cronenberg/kubrick movie dream

4 am. Just woke up from a disturving dream. I was in a film, the I dreamed the entire film from start to finish and was a character in it. Not a main character, just a participant, but the film was from my perspective. Can’t remember all of it but early scene involved being in a normal house for a cactus enthusiast group meeting. Bunch of average mostly ugly people there. Everyone showing their cactus, talking about them. An obese woman with a dog with a giant tree0like tumor growing out of their dog’s hip.

Later, scene in an apartment. in a city. Big place. Woman artist, shaved head, confident, confrontational, very sexual persona, hosting a party. says she is working on art piece. gives invitations to art show to select people. Then some announcement that art piece will not be occurring, and people start leaving/disappearing. Scared. Not sure wha tis happening.

Next scene I walk into another apartment some time later. I walk into one of the rooms and it is just a short hallway into the room with each side being a raised stage covered in women in bizarre, sexual body horror stuff. natural deformities, body modifications, tumors, sores, body covered in nipples, conjoined twin family of women and girls all dressed as 50’s flight attendants. All the women are the shaved head artist, it’s all gross, confrontational, bizarre,aggressively sexual, but I somehow feel safe here, like I know it’snot directed at me, that the artist is only expressing herself(s) with these pieces. Dream/film ends feeling unresolved (in a good way), I lie in bed ruminating on it, feel disturbed, grossed out.

I get up and write this all down because I know I’ll forget it otherwise and it’s too big and neat to let disappear into my mind. It’s like a comvination of Eyes Wide Shut and Cronenberg Sr’s Crimes of the Future. Slow paced, disturbing, aggressively sexual, body horror psychological thriller. amazed my sleeping brain just came up with that whole thing on its own.

dog with the tumor on its hip must have been a reference to stella. woman with nipples all over their body was like the person with ears all over thei rbody in crimes of the Future. Why does a brain take our memories, fuck with them, and play them back to us? . I’ve written this entirely with my eyes closed in an effort to remember each scene as clearly as possible which has ben difficult because it’s slowly receded/become foggy to my waking brain. Back to bed now.

***

Wow, that’s some impressive typing for having my eyes closed and being half asleep and trying to explain the weird dream I had. My description doesn’t do the dream justice but that’s normal, dreams often feel bigger than you can express. I hope when I read this in the future the visuals come back to me.

violence should (almost) always be a vehicle for something bigger

I just loaned dear little Benjamin Buttons my copy of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. I read it recently and loved it. But he said that a relative of his noticed he was digging into it and made a comment that he shouldn’t read it, that it was the most violent and disturbing book they had ever read. I thought that was interesting because yeah, the book is really violent (although by modern standards it’s not as shocking as it was when it came out in 1991) but I feel like it’s clear the book does not condone violence. It’s in there to illustrate an aspect of society, of humanity, to hold a mirror up to the reader’s face so we go, “gee whiz, humans can be so awful. Why is this guy doing this stuff?” And then you dig in to understand characters and situations you may have never considered before.

And I feel like that is what most good art that is violent, gory, or otherwise disturbing is doing. If it’s just a book or a flick that is trying to shock you with over-the-top, “what shocking stuff hasn’t been done yet?” visuals, I don’t find it disturbing (usually) because it’s weightless — I need believable characters or motives attached to the violent imagery so it can cut to my core like I want it to. I mean, if I’m going to feel awful after a film, I need to have cared about what’s going on in it in the first place, and I can’t do that if I’m just seeing a bunch of cheap shitty acting, plots, and special effects.

That said, I do think there’s a place for the occasional silly, self-aware, over-the-top violent piece. Evil Dead, Dawn of the Dead, that kind of thing. Yeah they’re absurdly violent and gory but it’s done in a funny way, in a “this is fun to watch with friends and be grossed out” way, and I think there’s value in that too. It’s stuff like Slow Torture Puke Chamber that I don’t have time for. That name got me really pumped up several years ago, and I was soooo disappointed. Just juvenile, silly. Not remotely disturbing.

what is this annoying script-writing technique called?

Jenn and I started watching Nine Perfect Strangers tonight. We’re two episodes in and so far I quite like it — except for this one thing that has already happened a lot, where characters launch into a personal attack on another character in a way that people in real life only wish they would tell someone else off. “It’s always so easy for you, isn’t it? It’s easy to be so dismissive and cold when you’re just so perfect. Well, I’ve got news for you, Geraldine. You’re not perfect. You’re not even close to it. You’re actually just a sad, insecure, mean old woman who hides her true self behind that mask, but I see right through that mask.” That kind of crap. Oooooh wow, that character really told that other character off.

It doesn’t end there though. Now the character who just stood by with a bewildered look on their face and took the verbal assault launches a volley of their own back. “You’re right, Gus. I’m not perfect. Most people don’t notice it but you, you’ve always been particularly observant. All those nights I spent slamming yet another bottle of sambuca, struggling to keep this family together — you saw me then. But you never came rushing to take the sambuca out of my fists and ask me how I was doing, did you? No, despite being more observant than your brothers, despite seeing exactly what was going on, you never tried to help me stop guzzling that delicious, enchanting sambuca. So it’s true, I’m not perfect, and I do wear a mask, but I think that’s better than being a fucking coward, don’t you?” WWHHOOAAAHHH, she told him off even better!! This show is HOT, it’s got all the tension I crave. That sambuca bit felt a bit like an ad but the rest of that was sick.

^{Listen, we all love a good mug of sambuca now and then. Jeez, I could really go for one right now actually.}

This isn’t a new technique, I’ve been noticing it for years now, but usually I avoid shows that employ it because the ‘big tell-off/responding big tell-off’ bugs me so much. Those kinds of conversations are utterly absurd yet they’re delivered as if they are realistic, and I find that insulting.

If anyone knows what this technique is called, please let me know so I can hate on it more succinctly to all the poor unfortunate souls who are doomed to watch modern tv with me. For now I guess I’ll go with ‘the big tell-off/responding big tell-off.’ It’s a bit clunky but it gets the gist across, I think.

I still like Nine Perfect Strangers so far, despite this. We’ll see how it goes though.

movies I’ve enjoyed

Sometimes I watch a flick and dig it, but then when someone asks for a recommendation I can’t remember the names of the ones I’ve like, so I’m going to make a list of them here to keep track of it. I guess my list of films I like is short enough that I can probably include all movies I’ve ever enjoyed, although the main focus of this is films I’ve seen more recently. Those are the ones I tend to forget.

• Arrival (2016) – smart sci-fi.
• Predestination (2014) – story-driven sci-fi. Impressive twist.
• La Jetee (1962) – one of the best sci-fi films ever, IMO. And it’s just still photos and narration!
• The Core (2003) – this is a fucking stupid sci-fi movie but it’s so dumb, it’s good.
• The Blackcoat’s Daughter (2015) – probably my fave modern horror movie.
• Suspiria (2018) – wait, this might be my fave modern horror movie.
• YellowBrickRoad (2010) – super, super low budget horror movie, but effective and weird.
• I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives In the House (2016) – it’s been a while since I saw this one but I remember really liking the tense, spooky atmosphere of it.
• Snowpiercer (2013) – another fucking stupid sci-fi/action movie that is so dumb, it’s good.
• Doctor Sleep (2019) – sequel to The Shining. Does an excellent job of paying tribute to both King’s book and Kubrick’s film, and stands on its own feet quite well, surprisingly. A friend described it as being like high quality fan fiction, which I think is perfectly apt.
• The Witch in the Window (2018) – a low budget yet extremely competent little horror movie. I jumped a few times.
• Vivarium (2019) – I’m not sure how to classify this one, psychological thriller/horror is the closest I can get but it’s not so much horror or thriller as just really fucking weird and uncomfortable.
• The Platform (2019) – social commentary in a horror movie. Not enough of this kind of thing.
• Possessor (2020) – psychological thriller/horror from Brandon Cronenberg, son of David Cronenberg.
• Antiviral (2012) – also by B. Cronenberg, a psychological thriller.
• ABC’s of Death (2012) – 26 short horror segments, some funny, some scary, some dumb, some great, but overall a neat concept that is well executed.
• ABC’s of Death 2 (2014) – same as above but this installment varies in terms of quality a bit more — the good stuff is great while the bad stuff is lousy but overall it’s still very enjoyable.
• I Stand Alone (1998) – a grim, feel-bad watch from Gaspar Noe. Especially impressive considering it’s form 1998.
• Irreversible (2002) – wow, I didn’t realize this was from 2002. This is also impressive for that era. More brutality from Gaspar Noe.
• Martyrs (2008) – while I don’t consider this one amazing, its brutality has stuck with me since so I’m putting it on the list. It’s definitely my fave of the New French Extremity movement.
• Serbian Film (2010) – the single most disturbing flick I’ve ever seen. Made me feel awful for a few days, maybe a week.
• Antichrist (2009) – Brutal, nihilistic, psychological thriller from Lars von Trier.
• The House That Jack Built (2018) – Another brutal, nihilistic psychological thriller from Lars von Trier. He’s good at this.
• Dancer in the Dark (2000) – Another von Trier affair. Still brutal and nihilistic, but also terrifically sad.
• Lost Highway (1997) – one of my fave Lynch films. Psychological thriller, I guess?
• Dune (1984) – everyone shits on Lynch’s Dune but fuck them. I love it.
• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) – another of Lynch’s work that was panned but I think is amazing. Weird psychological thriller obv, but don’t watch it without watching the first two seasons of the Twin Peaks tv show first.
• The Exorcist (1973) – still the scariest movie ever, IMO.
• The Blair Witch Project (1999) – also really fucking scary. Done on a shoestring budget, yet it’s so effective! Amazing.
• The 4th Kind (2009) – most people hate this alien horror movie but I found it terrifying.
• The Shining (1980) – right up there with The Exorcist. Everything is perfect. The acting is insane.
• Blade Runner (1982) – sci-fi drama. Visually and aurally stunning.
• The Deer Hunter (1978) – a fucking slow burn, uncomfortable throughout, sad, touching. I don’t usually like drama but this one is special.
• Akira (1988) – I find anime is undervalued in the world of cinema, like “if it’s animated, it doesn’t count,” and that’s stupid because this is an incredible sci-fi story. I grew up with the first English dub so that’s my preferred version.
• Princess Mononoke (1997) – more fantastic anime. This one is fantasy but it’s brutal and has a strong message.
• Alien (1979) – how can a single alien on a space ship be so scary? Ridley really hit it out of the park with this one.
• The Wall (1982) – I’m going out on a limb here because I haven’t seen this in decades, but I remember being brought to tears by it a few times so I’m throwing it in here. Sad, fucked up, moving.
• Under the Skin (2013) – Psychological thriller/horror? Hard to define. Slow, artsy, disturbing, sad. Criminally underrated.
• The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) – Really fucking slow but for someone like me who gets off on the devil and evil, the payoff was well worth it.
• The Passion of the Christ (2004) – I know, how does a fervent antichrist like myself have such an affinity for Christian shit? Blame my upbringing. Anyway, Satan is amazing in this one.
• Coherence (2013) – super low budget and it shows but there are some genuinely uncomfortable/unsettling moments that make this one worth it, IMO.
• First Reformed (2017) – slow, sad, brooding, uncomfortable.
• Apocalypse Now (1979) – Such a great portrait of the insanity of mankind. Up there with Blade Runner and The Deer Hunter as my fave movie of all time.

More to be added as I remember them.

Ultima Dies

I’d like to make a movie that starts out typically enough, with a great scourge spreading darkness and evil throughout the land, and the fate of the planet rests on the shoulders of some unlikely hero — a child, a nymph, a baby yoda, something cute and kind and universally lovable. And at the climax of the movie, in the great battle scene, that hero would get killed. That’s it, that’s what I want. I don’t know where it should go from there, maybe the evil forces would simply continue to roll over the weak, maybe some other hero for the good would present themselves. I don’t really care. I just know that as a viewer, I would love to be shocked and heartbroken by seeing the good, pure, innocent hero that we are all used to seeing overcome impossible odds, actually meet a more likely fate. Shit, it could even happen near the start of the movie. See? There are already so many adventurous possibilities, totally ignored by mainstream filmmakers. Cowards.

girls on film

Yesterday I recorded a short video of myself for a friend. It’s his 50th birthday soon and his partner asked us to contribute something to his birthday video, you know those things that have been popular during the pandemic due to not being able to get together. I was dreading making the vid because I always loathe how I look on film, both photos and vids. I’m a terribly unphotogenic son of a bitch. It’s funny because I don’t think I’m too hard to look at normally but capture it on film and blammo, I’m a monster. Ok not that bad but I def look dumb.

But I went and made a quick vid for him last night, just walking around the living room while filming myself with an old digital camera, and it turned out great! Ok not that great, I didn’t say anything wise or funny or special but at least I didn’t look like a hideous freak. My gestures and facial expressions were surprisingly normal and pleasant. I couldn’t believe it. For the first time that I can think of, I didn’t mind seeing myself on film. It was shocking, and a real treat.

That might seem like a silly non-event to blog about but when you’ve had decades to build up an aversion to seeing yourself on film, this is a big deal. So yeah, that’s it.

My review of the film, Mother! (2017)

My pal recommended Mother! to me a while back and I finally watched it last night (well, part of it — I was so bored and annoyed by it that I had to fast forward to the end when there was at least some violence and gore to hold my attention). I just emailed him my thoughts about it and decided I would post that email here since it basically serves as an extremely casual review of the film. In a nutshell: it sucked. Long, boring, annoying, pretentious, lacked any emotional or intellectual value.

***

I thought Mother! started fine but I was really annoyed with the main character and how much rudeness she put up with from the man and woman who ended up staying with them, and not talking about it with her husband. I found that impossible to relate to. But I realized almost immediately that the whole thing was likely a dream and that absurd things could happen in that world, which I think is kind of a lazy, easy out for a film maker.

There were a lot of recurring “themes” in the movie (I hate using that term for this because I feel like it denotes something serious and artistic whereas this film was not that, it was just a director making a point to mention or show a few things throughout the movie repeatedly to make is seem serious and artistic), like pregnancy, children, yellow powder, shattered glass, rot, but like I just said they all felt meaningless to me.

I thought the film was way too long at 2 hrs. It didn’t need all that time to get its point across, and I’m sure I would have liked it more and maybe not needed to fast forward through the second half if it had been edited down. It took too long to establish that it was basically a dream, and went on and on with rude people and absurd situations that felt pointless.

Oh jeez, I just read the plot on the wikipedia page and it’s even more pretentious than the film! It only refers to the husband as ‘Him’ and the woman as ‘mother.’ This is ridiculous. Lol, and the directors comments on the ‘themes’ of the film are laughable. He sounds like a junior high school student talking about how brilliant their shit is. What a joke. Huh, looking at his filmography, Requiem for a Dream is the only one I like. I thought the others sucked. What a shocker.

The only things I liked were how obscenely sexy the main chick was (what a body, hubba hubba), and some of the violence and gore at the end. Like when the soldier’s face is shot off, she gets the shit kicked out of her by the crowd, the baby’s neck is snapped and then it’s just a pile of guts on the table, and when the guy pulls her heart out. The rest of it was dumb. Man, Aronofsky is a pretentious twat. He’s like a wannabe David Lynch without the intellectual chops or emotional instinct.

***

There you go. Why doesn’t someone pay me to review movies? I’m good at this.

Thumbs down for everything

 

Trilogies are pretentious and annoying

I notice a lot of artists are obsessed with creating trilogies. Filmmaker Lars von Trier has his “depression trilogy” of films. Robert Smith and his band The Cure have their “dark trilogy,” consisting of their Pornography, Disintegration, and Bloodflowers albums. Filmmaker Ingmar Bergman had Through A Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and The Silence. There’s J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy of books. Tons of musicians compose trilogies of songs, or a song with three ‘movements’ in it. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer have their aptly titled tune, “The Three Fates.” Dream Theater have their “A Mind Beside Itself” trilogy of songs, consisting of Erotomania, Voices, and The Silent Man.

These are just a few examples that came to mind while writing this, and of course I’m not talking about franchise bullshit like Home Alone 1, 2, and 3. I’m talking about pretentious art stuff. I wonder why it’s so common, why artists are drawn to doing things in threes. I don’t know but I don’t like it. What about duos, quadruplets, quintuplets, etc? I haven’t come across any of those that I can remember so I feel like it’s mostly a path dependency thing, where artists are accustomed to other artists doing it so they instinctively copy the blueprint. Even when artists don’t intend to make a trilogy but later acknowledge they have inadvertently done so, I find it annoying. I don’t even want to hear about it. Trilogies are just so overdone.

I actually love almost all the pieces I listed in the first paragraph. I just have to not think of any of them as, ahem, you know what.

Movies are wasteful, and for lazy people.

Before anyone blows a gasket, I’ll clarify that I’m one of the lazy bastards that I’m going to bitch about.

It just occurred to me that every film or tv show costs millions of dollars to make, and there is a massive footprint left behind by them: scouting locations and actors; entire film crews flying all over the world to film a scene that lasts only a few minutes; cars and buildings blown up; elaborate costumes and makeup and special effects that will never be used on another film; countless meetings between executives and producers at high end restaurants so they can discuss what font to use on the poster; etc. Then there is the countless hours of physical labour that go into it — writers, producers, set designers, casting, lighting crews, film crews, sound crews, stunt doubles, etc.

My point is that even the shittiest film or tv show requires an immense amount of effort and resources to create — and then we, the audience, end up sitting on a couch in our sweat pants, slack-jawed, eyes glazed over, brains mostly turned off while we stare at the talking heads on the screen in front of us. It’s really quite absurd how much work goes into creating our passive entertainment.

Meanwhile, in the not-so-distant past, reading books used to be the go-to entertainment form, and books have a far smaller footprint and require us to actually use our brains.

This makes me feel guilty for not reading more. Of course there are still some great flicks out there that no one should feel guilty about watching but that’s probably less than 1% of all film and tv — the rest of it, we should definitely feel a great deal of shame over.

I think I need to start reading more.

Mandy, Beyond the Black Rainbow, and the hypocrisy of the reviews these films have garnered thus far

I loved Beyond the Black Rainbow, and this guy’s performance in particular.

In the last few weeks, I’ve seen two films made by Panos Cosmatos — Beyond the Black Rainbow, and Mandy. The former was widely panned by critics and has a low approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while the latter has been lauded by critics and audiences alike.

Meanwhile, I’m baffled as to how these films could be received so differently when they are so similar to each other.

• Both films are set in 1983.
• Both are retro as all hell, a la Stranger Things, down to all kinds of wonderful details like the fashion and furniture of the time.
• Both films utilize a plodding, glacial pace.
• The dialogue in both films is delivered in a slow, dream-like way.
• Both films clock in at about 2 hrs.
• Both films tell simple fantasy stories (BtBR is about an evil doctor that imprisons a girl who has psychic powers, Mandy is about a guy seeking vengeance against some religious fanatics who killed his spouse, and their biker-demon henchmen) but tell them in ways and dress them up with interesting storytelling devices that make the films seem more complex.
• Both films are quite violent, and have scenes where sharp spikes are driven into some poor bastard’s mouth — Cosmatos seems to have a fascination with penetrating orifices with sharp things. I like it.
• Both films wear their influences on their sleeves, quite overtly: for example, the biker-demons in Mandy are clearly inspired by the Cenobytes from Hellraiser, while the “devil’s teardrop” knife from BtBR and Red’s axe from Mandy are clearly inspired by the films of Cronenberg. And of course, though less obvious to the layman, the slow pace and dream-like qualities of both films hearken to the films of both Lynch and Kubrick.
• Both films share a nod to 80’s metal: in BtBR, it’s the ‘heshers’ listening to Venom by a campfire; in Mandy, its the Motley Crue and Black Sabbath shirts she is usually seen wearing.

I think both films are fine (though I much prefer BtBR, most likely due to it leaning a bit more toward the sci-fi and horror genres) and very similar so I don’t understand why one was shat on while the other is celebrated. I bet it has everything to do with Cage being in Mandy, and all the sycophants pushing each other out of the way to eagerly suck a star’s dick.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: critics are fucking idiots. They are as biased as anyone else — nay, more so since they are paid to write their drivel and Hollywood hype machines don’t mind throwing a few coins at the monkeys when it’s to their advantage — so their opinions are actually less valid than yours or mine. Don’t pay any god damned attention to them. Just watch what you want to watch, and feel about it however you feel. You don’t need a fucking critic to tell you what moves you and what doesn’t.

I’m on a mission here.