in equal measure, dumb-humoured and provocative. I think it's nearest peer is the South Park agenda. I think I squirmed throughout the running entire time, being quite a timid and socially delicate soul, but couldn't help laughing at the excess. I think it will stand the test of time, as it rushes headlong into the social frictions between class, race, religion and sexuality without any recourse to poitical correctness, I think it is a seriously post-9/11 film.
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November 10 The Postal ServiceTHE POSTAL SERVICE
I must say, I always really liked the Postal Service stuff, but the more I hear their songs, the greater my appreciation and affection.
"We Will Become Silhouettes" is one of those great ironic pop-tracks that sound like candy but are dark on the inside. The video makes explicit the story it tells: a cold war vision, given the sweetest family afternoon laziness where the boy looks bored and Mom and daughter go ba-ba-ba to accompany the men's household karaoke. Then they head out on their bikes, looking like people left-over from a Ray Bradbury adaptation. The video maintains the irony and bittersweet taste of the original. Ho, even the deceptively Christmassy cover of the single is laced with horror and irony. Has being blown up by Nuclear bombs ever sounded so beautiful?
"Such Great Heights" is a truly beautiful track and a minor immediate classic, methinks. It's an on-the-road track, but the chorus provides an alluring declaration of bliss and denial. Check out this incredible acapella version by the Archodants... truly wonderful, and I'd think these were a fantastic live experience (and don't forget to check the original too)
Achordants cover: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcOumGc1zd0
Postal Service video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMOkfI7wCrI&mode=related&search=
Postal Service also do a cool cover of Phil Collins' "Against All Odd". Ah, it's great when cool bands re-value duff tracks.
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