Alienated in Vancouver

The Wages of Fear

2012-02-03T08:11:00.000-08:00

I've missed a few opportunities to write about Vancouver film events lately - hope a few of you got to see Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole last night, or some of the ongoing Tarkovskys (his two final films play the Cinematheque tonight, Nostalghia and The Sacrifice; both were made in exile - in Italy and Sweden, respectively - after Tarkovsky left the Soviet Union. While Nostalghia is one of his more "atypical" films, it makes a great pairing with The Sacrifice, and not just because both films feature Bergman regular Erland Josephson. Actually, The Sacrifice, after Stalker and maybe Ivan's Childhood, would be the film I'd most likely direct Tarkovsky noobs towards; Solaris, despite being the most visible of his films, is actually not so watchable, is the only film of his I've seen that I would count as less than a masterwork).

However, I come not to write of Tarkovsky but to enthuse over the gripping French classic thriller, The Wages of Fear (poster above), also soon to play at the Cinematheque. There was a time when directing people to this film would have been done via a reference to William Friedkin's Sorcerer, which reimagines it - quite cleverly, I think - but that film is not so well-remembered now, so I guess the portal I'll pick will be the presence of director Clouzot's name throughout Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (forgive me if I'm misspelling that incorrectly) - he's one of the filmmakers to feature on the cinema's marquee in that film, I believe in reference to Le Corbeau. Clouzot made several masterful French thrillers - also highly recommend Diabolique - and is a filmmaker who anyone with a taste for films noir should explore. (Diabolique got a particularly shitty and pointless Hollywood remake a few years ago, too - they might as well have just colourized it and dubbed it into English).

I have nothing new to say about any of these films, for those who have already seen them - but for budding Vancouver cinephiles who don't know them, this is a great chance to get out and see'm projected on the screen...

Geek Dream

2012-02-03T07:28:00.000-08:00

In the dream, I'm at some sort of flea market located in farmer's fields. There's a corner that's filled with records and books and such, and I've shopped through it, found little, and left, when I discover, walking down a shrubbery-lined aisle, that one little grassy "alcove" is stacked with magazines, comic books and 45's. (No, not guns - vinyl singles, most with picture sleeves!). I dig in, excited to be looking through stuff that, because it's not in the main area, hasn't been picked over yet, and I find some gems. The stuff I remember includes a couple of issues of Howard the Duck, including issue #1 (though my sleeping brain is not as good as accessing memory as my waking one, so I get the cover wrong); a very old issue of Discorder magazine (I get the size wrong); and a New York Dolls 7" (with picture sleeve - "Personality Crisis," maybe? My brain does better with that one, providing a miniature approximation of the cover of their first album). I excitedly pile up my goodies in a couple of stacks, which I plan to buy, when suddenly there is a flash flood, and I have to cling to the shrubs as the water rises, and rises, and rises.... When it subsides, for whatever reason (I now forget) I have left the area, and somehow run into a childhood friend named Greg, long estranged. I tell him about the stash and that he can have the New York Dolls single if we can just find where it was. My father is there, too, but we pass him by. I get us roughly to the area but instead of finding the alcove we disturb some sort of religious ceremony being put on by formally dressed - like, suits and ties - Native Americans, whom my sleeping brain postulates are Kiowa, for no reason known. Even then, I'm not sure. Rather than disturb their ceremony, Greg and I leave to look for the stuff elsewhere - "it couldn't have all washed away, could it?" - and that's when my alarm goes off. Now I'll never know if I found it, but given my dreams - which often end with unfinished quests, me looking for something - probably not.

...tho' come to think of it, usually it's a PERSON I'm responsible for that I can't find, because I'm too distracted by STUFF. In this dream, it's the stuff that I can't find.... Hm....

Go Figure

2012-02-02T00:56:00.001-08:00

...for all its obviousness, this is the first article I've read that suggests the massive decline in honeybee populations is due to insecticides...

Certified Copy reconsidered

2012-01-31T23:55:00.000-08:00

I confess, having viewed Certified Copy again for class, that I did it an injustice in my reaction to the Straight's top 10 movies of 2010. It really is a remarkable film, it just makes my brain itch in ways I can't quite scratch, which is a maddening sensation for one such as myself. I hate an itchy brain.

See The Grey

2012-01-30T16:52:00.000-08:00

...an excellent film. Director Joe Carnahan made an impression with Narc several years ago, a gritty, intense throwback to '70's American police thrillers (think The French Connection, Busting, and vintage Sidney Lumet), and wrote the screenplay for a better-than-average tale of police corruption, Pride and Glory, which no one else seemed to like, but has done nothing since that I noticed (unless you count The A-Team). With The Grey, he crafts one of the best men-against-the-wilderness movies I've seen, not as overblown with macho white man posturing as The Edge, not as genre-bound as (much as I love it) Rituals... (I'm not including Deliverance in the list of films I'd compare it to, since that film is less about the confrontation with nature than depraved hillbillies, and it would open the door to a discussion to a whole host of urban/rural horror films, which is not a genre that applies here). It's themed around the human confrontation with death, with a group of men who survive an airplane crash in the arctic having to struggle with the elements and a pack of wolves into whose territory they are trespassing; it may take some liberties with the human relationship with wolves - since I remember reading (I think in Barry Lopez's Of Wolves and Men) that since European settlement of North America, there are no recorded attacks of wolves on humans - but it does so believably, and Carnahan appears to have done his homework re: wolves in other regards - he's allowed a bit of poetic license. It's perhaps one of the "heavier" films to get mainstream theatrical distribution lately, has believably human characters, great location images (it's shot mostly in Smithers), and a few images I suspect I will remember for years. The Straight's Mark Harris praises the film here, while Adrian Mack interviews Carnahan here. I also heartily endorse The Grey, and only mean praise when I say there was a sequence I mostly "watched" with my hand clamped over my eyes. Not many movies evoke that response in me these days...

David M.'s Winter Romance in No Fun City 2012

2012-01-29T08:39:00.000-08:00

1067: the number remains the same

2012-01-28T20:00:00.000-08:00

...but the street address is different. Makela/ Minkler/ Arai play tonight at 10pm. Same protocol as before - no signage, off the grid - but a different address. I'll leave it to you intrepid types to find it!

The Budos Band is coming!

2012-01-25T23:55:00.000-08:00

I know jack about funk, but I know what I like, and I LIKE the Budos Band - one of the Daptone stable of rather retrofitted funk/ soul/ groove bands, generally working an instrumental angle on the music. They play the Red Room Ultra Bar February 18th. Check this stuff out! Or this!

RIP Theodoros Angelopoulos

2012-01-25T09:56:00.000-08:00

I only ever saw one Theo Angelopolous film, 1988's Landscape in the Mist, but I saw it twice. I loved it, back in the 1980's, on first viewing - when I was first taking in Tarkovsky and Bergman and Antonioni and such; in the 1990's, when I attempted to revisit it, I was not as enthusiastic. A brief attempt to engage with Ulysses' Gaze on video some ten years ago also was not productive; despite Harvey Keitel's presence, I lasted about fifteen minutes. I have nothing much to say about his cinema, given my narrow and none-too-recent exposure, but he was certainly a major figure in world cinema and his passing - struck by a motorcycle at age 76 - must be noted. Condolences to those who knew him and/or admired his work.

RIP HMV flagship store

2012-01-24T00:56:00.000-08:00

I took one final stroll through the HMV flagship store in the last half hour of its being open tonight. With the upper and lower floors empty and barricaded off, the discounts still negligible (10-20% off most items, aside from truly horrific bits of non-culture that no one wants, like $1 biographies of Fall Out Boy, or Madonna's Glee book, whatever the hell that is), and not much organization to the remaining stock, the main floor was still full of people milling about, searching for that elusive good deal right to the end (I'd snagged Morbid Angel's Heretic and a documentary about Nigerian exploitation cinema out of the $1.99 bin earlier today, but not much was left of that caliber even by mid-afternoon). Maybe we were just feeling some odd, undefinable need to bear witness, pay respects, be there when it died - since after all, this isn't just one bloated, mediocre chainstore location that's closing, it's a symptom of an ongoing paradigm shift that's going to have a profound impact on the way we consume media in the future (albeit possibly for the better). Maybe just maybe, too, we were there because, all appearances to the contrary, we felt like some part of our community was disappearing? Announcements counting down the minutes til closing made sure we understood what the real relationship of HMV to the community is, from their point of view, anyways - the guy on the mike kept telling us that it was a sad occasion, then unsubtly urging us to cheer ourselves up by buying something. Still, the sense lingers that something more than an opportunity to relocate our money from OUR pockets to THEIR pockets was being lost. Fucked if I can quite put my finger on it, though - HMV have always been better at conveying how important their model of business is to them than making connections with Vancouver culture or the real tastes and needs of their customers, so what their closure really means to the city isn't easy to see (Future Shop must be happy, though). Maybe we were just there hoping that something would happen in that last half hour that would prove that our having been customers at this particular store, having spent our time and money there over the years, wasn't, in fact, a completely meaningless thing in the end, as insignificant in human terms as whether one favours Pepsi or Coke... because if it doesn't mean anything to be present when something dies, what possible meaning could it have had when it was still alive?

In-between the touching announcements, meanwhile, we had music: Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me" was in heavy rotation, obviously programmed to tap into an easily commodified form of nostalgia relevant to the target market HMV most caters to - middleclass whitefolk who were teens when that song (and The Breakfast Club) were current, who retain fondness for it, and now have (in theory) the purchasing power that comes with adulthood. (I'm sure that HMV have done market research to determine which songs correlate with the most purchases, and surely that one's way up there. Of course, that kind of manipulative, whorish cynicism and pandering does nothing but ruin cultural experiences for some of us - because as much as I loved The Breakfast Club and even that fucking song when I was 14 or so, hearing it now makes me want to reach for a shotgun - but then, one could never accuse HMV of over-estimating their customers' tastes). I confess that I actually felt a bizarre sort of misty-eyedness at the thought that I may never again have the particular displeasure of having songs like that (or Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," say, also a HMV favourite featured in the last half hour) accompanying the experience of shopping for music or film; God knows Zulu/Videomatica won't be spinning shit like that anytime soon, or any of the other locations that sell music (or movies) to people who care and know about music (or movies)... The impossibility of imagining either of those songs over the speakers at Audiopile or Red Cat or Neptoon or so forth says something about how vastly Other the whole HMV experience is, how much MORE it is about the marketplace than culture... It got me thinking briefly what I would play to mark the occasion of the HMV flagship store's closure, if *I* were given free reign to DJ the night. I think I've come up with the perfect song - Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers doing "Isn't It Grand."

(No, seriously - there's no other last sentence to this piece, go check that song out for the conclusion).

RIP, HMV flagship store (now what the hell else is going to fill that space?).

Jeezus, Vancouver

2012-01-21T23:28:00.000-08:00

Reading about the liquor licensing situation at the Rio Theatre can only make you shake your head...

Robots on Fire at Kozmik Zoo!

2012-01-19T23:08:00.000-08:00

Darren Williams of Robots on Fire with Eugene Chadbourne at the Cobalt, taken by Femke van Delft, and not to be reused without permission (I mean, we likely aren't going to do anything unreasonable like ask to get paid or nothin', we just surely would appreciate the courtesy).

I first met Femke van Delft, my longest collaborator on the arts scene in Vancouver (not countin' editors) when Robots on Fire gigged with Eugene Chadbourne and Han Bennink at the Cobalt six or seven years ago. I later saw them play with Mats Gustafsson there. They're a pretty dynamic unit - I think somewhere they do a free jazz cover version of Black Flag's "My War," if that gives you any idea where they're comin' from. (Bassist Dave Chokroun says that they're "about taking musical traditions, blowing them up, and playing the pieces – including the tradition of taking the tradition, blowing it up, and playing the pieces.") They gig on the 31st at Kozmik Zoo, and tho' I won't be there, and am officially NOT BLOGGING - I am NOT here right now, you are NOT reading this - what can I do but pass on this link I just got sent? ...for those musical adventurers lookin' for something unusual to do that night (a Tuesday, I do believe)...

Glenn Erickson on The Hellstrom Chronicle, plus DVD releases

2012-01-19T01:00:00.000-08:00

Just when there's nearly nowhere decent left to rent or even buy DVDs ('cept the Videomatica sale store in back of Zulu!), there are some great releases happening. Koji Wakamatsu's three hour and ten minute long epic about Japanese radicals, United Red Army, came out this week; I wrote about it here, mentioning its relationship to the horror film Kichiku Dai Enkai. Also Japan-wise, not too far in the future, Anchor Bay will finally issue a legit Battle Royale (hopefully the Fukasaku theatrical cut, which has a far more decisive ending than the Chinese bootlegs and Korean extended versions that circulate here), and Criterion will have Fassbinder's World on a Wire out... Alas, I have no time or energy to write about any of that right now. Except I just wrote Glenn Erickson about Ken Middleham and the amazing bug photography in the new legit release from Olive Films of The Hellstrom Chronicle, and he posted my email at the bottom of his (very able) review of that film, which is accurate enough that I don't need to say much more ('cept what I said in the email). So go read his review, 'specially if you like bugs, and continue considering my blog on hiatus...

PS. At least until I see it a few more times and have a chance to revise my opinion - which I am in no rush to do - I think I'm ranking Cronenberg's new film down there with my least favourite of his works. Bearing in mind that I'm not really that interested in the biographies of Freud or Jung or the history of pyschoanalysis or such - and thus perhaps not the film's ideal viewer - I have to say that I'd be more inclined to revisit M. Butterfly or Spider or Existenz or any of those other less-generally-loved Cronenberg titles twice before seeing A Dangerous Method again once. In brief:

1. Too many of the film's ideas are presented as mere lines of dialogue than fleshed-out, acted-out, embodied personal beliefs; for instance, we learn that Freud objects to Jung's interest in the supernatural and mysticism and such, and that this is central to the rupture between them, but the latter is never made real for us, never motivated, never shown at work, save as a topic of conversation between the characters (no scarabs knock at the window here). The same is true of Freud's over-focusing on sex - the film takes no risks in offering us glimpses into Freud's private life, to make his ideas an extension of his character; it's all just a matter of talk. Perhaps the prestige of these historical figures inhibited Cronenberg when it came to taking creative liberties with these men's biographies; if that's the case, one wishes he'd been braver.

2. Fassbender and Mortensen turn in surprisingly dull performances, with little expressive range or emotional force; this is particularly disappointing re: Fassbender, who was so good and Shame and is given quite a bit to work with. (Mortensen is doomed, meanwhile: the film is not really that interested in Freud, save as an influence on and occasional foil for Jung). Meantime, Vincent Cassell plays a much more interesting character (qua movie, not history) than either Freud or Jung, but barely gets ten minutes of screentime, appearing almost entirely as a function of the narrative, inserted in it only to motivate a particular choice on Jung's part, then quickly disappearing...

3. There is nowhere near enough sex, considering its importance to the story. When sex does surface, it's as a violent explosion of repressed energies, but these are very soon buried over again and made the stuff of conversation. All that may be appropriate - we are dealing with intellectuals in the early 20th century - but it still isn't the stuff of exciting cinema; again, perhaps the prestige of the story inhibited Cronenberg from really taking risks... (People with spanking fetishes might enjoy where he goes, though).

4. The best moments in the film, by me - and here I stand far from the consensus - all revolve around Kiera Knightly, who makes the passions of Sabina Spielrein quite compelling (and whose "scenery chewing" not only seemed perfectly believable but reminded me of a young, rather violent woman I met once when volunteering at Riverview). I would have enjoyed the film far more if it jettisoned 70% of its Freud-Jung material and focused instead on her, if the film had ended up more of an overtly feminist biography; she ends up the emotional heart of the film, but - just as she is excluded from most histories of psychoanalysis - her story too often takes a backseat to those of Freud and Jung... It would have been interesting for Cronenberg, who has made some fairly misogynistic films (Rabid, The Brood) to really run with the idea of a feminist revisionist history, to make a film about how much more ALIVE Spielrein seems than either Freud or Jung. In fact, he very nearly does just that, but doesn't quite take it far enough...

Polanski's Carnage was much more enjoyable...

Ahna, Druden, Wolves in the Throne Room

2012-01-16T00:48:00.000-08:00

While I've gotten used to being ID'ed at 43 and frisked at the door, the overzealous security staff at The Venue really outdid themselves tonight: I was sitting on a stool in back of the hall, to rest my legs and back after an hour standing in the pit and to better concentrate on the music. My eyes were closed, my head down, and Wolves in the Throne Room were moving me to a transcendent state; sometimes the most intense musical experiences can only be had when one shuts out visual stimuli. Suddenly, at the peak of my concentration, the whole world transformed to this blissful, mournful rising wave of sound emanating from the stage and a ghostly phantom vocalization, like some sort of Satanic Gregorian chant, floating over the music, I feel a hand on my shoulder. I open my eyes and look up, wondering if perhaps a friend has found me: instead it's a bouncer. "Are you okay?" he asks me. If I seemed a bit dazed at the question, it was simply because I can't see what about concentrating to music would make me not okay, but I said to him - politely enough - that I was fine. He responded with a stern command: "Don't sleep."

In case he didn't catch my reply - he was walking away, and the music WAS loud - what I shouted was, "I was LISTENING - it's called music!" (...and then I added a "term of affection" that I will not repeat here, lest I seem uncivilized.) Yes, folks - tonight, I was busted for LISTENING TO MUSIC AT A CONCERT.

Only at The Venue.

Anyhow, Wolves in the Throne Room were magnificent, and it was great to finally see Anju Singh with Ahna, her intense avant-metal duo. She's got a hell of a voice, is one hell of a drummer, and Ahna are one unique musical experience.

That's it, really. Resume blog pause.

Bad cellphone pics by me - Ahna at top, Wolves in the Throne Room below

Blog pause, plus the cellphone photography of Allan MacInnis

2012-01-14T05:26:00.000-08:00

Well, at the start of last term I declared I was going to stop blogging altogether. It lasted two months. However, this term, I've doubled my courseload at UBC, and I really, really need to cut this out for awhile. Barring MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS, this blog is on hiatus. I mean it. Really.

Though you should all go see the Creaking Planks anniversary show at the Railway Club next Wendesday (at 8:30, as a "late show" second-billed to a free, I think, concert by Edmonton Block Heater at 7:30). And aren't we all delighted that the new Cronenberg and Polanski movies are playing? And there's a Tarkovsky retrospective at the Cinematheque (I recommend Ivan's Childhood) and next month a screening of The Wages of Fear. I'm not as familiar with the Vancity Theatre's upcoming films, and won't have time to acquaint myself, but there's a great series of films on newspapers, Stop the Presses, which features a highly underrated and very well-cast Ron Howard "comedy/drama" called The Paper, which I liked well-enough when I stumbled on it some years ago (Michael Keaton, Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Randy Quaid, Marisa Tomei, and Spalding Gray star). Sam Fuller's Park Row will screen (I haven't seen it), as will a bunch of other films (including, of course, Citizen Kane).
The gem by me is Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, a terrifically cynical skewering of American media, screening February 2nd...

Oh, and did you notice that you can get an amazing Ingmar Bergman box set (featuring three of my favourite Bergmans - Shame, Hour of the Wolf, and The Passion of Anna) for peanuts at the HMV closeout sale? (There's about a week left, but their stock is badly dwindling. They also have a substantially discounted Murnau and Borzage at Fox box set - last I checked, there were about eight of them, marked down from $300-odd dollars to $80-something, on the main floor by the Burrard Street windows. It's still not in my price range, and they say there'll be no further markdowns, but fans of silent cinema who actually have money might want to check it out. Plans are also afoot for a birthday film event, too, though it may (or may not) run a little later this year than my actual birthday (so it won't conflict with classes). We'll see. THAT I will announce here, as it gets closer.

Meantime, to keep you entertained, here are some pictures (I'm told they're worth 1000 words each):

Mom and I go casino gambling!

Shot from the West Coast Express: trainyards in Coquitlam

Tonight's snowfall 1, circa 10pm

Tonight's snowfall circa 2:30 am

Tonight's snowfall circa 5am

Sunrise a few days ago

Pond at UBC's Nitobe gardens, the day before yesterday

The shadow of a tree, at the same

Apologies to Robert Dayton!

2012-01-14T04:41:00.000-08:00

Jeez - I missed a July Fourth Toilet show and a Canadian Romantic performance. Mack wrote about'em here. Sorry, Robert - I'm completely overwhelmed with school stuff at the moment... I actually hoped to go to at least one of these, but by the time I checked in to see when they were (late last night, having commuted back to Maple Ridge) attending either was impossible. Damn!

Bloodied But Unbowed plus punk show tonight!

2012-01-14T04:36:00.000-08:00

I'm kind of done with Bloodied But Unbowed, but for those of you who haven't already seen it, it screens tonight - in the "added Jello" cut - at the Astoria, along with performances by The Jolts, the B-Lines, and Hello Polly (a band consisting of Paul Leahy of No Fun and various members of the Pointed Sticks). Facebook page for the event here, Beat Route article on the film - including interviews with a whole bunch of people involved in it - here.

Glenn Erickson, Max von Sydow, and the dreams of pygmies

2012-01-14T03:56:00.000-08:00

Still from Deathwatch
Having an interesting, cinema-intensive correspondence with DVD Savant Glenn Erickson about Bertrand Tavernier's film La Mort En Direct (Deathwatch). He's done a two-part article on Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World - part one, part two - which, in the second half, compares that film with Tavernier's, finding several apparently non-coincidental similarities (including the presence of Max von Sydow, who pops up at the end of both films; as Erickson says, "all roads lead to von Sydow"). He reports that Wenders spoke about how he and Tavernier were collaborating on a film idea, and took it in different directions - hence the similarities. I find it interesting that other of Wenders films have occasionally resonated against earlier movies - see also this blogger's discussion of Alice in the Cities, Paper Moon, and Lolita, or consider the deliberate borrowings from Nicolas Ray's The Lusty Men in Kings of the Road. Wenders imagination seems steeped in cinema, such that images from other films, consciously or unconsciously, sometimes surface in his...

Another similarity between Deathwatch and Until the End of the World, however, is that both films exist in longer cuts not widely seen in North America, which is how he and I got talking about them in the first place (he found something I wrote on IMDB many years ago about the "long version" of La Mort En Direct, and, not realizing it was me - because we've corresponded before - wrote me).

Still from Dreamscape

My big addition here is to bring up one of my favourite '80's SF films, Dreamscape (for which I have considerable more fondness than Erickson, who rather pans it here). I'd mentioned previously on this blog that it has a line that resonates with the Tavernier film. Though it has been some time since I last saw Dreamscape, and my memory has fogged, I believe Max von Sydow says something in both films involving dreaming pygmies, which surely cannot be a coincidence, and seems to suggest some deliberate creative input on von Sydow's part - as if he decided to stitch a resonance between the two films, which he made a few years apart. As Erickson's part two on Until the End of the World mentions, pygmies were to play a role in that film, too -- it's all getting rather strange, isn't it? Particularly if you note that in both Until the End of the World and Dreamscape, von Sydow plays a scientist working on futuristic dream technology...!

Still from Until the End of the World

(Note that ardent DVD hounds can find the long version of Until the End of the World either via an Italian DVD release, lacking English subtitles for scenes not in English, or a Chinese bootleg of the same that sometimes pops up in a cheapie Wenders box sold on eBay. Further, they can probably track down the French DVD release of the European cut of La Mort En Direct, a terrific dystopian SF film about reality TV and the morality of images, starring Harvey Keitel, Romy Schneider, Harry Dean Stanton, and Max von Sydow; it's continued non-distribution in North America puzzles me, but it would HAVE to come out in the proper European cut, which is far superior to any previous VHS/ Laserdisc releases here. Dreamscape, meanwhile, being the cheesiest and "most Hollywood" of the films under discussion, is, of course, widely available!).

Thanks to Glenn Erickson for some interesting discussion!

A movie for Haiti: The Agronomist screens Friday

2012-01-12T21:43:00.000-08:00

A Jonathan Demme film screening to benefit Haiti! Martha Rans, involved in organizing the night, writes that the evening is "a fundraiser for a project in Haiti that is making schooling available to kids who would not otherwise be going to school. Especially since the earthquake. The film is a film follows the life of Jean Leopold Dominique, who ran Haiti's first independent radio station, Radio Haiti-Inter, during multiple repressive regimes. The panel discussion features two people who have direct knowledge of the work of Dominique and the film as well as Daniel Laurent from Haiti who directs the school."

Fuck the Steam Clock! (featuring Gunnar Holm Mikkelsen)

2012-01-11T20:15:00.000-08:00

The Gastown Steamclock, as jacked from the matrix by Gunnar

I got friendly with a fellow student last term in the Film Studies program at UBC - a Dane named Gunnar Holm-Mikkelsen, here for one term before heading back to Denmark. He's an interesting guy - a filmmaker and a songwriter to boot, performing under the name Saint Kodiak. We shared both Ernest Mathijs' Cult Movies class (yes, the Ernest Mathijs who was recently featured in the Straight) and Lisa Coulthard's violence-centred American Cinema Since 1960 course - excellent classes, and fuel to many a stimulating conversation between Gunnar and myself.

Saint Kodiak at Funkys, photo by Al, hair by Femke

The peak of our interactions, however, came shortly after both of us got lightly sozzled at Funky Winkerbeans (the Eargoggles night, with the Rebel Spell performing).

The Rebel Spell by Femke van Delft, not to be reused without permission

It had been fun enough to show him around the city a bit before we got sauced, offering him a narrative (as we worked our way east along Hastings Street) about gentrification, poverty, the Woodsquat riots - assisted by Stan Douglas' vivid photographic reconstruction - and the whole Marc Emery tale, which led to a trip (tho' we didn't partake) the Cannabis Culture bookstore. Gunnar responded with tales of the Danish Freetown Christiania, which I'd not heard of previously - a sort of squatted autonomous zone inside Copenhagen where normal Danish law ceases to apply and pot culture and so forth proliferates.

Openers The Fight United by Femke van Delft, not to be reused without permission

As I realized awhile back giving Zev Asher a similar tour (though we ended up at Scratch Records, not Funky's), there's a sort of enlightenment otherwise unavailable that comes of talking about the city to a non-Vancouverite, and once we got to Funkys (and the beer began to flow) we ended up having some great conversations with Femke van Delft, Bev Davies, and Todd and Erin of the Rebel Spell, all of whom sat at our table for a period... but the peak, as I say, was when we were staggering about Vancouver afterwards, and I asked Gunnar if there was anything else in the city he wanted to see while we were out and about.

Stepha of the Rebel Spell, photo by Femke van Delft, not to be reused without permission

"I keep hearing about this Steam Clock," he said. "Is it really worth seeing, or is it just some lame, touristy thing?"

Honest-to-God, folks, I had never devoted a minute of my life to thinking about the Steam Clock before that, and I almost collapsed in laughter. No, no, it's not worth seeing, I said - or something along those lines - but that alone makes it worth seeing! As we reeled towards Gastown, I commenced a rant that I didn't know I had in me, about how the only people who seem impressed by the Steam Clock are Asian tourists and ESL students; it practically exists as a photo op for them, while actual Vancouverites walk by heedless, paying no attention to the thing and identifying with it not in the slightest. It's nowhere near as grandiose in its lameness as my own town's contribution to public art, the giant robot horse clock, known as The Beast, that (when it's working) rears up on its hind legs and nods its head a few times, as the clock chimes the hour. By contrast, the Steam Clock doesn't even have status as a public eyesore; I actually will bring visitors to Maple Ridge to bear witness to the horse (and Bev Davies and Femke van Delft both got to photograph it in action, and we stood around chatting about how utterly absurd and misguided it is - all the moreso for having its design allegedly plagiarised from a Hasbro toy), but if Gunnar hadn't asked - and if he hadn't asked in the way that he did - the Steam Clock is so negligible that it would never, ever have crossed my mind as something to show him. Better yet, Gunnar knew something about it I didn't, which the plaque confirms - that it isn't even actually an antique, that it was set in place in 1977 or such, as a manufactured tribute to Vancouver's past.

The Maple Ridge Horse Clock by Bev Davies (!), not to be reused without permission

I don't remember all that we said about it as we observed it - I seem to recall him chuckling wryly and saying "it's a clock and it blows steam!" and he recalls saying something like "I passed up Big Ben for THIS?" - but I do remember seizing the moment - as the clock blew 2AM - to ask some equally inebriated Vancouverites who appeared on the sidewalk at that time if they felt any identification with the Steam Clock at all. The actual wording of their response is lost to alcohol and time, but I briefly bonded with these strangers in drunkenly declaiming "fuck the steam clock!" while Gunnar looked on, laughing.

It was a sweet moment of bonding, our cursing the Steam Clock together. Though, to be honest, on reflection, having thus publicly abused the clock, I am now moved to a certain fondness for it, based in its status as a neglibile non-event; it is benign, ersatz, useless, and ever-so-humble, offending no one and accomplishing nothing (though presumably some of the tourists who pose in front of it find it moving, and I guess it does serve its function as a timepiece well enough, though I cannot recall ever having used it as one). For the true athlete of perception, it seems its value as a tourist attraction lies precisely in its lack of value as a tourist attraction; perhaps the next time I entertain a visitor to this city, thanks to Gunnar, I will bring them there, as well, so we can contemplate how singularly unimpressive and meaningless it is, as it blows its steam at the sky. It makes one wonder what actual historical landmarks the city pays no attention to, while celebrating this one... Bev Davies occasionally has pointed out to me the house The Clash stayed at the first time they came to Vancouver, for one, and I retain some fondness for the wall, long-since muralled over, where that pro-Squamish Five slogan was spraypainted, reading, if memory serves, "Jail the Real Terrorists: Litton, Hydro, Red Hot Video." Maybe there are some scorched spots left on the sidwalk from the Canucks riot?

(Check out the music of Saint Kodiak here).

Maple Ridge solidarity gesture: The Likely Rads, the Jen Huangs

2012-01-07T11:17:00.000-08:00

A couple of bands from hereabouts are playin' Funky's tonight - the Likely Rads and the Jen Huangs. I won't be there - too much else I gots to do - but, like, check'em out; the new Likely Rads album - a few free samples are on the bandcamp page - is pretty damn good, kinda vintage SNFUish, with maybe a pinch of DRI...

Further Funky's listings follow...

FRI JAN 13 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * SOUNDCITY HOOLIGANS * SCAREBRO * MEN AT ADVENTURE * SIREN SONGS

http://www.facebook.com/events/279026082143765/

SAT JAN 14 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * BRAUHEIST *GROSS MISCONDUCT * EXCRUCIATING PAIN * MEMORIAL

http://www.facebook.com/events/182033315226133/?

THURS JAN 19 * THE EVIL BASTARD SCARYOKE EXPERIENCE
http://www.facebook.com/events/189156277847251/?

FRI JAN 20 *NO BOLLOCKS AND MYA MAYHEM PRESENT A FUNDRAISER FOR THE FOOD NOT BOMBS AND ANIMAL LIBERATION MOVEMENTS FEATURING * INFECT PROPAGANDA * ABSURDIST * VIOLENT NUN * DEAD TERROR

http://www.facebook.com/events/267389773317781/

SAT JAN 21 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS A JAY BROWN MEMORIAL PUNK SHOW* ALCOHOLIC WHITE TRASH * LESBIAN FIST MAGNET * CAR 87 * GNARCOLEPTICS * WAUZTED

http://www.facebook.com/events/149627225143193/

THURS JAN 26 * THE EVIL BASTARD SCARYOKE EXPERIENCE
http://www.facebook.com/events/189156277847251/?

FRI JAN 27 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * SEVENS NINES AND TENS * SABRAEL * ANCHORESS * PRICK BASTARD

http://www.facebook.com/events/153150378120787/?ref=ts

SAT JAN 28 *NO BOLLOCKS * INFIDEL * DEMIGOD PRESENT * SINNED * ZUCKUSS * IDES OF WINTER [X NECROBIOSIS]* FACE GRENADE

http://www.facebook.com/events/165261690239005/

FRI FEB 3 *NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * TENANT * IF WE ARE MACHINES *THE ALASKA * ANCHORESS

SAT FEB 4 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * THE STILTSKINS * LIFE AGAINST DEATH * GNARCOLEPTICS * A.T.F. * SECRET ALL GURL DBEAT AGGRESSION

Wolves in the Throne Room January 15th

2012-01-04T23:23:00.000-08:00

There's a reason Godspeed You! Black Emperor picked Wolves in the Throne Room for All Tomorrow's Parties. The band performs a very bleak and mournful Pacific Northwest take on black metal, with considerable subtlety and nuance and a strong connection to the forests and energies of the region (though death seems a powerful presence in their music, more than the generative aspect of nature). I've also seen it said about them that they have a powerful stage presence, an environmentalist angle, and that they'd prefer people to lay on the floor and cry than mosh at their concerts - they're apparently not great fans of the violence of the pit. I must admit that I've been listening to them more than I've been reading about them, so I can't really say much else about them, but their January 15th concert at The Venue - with Ahna and Druden - sounds like its going to be an essential show. Check these guys out, folks...

Meantime... classes have started again, so I may not be so active here for awhile. Or maybe I will. Hell if I know.

Late Edition to 2011 Top Ten: Red State; plus HMV rant

2012-01-04T12:40:00.000-08:00

I have lots of good excuses for not getting to Kevin Smith's Red State until this past weekend. I'm no Kevin Smith fan, for one - Dogma was enough of a mess that I stepped well clear of the boat long before he began sticking his own face and name all over the place (for instance, with An Evening With Kevin Smith, which I always imagined subtitled, "As If You Give a Fuck!") and making movies starring his own character (who knows, maybe Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is some sort of masterpiece but I sure haven't wanted to see it). Red State sounded like an unusual film for the guy (plus Michael Parks is in it!), and the fact that Smith announced that he was going to self-distribute it and then retire from filmmaking was kind of piquant, suggesting maybe that he'd discovered he'd become a bit of an embarrassment and had, uh, grown up - but I wasn't about to go all the way into town to see the movie on the night that he presented it personally to Vancouver audiences, especially since it meant having to hang out with the guy ("dude, I want to see your movie, I don't want to be your buddy.") Then the film had the bad luck to come out on video just as video stores were closing down left-and-right. I had no such faith that I would find it interesting that I was prepared to BUY it (unless I found a copy for $5 or less, which I haven't yet). I could just torrent it but, as I've said, I have some software issues and an 81-year-old Mom to entertain who has a finicky DVD player that won't accept my home-burned discs, so a legit copy made more sense. Finally, visiting a friend on Vancouver Island for the holiday, I suggested we rent it (there are several healthy video stores still out there, like the excellent Pic-a-Flic). My, am I glad to have made that suggestion.

A few observations about Red State:

1. It has more meat on its bones politically than any other non-documentary American film of 2011 that I'm aware of, confronting us with a very real hystrionic homophobia that flourishes in certain Christian crevices, generally completely unacknowledged, and certainly never looked at under a microscope as it is here. It shows just how intense this phenomenon can be, and does so very believably, in no small part due to the amazing, amazing performance of Michael Parks (above). It's not an easy film to watch - I have no idea what it would be like to watch it from a gay perspective, and it's a shame that it doesn't make a bit more room for there to BE a gay perspective - it's a little "straight," considering its subject matter - but it's confrontationally direct in presenting this side of American ugliness, which gives it all sorts of weight with me. The title, too, is nothing short of brilliant, considering.

2. It is very well-crafted as cinema. Every minute of the film, you feel like you're in the hands of a man who knows how to make movies, in a way I don't remember feeling watching the few other Kevin Smith films I've seen. It has little of Smith's brand of humour, and none of it feels inappropriate. It begins in a world that we might recognize as "Kevin Smith territory" - three morally naive but very horny adolescent boys answer a sex personals ad and set off to have a group sexual experience with an older woman - but from the moment that they find themselves abducted by a homophobic and well-armed church group, it's like we're in a different filmmaker's movie. Maybe Eli Roth's, because Red State has a lot of the tension and some of the violence and visual sensibilty of the Hostel films, which is likely why the film is popping up in the "horror" section at HMV. It's more restrained than Roth's movies, however, and has a menacing quietness to it almost from the start, which makes it very, very compelling.

3. That said, it is derivative of other films, especially in terms of technique - enough so that it counts against the film. There are jagged running sequences that suggest the Saving Private Ryan/ 28 Weeks Later variety of shakycam; they're well-used but not exactly an innovation at this point, and this fact calls some attention to itself ("Aha - he got that from..."). Cribbing a bit from the look of Hostel was a very good idea, too, but it also might have been better if it hadn't been so noticeable. The ending, further, has a Joel and Ethan Coen sort of glibness to it, and perhaps is the least effective part of the movie; Red State builds to this bizarre peak of tension, ratcheting up its audaciousness and bravery to career highs for Smith, without cheating or violating its terms - and then it cops out a bit, ending behind closed doors in a sort of Burn After Reading coda that isn't quite as dramatically satisfying as one hopes. Smith may well have spoiled his own voice in cinema with some of his past excesses, so I guess it makes sense that he borrows as much as he does from other movies, but he doesn't quite have the level of mastery at stealin' shown by Tarantino, who manages to borrow from other movies in such a way that he ends up being credited for what he takes (which is quite an accomplishment). Maybe Smith just needs more practice at it...

4. But that said, it's an interesting enough ending, to a bold enough film, that I think Red State could easily be viewed again, and again, and still be thought-provoking. I certainly will be keeping an eye out for a copy (though I'm still not prepared to pay $23.99 for it, even less the 10% discount that our closing HMV is offering). ...and may I also here reiterate that Michael Parks proves himself one of the great American film actors with this role? His many Tarantino/ Rodriguez appearances have been uniformly great, but he glitters and shines with a crazed intensity in this film, and even gets to sing a few gospel songs. (Folks who took note of the eerie but marked quality of his singing in this film should check out this clip here).

It's a shame that Kevin Smith is retiring from making films. I'd rather see him retire from making public appearances and focus on making MORE FILMS LIKE THIS (which could be subtitled, perhaps, Kevin Smith Shuts the Fuck Up and Gets Serious About His Craft). With apologies to Kelly Reichardt, I think Red State deserves the place of Meek's Cutoff at the bottom of my top ten list for 2011 (see below). It might even deserve a spot a few notches up - it's actually a kinda IMPORTANT film, which, enjoyable as it is, Rise of the Planet of the Apes sure isn't - but I need to look at it again to puzzle over it a bit before I make such a move.

...By the way, as a side note, isn't it kind of interesting to see that it only took at 10-20% discount on HMV's regular stock to get it to fly off the shelves? The store has been very nearly picked clean of interesting films and CDs at this point, with many areas completely denuded and blocked off; they'll no doubt be near empty by the final closure, just a couple of weeks from now. This proves, among other things, that people are in fact MORE THAN WILLING TO PAY MONEY FOR DVDs AND BLU-RAYS AND CDs, they just aren't prepared to pay the prices that are generally being asked for them. Given how fucking CHEAP it is to manufacture and distribute this stuff, and the sheer abundance of cheap-to-free media choices out there, it's a shame that the industries in question wouldn't just acknowledge reality and try LOWERING THEIR FUCKING PRICES as a strategy for survival, rather than digging in the way they have, even though it clearly has meant bankrupting the retail outlets that service them. It's kind of ridiculous that CD and DVD manufacturers (to say nothing of Blu-Ray) STILL keep asking $19.99 OR MORE for a fuckin' disc, when they'd make a tidy profit and actually SELL the thing at half that price; $19.99 is two hours wages for some folks out there! Those looking for someone to blame for the state of the industry might want to take these observations in, before pissing and moaning about Netflix and torrenting and so forth: the industry has NOT responded to changing conditions, has in fact petulantly REFUSED to do so, and has thus needlessly sabotaged itself. Someone should spraypaint "Adapt or die, motherfuckers!" on the HMV hull, once the building is finally vacated. It won't be much satisfaction to those many people who would still be BUYING CDs and DVDs and so forth if they were just a bit more affordable... but it would have truth to it.

Deconstructing Harry tonight!

2012-01-03T09:57:00.000-08:00

Everyone tells me that I have to see Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry - usually during a conversation where I complain how frustrating I find his cinema. They explain that it was made as a reaction to some of the scandals around him a few years ago and is a sort of frustrated explosion of a Woody Allen film, taking risks and pushing buttons left and right. It DOES sound like a-more-interesting-than-average Woody, and it turns out that it plays tonight at the Vancity Theatre at 7:30 pm, as part of a Cinema Salon with the Straight's Charlie Smith presiding. Sounds like a not-to-be-missed opportunity - I'm quite looking forward to it!

Punk rock New Years' in Vancouver!

2011-12-31T00:34:00.000-08:00

Nothing says New Years like Two Dogs Fucking, eh?

Well. Lotta cool punk rock shows to choose from on New Years. Funkys has the biggest - the Dayglo Abortions and five other bands (The Keg Killers, the Fuck You Pigs, the Gnarcoleptics, Brady's Problem, and the Blistering Barnacles). Starts at 8 and - the Facebook page says it runs til 4am; can that be right? I rejected the Dayglo's bad taste and politically incorrect lyrics for years, but "Release the Hostages" was playing as I typed this; I'm glad to have finally realized how great a Canadian band they are (and man, do people ever like my Two Dogs Fucking t-shirt. Some coffee vendor on the West Coast Express actually took a photo of it once - made me stand up straight and stretch it out)...

If you've seen the Dayglos a bunch lately, The Rebel Spell, my favourite Vancouver punk band under 50, play Iron Road Studios (383 Raymur) with the Living Deadbeats, Motorama, and - ooh - the reincarnaton of Ron Reyes' Piggy, with a new lead vocalist (Alexa Bardach was havin' some issues - it's too bad, because she's a compelling performer). I was struck watching the Rebel Spell sing the other week how much the pleasure of this band lies in the quality of impassioned speech; Todd Serious is one of the best political lyricists/ speechifyin'-songwriters since Phil Ochs, punk or otherwise, and even if you can't make out every word, you'll appreciate the passion of the delivery...

That's not the only other option, either: for people who like their punk with a twist, the B-Lines and Shearing Pinx play at Pat's Pub with openers Screaming Queens and Italian Husbands (that's two bands, there, not one with a fairly long name). If there are other punk gigs tomorrow night, I'm unaware of them - they must be bands I don't know (yet!).
Happy New Years!

Al's Top Ten Movies of 2011 (in response to the Georgia Straight's)

2011-12-29T23:46:00.000-08:00

Note: in no way is this meant as a challenge to the Straight, I'm just using their post, to which freelancers like m'self don't contribute, as a pretext for puttin' my own views out there. Also note: I've had very little sleep (I was on a massive Dexter binge last night), so there may be typos or awkward constructions below, which I'm losing the strength to seek and destroy at present; I'll return to it tomorrow, perhaps.

It's a bad year to ask me to give a "top ten films of 2011." What with my proximity from Vancouver, video rental stores around me dying like hornets trapped inside a double-paned window, no VIFF pass, a need to consider whether my Mom will like a film when I do rent or buy something, and my classes at UBC taking up a goodly portion of my cinema-time, I feel like I've barely seen ten new movies I genuinely enjoyed this year. Perusing the Georgia Straight's Top Ten lists, I find myself shaking my head and going, "Nope, missed that one... missed that one... missed that one too" far more often than I'd like.

Some reactions, though, for what they're worth. I managed to see exactly one film on Ken Eisner's list, Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy. Almost every cinephile I know personally (four that I spoke to about it) was disappointed by this film; I didn't mind it, though I certainly wasn't as moved by it as I was, say, A Taste of Cherry. Vastly less so, actually. It's beautifully shot, the locations are gorgeous, and Juliette Binoche is always interesting to watch. However, the whole purpose of the film - a somewhat gamelike philosophical musing on the nature of authenticity - just didn't really do much for me; not really sure, from reading his capsule description, what Mr. Eisner got out of it that I didn't, but Certified Copy wouldn't be on my top 100, even.

I'm otherwise outgunned - Ken Eisner sees a LOT of films! Of the ones he recommends that interest me, I'm mostly likely to keep an eye out for Submarine. In fact, I want to see everything I can with Paddy Considine, these days, having enjoyed his work in In America, loved his performance in the recent (completely and unfairly neglected) Patricia Highsmith adaptation The Cry of the Owl, and been very moved by his feature directorial debut Tyrannosaur (which is on my top ten).

I managed to catch three of Janet Smith's recommendations. I also admired Lars von Trier's Melancholia, and will include it on my own list; certainly the opening montage was stunning cinema, though I found von Trier's sense of perverse humour (mostly as manifested by Udo Kier) a little wearisome and at odds with the film as a whole (I'm not at all bothered by it when it issues forth at press conferences, however). Still, the images of the earth being destroyed in a planetary collision (set to "Tristan and Isolde" if I recall correctly) were perhaps the single most indelible of those I took in this year (or at least tied with the horse being led against the wind in the opening moments of Bela Tarr's final film, The Turin Horse, more on which below).

Malick's The Tree of Life was more problematic for me. I respect his ambitions, as well, but it stands to Malick's canon somewhat as 2001: A Space Odyssey stands to Kubrick's, as the most pretentious, most overly ambitious, and most uneven (I'm being polite) film he's made. It still (like 2001) has mangificent and memorable moments, but I really didn't need the whole metaphysical framing device - including the frigging dinosaurs at the beginning and Sean Penn wandering around purposelessly in some ill-defined netherworld at the end. While I understand that such moments are doubtlessly inextricably linked to Malick's purposes in making the film, I was so moved by some of what the film had to say about growing up in America in the 1950s, and about the the father-son relationship at its core, that I resented the degree to which such things were ultimately diluted and diminished by the rest of this spiritually-bloated quasi-religious fartsiness. Much as it seems an insult to call any Malick film anything less than a masterpiece, I can't in conscience include The Tree of Life on my Top 10 List, if the criterion is whether I actually enjoyed the film or not.

Then again, The New World took a long time to grow on me too, and I have full intentions of wrestling with The Tree of Life again (...somehow that turn of phrase reminds me of Bergman's The Virgin Spring).

Finally, re: Janet Smith's list, much as I like Ms. Blanchett, Hanna seemed a minor thriller at best - I would even rank Fincher's English reworking of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo above it - and it wouldn't come close to my top ten.

Re: Mark Harris, I managed to catch two of his recommendations, besides Melancholia and Certified Copy (already discussed), Armadillo and Shame. I liked both! (I thought Ken Eisner was weirdly cruel to Shame and my views are closer to Mark Harris', though I would also add that it's beautifully composed and scopophilically very satisfying). I had no great passion for either, though - Shame was very compelling, but not a film I'd want to see again. The film on his list that I haven't seen that I'm most interested in is In a Better World.

Re: Patti Jones and John Lekich, I haven't seen any of the films on their lists that I haven't already mentioned. Both praise Midnight in Paris, but I have a fairly marked dislike for Woody Allen, with a few (very few) exceptions (I have great fondness for his most successfully Bergmanlike of his pseudo-Bergmans, Interiors, for instance. Also, I should note that I really want to see Deconstructing Harry, which Straight editor Charlie Smith will host at the Vancity Theatre January 3rd). The premise of Midnight in Paris strikes me as silly beyond consideration, and the amount of praise it has received in no way outweighs my own intuitions.

Also re: these lists, I want to see both Drive and Take Shelter, but haven't yet.

Finally, Straightwise, I took in a few films mentioned in Steve Newton's Year in Horror post. I thought Insidious, to which he gives some muted praise, was "total shite,"while managing to enjoy The Thing prequel a lot more than he did, though not enough to say that it's a film I actually care about (it was at least as good as Alien Versus Predator*). Finally, I do not understand why people liked Drive Angry; a few people I saw enjoyed it, I found it inelegant, noisy, splashy big-budget crap. Otherwise I missed most of the films he mentions, and I'm not really sure what my favourite horror movie of 2011 was. I don't consider any of the films on my list below true horror films - perhaps The Human Centipede would count, but I actually think of Tom Six as an arthouse filmmaker, not an exploitation or horror filmmaker. I quite liked a film called Black Death, which tells a somewhat unique tale of Christians-vs-Pagans - but it's nowhere near my actual top 10...
While again asking you to bear in mind that this wasn't a great year for me, current-cinema-consumption-wise, here's "Al's Alternative Top Ten" - a rather eclectic list, but I'm under no pressure to "type" myself as a viewer on my blog.

1. Tyrannosaur. A rather vicious drunk, on emerging from a pub, kicks his own dog to death in the street in the opening minutes of the film. He's the main character, and is so brutal and distasteful in this scene that it counts as quite a triumph of cinema that you'll be moved to tears by his plight as the narrative unfolds, despite his continued raging, self-pity, and constant drinking. I don't understand how someone with Aspergers (Considine, the director), supposedly at a remove from human emotional expression because of his condition, can no less make the most emotionally powerful film I saw all year. I liked Tyrannosaur in the same way I feel like I'm "supposed" to like Mike Leigh's films (but seldom do). Peter Mullan's performance as said drunk is very powerful - you might recall him as the leader of the Hazmat team with the, um, "family problems" in Session 9. I liked the end of the film a bit less than I did the beginning and middle - would have tolerated more loose ends and ambiguity than the more formulaic, less convincing emotional resolutions of the film's last fifteen minutes - but it's still a great achievement. On the odd chance that I'm mis-including it (if it gets picked up in January for a run in Vancouver, say), do check it out.

2. Melancholia. 'nuff said, I hope.

3. The Turin Horse. Bela Tarr's final film, like Melancholia, has images the beauty of which will make you ache. These two films both speak to a cinematic sensibility for which I have terrific respect - one that aspires to make contemporary cinema as profound, moving, "spiritually significant" and transcendentally painful as the masterpieces of Tarkovsky and Bergman. Not much cinema being made these days has any such ambition, even less comes close to succeeding, but The Turin Horse does on both counts. Tree of Life also gets a nod here, of course, but I'll stick with Melancholia and The Turin Horse as my favourite "big" films of the year, artistic-ambition-wise. I would add Gaspar Noe's Enter the Void to this list, too, but Wikipedia lists it as a 2009 movie, and I have no idea when the rest of the world saw it. It's a 2011 film as far as Vancouver is concerned, but if I'm going to cheat, it will be to include a very different film, a bit more recent...

4. ... that being Rubber. This is technically a 2010 film, but as far as I know, it didn't get a theatrical screening after it played the 2010 VIFF, so we only caught up with it here in 2011 on video. I think that makes it fair game to include (because otherwise there's no other top ten I could put it on!). This is a deliriously surreal, very black comedy about a telekinetic killer tire. If that description alone isn't enough to make you curious, nothing further I can say will matter (what if I tell you that heads explode?). This may well be the best film Wings Hauser has been in**, though of course his performance has nothing on his scenery-chewin', "Neon Slime" singin' role as Ramrod in Vice Squad.

5. The Guard. No one else seems to care much about this film, but this is a very likable, somewhat dark, and rather subtly written Irish police comedy with a great performance by Brendan Gleeson, and is directed by John Michael McDonagh, brother to In Bruges director Martin McDonagh. It stops a little short of In Bruges, but based on those two films, I'll be following these McDonagh boys. I see very few comedies that I like, and almost none that make me laugh aloud. The Guard did, more than once.

6. Rango: it may just be that my Mom loved it, I don't know. I feel a bit weird about including it, and have been too self-conscious about my fondness for it to actually buy a copy for myself, but if I had children, I would buy Rango for them in a flash and make them watch it with me, repeatedly, whether they liked it or not. It's very inventive, suffused with a sincere love of cinema, a delightful visual sense, and some very sophisticated humour; Johnny Depp, as the chameleon for which the film is named, undergoes a spaghetti-western-like ordeal in a desert town populated by other talkin' reptiles. Better still, Depp squeezes a brief but very noticeable, fond tribute to (spoiler - rollover to see) Hunter S. Thompson into the film for any adults savvy enough to get the joke. (Anything in a film that will make five percent of the audience stand and cheer while the other 95% look around wondering what the fuck just happened is okay with me. If anyone happened on a whim to go see this theatrically whilst under the influence of psychedelics, not realizing this, err, "character" would be making an appearance, I imagine they'd have happily shit themselves, laughing in the aisles, at that moment).

7. Rise of the Planet of the Apes. It takes some guts for critics who hope to be taken seriously to praise such a commercially successful film, but I'm still a bit surprised that no one at the Straight acknowledged it; can it be that no one else loved this film? Because I did - it made me feel like I was 14 again, so wholly did it involve me in its story. It's perhaps a bit sad that, at this juncture in human history, to believe in the potential for revolutionary change, we have to project it onto apes - that 21st century human beings can't make a movie about human beings bringing about massive social change, anymore - but the entire destroy-humanity-and-start-afresh-in-the-forests final message has definite appeal for sentimental, impotently liberal slobs like me. Andy Serkis actually outdoes his roles as Kong and Gollum in the character of Caesar; never have I felt so emotionally invested in an animated character, not even Rango.

8. Limitless: This was one of the smartest, best-crafted, most engaging mainstream thrillers I saw this year, and deserves to be rewarded for having the bravery to offer a rather pro-drug message.

9. Can I list Human Centipede 2 as a 2011 film without cheating? (It hasn't actually gotten theatrical release here, but nor will it ever). The first Human Centipede was very chilly and restrained, almost playing like a very dark, very cruel comedy, minus the laughs. It had surprisingly few vomit-inducing moments, given the subject matter (a mad scientist, meant to evoke Nazi medical experiments, sewing a chain of people together ass-to-mouth). In extreme contrast, The Human Centipede 2 abandons all restraint and has shit and blood flying, even spattering the lens (we can be grateful its black and white). I really don't know how I feel about this film; rather than a straightforward sequel, it adopts a metacinematic approach, seeming ultimately to function as a frontal assault on a certain stripe of movie viewer. It focuses on an extremely damaged, distasteful, and improbable-looking main character, a sexually abused, mentally deficient near mute (we understand that he CAN speak, but we never hear him do it) who is obsessed with the first Human Centipede, and decides to re-enact the operation of the first film, with no medical skill or equipment (unless you count duct tape and staple guns). My reaction at this stage is more visceral than thought-out, at this point, but without knowing what to make of it, the extremity of this film impressed the hell out of me, and there's an odd beauty to the images, something very compellingly watchable. It's enough to merit inclusion - eagerly awaiting part three.

10. Meek's Cutoff. I have yet to see River of Grass, but I think it strange that I like each Kelly Reichardt film I see significantly less than the previous. As she grows in confidence and critical acclaim, shouldn't it be the other way around? I've seen Old Joy at least half a dozen times; speaking of cinema-as-art, it is one of the two Americans films of this new century that I most admire (the other being Robinson Devor's Police Beat - I'm proud that the Pacific Northwest is inspiring such films). There is so much emotion, so much meaning packed into so minimal a plot (two old friends, grown somewhat apart, taking a road trip to an outdoor hot spring in Oregon) that the film beggars my ability to write about it concisely; I think I've cried more profoundly watching this film than any other, not not out of the chickenshit sentimentality promoted by Hollywood (because I also cried at Rambo III - making me cry at a movie is no great accomplishment), but because of the parts of the human heart it touches through its characters, apparently quite effortlessly and always with great honesty, tenderness and care. I liked it much more than Wendy and Lucy, which was just too uniformly depressing and despairing for me to really enjoy the experience of watching it. Meek's Cutoff - following a group of settlers lost in the deserts of 19th century Oregon, fighting amongst themselves and striving to find a proper attitude to a Native they abduct, to lead them to water or rescue - is bleaker still. I'm sure there are many profound things to be SAID about Meek's Cutoff - it would be a fine film to write about or think about or talk about, a fine "conversation starter," and its probably "objectively" an important film - but it failed to move me deeply, partially because Reichardt deliberately foils the expectations of the audience that a film will tell a complete story; she very deliberately leaves things open ended, robbing us of any sense of closure, providing instead a one-hand-clapping moment for the final shot, meant, presumably, to stimulate dialogue as to what it all means. I don't OBJECT to such provocations, per se, and I don't always need a pat ending (see Tyrannosaur review, above), but neither do I go to films JUST to be intellectually provoked; I want to be transformed, moved, engaged emotionally, to emerge the theatre in a new state, my life enriched or altered. Old Joy did that so powerfully, for me, that I can't quite understand Reichardt's current trajectory; I get that, with Meek's Cutoff, she wants us to feel equally lost as her settlers, wandering a desert with little hope of salvation and no sense of who to trust (...I wonder if the Native is somehow subtly meant to figure Barack Obama?). But maybe I'm missing something, because the part of the film where I'm supposed to FEEL it just never really arrives... Kelly Reichardt is still one of the most interesting filmmakers presently working in North America, but if her next film follows this trend, I might have to reconsider my rejection of anti-depressants (or stop watching her movies).

There, that's my own top 10 list - again, please bear in mind that I had very limited exposure to new cinema this year.
___

*While this IS a joke of sorts, I must say that I sincerely liked Alien Versus Predator, but only insofar as, on entering the film theatre, as I usually do with exploitation fare (at whatever budget-range), I had my expectations set well below zero; expecting nothing, I was passably entertained. The critical uproar that greeted that film actually shocked me a bit, since it suggested that people actually thought it might be somehow a good film, actually had hopes for it - something as absurd as my own hopes for Hostel 3 (see below).
**This is also a joke of sorts.

Dayglo New Years, Funky's listings

2011-12-28T20:23:00.000-08:00

Dec. 31st the Dayglo Abortions headline a list o' six bands at Funkys! Subsequent Thrasherbalts listings include a whole bunch of shows that I would be at if I didn't live in the 'burbs. For one, I'm kind of blown away by how good the new Likely Rads CD is - kinda like early SNFU, but with production values. I would be at Funky's in a flash on the 7th if the commute were easier (plus they're from my little 'burb, so I'm pretty sure I'll have a chance to catch them here soon enough). Scarebro (Jan. 13th) is a Bison BC side-project, with James, Bison cover artist Mike Payette, and former Bison drummer Brad; I got to see a Biltmore gig they did, which was most enjoyable, tho' less intense than Bison (most things are). Their Bandcamp songs have a pleasing "Dinosaur Du" vibe to them, if you see what I mean. Mya Mayhem's animal rights thing sounds interesting - I haven't seen her since she sang for Tunnel Canary 2.0 at the Sweatshop. I have shamefully never once seen Ahna play, tho' I'll be able to catch them opening for Wolves in the Throne Room (...and a very cool show that promises to be)... I like that Zuckuss do Star Wars themed porno grind, but I somehow have never gotten around to actually listening to them in a serious way - I'm not sure what the right MOOD is for Star Wars themed porno grind, which might be part of the problem. I've also never seen Alcoholic White Trash (tho' Lesbian Fist Magnet, billed with them, were a LOT of fun the one time I caught'em at the Cobalt). Finally - one last band I've never seen but will try to say something about - I really like that Snaggletooth exists, but maybe they should call themselves Snaggletooth BC, to differentiate themselves from the Dutch Motorhead tribute band of the same name? (How many other Snaggletooths are there in the world, one wonders...?).

Ah, the shows I would see at Funkys, if only I still lived in walking distance...

Listings follow...
THURS JAN 5 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS TRIBUTES * POWERCLOWN [IRON MAIDEN] * SNAGGLETOOTH [MOTORHEAD]

http://www.facebook.com/events/282482725126147/?

FRI JAN 6 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * LIFE AGAINST DEATH * CATHAR * OUT OF THE RUINS * BLACKWATCH
http://www.facebook.com/events/244746645592759/?

SAT JAN 7 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * THE LIKELY RADS * ANCHORESS * THE REPOSSESSORS * THE JEN HUANGS

http://www.facebook.com/events/160842510684190/?

THURS JAN 12 * THE EVIL BASTARD SCARYOKE EXPERIENCE
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=248239208557365

FRI JAN 13 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * SOUNDCITY HOOLIGANS * SCAREBRO * MEN AT ADVENTURE * SIREN SONGS

http://www.facebook.com/events/279026082143765/

SAT JAN 14 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * BRAUHEIST *GROSS MISCONDUCT * EXCRUCIATING PAIN * MEMORIAL

http://www.facebook.com/events/182033315226133/?

THURS JAN 19 * THE EVIL BASTARD SCARYOKE EXPERIENCE
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=248239208557365

FRI JAN 20 *NO BOLLOCKS AND MYA MAYHEM PRESENT A FUNDRAISER FOR THE FOOD NOT BOMBS AND ANIMAL LIBERATION MOVEMENTS FEATURING * ABSURDIST * VIOLENT NUN * AHNA AND MORE TBA

SAT JAN 21 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS A JAY BROWN MEMORIAL PUNK SHOW* ALCOHOLIC WHITE TRASH * LESBIAN FIST MAGNET * CAR 87 * GNARCOLEPTICS * WAUZTED

http://www.facebook.com/events/149627225143193/

THURS JAN 26 * THE EVIL BASTARD SCARYOKE EXPERIENCE
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=248239208557365

FRI JAN 27 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * SEVENS NINES AND TENS * SABRAEL * ANCHORESS * PRICK BASTARD

SAT JAN 28 *NO BOLLOCKS * INFIDEL * DEMIGOD PRESENT * INSIDIOUS DESCREPANCY * SINNED * ZUCKUSS

http://www.facebook.com/events/165261690239005/

FRI FEB 3 *NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * TENANT * IF WE ARE MACHINES *THE ALASKA * ANCHORESS

SAT FEB 4 * NO BOLLOCKS PRESENTS * THE STILTSKINS * LIFE AGAINST DEATH * GNARCOLEPTICS * A.T.F. * SECRET ALL GURL DBEAT AGGRESSION

http://www.facebook.com/events/332700050074350/

No Fun City on DVD

2011-12-28T00:11:00.000-08:00

Gerry Hannah onstage with the Subhumans at the Cobalt, 2008, photo by Femke van Delft, not to be reused without permission

Toured Mom through No Fun City as part of our evening's viewing tonight - it's out now on DVD. The film chronicles the sorry state of music venues in Vancouver, cutting mostly between Keith Wecker, David Duprey, Malice Liveit, and wendythirteen in their respective struggles to keep punk, metal, noise, and other not-about-the-money music events happening in Vancouver. Mom really is only slightly interested (only because I know or have interviewed many of the people in the film), so I speed-searched through it for her, mostly scanning to see familiar faces or places. (I got particularly enthusiastic to see the Cobalt washroom again, for some reason, and paused to tell her an anecdote or two... Just thinking about it brings a scent-memory, which is by far the worst smell I associate with positive memories and feelings. Plus I got to see footage of the final Subhumans gig there, which I wasn't able to be at, because I was busily packing my furniture to leave a bedbug-and-mouse infested apartment in the west end and return to the suburbs to face my mother's incapacitating illness and my father's impending death). It's a heartbreaking film about a maddening state of affairs, but it's necessary viewing if you still haven't seen it, and a very well made documentary, more than deserving the acclaim it has received; it can be purchased for a very reasonable price at the Videomatica sale store (in back of Zulu) or other shops around town.

Subhumans, Cobalt 2008 - photo by Femke van Delft, not to be reused without permission
One wee issue that I should mention - for some reason, unless there's some weird malfunction with my Mom's DVD player, which is definitely possible, the film is presented in a fullframe format that cuts the names of various people interviewed off at the edges. Last time that happened to me was with an independently produced DVD of Zev Asher's, so it might just be an artifact of the technology they've produced the DVD on as it interacts with the technology I'm using (it's an older DVD player, an older TV, and so forth). Then again, it might affect others, too, so I gotta mention it. Don't let it stop you, though - this film is a must see if you care about live music, or Vancouver, or Vancouver live music, or DIY culture, or punk, or....

RIP Sam Rivers

2011-12-27T13:50:00.000-08:00

I have fond memories of seeing Sam Rivers, circa 1999, at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, where, stylishly dressed and exuding professionalism, he charmed the audience with relaxed, amusing anecdotes and an engaging speaking style in between intense and enjoyable bursts of quite-hot free jazz, which he played on a few different instruments. Though I had spun albums he'd appeared on, I hadn't expected half as enjoyable a show as I got, and felt afterwards that I'd been treated to a glimpse of the African-American roots of outside jazz, with Rivers as an emissary of the world of Ayler and Coltrane and Coleman and Dolphy and Marion Brown and Dewey Redman and Roscoe Mitchell and so forth. It felt like a privilege - all the moreso since all but two names on the list are now gone. Rest in peace, Sam Rivers.

Hostel Part III DVD review: guhhhh

2011-12-27T13:34:00.000-08:00

With next-to-nowhere to rent videos these days and a concomitant decline in the number of "previously viewed" DVDs to be found on the cheap, I made the mistake, based on my admiration for the first two Hostel films and my immense curiosity to see what could be done by relocating the franchise to Vegas, to buy Hostel Part III, now out as a direct-to-DVD release, priced around $25 (even after a Boxing Day discount), and made, apparently, without a smidgen of involvement from Eli Roth. Profit, horror fans, from my mistake: paying more than $3 for this film (if you pay anything at all), however much you like the previous Hostel films, will leave you feeling ripped off and disappointed with yourself. While for some of you it will come as no great revelation that this is a pretty bad film, and while I admit that it really isn't worth writing about at all, I cannot but set down a few reactions, to purge them from my system:

1. The film has no intelligent or coherent statements to make about violence, exploitation, torture, global capitalism, Abu Ghraib, ugly Americanism, or any other themes that can be teased out from the first two Hostel films. It offers, instead, yet another variation on the tried-and-true motif of the Vegas-bachelor-party-gone-awry (both Very Bad Things and even The Hangover are better films, and perhaps even scarier). To the extent that it has a coherent theme, it appears to be that Vegas is evil - an observation that is written into the screenplay with considerable didacticism. If it has anything beyond that to say, it gets obscured by the various too-clever attempts to subvert, augment, or copy wholesale elements from the previous Hostel films; and even that statement - "Vegas is evil" - is made without much force or conviction, because -

2. The film does nothing to evoke Vegas, despite apparently being shot on location. Exterior shots are uninspired and perfunctory, and the film shows no real interest in either the myths or the realities of the place, while interior shots are obviously and badly staged. Presumably no actual casino wanted to be associated with this film (or else the budget simply wasn't there for much location shooting), so card tables and slot machines are plunked in shabbily-furnished sets that look more like empty gymnasiums than glitzy palaces of vice; the casino my Mom and I gamble at in Maple Ridge is more glamourous (and feels more like Vegas) than the ones assembled here. The psychology of gambling is equally not evoked in the film; the one brief casino visit and the presence of a wealthy audience placing bets on how the tortures play out - a clever and Vegas-appropriate twist the film offers on the way things are done, but poorly explained and not engaged with in detail - are not enough to make this film feel Vegas-specific or interested in gambling. While Roth was equally not very interested in the realities of Europe or Slovakia or such, with Hostel 3, we're looking at an American city that EVERYONE has seen, at least in dozens of films, and has some feelings about; to fail so completely to evoke the excitement or the glamour of Vegas, even for the purposes of subverting it, is to waste an entertaining premise.

3. Waste occurs on a thematic level, too, as the film misunderstands its own greatest potential. By relocating the action of the film to Vegas, the film COULD have squarely placed responsibility for the human exploitation, torture, and violence it depicts on American shoulders, rather than comfortably displacing it on cardboard-cut-out pseudo-Slovakians (which is arguably what Roth does; while his films do engage with the aftershocks of Abu Ghraib, it still must be said that it's problematic, in the immediate wake of that scandal, to depict Americans as the VICTIMS of torture, not its perpetrator). It teases us that it will do exactly this, in fact - blame America - with an opening set-up, echoing certain scenes in the first film, wherein a young American enters a hostel room where two attractive Eastern Europeans are in a state of semi-undress; of course - because it is far more likely that the film will invoke its forbear for the purposes of a twist than it is that it will borrow a scene whole - it develops that it's the American, not the Eastern Europeans, that is to be feared. In a feat of amazing lameness, however, midway through the film, the filmmakers cop out, wreck this at least somewhat interesting development, and decide that it's more important to be pointlessly, meaninglessly, literally faithful to the previous two films by having a European - played by Thomas Kretschmann - in charge of the American branch of Elite Hunting than it is to stake new territory or even remain thematically consistent with their semi-inspired beginning. Besides, Americans never torture people, nooo...

4. The film consistently provides details about how Elite Hunting runs its Vegas operation that function not to illuminate or lend reality or nuance to the way the business is run (as is done delightfully throughout Hostel II), but to set up plot elements for later in the film: the fact that the bloodhound tattoos become scanned as a sort of ID sets up (and telegraphs) a scene where one of the good guys cuts off a tattoo from a corpse to use as a sort of ID card; the fact that the building is set to blow up if the operation is compromised is there not because it seems plausible that this is something an organization that might want to keep a low profile would do, but to justify having a Real Big Explosion at the film's climax; the weird fact that the Eastern European guy, kidnapped at the beginning of the film, is kept alive while later abductees are killed is not because there are special plans for him or reasons within the world of the film not to kill him, but because the film wants someone to tell the American characters that they're fucked, when they find themselves in adjoining cages, and so forth. The stripped-down elegance of the storytelling in the first two Hostel films is made far more visible by contrast with how clunky this installment is.

5. While for the most part the film flinches from its gore, there are exactly two amusing, inventive torture scenes that must be mentioned. The first and bloodiest demonstrates that in addition to the first two Hostel films, the filmmakers have seen Eyes Without A Face; and the second, that they have a familiarity with Fear Factor - particularly the oft-used ordeal-by-insect. (The cockroaches in Hostel Part III appear to be of the same South American sort that Bradford Dillman vies against in Bug!, minus the compelling insect photography of Ken Middleham). This sequence contains the one truly inspired, buy-someone-a-beer-for-coming-up-with-it moment that the film offers, a delightfully, absurdly placed camera lending to an implausible but revoltingly effective gross-out, almost sick enough to trigger a physical gag reflex. It's not enough, but it has to be acknowledged.

However, even here, the film serves mostly to show by negative example just how well-thought-out Eli Roth's previous two films are. Both of those films make their characters' deaths count, and reserve their worst tortures for the most vulnerable of them - Josh in part one, whom Roth deliberately misleads us to think is his protagonist, and Lorna in part two, whose death we anticipate and are thus made complicit in, which only makes the extreme violence of it that much more upsetting. Hostel Part III, meanwhile, reserves the worst tortures (above) for the characters we like least; the character we like most, the Vegas-naysayer Justin, played by John Hensley, who upstages the rest of the cast in both his conviction and his charisma, and is the character we most want to see fight back, is coldly and quickly dispatched with a crossbow, whose bolts find their mark offscreen. This occurs as part of a highly stagey, emotion-free confrontation with someone described as a "Japanese cyberpunk," who seems more like a monster out of Pan's Labyrinth than a human being; the scene that should have been the most upsetting of all in the film instead plays out in the muted tones of anticlimax, with our emotional investment in Justin completely squandered.

There are other disappoinments. Hostel Part III has none of Eli Roth's skill with locations or mood; the building where the torture takes place is boring and charmless, compared to the dilapidated industrial locations of the first two films. A potentially memorable downer ending is spoiled by a too obvious, too pat happy-ending turnabout (you'll be thinking "I hope they don't--" long before they do). And the main conflict in the film reduces the complexities of the first two - which DO open onto global and political arguments - to two guys fighting over a woman, a trivial, meaning free macho contest. Pffft.

Man, the death of video rental stores is really going to suck...

Nomeansno Mama LP on eBay

2011-12-25T15:43:00.000-08:00

I once owned the LP of Nomeansno's Mama. Privately pressed in a run in the lower hundreds, it was already scarce by the time I bought it, circa 1985, at a long-gone store called Main Street Records on Granville Street. I paid $10 for it (they didn't know what they had). Years later, for reasons I forget (...being broke?) I made the foolish decision to sell it to Ty Scammell at the Vancouver Flea Market, who gave me a then-high figure of $80 for it; I've missed it since. Where it ended up after Ty's death is anyone's guess; the copy currently on eBay is not that one. Just as well: if it were that selfsame record, I might be more tempted to bid on it, for sentimental reasons - bringin' my Mama home, and all. Given that the one that's up for bid is mildly warped, and I have a turntable that is very, very sensitive to warps, and that it is currently bid up to over the $200 mark, it's best that I just let this one get away. Maybe I'll find the album in a thrift store someday...

Dreams of Being Murdered by a Self-Help Cult

2011-12-25T12:02:00.000-08:00

I seem to have an active dream life lately. In last night's dream, I had joined some sort of self-help cult to work on my various issues, and was finding myself increasingly uncertain about how the group was run. Various errors and mixups had me feeling like I was in the hands of untrustworthy amateurs; when I was assigned to be partners with a very awkward burn victim who had joined late - which seemed some sort of punishment for my dissent - I decided I'd had enough. My "I" was a bit fluid in this dream, but one manifestation of me, whom I believe was a woman, approached one of the women who administered the group, just as a big challenging event was slated to happen. I explained that I wanted to leave. She threatened to sue me for breach of contract or such if I did, then suggested I was just trying to avoid the big challenging event (which I was, but there were other dissatisfactions, to be sure). I persisted. Soon I found myself drawn aside to talk in private, while the other group members did an exercise, with a man whom I hadn't seen before. He listened sympathetically to my problems - then (by mechanisms I am unclear on) killed me using a poisonous snake, which bit me in the neck.

Some other manifestation of "me" in the dream was investigating this death/disappearance of a group member when I woke up... Merry Christmas, folks...

Seasonal Engrish, etc.

2011-12-24T12:09:00.000-08:00

Some amusing Seasonal Engrish posted today... In other news, I think I'm going to pause the blog for awhile again: holiday stuff to do, plus the onset of classes at UBC January 4th. I've got a couple of things I'm working on for the Big Takeover site which I'll put links up to, but otherwise not much going on. Must say, isn't a relief that in a couple more days the "Christmas music everywhere" phenomenon will be over? Wouldn't you prefer it if the malls played nothing but, say, Dayglo Abortions songs for the whole season?

They play Dec.31 at Funky's, by the way...

I dream a scientific experiment

2011-12-24T10:03:00.000-08:00

...in last night's dream, some scientist, wanting to prove a moral point about life - that it is inherently cruel and competitive - was setting up an experiment, reducing the light in a gigantic greenhouse so that only one plant would be able to flourish: but which? The hypothesis was that the most aggressive, most hardy, most ruthless plant would rise to the top of the heap, hoarding the light and leaving the rest to die. Environmental activists were expected to be outraged, but they had their own reading of the experiment, their own way of looking at it. Can't remember for the life of me what it might have been.

Maple Ridge Metal and Punk: the Wolf Bar

2011-12-24T01:34:00.000-08:00

Multiple Partners at the Wolf Bar in Maple Ridge; bad cellphone photography courtesy Allan MacInnis

It's been hard to keep abreast of music in Maple Ridge. The Ridge Radicals Facebook page is one place, and every now and then something ends up listed on www.livevan.com; but I'm sure I've missed out on a few things, since I'm used to living in a town that allows gig posters (which are very, very rare here). Anyhow, turns out that for some time, the Wolf Bar (at 22336 Lougheed Highway, entrance in the alley below) has been having weekend shows, apparently with no cover charge and abundant cheap drinks. Tonight I finally made it there, where, to my surprise, I caught Paradosis - who, stripped to a trio, have refined their sound, honed their chops, and gotten much more confident. They played a great, proggily intense set tonight - lotta whooped cries of "Paradosis!" from the audience, and indeed even a bit of moshing. I've long felt that they're a young BC band to follow, and expect that they will eventually end up getting noticed; certainly the crowd at the Wolf were enthusiastic. Their set was followed by a long DJ set of bar music, beginning with Rob Zombie commanding the crowd to "dance motherfucker," which was sufficient, invitation-wise, for a dozen or so girls in the bar, most of whom just danced sexily with each other (though there were a few solo men trying their moves out, as well). I was particularly taken with a cleavage-heavy bespectacled girl who briefly got up on a speaker cabinet to shake her thing, her boobs rolling half-out of her top like ill-packed watermelons; if she hadn't been 25ish (because who wants to feel like an old pervert?) I probably would have tried to awkwardly drool on her a bit. With a spastic green laser drawing squiggily lines everywhere and a Paralyzer and three rum-cokes in me, to say nothing of the rum-eggnogs I'd had at home before heading out, it was entertaining enough to sit back and just watch people have more fun than me, though the overall bar-music theme during the interlude eventually wore me down. Feeling drunk, hungry, and a bit weary, I ducked out on Multiple Partners - a newish Vancouver punk band with obvious enthusiasm for the form - though I snagged their demo EP to check out at my leisure (song titles: "Lose the Safety Net," "Go West Young Man," and "Tough Pill to Swallow"). And for the billionth time I missed seeing the Bone Daddies - a local band whom I've had a ridiculously large number of chances to see at this point. Sorry, Bone Daddies!

Interested parties should check out the Wolf listings on Livevan - it's a small space, and the ambience by day isn't too far from Funkys*, but by night on the weekends it seems like a place I want to return...

*Funky's by day, that is. Not that I've actually BEEN to Funky's by day, mind you, but I've seen the regulars hanging out there before the music starts at night, and that's been more than enough for me. My brief venture into the Wolf by day, meanwhile, had me glowered at and appraised by two very scary lookin' women in their 40's with tanned leather faces and very tight jeans... just as well that I'm not much of an afternoon drinker...

Good King Wenceslas by David M.

2011-12-23T14:06:00.000-08:00

A Christmas song from David M.!

First UBC stress dream

2011-12-23T11:02:00.000-08:00

In the dream, classes have begun at UBC. For my first class - which I believe I was late for; the first half of the dream, now forgotten, dealt with the stress of just getting there on time - I've been assigned a paper on the Marx Brothers. It can be anything I want, germaine to the Marx Brothers, but it's due the next day, and I haven't seen a Marx Brothers movie in years. I'm trying to find a particular film I remember (one that my dream is making up) - a controversial, critically rejected late period film starring Groucho where he plays some rather dark, unsavory character (I believe that my dream is taking liberties with cinema history and here referencing Charlie Chaplin's serial killer movie, Monsieur Verdoux). I have an idea for a very unique paper, using this misunderstood and somewhat obscure movie - talking about how Groucho's role in it ironically references and exploits his reputation as a comic figure; no one has taken this angle before or tried to defend this film, so it's a shoe-in for a good paper, because success in academia is all about taking unique and controversial positions, writing things that no one else has and thereby distinguishing yourself. The trouble is, I can't recall the title of this (non-existent!) film, or find it anywhere online, and am searching various websites and databases and such trying to tease it out. Finally I give up and decide that I'll opt for the tried and true and write about the tattoo scene in Duck Soup - about the surrealism of the dog barking - but in order to do this, I need to see Duck Soup again. I decide I'll go to HMV - in my dream as in reality, they're having a closeout sale - and buy a discounted Marx Brothers box set I've heard about (that's just in the dream, I know of no such box); only I discover, as I set out from the computer lab that I've been working in, that I'm actually much, much further away from HMV than I realized; in fact, it's possible my dream has me somehow up on the SFU campus of Burnaby mountain, somehow conflating schools. Wherever I am, there's a long commute ahead, and I experience a moment of deep despair: how will I get to HMV, get the DVD, see it, do the necessary critical reading for background, write a half-decent paper, and get a good night's sleep? It seems impossible.

Somewhere in the dream - not sure when - I find myself back home, probably at my childhood home, where my father, alive again, is encouraging me not to give up, or such, and I'm arguing with him, as I often would, telling him he didn't understand that none of this is easy...

Voivod on Alternative Tentacles!

2011-12-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

As some of you may recall, my enthusiasm for metal is relatively recent. I loved it when I was 13, even saw some high-profile concerts back then (Sabbath touring Mob Rules, Priest on Screaming for Vengeance, and Maiden on The Number of the Beast - three pretty cool shows to have been at, even if my memories of them now are pretty scanty). Alas, I rejected metal just as it was getting interesting; tribal divisions between metal and punk (and my genuine dislike of the politics and attitudes of the metal camp, to say nothing of the fact that they tended to beat people like me up) were such that when it crossed over with punk, I saw it as an infringement on, and commodification and dilution of, punk, not a vast improvement of metal, and I entirely skipped the onset of speed, thrash, and death metal, along with hundreds of great bands up-and-coming in the 1980's - like, for instance, the Canadian band Voivod. I remember there being buzz around them back then, and thinking, "yeah, but it's metal." That was enough to keep me away.

Funny, then, that Jello Biafra - one of my heroes of punk - would be the one, all these years later, to finally turn me on to Voivod. Alternative Tentacles just released To The Death, from a 1984 demo tape that predates their first official releases. Man, is it great - there are samples on Youtube, if you want to hear for yourself (tho' they're taken from the tape, not the A/T release, which may well sound better - I haven't done a close compare). The original recordings were done, according to Away's section of the liner notes, "live in our jamspace in January 1984 with an old tape recorder and a couple of microphones," so there is definitely a crudeness to the sound quality here, which adds to the sense of raw passion and conviction on hand. The fury with which this band lay into their songs is thrilling, and there is definitely a noticeable punk element, so I imagine if I'd given this stuff half a chance at age 16 (which is how old I was when they recorded it) I'd have loved it - it's got at least some of the power of that ROIR Bad Brains album, you know? Also included are two Venom covers (another band I deliberately avoided back in the day - they scared me!) and a Mercyful Fate one. I'm still noob enough at metal that I can't immediately pick those out, but give me a few dozen listens to the album. What a super-cool Alternative Tentacles release! Most fun surprise I've had from them since the Knights of the New Crusade...!

Dreams of Diarrhea

2011-12-21T07:54:00.000-08:00

The dream I was having involved, as they often do, some failed quest, a competition with peers for some now forgotten reward. I'd retreated to a room - not sure which, even by the terms of the dream, as it seemed both bedroom and bathroom. I can't say for sure if I was sitting on a bed or a toilet when I began to shit, but it doesn't matter, because the shit was explosive and wet, spraying out of me with such enthusiasm that I missed the confines of the bowl (if there even was one) and shat all around myself. One image was of holding a wastebasket at the edge of the toilet to catch the stuff that sprurted out between my legs, but not all of it hit the basket either. I remember someone coming to visit and seeing all the shit surrounding me, dripping off the walls, piled on the floor. Presently I woke up (after a mere four hours' sleep) and wisely went to the bathroom.

No more eggnog and spiced rum before bed!

La La La Human Steps returns to Vancouver

2011-12-20T13:42:00.000-08:00

The first time I ever saw Montreal dance troupe La La La Human Steps was on cable-access punk video program Soundproof, when, in the mid-1980's, they played excerpts from their performance Human Sex, all of which is now seeable on Youtube. It was a memorable experience - there was a powerful, passionate, even angry physicality to the dancers' performances and they communicated with each other onstage in ways I hadn't realized were possible in dance; it was impressive enough that, as little interest as I normally have in the form, I went to see their Vancouver staging of Amelia a few years ago, and was glad I did. While it wasn't as RAW as what you see in the Human Sex clip - not much is! - it was still a powerful, provocative, and moving experience.

Funny: I still am not sure of the gender of the amazing blonde dancer showcased in Human Sex; I remember arguing about it with a big haired Goth female friend at the time, who was sure he was a femme male; I was sure she was a masculine female. I still don't know. S/he's hot as hell, regardless. La La La Human Steps returns to Vancouver in late January for a program of new works.

Lou Reed and Metallica?

2011-12-19T16:17:00.000-08:00

Livin' out here in the sticks, I sometimes miss news. In fact, until I caught an offhanded reference to it in a News for Youse in the Straight, I had no idea that Lou Reed and Metallica had recorded an album together.

Yes, Lou Reed and Metallica have recorded an album together - of course to great critical disdain. I actually don't mind the one song I've heard - it kinda reminds me at times of parts of that long, near-instrumental workout that takes up most of one side of Patti Smith's Radio Ethiopia, and it makes me wonder if there's going to be a Metallica-Lou live version of "The Blue Mask," which could be an amazing thing.

Still, I'm listening to Wolves in the Throne Room, Arkona, and Les Rallizes Denudes pretty much exclusively these days. Not sure that I have the room for this, psychically. We'll have to see.

Oh, and that Taj Mahal Travellers album that everyone's been paying big money for, the August one with the purple cover? Phoenix Records has reissued it.

"War Torn Man" video

2011-12-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

Great local roots music song - "War Torn Man," by Rodney DeCroo, gets very interesting video treatment from local filmmaker Flick Harrison. Check it out!

Great triple bill at the Pacific Cinematheque

2011-12-17T23:04:00.000-08:00

Some of y'all have holidays 'round about now, which makes this a great time to see some cinema. There's a bleak-as-a-winter-sky lineup post-Christmas at the Cinematheque that cannot be beat, if you like your drama depressing, beautifully photographed, and in black & white - the perfect antidote for all this damnable Christmas cheer!

The only thing I vividly remember from reading Larry McMurtry's

The Last Picture Show when I was a teenager was that there's a scene where the young Texan men in it get together in a barn to fuck some cows. McMurtry makes it sound like this was a normal thing for adolescent young men to do, growing up in Texas. It's presented in a straightforward, slightly sordid way that leaves you a bit benumbed - sort of Less Than Zero with udders. It made me very glad to not have been born in Texas, or, hell, anywhere in America, or, for that matter, on a farm (because really, who knows how widespread the practice is?).

I don't recall if Peter Bogdanovich put any cowfuckery in his film version of The Last Picture Show. It's a rather heartbreaking film, as I recall, with fine performances from Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, and a very engaging actor who seems to have disappeared from high-profile cinema, Timothy Bottoms (he of The Paper Chase and Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing, both highly enjoyable films in their own right). There's a new 35mm print set to open at the Cinematheque on Monday the 26th; there's even an early show on the 29th, at 4pm, that allows you to see it as the first film in a triple bill, with one other great drama and one film that, while I haven't seen it and so can't honestly vouch for it, sure SOUNDS interesting enough.

The other great drama is A Place in the Sun, adapted from Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy. Any punks who read this blog might care: if you don't know what the Clash's song "The Right Profile" is about, it's about the prolonged self-destruction of the film's star ("the longest suicide in Hollywood history"), the highly charismatic, somewhat tormented, and very talented Montgomery Clift. A Place in the Sun is the second film mentioned by Joe Strummer in the song (which mentions most of Monty's career highs, though misses an underrated Hitchcock he did, I Confess... Strummer also namechecks The Misfits, playing on the 18th at the Vancity). I haven't seen A Place in the Sun in a long time, but recall it being a tragic tale of how class distinctions function in America and can sabotage relationships (I believe I am putting it mildly). The film might also be of interest for anyone who wonders why the hell Elizabeth Taylor ever became famous (this and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf will both answer that question, though she's actually quite beautiful in A Place in the Sun. An old sorta-girlfriend of mine used to get compared to her... sigh...).

The third film, the one I have not seen, is called Suddenly, Last Summer - Monty Clift and Liz Taylor are both in that one, too (and Katherine Hepburn!). I must simply refer you to the Cinematheque guide for that one - but note that there is supposedly a "cannibalistic orgy" in the film. Any Hollywood movie from 1959 that has anything even approximating a cannibalistic orgy - it can't possibly live up to the image those words evoke, but still - is something I need to see.

By the way, I'm not trying to be precious in putting up French movie posters - they just looked best of the ones that turned up on the Google search!

Goodbye to 1067

2011-12-16T23:53:00.000-08:00

Going to 1067 was always an interesting experience: negotiating the herds of the entertainment zone, finding the back alley entrance, making your way through the disused office space (sometimes with odd art projects to negotiate, as above) to see improvised and avant-garde music somehow always felt more covert, more daring, more subversive than going to an East Van punk or metal show, however dilapidated THOSE spaces might have been, mostly due to 1067's proximity to the mainstream. It didn't hurt that the sounds one hears there usually take you far further OUTSIDE any definition of the mainstream you might encounter. I haven't gone there at all since circumstances brought me back to Maple Ridge; and after this Sunday, it looks like I'm never going to go there again, because the performance space is being SHUT DOWN, finally, after bucking the odds for a pretty healthy stretch of time (and even surviving the fucking Olympics!). Sad news, tho' - because in a matter of days, the space will be as dead as the Red Gate, dead as the Emergency Room - just another useless hull for mice to run around in, as if the city didn't have enough of those already.

Sigh.

Anyhow, people who care about the venue, improvised music, or the state of our city's creative music community are invited to a final night of reminiscing - a celebratory wake of some sort - this Sunday (the 18th) at 8pm. I wish I could say I'd be there, but I'm badly in need of a stamina transfusion, before I can make any such plans; right now, leaving the apartment sounds ambitious.

Exhausted in Maple Ridge

2011-12-16T16:12:00.000-08:00

The term finally ended at UBC - I bussed in on Thursday, a complete but unsatisfying draft of my "final" final essay on Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye completed the night before; somehow the five hours' sleep I'd had were enough to recharge me, because I rewrote the whole thing, sitting at the UBC library, between 9:30 and 3pm that day. It's much better - still only 95% of as far as I'd have liked to have gotten it, since I didn't really develop the most interesting thesis I hinted at (that it's a sort of proto-post-modernist take on genre, from back when no one thought in those terms) - but word counts, time limits, and exhaustion finally took their toll. What I finally submitted was good enough, and definitely better than I'd written the night before.

I'd half-considered staying in the city for the metal show at the Biltmore, but once I finally got the paper in I knew that all I wanted to do was GO HOME. No more commuting, no more writing, no more shopping, even, until classes start again in January. What a relief, what a relief - leave Vancouver for the Vancouverites as the Christmas frenzy sets in. No shows I need to see - Bison BC and The Rebel Spell will tide me over for awhile - and HMV can close without me; it's mostly a fake sale, anyhow, with most stuff only marginally marked down, and tons of cheap shit SHIPPED IN to sell at what are supposed to be blow-out prices but in fact still gives them a nice profit. The fact that so many of their shelves are bare, when the real sale price is only 10-15% off, is a bit puzzling - that slight a discount is hardly enough to get a hardcore scavenger like ME excited, anyhow. Still, there's not much meat left on that carcass - the DVD section is quite depleted, so someone is willing to shell out their cash...

Anyways, here I sit, exhausted, stuck in the suburbs, but not minding it so much. Smoke a bowl, put on Wolves in the Throne Room, and slump in the chair on my balcony, cold air in my nostrils, the chill getting under my clothes in a most refreshing and comforting way. I wish that the mist on the mountains were a lot closer, that I didn't have all this fuckin' TOWN obscuring my view. Even the clouds have a beauty to them. It's really not so bad.

Reg Harkema, John Armstrong

2011-12-16T00:30:00.000-08:00

Reg Harkema told me awhile ago about his plans to film the Modernettes' John Armstrong's Guilty of Everything as The Rebel Kind. John Mackie just wrote about the film - which starts shooting soon - in today's Sun. Not quite sure why the story is seeing print now, but... cool!

RIP Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-15T23:13:00.000-08:00

While there are many writers I admire, Christopher Hitchens is one whom I read and get jealous. I've often disagreed with the positions he takes, and sometimes found him cruel, extreme and needlessly offensive in his provocations - but his command of the language and the depth of his cultural knowledge generally leave me embarrassed about my own shortcomings, and I read his writing in a state of awe and envy, even when the views he's advocating leave me shaking my head. His skills as an orator were also something to marvel at - whatever else one says about him, he was very, very good at being Christopher Hitchens. I've followed the news of his struggles with cancer and hoped for the best for him. It was not forthcoming - he died today, at 62. His most recently published article for Vanity Fair, dealing with his cancer, is here.

An afterthought: actually, it looks from reading that article that I can make one cultural claim Hitchens couldn't - I know my Nietzsche! (At least better than he did). The aphorism in full is (I think in the Kaufmann translation): "From the military school of life: what does not kill me makes me stronger." The first part, so often left out, makes clear that Nietzsche is not putting forth the second as a general truth (so quarrelling with it for a couple of pages doesn't make a lot of sense). He's saying that for a certain type of person - strong souls, not easily defeated - adversities can be used as something to learn, grow, and empower onself with; that the strong, the morally ambitious, the fighers (whom he imagines his proper readers to be - Nietzsche could do nothing so well as flatter) will take their defeats, incorporate them, and find a way to rise above them better people. It's meant as "words to live by," as a useful maxim to follow, kinda his way of saying "don't let the bastards grind you down." Nietzsche was not so daft to think chemotherapy and cancer and such, insofar as they didn't kill you, were somehow empowering experiences.

It's still an entertaining article, I just had to posthumously one-up Hitch. My favourite variant of Nietzsche's quote, note - from a kinda-girlfriend of yore - was "what does not kill me makes me drink more." I suspect Hitchens would have liked that one, too.

"The Winter of My Discontent" by Iggy Pop

2011-12-15T00:09:00.000-08:00

A laborious essay that I am not completely satisfied with (with no time or energy for revisions) leaves me empty and doubting myself. Why do I want to be doing this academic thing, again?

Thank God for Iggy Pop. Someone posted that fantastic clip of him performing "The Winter of My Discontent" on Youtube. Whatta song.

Another anti-censorship rant re: A Serbian Film

2011-12-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

As I've said elsewhere online, I find it sad and wrong and offensive that the US DVD release of A Serbian Film has been subjected to self-censorship - trimmed of its most powerful images by its very own DVD label. I'm not even sure that it wouldn't be preferable to have the film banned outright, has as been done in several countries - or for it to be censored by the government (as happened in the UK, where some four minutes were chopped - the most removed from a film since the Video Nasty days, I believe). It would be, strangely, more respectful to do that than to have the DVD distributor reach in and tamper with the integrity of a film they're supposedly distributing, out of fear of potential controversy (despite the time-honoured observation that controversy usually does a film some good...). Such lack of testiticular fortitude needs to be roundly condemned; it is fundamentally an anti-art, anti-freedom of speech stance, a shameful willingness to compromise with the values of brainless conservatives (who might not have even NOTICED the film, for fucksake!). Either distribute the film uncut, or leave it to someone who has the balls to do it - boo, hiss, to (hilariously misnamed) label Invicible for copping out, dropping the ball, failing one of the more interesting horror films I've seen in the last few years. (They also have the audacity to slap the word "unrated" on the DVD box, which normally would imply "uncensored," which is so clearly not the case here).

None of my dismay stopped me, however, from picking up a copy of the DVD (it's in stock at Videomatica). I want a legitimate DVD, for one (without the word "Screener" written across the top, as is the case with the version on torrent sites); I wanted to see if there were any extras (none whatsofuckingever), and I wanted to see firsthand exactly what has been cut, for my own eyes, so I could write a pissed-off blogpost about it. Welcome to it.

For those who don't know, A Serbian Film deals with a retired pornstar who is lured back to work in a mysterious "art porn" film where he is not told what he will be doing. The director, Vukmir, is a former child psychologist with connections to the Serbian state. When Milos finally discovers that he has unwittingly entered into a conspiracy to produce (spoilers follow!) a vicious, pedophilic, incestuous snuff film about the Serbian family unit, he is rendered helpless by a massive dose of bovine aphrodisiac, and goes, as the filmmakers wish, violently out of control; he only discovers what he has done in flashback, afterwards, with the help of videos he finds as he attempts to reconstruct his lost time.

Two scenes have been predictably damaged: the "newborn porn" scene - where Vukmir plays some of his work for the just-drugged Milos - has been trimmed so that we do not see the baby come out of the mother's vagina and don't see the man pressing it to his crotch. We hear the baby's cries, but the CGI child is not even shown on screen, with most of the scene focusing on Milos' face as he watches, or the reactions of the woman to giving birth. Later in the film, when Milos, deranged on said bull viagra, is tricked into fucking his young son, again, images are removed - not from the actual sex scene, where his son is hooded, under a blanket, and thus completely hidden from view (and we're led to believe it's another underaged character in the film, a teenaged girl), but from the aftermath, the "moment of realization" where the hood on his son's head is removed and Milos realizes what he has done.

The censorship of these scenes is utterly pointless and wrong, insofar as:

1. It is clear watching the film that, good as the special effects are in the first scene, they ARE special effects - that we are OBVIOUSLY not witnessing a real baby being born or raped or such. It is also clear that in the second scene, the actor playing Milos son has not been put anywhere close to harm's way. No actual child abuse takes place in the film - this is the stuff of art, not porn.

2. While the idea of child abuse is significant to the film, it is clearly and consistently presented both as metaphor (for conditions in Serbia, where, according to the filmmakers, people are "fucked from birth"), as rage-filled political agitation, and as somewhat blackly-humoured horror; while one might feel outrage or disgust or sadness, no "prurient value" can be had from such images. No one who wanted to masturbate to child porn or incest porn or such would pick this film, given what's available online; by censoring the film, we're not preventing dangerous people from getting their hands on dangerous material, but from normal people getting their hands on an admittedly extreme, but deliberate and thoughtful work of film art.

3. Further, these scenes already have been presented in a fairly tasteful way by the director, insofar as it is possible to do so; even in the uncut version that circulates online, for instance, we see the baby-raper from the back, and while we understand what he's doing, it's not shown explicitly.

4. While censoring the newborn scene is thus pretty pointless, censoring the second scene does great damage to the emotional impact of the film. While the audience understands where the film is going, what we are robbed of is Milos' moment of realization, and thus the whole impact of the scene is muddled; cued for it (and not necessarily understanding that what we're watching has been censored, since it is made to look as seamless as possible), we actually WAIT for the moment, essentially the climax of the film, and it never comes. By thus lessening the horror of Milos' discovery, we sap the film of much of its force, lessen our understanding of his total emotional devestation, and sabotage his motivation for his subsequent actions, not understanding exactly what we've been seeing until AFTER many of these actions have played out. Invincible lessens the force of the film's rage, and makes the perverse suggestion that showing a child being raped is somehow BETTER if it is NOT made horrifying! If a film is going to use as a metaphor a father unknowingly raping his son, I want it to be as horrifying an image as possible; such things ARE horrifying, that's the whole damned point!

5. And despite the censorship, the ideas are still retained - we can figure out eventually what both scenes are about. So the ideas are still there, they've just had their emotional impact muted and their presentation made a little more confusing. It's like we're in the grip of some pre-civilized dread of the power of images, that it's the images, and not the ideas, that are the real problem. (Maybe the DVD distributors are superstitious about having their photos taken, too, lest their souls be stolen?). But how, exactly, are such images going to harm anyone? They MIGHT attract the wrath of moralizing morons who don't care about cinema or believe in the value of free speech, who want to protect us from ourselves, but WHO CARES WHAT SUCH PEOPLE THINK ANYHOW? Should filmmakers' neuter their own films, restrict the range of ideas and metaphors they represent in film, so as to placate a handful of tongue-clucking busybodies? Shouldn't morally responsible grown ups (like the makers of A Serbian Film or its admirers) be allowed to communicate unimpeded with each other without fearing the intrusion of such people? Apparently Invincible doesn't think so. What a shameful failure.

A final note of interest is to see what the DVD distributors don't censor. While two scenes involving children are chopped up, there are two scenes of violence against women and one particularly outlandish scene of violence against a man that are left, as far as I can tell, completely uncut. Both of the scenes involving women are far more disturbing moments, for me, since they're more plausible, less obviously metaphoric/ hyperbolic, and in fact far more pornographic than the "newborn porn" or sonfucking scene. The first is a scene where Milos (again, out-of-his-mind on bull viagra), while fucking an unsympathetic female character, is encouraged to hit her, and then, as his testosterone-induced rage builds, is handed a machete and encouraged to strike her with it - which he does, chopping off her head while continuing to thrust. It's a truly horrifying moment, since it taps into some primal, vile masculine place that actually exists - since the hormone testosterone controls both for violent and sexual behaviour, these are inextricably linked by male biology. It is far more unsettling for me as a man to watch such a moment, because it connects with something I UNDERSTAND about male sexuality - including my own; it's also possible to imagine some sick bastard out there actually getting off on this scene. Still, as far as I can tell, not a second is removed here: we get blood spurting from the woman's neck as Milos chops away, the removal of her head, the bloody, spurting stump with Milos still fucking the corpse... It's all there. A similarly disturbing moment is also left in, later in the film, where we see what is supposed to be a snuff film using another actor, who thrusts his cock in the mouth of a chained woman who has had her teeth removed and, blocking her airway with his penis, pinches her nose shut so she chokes to death. A very depressing, bleak, brutal moment - completely left intact - as is the scene where Milos, enraged, finally gets revenge on one of the "bad guys" by thrusting his erect cock into the man's eye socket and skullfucking him to death. Presumably these scenes are what account for the four minutes cut from the British release of the film, but Invincible didn't touch them, giving them that much more weight over the censored moments. Funny that brutal violence against men and women is seen as acceptable in our society, whereas violence against children carries so much more of a taboo...

What makes ANY of the censorship of the film truly a folly, however, is that the label presumably hopes to make money on this DVD - while not realizing that they're essentially, in their gormlessness, encouraging people to download the uncensored version absolutely free, from any of a dozen sites. Freedom of speech is free - but the censored version will cost you $25. Good luck with that, folks.

Sorry, Mike!

2011-12-09T02:22:00.000-08:00

Dan And by Allan MacInnis

Apologies to Mike Payette - when he staged dived onto me, I genuinely tried to support him, it's just that he kinda hit me sideways.

Awesome Bison BC show tonight...

A footnote to the Eargoggles release

2011-12-08T07:19:00.000-08:00

Heh.... by the way, folks, in case it wasn't clear, I still heartily endorse the Eargoggles release party Friday at Funkys and encourage y'all to attend. I'm not even sure that the Rebel Spell were consciously endorsing (or aware of) the methods of A Better Life (or whether these have been accurately portrayed in the media); they might have just been looking for an independent alternative to the SPCA. I'll attempt to clarify this at a later date!

The Exorcism of Emily Rose (versus killer sheep)

2011-12-08T00:02:00.000-08:00

Even for a genre fan, most horror films fail to excite. Case in point: out of an interest in representations of genetic engineering and GMO's in science fiction films, I watched a New Zealand horror film this afternoon, Black Sheep, that has rampaging genetically modified, mutant sheep besieging a farm - it's sort of Night of the Living Sheep, with a few nods by the Weta SFX team to Rick Baker's American Werewolf in London prostheses.
The film neither has the seriousness or intelligence of Larry Fessenden's No Telling nor the emotional power of Jena Malone's terrific performance in a film called Corn (and you know the world is getting pretty fucked up when "corn" can be the title of a horror movie. Incidentally, that film also involves violent sheep, as the box art makes clear). Black Sheep tries instead to make an entertaining exploitation vehicle out of its subject matter, in the vein of Peter Jackson, but it doesn't go far enough, isn't fun enough, is neither dumb enough nor smart enough to succeed; the sheep FX are passably entertaining, and I suppose I'll keep the DVD - since there just aren't that many movies made in which sheep kill and eat people - but I cannot see the circumstances arising where I'd ever revisit this film (unless I were maybe writing a paper on the representation of GMO's in horror). That's par for the course; it's rare, especially when you watch as many horror movies as I do, that one makes you take notice, makes you aware that you're in the presence of something original. You don't even expect as much - I wasn't disappointed by Black Sheep in the slightest, even though I didn't care much about it, because, as a hardened horror fan, I know when I watch a horror movie, the best I can expect is to be idly amused; anything more than that is a rare bonus.

That's why I'm writing this; to direct genre fans to an interesting American film called The Exorcism of Emily Rose. There are a dozen good reasons to watch it: it involves a very unique genre cross-fertilization between the courtroom drama and the exorcism thriller; it has terrific performances from its principals, including Laura Linney and Tom Wilkinson, both of whom I admire, and Jennifer Carpenter, better known as Dexter's foul-mouthed cop kid sister from the TV series (horror fans will also know her from the English-language remake of [REC], Quarantine). Though it's an American production, also boasting a few other name stars (Mary Beth Hurt, Campbell Scott), that it was shot in Canada means there are various excellent Canadian supporting actors, like Colm Feore, Kenneth Welsh, and Henry Czerny present, too. It was filmed at least in part at UBC, and apparently the Buchanan Tower is visible in the film - a building which I pass every day on my way to classes, often humming a Roky Erickson tune, but nonetheless failed to recognize on screen. More than any of that, however, the appeal of the film lies in how it uses its courtroom construction to intelligently examine questions of faith, taking us fairly far into the realm of the supernatural while mostly avoiding the sort of hystrionic, conservative Bible-waving grand guignol that usually attends such matters in American-made horror films (even the highly enjoyable The Last Exorcism, a film which is so smart up til its risible last few minutes that they really stand out in contrast and lessen the overall effect). And while the claim "based on a true story" is usually a ploy to make horror movies more frightening, discredited for decades - and I think we can thank a number of films that draw inspiration from the exploits of Ed Gein for that - there is indeed an interesting, real-life exorcism story that inspires the film, that of Anneliese Michel. (I'm no expert in these matters but the Wiki page links there certainly seems to echo the film I've just watched).

I'm not attempting any thorough analysis here, but I think horror movie fans out there would enjoy this film. It's not a great film, but it's one of those horror movies that rises far enough above the median that I get excited watching it - a rare enough experience that it's worth remarking on. A more thorough discussion of it can be found here.

A Better Life Dog Rescue...?

2011-12-07T16:48:00.000-08:00

A day or two after reporting in the Straight, via Eargoggles' Clayton Holmes, that the proceeds for DVD sales for The Rebel Spell would go to A Better Life dog rescue, I encountered troubling news stories online that the people who run this rescue operation were supposedly breaking into private residences to liberate dogs who were being "abused" (by the standards of A Better Life, anyhow), then re-selling the pets. This is something the RCMP allege that A Better Life are doing for profit - something the founder, one Jan Olson, and her partner deny. Without any evidence one way or the other, I'm willing to believe their denial, actually - this sort of action seems far more likely to stem from idealism (and maybe a bit of a vigilante streak) than the profit motive - but I'm still troubled, particularly in discovering that this is a controversy that has followed the group for some time; here's another story, from 2009. Personally, I don't really like the idea of any private group - people with no public oversight, accountable only to their own consciences - breaking into private property for any reason, let alone to take things and redistribute them (...and this applies whether we regard a pet as property or not). Unless they have a pretty damn good moral justification for taking such an action, this is stepping wayyy too far outside the rule of law for my tastes; between pets being left alone for a few hours and people breaking into homes and yards, I have a pretty clear moral sense of what the greater evil is. And the whole "report abuse" function on their website seems a little too Stalinist, a little too open to abuse in its own right... I actually have no pets of my own precisely BECAUSE I would consider it wrong to leave them alone for long periods, as I would be obliged to do; but that doesn't mean I think that everyone should be made to follow that rule, under the penalty of vigilante action.

So I guess I won't be buying this DVD by The Rebel Spell. Bummer, I would have liked to have seen it.

Frustrations continue

2011-12-07T11:18:00.000-08:00

Grrr! In order to get Gmail to work properly, I had to upgrade to Internet Explorer 9, and now IT'S all fucked up - bizarre, ugly, unwelcome changes, with half my remembered websites vanished, and a new understanding of tabbed browsing that Makes No Fucking Sense (the URL for the website is in one tab while the NAME of the website is in another, taking up twice the amount of space for the same amount of information and badly crowding the top toolbar, so that opening a third tab seems dubious and a fourth impossible. News to Microsoft: if I can't tell from the URL and the fuckin' page in front of me what website I'm on, having the information on a separate tab isn't going to help). Meantime the upgrade DID solve my previous problem with the "new look" of Gmail (the layout was getting all bungled and overlapped when I tried to reply to a message), but created a new problem, a bizarre and unnecessary dead zone of white space running along the left inner margin (where the messages start); plus the icons for Bold, Underline and such that are supposed to run horizontally across the top of a message I'm typing have a weird tendency to leap into a double spaced vertical formation, so that the message suddenly disappears, leaping a mile below the level of my screen). NOTHING WORKS PROPERLY - or else is designed so badly that even if it is technically working properly, it's a friggin' mess. Would someone PLEASE teach these people the meaning of "leaving well enough alone?" ...or how about that other old saw, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it?"
Meantime, now that I've started blogging again, I'm starting to remember why I tried to quit - that sad old feeling that I'm talking to myself, writing words no one reads, while sitting alone in my room in the suburbs. Pathetic! Fuckit, I've gotta get out of the apartment....

Rogers dies: the ongoing saga of the death of the video store

2011-12-06T21:51:00.000-08:00

NOTE: the below has been amended. I had been (mis)informed by the manager of the last surviving Rogers Video in Maple Ridge that all Rogers rental stores were closing. This is not the case - locations remain open in Vancouver and elsewhere. Mea culpa! So what's below has been edited...

Hard to believe how fast things have happened. When, in April - a mere eight months ago! - I wrote my obituary for video stores, Blockbuster and Rogers still had hundreds of locations across Canada, and Videomatica hadn't announced its closure. Now Videomatica's rental location is empty (though its sale store appears to be flourishing in the back of Zulu Records), Vancouver's gargantuan HMV (not a rental store, obviously, but still a major source of physical media in the city) is weeks away from shutting down, Blockbuster has undergone a two-tiered store closure and no longer exists anywhere in North America, and - I discovered today - Rogers Video is now doing the same with all but its busiest locations - which will have a very direct impact on me: now that I've accepted busing some twenty blocks out of my way to rent movies - which is what I did today, and how I made this discovery - I learn that in fact, in a week's time, Maple Ridge will be left without a single video store (one little indy still exists in Pitt Meadows, so intent on bucking the trends that they still rent VHS tapes as well as DVDs. Pity they don't have anything like a decent selection of movies). Actually, I should amend that: there is one Asian convenience store with a small selection of new arrivals, who may emerge as the successful "last man standing" of this die-off. It's not exactly going to suit my needs.

Anyhow, all you scavengers near closing Rogers locations (like the one at Hastings and Slocan, a few blocks west of the PNE) better get scavenging. The one I was at had "Buy One Get One Free" sales on all their rental stock (mostly priced at $9.99 or $14.99), and the shelves were already looking kind of bare...

One caveat, though - don't count on closing locations to honour your point cards. No points are being given for purchases, and all sales are final. Cry if you want.

More Shithead!

2011-12-06T11:52:00.000-08:00

Relating to his new(ish) book and Big Takeover #69's feature on Bloodied But Unbowed, I just put up a mini-interview with Joey "Shithead" Keithley on the BT website. Check it out...

Friday: The Rebel Spell!

2011-12-06T02:04:00.000-08:00

See my interview with Clay about the Eargoggles release here...

Thursday: Bison!

2011-12-06T01:35:00.000-08:00

...at Fortune Sound Club!

Biting the hand that feeds: Gmail's new look

2011-12-05T23:37:00.000-08:00

So Google has foisted a "new look" on gmail users today - "streamlined, new, improved!" May I just say that this is one of the most irritating aspects of online life? I mean, granted, I'm a bit curmudgeonly in these matters - unlike people who delight in innovation for its own sake, I tend to like stability and reliability when it comes to tools, since it's the WORK THAT I DO WITH THEM and not the design of the tools that matters to me. As long as they work, I'd really rather not have things fixed, thanks. This is why I still use Internet Explorer, for example; though I did try Firefox for awhile, I see no advantages, no reason that I should re-adjust my habits and routines simply for the sake of using the newer, hipper web browser - everything I want to do online can be done through IE, thanks. It's also why I only reluctantly accept upgrades, since sometimes (think Windows Media Player - yeh, I'm a PC-user, too, natch), they're more like downgrades, completely misunderstanding how a product works and replacing useful, logical functionality with arbitrary, gimmicky nonsense. It's rather like waking up in the morning to find out that someone decided, with no input from you, that your car needed a new paint job, and while he was at it, thought that it would run better on square tires. Too much crap like that can kill a site (Myspace, anyone?). Can we just go back to the way things were, folks? Was there anything WRONG with it that I missed?

The Korpiklaani question I forgot to ask

2011-12-02T20:25:00.001-08:00

I wish I'd remembered to ask Jarkko how one dances to Korpiklaani. I'm trying to imagine a combination between moshing and a polka, and it's making my head hurt. Guess I'll see for myself tomorrow!

Jarkko Aaltonen/ Korpiklaani interview - plus Jeffrey Lewis in the Straight

2011-12-01T08:36:00.000-08:00

I did an interview for the Straight with Jarkko Aaltonen, bassist for Finnish folk-metallers Korpiklaani (at the left in the photo). The band plays Saturday at the Rickshaw. A few outtakes follow!

A: So... This is your third North American tour?

J: Yes, third time touring, although before the first tour, we actually did a one-off show in Calgary.

A: Is it your second time in Vancouver?

J: Hmmmm - no! Third. On both of our previous tours we’ve been to Vancouver. The first time was at this big ballroom in the city centre and the second time was at the Rickshaw.

A: …which is notoriously in a very bad part of town.

J: Yeah, we sort of realized that the last time we were there.

A: Did any interesting experiences or stories come of that?

J: Well - not really, although - I was in the city centre, whatever it’s called, this sort of walking district there, and I was with a friend of mine, and we were thinking that we need a hotel room so that we could shower and stuff. But we know that we have to get that from closer to the venue, so we go back to the venue, and we start walking this one street [and we’re thinking he’s talking Hastings, here] trying to find a decent hotel that has a room free. And in the end we end up 200 meters from the spot that we left in the city centre. We were back there. Because as you said, that district around the Rickshaw is not really the fanciest. Not that we were looking for a presidential suite…

A: I was wondering if you get asked a lot of stupid questions - I mean, I was watching your Bill Zebub interview in the film Pagan Metal -

J: Yeah, but that guy has made an art from being an idiot! I mean, nowadays if we start getting really really stupid questions, you know the whole idea of the interview is not to be informative but funny. And I don’t mind doing those - it’s another form of interview.

A: But, I mean, I was wondering if there are typical misconceptions that come up when North Americans interview you, due to cultural differences or such?

J: I don’t know if there are any misconceptions as such. The most annoying question that an interviewer can ask is, ‘well, I don’t know anything about your band; can you tell me everything about your band?' That really really makes me want to point him or her to the left side of the van and tell them to go and read the bio.

A: Heh. I bet. But the cultural differences are significant, though - I mean, you guys have actual pagan roots to go back to. In North America, we just have made-up stuff like Wicca and Satanism... I get a bit jealous...

J: Yeah, but on the other hand, as a sociological experiment, it’s a fine piece of art. You take people away from their roots and see what they come up with.

A: ...like global capitalism.

J: …and extreme Christianity as well. (For more on Finnish paganism versus Christianity, see Jarkko's answers in the Straight!).

Also of note in the Straight: Mike Usinger has done a big Jeffrey Lewis feature. Jeffrey plays tonight at the Biltmore - he puts on a great show, y'all should check him out!

Bloodied But Unbowed in Big Takeover

2011-11-30T00:32:00.000-08:00

Folks, anyone who cares about the Vancouver punk doc, Bloodied But Unbowed, really has to see what Jack Rabid and crew did with my interviews with Susanne Tabata and Joe Keithley in the new issue of The Big Takeover. It looks FANTASTIC, and even has a photo I've never seen before (of Randy Rampage and Art Bergmann together). I've been doing stuff for magazines and newspapers for seven years and have been in around 20 publications by now; this is bar none the best looking article I've ever been associated with. (It's not a bad read, either!).

RIP Ken Russell

2011-11-28T18:19:00.000-08:00

...dead at 84 of a stroke, as of yesterday. Say what one will about his excesses, Russell was one of the first directors of note to come to my attention; here in Maple Ridge, back in the 1970's and 1980's, it wasn't all that easy to connect with real cinema - even once video stores started opening, their stock wasn't exactly handpicked by cinephiles (I remember one of the first video stores in town renting Koyaanisqatsi to people for free because the owners thought it was so bad that they couldn't dare ask money for it). While not all of Russell's films hold my interest now, back then, Altered States, Tommy, Women In Love, The Devils, even Crimes of Passion were important films for me, films to watch repeatedly and talk about with friends, and Russell was one of the first directors whose work I sought out based on his name (along with John Cassavetes - most of whose films were completely unavailable on video for years - and Nic Roeg). His films were relatively easy to find on VHS, all striking in some way or another, and yoked by certain themes and proclivities such that, as a kid with a growing love of cinema, I could grasp that he was an auteur. (The relative unsubtlety of some of his films probably aided my 12-year old appreciation of them - that's how old I was when I saw my first one, Altered States, at the Stanley Theatre in Vancouver during its first theatrical run). Perhaps Russell's passing will stimulate interest in him and prompt Warner's American arm to do something daring like putting out the WHOLE VERSION of his greatest film achievement (see below). My respects to Ken Russell.

Desperate days

2011-11-27T02:33:00.000-08:00

...hm. Surprisingly neurotic and unself-confident about my classes, as final essays approach. That feeling that something of myself is really being put to test, here; that big decisions hang on what I do in the next couple of weeks. Not feeling very UP to it, but I'll have to rally soon, because deadlines are getting very, very close.

Jeffrey Lewis returns to Vancouver!

2011-11-26T22:48:00.000-08:00

...check him out on Youtube, he's a hell of a songwriter, a lot of fun as a performer, a talented comics artist, and a Peter Stampfel collaborator!

Free the weed!

2011-11-26T09:50:00.000-08:00

I didn't weigh in on Occupy, but here's something I will say something about: legalizing marijuana. It's a very, very good idea. Tax it, regulate it, remove criminals from the picture and let those of us who use it now and then relax, forgodsake - I'm sick of trying to be covert about smoking it when it's such widespread and harmless behaviour, sick of the grey area it presently exists in. I smoke pot - in moderation, a few puffs a few times a week - for various reasons:

a) when I've been bogged down all day in some project or responsibility and am mired in a stressed-out, exhausted state, it helps me shift gears in a shorter timeframe, get out of one unproductive mindset and into another more positive one

b) to stimulate the flow of creative juices when brainstorming about a piece of writing

c) to enhance movie nights with a buddy - marijuana and movies go together like alcohol and fighting

d) to enhance various other aesthetic experiences (listening to music, having sex, or combinations thereof)

e) as a remedy for motion sickness - remarkably effective; sometimes when transferring between buses on long commutes I've puffed a bit on my pipe to keep me from getting sicker, and it works quite well

f) to fend off migraines; during periods of my life when I'm subject to them, it is far, far preferable as a means of coping than any of the prescription meds I've tried (like menacingly-named vasoconstrictors, which list heart attacks as a possible side effect; why would I want to pop a pill that might kill me when I can simply take a few puffs on my pipe?).

I fail to see any of these things as being a social threat. What IS a social threat is the violence associated with its criminalization; I have no idea, when I buy pot, where it's coming from, whether I'm financing gang activity or such. I would much rather have the transaction taxed and regulated and above-ground, which is the ONLY thing that the current laws against pot prevent (they don't slow or stop the usage of the substance one iota, they just raise the price and remove the revenue that changes hands from the tax-stream). It's nice to see a few Vancouver politicians joining the call for this highly sensible move; after having recently been called a hypocrite by Marc Emery -whose prison blogs can be read here - even re-elected Mayor Gregor Robertson has joined his voice to calls for legalization. Stephen Harper, predictably, has just said no.

The Korean release of The Devils

2011-11-25T22:46:00.000-08:00

The Korean DVD version of The Devils arrived in the mail today. It has the same box art as the Spanish and the proposed art that leaked from Warner Brothers awhile ago. There are, as is typical with Korean releases, no extras of any sort. The option of Spanish subtitles suggests that this is sourced from the Spanish version of the DVD (there are no English subs, only Spanish and Korean). The sound is quite a bit clearer than I've heard it before, but some of the dialogue is whispered urgently with much background noise, so English subtitles would, in fact, make this a more attractive purchase. The image quality and the colours are quite good, compared to the previous options, though some of the church interior scenes have an odd effect I hadn't noticed before, where there's a sort of rainbow mottling of skin tones, for instance during Grandier's trial, when he is led back in with a shaved head; these colours may be meant to represent the way sunlight falls on skin when refracted through stained glass - something the inferior image quality of previous versions would not have allowed me to notice - but since no stained glass is readily apparent in Derek Jarman's terrific sets, I can't quite settle my mind that this isn't some odd defect. And speaking of defects, all the stuff we can presume would be missing is missing - the Rape of Christ and the charred tibia masturbation, most obviously, though I believe there are trims to Jeanne's other masturbation and self-flagellation scene, and if there is supposed to be extended footage of the breaking of Grandier's legs - it's not there, either. We presume the BFI presentation will be neutered in exactly the same way; and since it will be PAL and region-coded, the Korean DVD (NTSC, region-free) may still be your best option in North America, unless and until the American arm of Warner Brothers grows a pair of yarbles and decides to release the unexpurgated version of this film. I wouldn't hold my breath.

...so where the hell is A Dangerous Method?

2011-11-25T00:20:00.000-08:00

Grrr! I'm surely not the only person who has been eagerly awaiting the Vancouver theatrical debut of David Cronenberg's new film dealing with the relationship between Freud, Jung, and Sabina Spielrein, A Dangerous Method (that's the Wiki page, official site here, long Sony Classics PDF presskit here). It opened this week in the USA; I had assumed it was also going to be opening here, as well, but it's nowhere to be seen - and according to Tribute.ca, it won't get a Canadian release until January 13th! This is far too long to wait. Maybe I'll read John Kerr's book, A Most Dangerous Method, to prepare myself... that last link goes to an informative and piquant review/ synopsis in The Independent...

Mark Frechette and Daria Halprin!

2011-11-24T21:50:00.000-08:00

Wow - just found this clip on Youtube - the young stars of Zabriskie Point interviewed by Dick Cavett! (It's an awkward and uninformative interview, but in a way, this adds to its interest. Those unaware of the bio of Mark Frechette should read here - a very interesting man. Daria Halprin is still around and somewhat of a public figure, but not so much so in relationship to this film; her website is here.)

Spend a minute with The Shaggs

2011-11-23T22:06:00.000-08:00

Oh, Lord. I suddenly find myself enjoying a Shaggs song, and worse - I feel like I understand it. What's happening to me?

Three cellphone photos of Mayhem

2011-11-23T10:23:00.000-08:00

After falling in love with none of the opening bands (Abigail Williams, Hate, and Keep of Kalessin), I was half-worried that I'd be bored by Mayhem the other night, believe it or not. Extreme metal on my headphones to drown out the banal jabbering of my fellow commuters is one thing; shirtless thugs somberly pumping the goats into the air like it means anything and recycling Sabbathy blues licks is another (okay, so Keep of Kalessin were actually quite a bit better than that, and neither Abigail Williams nor Hate were without their moments, but still, it didn't really engage me). Up til Mayhem took the stage I was wondering if maybe the only metal shows I should go to are local ones - if there's something so tribal about metal that it almost requires a community connection to be meaningful; I'd rather support a local band at Funky's with no pretentions than a visiting band filled with them, and my somewhat stoned notes for the evening kept returning to the theme of how much more I'd rather be watching Bison, who at least look like they're having FUN when they play.*

Then Mayhem took the stage, and from the outset, my opinion changed. Overwhelming stage presence, the heavily made-up singer shrieking into an inverted-cross mike and the shirtless bassist - "the one who was so unpleasant to poor Sam Dunn in that doc" - seeming charismatic as all hell, sinewy and smiling with an evil grimace as he channelled and surfed the band's energy, completely absorbed in the music... which was absolutely relentless, and lit with bright blue and abundant strobes and fog. A crazy, chaotic, and very, very powerful band. They actually namechecked Skinny Puppy, too! (I expected them to maybe drop a reference to Blasphemy, but the praise for Skinny Puppy made perfect sense). The people who came late had the right idea - and I was very happy to see that indeed, by the time Mayhem took the stage, the place was packed.

True: I did leave early, and may have missed some theatrics - but I'm a suburban wuss, and I'd barely slept the night before, so getting home before 1am seemed vastly preferable than waiting til the gig was over and arriving after 2... My three best photos of Mayhem onstage in Vancouver follow:

*And remember, folks, Bison BC plays Fortune Sound Club December 8th.

A massive Rudimentary Peni article

2011-11-23T08:45:00.001-08:00

Thought this was interesting - lots of art and lyrics, plus a history of Rudimentary Peni.

In which I miss my train

2011-11-23T08:21:00.000-08:00

Shit. Dunno if it's some sort of passive aggressive protest at the way things are, spurred on by all the class rage of Breaking Bad, or terrified avoidance of the reality of my encroaching final essays, or maybe a mere response to miserable weather, but today is the second day this week that I've missed class at UBC. Both classes, mind you, were going to be predominantly devoted to film screenings - In Bruges for my Cult Movies class on Monday, Inglourious Basterds for American Cinema Since 1960. Nevermind that I've seen both movies, and in fact own both on DVD, or that it's a bit of a waste to spend two hours on trains and buses getting to class in order to just watch a film; this doesn't really mean anything, because attendance is graded, and the professors do sometimes say things of import to our readings of the films, by way of an introduction. Plus I was going to be working on a paper after class today - was going to stay late at the library. Monday's absence I actually don't feel that pissed at myself about - I was awakened by stomach cramps and diarrhea at 2am, having barely even fallen asleep, and had no luck getting back to sleep for the remainder of the night, so my decision to turn off my alarm and try for another few hours was a considered one. Today, however - I was quite shocked to get out of the shower and see that it was 7:36, that I'd lingered just long enough to make even the briskest trot to the train station futile (last train in leaves at 7:44). I attempted it anyway - I was five minutes away, with a busy bypass to cross and a downhill slope slippery with wet leaves to traverse, when I heard the train pulling up, and knew beyond a doubt that I would not make it - that at best I'd catch a glimpse of the train's tail as it receded in the distance. I turned back, trudging up the hill I'd just come down, grumbling to myself, my heart still pounding from the quick walk I'd attempted. What a loser.

More on The Devils

2011-11-22T20:31:00.000-08:00

Tom Charity of the Vancouver International Film Centre passed on this link to Mark Kermode's discussion on the upcoming BFI DVD release of The Devils (thanks!). As I expected (see below), the Rape of Christ has not been reinstated, nor any of the other material removed before the film was certified - which I imagine also includes that charred tibia masturbation scene that I so want to see. As I've said elsewhere, that scene is far more important than the Rape of Christ, since it depicts the posthumous connsumation of the relationship between Jeanne and Grandier (who has been burned at the stake; all that remains of him is a very phallic chunk of bone, which, when presented to her as a souvenir, Jeanne puts to good use...). Unlike that scene, there is truly something excessive about the Rape of Christ; the film has plenty 'nuff already of orgying nuns indulging in sacrilege, such that no real further points are scored by pushing it as far as Russell does. Not that I object, and of course I'm all for the scene being reinstated, and I think the BFI folks are being a bit CHICKENSHIT here (tho' Kermode, in, erm, shilling for them a wee bit, does have a point, that there HAVE been inferior director's cuts released in the past - we can add Donnie Darko to his list; I for one can't stand the tinkered-with version of The Exorcist, and would rather watch the original Apocalypse Now over Redux any day.) But I won't be satisfied until BOTH the Rape and the tibia masturbation are back in the film, which seems to imply that I will never, ever be satisfied. Ever.

On the other hand, the good news, I guess, is that I won't feel compelled to upgrade my recently-acquired Korean DVD of it. Which is good. I'm out of money. I will review that disc as soon as it arrives.

My Breaking Bad problem

2011-11-20T11:33:00.000-08:00

I don't watch a whole lot of these made-for-TV superseries. I've done season 1 of Dexter and The Walking Dead, all of Deadwood - and that's about it. I know from my Deadwood experience how addictive these shows can be, how one is compelled to stay up late watching episode after episode, in a way analogous to the experience of reading highly compelling pulp fiction. I've recently been introduced to Breaking Bad, an excellent example of the form - involving the moral compromises and human consequences that ensue when a high school chemistry teacher, Walter White, decides, on discovering that he has cancer, to start cooking meth to provide for his famiily. It's the same experience: it's hard to walk away having seen fewer than four or five episodes in a row. This is also true for my Mom, who is as hooked as I am, checking her watch at 11pm to turn to me and say "just one more episode?" She's as invested in the show as I am, which is what I'd hoped would be the case.

(...People seem scandalized that I'm showing these to my 80-year-old Mom, but she actually enjoys fairly violent entertainment, and has been known, at the climax of a good revenge thriller, to be cheering the hero on in the final showdown, saying things like "kill him!" - something that's become a bit of a joke between us, such that she now performs this reaction where appropriate because she knows it amuses me. My Mom is very sweet, and just a little bit bloody-minded... she also has no one else in her life to keep her company, so we watch a lot of movies together anyhow; I figured a series would be cognitively good for her, get her to exercise her memory over the long-term. Mind you, my Mom is also of a somewhat conservative mindset, and tends to get more satisfaction out of the scenes where Walter and Jesse are punished for their wrongs - she interjects things like "they deserve it!" - than the moments where they seem to be getting away with it, which is what I tend to cheer on...).

Our method of delivery for these has been primarily DVD up until now. I bought Season 1 last Friday, Season 2 on Monday, and Season 3 on the Friday just past. Here we are on Sunday, then - and all 33 episodes have been gobbled up, consumed, in a week and a couple of days. What to do now? We COULD just wait for Season 4 to be released on DVD - I will definitely purchase it, and DVD is still my format of choice. But Mom's attention span won't hold out that long - she'll have forgotten the series and her investment in it by that time, I would imagine, whereas right now she and I are both champing at the bit to see more. I generally only feel comfortable using torrent technology for things a) I cannot buy legally anyway - things unavailable legally, like Todd Haynes' Superstar, for example, or the uncensored version of A Serbian Film; b) things I would never buy anyways (pornography, for instance - surely only the very rich or compulsive masturbators pay for that, these days); c) things I do not yet know that I want to buy, which I want to take for a "free test drive." Torrents are ideal for such purposes - 'cept even here I've run into a snag; my first attempt to download the full season 4 netted me a zipped file that I supposedly have to pay money to de-encrypt, which I have to acquire from some sleazy-lookin' website called "Share Cash" that appears to be trying to commodify exchanges in the torrentsphere. No thanks! There's also the legal option of buying one-episode-at-a-time off Amazon, of course, but I'm damned if I'm going to pay for these things twice, once now and once the DVD is released. And I very much doubt that AMC's reruns coincidentally match up with Mom and my needs, here - I don't want to miss a single episode, or see them out of sequence...

So here I am torrenting one episode at a time, negotiating the odd failed download en route, checking each to make sure the quality is okay (it isn't, always), planning to compile them on a DVD that I can invite Mom over for (her player doesn't like burned discs). With luck, a legit DVD release will happen soon, and I'll be able to legitimize my position here. If all works out, maybe Mom and I'll even end up watching Season 5 as it airs on TV - "the old fashioned way." I should go check my downloads now... Mom'll be expecting me...

Monday Night Mayhem!

2011-11-19T00:41:00.000-08:00

...sounds kinda like a sports event, dunnit? But no, of course - I'm referring to notorious Norwegian black metal pioneers Mayhem, who play the Rickshaw on Monday (that's the Wiki; their Myspace is here, though true to that site's ethos for the last couple of years, it is apparently currently malfunctioning). I was told at Scrape today that there are still tickets to be had - since, perhaps, people are holding back because, given the band's storied past, they figure the band might not be allowed into Canada (to perform what will be their First! Ever! Vancouver! Show!). Rest assured, tho', ye skeptics, that (-or so I was told) the band is currently IN CANADA, and with no borders left to cross en route to Vancouver, it's lookin' pretty damn likely that Monday's show will proceed. Also performing are Norway's Keep of Kalessin, the LA-based Abigail Williams - named after one of the accusers in the Salem witch trials - and Polish band Hate. I don't know how I feel about Mayhem's past or their philosophy of life - I don't think I'd enjoy spending social time with'em, God help me - but their music sure is sonically satisfying, and I'm still craving strong stimulation (see below). Check out "Whore" here, for a sample of what they do best.

Scythia Saturday, Korpiklaani Dec 3

2011-11-18T07:26:00.000-08:00

I've actually been kind of enjoying folk and pagan metal these days. Bought Bill Zebub's Pagan Metal documentary (which that link apparently allows you to watch for free) at a meagre discount at the HMV close-out (which is not really a SALE yet, as I understand the concept) and found myself particularly enjoying this incongruous combination of musical styles (somehow punk and folk was an easier sell for me). I'm happy I'm starting to get it. Bands like (Irish metal) Primordial or (Finnish) Korpiklaani help (the latter plays Dec. 3 at the Rickshaw - lotta fun songs about drinking). Meantime, Vancouver's own contribution to the form, Scythia - whom I interviewed here - play with a bunch of like-minded bands at the Rickshaw on Saturday, as some sort of pagan metal folkfest. I just might go, if my suburban condition permits...

EDIT: I incorrectly identified this gig as happening on the 2nd. It's the 3rd!

A David M. Christmas

2011-11-18T03:54:00.000-08:00

Gigs! Bison BC, The Rebel Spell

2011-11-15T20:55:00.000-08:00

The Rebel Spell by Femke van Delft

Two of my favourite local bands are playing soon, how can I not mention them? Bison BC plays the Fortune Sound Club Dec. 8th and The Rebel Spell plays Funky Winkerbeans on December 9th, for the Eargoggles DVD release. My respective interviews with them are here and here!

More censorship: Xxxenophiles, an extraterrestrial anti-semite, and "Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy"

2011-11-15T03:34:00.000-08:00

Finally I've found a new online pastime: go to Gomorrahy.com (see a few posts below) and look up provocatively-titled videos and books and such that are prohibited in Canada, so I can find out what they are and whether the decision to ban them makes any intuitive sense at all. Not everything on the lists is of equal interest - I know that I'm not at all interested in bestiality porn, or rape porn, or kiddie porn, or so forth, and have no problem with its censorship, while items like the Ream His Straight Throat series have fairly self-explanatory titles (and it really is of little consequence to me why volumes 2, 3, 4 and 7 are admissable, while 5 and 6 are prohibited). On the other hand,something about the mere existence of a comic book called Xxxenophile fills me with curiosity and delight. What could it be, and, harmless as it seems after a superficial investigation, why are some of its manifestations banned in Canada? What could possibly be threatening about cartoon depictions of consensual sex with extraterrestrials? Whom, exactly, is being protected from what, and why? The question is puzzling enough that I kinda want to read some Xxxenophile stuff, to get its flavour. Just how humourless IS the Canadian government, anyway?

Today's best discoveries, however, include a pornogrind song that I'll get to presently, and the existence of the extraterrestrial Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn, from Pleiades, who orbits earth offering spiritual teachings and. from what I can gather, what appears to be anti-Semitic hate speech, which is why several of his (?) publications have been banned here. Alas, Hatonn doesn't seem to have his own Wikipedia entry, though he is mentioned on what happens to be the most bizarre Wiki page I've ever encountered, dealing with developments in theosophy that I had no previous knowledge of. There is really quite an elaborate list of extraterrestrial intelligences with religious significance to neo-Theosophists, with Hatonn merely being (we hope) the most Jew-hating of them. It is quite disturbing that some people take any such things seriously, as the authorship of that Wikipage and the various institutions that revolve around Hatton prove, but still, if it wasn't for our government's efforts to censor such material, I would have no idea it existed. This raises the question of whether our government is actually bestowing on such publications far more attention and honour than they deserve, by taking them so seriously; I'm sure I'm paraphrasing someone else here, but it seems to me that most functional people will be able to self-protect themselves from exposure to such warped weirdness, while anyone who can't probably isn't safe reading TV Guide.

Another thing I'd never have encountered without finding it on a censor's list: a pornogrind song called "Erotic Diarrhea Fantasy" by a band called Torsofuck (also the authors of "Raped by Elephants;" I wonder if that one's legal here? There IS bestiality and coersion in it, after all!). The banning of such songs is particularly amusing given that the lyrics are completely incomprehensible growled gurgles; all you really need to do is take away the lyric sheet and these could be songs about baking cookies. Plus, you know - the idea of fantasizing about being covered in diarrhea seems about as banal and harmless as seriously twisted perversions come. If someone wants to write a song about ejaculating whilst being wetly shat upon, I cannot see what possible moral OBJECTION any rational person might have ("Ewww!" is not a moral objection).

Meantime, nor can I see why anyone would really want to LISTEN to such stuff, but I suppose on a slow night, given a lack of more appealing options...

Flesheaters online discovery

2011-11-14T00:07:00.000-08:00

Check this shit out - a GREAT live tape of the Flesheaters (my favourite LA punk band at the peak of their powers) recorded off the soundboard! Waah!

The Devils addendum

2011-11-13T22:43:00.000-08:00

Heh. Now that I went ahead and ordered one of those Korean copies of The Devils - wouldn't you know it, there's BFI version coming out, promising to be the "original X certificate" version, and described as 107 minutes long, which, given PAL speedup, would make it 111 minutes or so - quite possibly the whole film. I'll believe it when I see it, but...

In which I re-disappear

2011-11-11T12:37:00.000-08:00

Okay, so that was undeniably a brief spurt of blogging. I guess I have to say that, contrary to my declarations of a couple of months ago, my blog is not technically dead. I don't know what it is. A zombie blog, lurching about for a short period, then collapsing inert...? I've got to re-focus my energies on other things now, though, so I'm going to go away again. Whether I return or not... hell, I dunno.

Dick's Exegesis - or 976 pages of it

2011-11-11T12:32:00.001-08:00

A new editon of PK Dick's Exegesis has been published. My.

Extreme and censored cinema, plus a word I learned tonight: Gomorrahy

2011-11-11T03:15:00.000-08:00

Kind of hungry for stimulation this week. A couple of my classes were cancelled due to the holiday and I'm not quite up to writing my final papers (soon!), and my Mom, bless'er, has been on a couple of her casino trips, so I've had some free time. As sometimes happens in the anticlimactic wake of a big burst of writing (submitted four essays of varying length and one Straight article last week), I'm a bit depressed and numb, not sure what I'm doing with my life, not very energetic, not very connected emotionally - hell, I'm even a bit lonely, a bit bored - and so I've been looking for cinema to wake me up, hence my finally watching Cannibal Holocaust. (Actually, I just watched a torrented version of Human Centipede 2 tonight, as well. I promise, folks, I'll buy the DVD when it comes out. It's really quite something, but forgive me if I don't commit as to saying what that something might be). Also watched the South Park episode, "HUMANCENTiPAD," the comedy skit "Human Centipede Anonymous," and torrented and flipped through The Human Sexipede, which, alas, appears to be mostly a normal porno (not that these don't have their uses. Apologies to the fine people who made The Human Sexipede for stealing their film, but I mean, it's certainly nothing I ever would have paid money for, unless it turned out to be some brilliant cult item, which I've now conclusively proven to myself it is not). I've further decided to meet the challenge of watching A Serbian Film (praised by Eli Roth in that link last post) - another film to torrent, because, we gather, the official DVD release in North America is a censored cut.

In the midst of all this, in trying to figure out how to determine if I might be violating any laws by accessing the uncensored version of A Serbian Film, I have learned a new word: Gomorrahy, "the insertion of a hand, a foot, or the stump of a limb (i.e., the insertion of an extremity) into an introitus/vagina or an anus/anal canal, for a sexual purpose." Never have I heard the term before (despite having read at some length about Annie Sprinkle's arrest for making amputee porn with Long Jeanne Silver, getting, essentially, ankle-fucked by her). I guess if adding a Y to Sodom gives us Sodomy, it's linguistically a fair move (though I don't recall any biblical tales of stump-fucking in Gomorrah; maybe they were omitted in Sunday School.)

My source for all this is the website Gomorrahy, which, fascinatingly, offers PDFs of various official lists of "prohibited titles" - books, DVDs, and so forth that are not allowed to be imported into Canada. For instance, on page 3 of the listings for this 2010 report, we learn that the Fuck My Mom and Me series is mostly admissable, while the film entitled Ball Busting and Cock Biting Coeds is prohibited. Unfortunately, no details are given as to why. The provocatively-titled Junkyard Fist Dogs is allowed, but Pussy Torture 8 is not. Even certain works of anime, like Blood Royale, are banned, as are various comic books, like Pet Humiliation Diary, which shows up on a banned list from 2011 (I am somewhat disappointed to see that it's just another Japanese S/M comic; the title took me somewhere else). It's interesting that with so much material freely being transmitted electronically there isn't an official government database to check in with, so that we can see ("gee, I wonder if Zebedy Colt's The Devil Inside Her is legal here yet?"). It's rather amusing that to even find out about such things I have to visit an anti-censorship website...

Hm. I see that there's a film called The Texas Vibrator Massacre that's prohibited in Canada. I bet there's a torrent of it. The trailer is here, a detailed description here... It actually piques my curiosity, as a riff on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre films. But, well... it's prohibited. Should I let that stop me? (Maybe it's only prohibited if you buy or sell it, while the stealing of it is unregulated? Hmm).

That reminds me, I was reading about Rob Zombie regular Bill Moseley's Texas Chainsaw Manicure movie... Now that's something I should try to find - and I bet it's legal, too!

Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)

2011-11-10T23:18:00.000-08:00

Don'tcha all wish that there was a movie theatre in town that would program a double bill of the Human Centipede films? I do. (Wiki for part 1, part 2). How fun these would be to see in a social environment... I bet Kier-la has had'em at Blue Sunshine. Vancouver needs the return of Cinemuerte!

PS: Eli Roth talks about his reactions to The Human Centipede (First Sequence) here.

Friday: Snaggletooth. Music Mondays: Lemmy!

2011-11-10T18:19:00.000-08:00

Motörhead in Vancouver, by Femke van Delft

So any really diehard Motörhead fans might want to check out Friday's Motörhead tribute band, Snaggletooth, at Funky's - they do a pretty credible job of what I think is "Orgasmatron," mislabeled as "Killed By Death" here (that surely is Sonny of Little Guitar Army, eh?). It's kinda unsettling the extent to which the lead singer has gone to look like Lemmy, though I don't believe he has taken it to the full limit, which would involve growing a large, hard mole on his cheek. (That would be impressive). If I didn't live in the suburbs, I'd be there for sure. Actually, I still might be, we'll have to see: I can get drunk and try to impress any chubby pale punkettes in the audience with my tales of meeting Lemmy ("I gave Lemmy Kilmister tentacle porn!").

...Then Monday, it's the Lemmy movie, for Music Mondays at the Vancity Theatre. This is a very funny, very engaging documentary, with various people praising Lemmy or offering colourful anecdotes. Highly recommended, surprisingly endearing and revealing.

...and finally, if anyone has missed it, Motörhead will be KINDA sorta coming back through town on Megadeth's Gigantour, which will see the band playing the Abbotsförd Entertainment and Spörts Centre on February 20th. If anyone wants to drive me to Abbotsförd...

Ken Russell's The Devils - there is news!

2011-11-09T11:28:00.000-08:00

It turns out that there has been news in regard Ken Russell's hard-to-see The Devils - a film based on historical events which documents the misuse of church power and the persecution and martyrdom of a somewhat debauched priest, played by Oliver Reed. Film geeks have been waiting for years for an official DVD release. Long-censored footage, previously considered lost, of orgying nuns molesting a life-sized Christ on the cross (the so-called "rape of Christ" scene) was reinstated for a highly watchable bootleg that came out a few years ago, but it was of variable quality and aspect ratio, and still missing the scene where Vanessa Redgrave, as a mentally disturbed, sexually fixated nun masturbates with a rather phallic chunk of charred human thighbone. A lot of discussion has been on whether Warners would ever "have the guts" to release the full film - a discussion that presumes that it's the controversy around these censored elements in the film, and the film's critique of religious hypocrisy, that has kept them from getting on board, which may or may not be the case; I actually don't see how the film - which attacks hypocrisy in the name of God and the misuse of power, not God or faith or the idea of belief - as blasphemous in any way, and can't see how (unless one is pro-hypocrisy) it could be regarded as a threat to ANY person of faith, however disrespectful it might be from an idolator's point of view... It's funny what some people are scared of...

Well, here's the news, for anyone who missed it (as I did, until late last night): in 2010, Warners DID release the film - in Spain and very, very briefly on iTunes. Reports online suggest that this is a great-looking release in the proper aspect ratio, but still abbreviated, running 103 minutes. Whether PAL speedup has anything to do with this or not hasn't been noted, but 103 minutes is the length given for the censored cut; longer versions, including the "rape of Christ," run between 108 and 111 minutes, and reports online state that this footage is still missing. It is, of course, highly unfortunate, that Warners, who COULD release the complete film, are choosing to go with a censored cut; but as with other botched DVD releases of recent years (the Zabriskie Point with the shitty Roy Orbison song tacked onto the end credits; the Performance with the missing line of dialogue; the highly abbreviated, dubbed, mangled version of Burn!) this may be the only official release we're going to get, unless someone at Warners catches a rare case of courage.

Meantime, it turns out that what appears to be the same release as the Spanish is now available in region free NTSC through Korea. The box art below is from the Korean edition, as sold on eBay. Note the misspelling of the director's name! (Nothing new there - my version of The Brood from Korea is directed by someone named "David Cronenberc"). I've got this on order and will weigh in presently as to whether any missing footage has been reinstated.

Petunia record release Saturday!

2011-11-07T18:17:00.000-08:00

Since I'm throwing a few posts up I might as well mention that I totally loved some of the stuff on Petunia and the Vipers' new LP. Pretty much all of it, in fact, except the Hoagy Carmichael cover, which I didn't really need so much. I didn't mention that in the review I wrote, though (see here) - besides, it's deeply cool to see how much Petunia is expanding his musical domain on this album. Fave song on it is "Mercy," which you can see performed live here. That's Red Herring's Steve Nikleva with him onstage, I do believe! The record release is Saturday at the Ukrainian Orthodox Hall.

RIP Andre the Gypsy?

2011-11-07T13:15:00.000-08:00

Someone commented on my Andre the Gypsy interview to say that Andre died last month. I hadn't seen him for months - the last time I saw him, I passed on some personal information from someone from Andre's past who wrote me, wanting to get in touch with him... I hope that all worked out in a good way. He seemed moved by the request - don't know what happened after that.

You can hear various performances by Andre here, on his video blog.

Cannibal Holocaust evening: Korean DVD discovery

2011-11-06T21:18:00.000-08:00

I've been shopping for a DVD of The Brood, which I have owned and sold before and have now decided I need in my permanent collection. Since I have a vested interest in the existence of physical media - I *like* that there are shops where I can buy movies - I try to buy DVDs rather than torrenting them, especially when costs aren't high. The cheapest DVD version of The Brood available comes from Korea, so I purchased it via eBay the other week. Since there was a discount for shipping if one buys other DVDs, and since Korean DVDs are usually of reasonably good quality (if often void of extras), I poked around the seller's site. I'm presently taking Ernest Mathijs' Cult Movies course at UBC, so I've decided to see as many cult films as possible while the course is going on, especially ones I've previously avoided, and it seemed prudent to see if I could make an interesting bulk purchase.

This, folks, is how I come to be in possession of the Korean DVD of Cannibal Holocaust. And for the benefit of any movie geeks googling "Korean Cannibal Holocaust" for a review, I will now offer a few caveats.

The Korean DVD version I purchased (pictured left) is not widescreen -which most other releases are. It is mostly, but not all, in English, and the portions in Italian - during the scenes with the soldiers in the jungle near the beginning of the film - are not subtitled in English (those of you who read Korean need not worry). It has a rather grainy, VHS-quality image. Optical fogging is used to censor the pubic region, where it appears, similar to what some of y'all might remember on the Japanese VHS versions of El Topo and The Holy Mountain (one might also note that there is a puzzling plentitude of male nudity in the film, so often it's the cricket set that's getting fogged). On the other hand, optical fogging is not used to censor the actual deaths of animals, which the film is notorious for; these do not appear to have been censored in any way. There is a screaming coatimundi being stabbed in the neck (described elsewhere incorrectly as a muskrat, an anteater, and so forth), and several minutes of upsetting turtle gore. There are also spider, snake, pig and monkey deaths. I can't say which version of The Last Road to Hell is used - a film within a film based around "found footage" or such of unfaked Nigerian executions; apparently there are Dutch versions that are longer than those in other countries - but there is certainly some real human death in the Korean cut (though not shot FOR the film - it isn't a snuff film, though that impalement sure looks convincing, doesn't it?). Overall, it's a mediocre but watchable presentation of an immoral and nearly unwatchable film. The censorship is in itself quaint enough (and bizarre enough, that anyone should think pubic hair is more of a threat to public safety than images of people and animals being killed) that it actually adds to the movie's limited appeal.

And now I've finally seen it. There's one less horror movie in the world that I'm afraid of watching. Perhaps I should take a bath...

Oh, that reminds me, while I'm at it, the Korean I Spit On Your Grave, while I'm sure it also has censored pubes, has the castration scene intact, including one big spurt of blood that I didn't recall from the previous version I watched. So that's good.

Happy viewing, folks.

Don't Get Your Hopes Up, but...

2011-11-04T00:48:00.000-07:00

I can't sleep. I spent most of the day writing for this UBC Film Studies course I'm taking - roughly some seventeen pages of text, far in excess of what was asked of me. My brain is still buzzing, such that, despite my exhaustion, I can't sleep. I've decided to embrace this unwelcome awakeness and exhaust myself further in the hopes that the next time I lie down, my mind will be quieter.

What to do, tho', in this state? I've already masturbated, bathed, eaten, and done some recreational reading this evening. I also just watched an episode of Pee-Wee's Playhouse, which was delightful but far too stimulating for me to dare a second (who knew that Lawrence Fishburne appeared in that show?). With nothing else compelling on hand to occupy myself, I've been poking about the net - reading Mack's latest News For Youse on the Straight website, checking the obits (GWAR's guitarist died, and I wouldn't expect their November 7th Commodore show to go ahead).

...but I've surfed the sites I meant to surf, and I'm still awake, so, prior to heading over to the land of Free Cell, I thought I'd kill a few minutes with a blogpost. Don't get your hopes up - I'm still considering this blog done. Consider this the muscle spasm of a corpse, a postmortem bit of flatulence... Still, anyone who has been following this blog - people harder up for entertainment even than myself - might want to waste a few minutes on this review I wrote of a Funky Winkerbeans show for the Straight.

I gather their Warbringer show on Friday is going to kick ass.

Oh, by the way, HMV's Vancouver megastore appears to be heading towards closure. No public announcement has been made and the time frame is up in the air, but staff have confirmed this, and all stock, I believe, has been marked down by 10% - a discount which I presume will deepen in the next month or so. It's kind of amusing to me - after two years of not shopping there (having been offended by the attitude of one of the staff), I only just returned last week (since the Videomatica Sale Store, in transition to the back of Zulu Records, isn't up and running yet, and there's not really anywhere else in town to shop for DVDs). Looks like I'm just in time to plunder the sale stock.

Okay, time for a game of Free Cell.

No, really, this is my final post - plus a wee VIFF postscript

2011-09-18T21:23:00.000-07:00

Sorry, folks: I've decided to not bother with the other blog, either. It must seem vain and self-contradictory for me to even write about it here, but the decision to give up blogging (for now) is a big one for me, part of a fairly substantial life change I seem to be undergoing. So I'm going to explain why at some length, for anyone still peeking in.

I had thought that it would be a good idea to start a new blog that allowed me to focus strictly on film: one of the few reliable perks I've had from my writing is getting into films I've written about free (theatres are a lot less of a hassle to deal with than concert promoters and/or bands). Cinema is a constant companion for me, something I do love, and it seems like a more than worthy cause to support Vancouver's arthouse cinemas and festivals. Plus it's a lot easier for me, now that I'm stuffed away in Maple Ridge, to access film (via screeners, torrents and matinees) than it is for me to attend music events.

However:

a) I am not making sufficient money at present via writing to support myself. I had hoped that this might change this year - I actually paid my rent for one month with proceeds from the Georgia Straight this summer, a first-time-ever accomplishment for me that made all the work I've done seem briefly worthwhile. But it didn't last; assignments since have been highly sporadic. There was a time when it seemed like using this blog and other "free writing" projects as a way to build a name for myself ("exposure") was wise, but the amount of exposure I've been able to get is at this point insufficient to justify the continued endeavour.

b) ...particularly since I am now unemployed with no stable sources of income.

c) The experience of film has changed for me greatly in the last few years. Rather than sharing arthouse and cult fare with sophisticated cineastes in the city, my selection criteria now mostly centres around trying to enterain my Mom. We watched the Samuel L. Jackson - Eugene Levy buddy comedy The Man today; it was highly entertaining, and it was great to see my Mom laughing aloud, rather uproariously, but certainly not the sort of film I have much to say about.

d) When not watching film with my Mom, my one friend in Maple Ridge is more of a Batman Begins kinda guy than he is interested in extreme horror, punk cinema, arthouse fare, or docs - my usual staples. We have managed to find a middle ground, so that when we do get together, we share films that both of us find vastly entertaining (and thanks to him, I've caught a few excellent movies that I *never* would have seen otherwise, like the delightful Candian dark comedy with Woody Harrelson as a mentally challenged, but morally righteous wannabe superhero, Defendor, or Henry Selick's disturbing but fascinating non-children's film Coraline. But again - tho' I'm enjoying them, these sorts of films are not what I would normally want to write about, at least not without either monetary or academic recompense of some sort. But between my Mom and said buddy - I watch almost no other films lately, outside class.

e) To the extent that I will be writing about film in the next while, it will likely be as a component of taking Film Studies at UBC. I'm not entirely sure about that course of action, either - I'm enjoying it, thus far, but wondering if I'd not be better off working on improving my CV re: teaching. In either case, the two classes I'm presently taking are more than enough for me to feel satisfied with my output, writing-wise. (Ironically, one of them will see me writing about The Dark Knight later in the session... but at least it will be in AID of something, y'know?).

Finally:

f) With so much uncertainty in my life as to what I want to do and what I should do - where to look for work (not a video store!), what course of study to pursue in school, watching film and writing about it free just seems like a vast distraction that will do nothing to soften what is starting to seem a pending existential crisis. The VIFF looms, and I have the opportunity to cover it, but with so many other things that I need to devote thought to, it seems intimidating and oppressive (imagine that!) to make time away from my studies, my Mom, and my search for work (such as it is) to watch films and write about them. I need to do something different with my life than I have been doing.

That said, I have to highlight a few VIFF recommendations, for old time's sake.

Cinephiles who liked Linda Linda Linda and the vaguely Fargo-like The Matsugane Potshot Affair will want to check out My Back Page, the new film by Nobuhiro Yamashita. I didn't get a chance to finish the film - Mom lost interest, which should not discourage any serious cinephiles out there (tho' don't bring your Moms). It's compelling stuff, the most serious of Yamashita's films that I've yet seen, looking at a chapter in Japanese history that I have not seen widely represented in cinema previously: the student radicalism of the late 1960's and early 1970's. The main character is an idealistic and sincere young journalist who gets involved with a morally questionable radical, who may not be what he seems. People who enjoyed the Baader Meinhoff movie that came out awhile back, or Koji Wakamatsu's excellent United Red Army, also about radicals in Japan, will probably value this film a great deal. I'll probably check it out myself, so I can see how it ends!

Also of note: a film I have not seen, one of those legendary "unseeable" films by a master of American cinema, Nick Ray, is screening: We Can't Go Home Again. Hopefully some film writer in Vancouver will do justice to this film - because it's a highly significant event, that this film has been finished (?) and released. That said - I haven't seen it and know little of it, save that I will be going.

The final two recommendations are absolutely relevant to my current life experience: Roadie (not the Meat Loaf film!) and Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse. Roadie, which I have not seen, deals with a middle-aged man who has been working as a roadie for the Blue Oyster Cult returning to his hometown, where his mother is beginning to show signs of dimentia. A life crisis ensues. It helps that I'm a Blue Oyster Cult fan (and what a PERFECT band to choose for this film); those of you who do not know their first three albums are directed to, oh, "ME262" - prior to their radio success with "Don't Fear the Reaper," they were consistently brilliant (and say what you will about their later output, it is inconsistent at the VERY best, though the band have continued recording and touring and keeping the machine going). But whether one is a BOC fan or not, this is an inspired topic for a feature film indeed: at the end of the day, despite the energy we pour into (and get out of) rock music, what is it really worth?

The Turin Horse is relevant in that apparently Hungarian auteur Bela Tarr is saying goodbye to filmmaking - he has declared that this will be his last film. I was able to preview this film the other week. I have one peeve, that I need get off my chest: the film begins with a narrated anecdote about the last lucid days of Friedrich Nietzsche. You may take your pick as to whether this narrative takes poetic license or simply gets it wrong; it repeats the tale - apparently unsubstantiated - of Nietzsche embracing a flogged horse in the streets of Turin, then has the philosopher collapse into silent madness afterwards, tended to by his mother and sisters, his last utterance supposedly being, “mutter, ich bin dumm” (“mother, I am stupid”).
Attempts to Google that phrase, which, despite having read a fair bit on Nietzsche, I have never encountered before, lead only to pages about the film, so I'm guessing it was contrived for the movie. But what really irritates me is that, presumably for the sake of elegant storytelling, no mention is made of Nietzsche’s final letters, written after the disturbance in the streets of Turin. He wrote several, and some of his “madness letters,” which he mostly signed “Dionysius” or “the Crucified,” have passages that are in fact quite moving (“Sing me a new song: the world is transfigured and all the heavens are full of joy.”) (See the selection of his 1889 letters in translation at http://www.davemckay.co.uk/philosophy/nietzsche/).

None of this will be of much significance to anyone but the most ardent Nietzschean, however, since the film is really interested (shades of Bresson’s Au Hazard Balthasar) in what happens to the horse - something, as the narrator points out, that is not known. The first images are of the horse and driver fighting a windstorm as they labour towards a rural farmhouse. There the driver, paralyzed in one arm, and his daughter struggle with the tasks of daily living - boiling potatoes, drawing water from the well, chopping wood. Wind howls outside, on a near-apocalyptic level. The first hour of the film is in this vein - in a rather gorgeous black and white similar to Tarr’s previous films, with very slow, utterly compelling camerawork, as usual. Mostly we hear the sound of the wind howling on the soundtrack; occasionally, droning chamber music of organ and strings, by previous Tarr collaborator Mihály Vig, swells on the soundtrack. (I should note that I am a fan of drone music and do not mean the term “droning” pejoratively; the score here is a bit Terry Riley, a bit Tony Conrad, and quite beautiful). About an hour in, a stranger comes in to ask for alcohol and offer philosophical exposition about how he is avoiding town, because it has become debased and ruined, with everything that is excellent beaten into submission or at least silence, the grasping hands of the takers finally having destroyed everything. There is an implied indictment of the great, the excellent, and the noble for their complicity in their own disappearance - they could have at least put up a fight (which presumably The Turin Horse is a final attempt to do). The death of God and the evils of capitalism appear to be referenced. Though the driver dismisses his visitor's claims as “rubbish,” they read as a heartfelt polemic against the state of things from Tarr and co-author Krasznahorkai - one which I find most sympathetic at present.

More happens in the film, but need not be recounted here - those wishing an austere communion at the church of cinema, for whom the names Bresson, Bergman, and Tarkovsky have resonance, are urged to see it, while those who don’t understand what I’m talking about are duly cautioned. It is a shame that Tarr is embracing silence himself, but after the disappointing reception of The Man from London (which I admired), it is good to see him going out on as strong a film as this.

One final note: the film is being identified with a movement I had previously not heard of, Remodernist Cinema, calling for a return to spiritually ambitious filmmaking. I’m all for it.

The VIFF catalogue is online here - happy browsing; enjoy the festival. Good luck.

PS

2011-09-08T09:26:00.000-07:00

Uh: forgot to mention: the Sick Ones play the Fairview tomorrow (Fri, Sept. 9th). I'm told Rampage will have special guests...

...And that might not end up being the name of the new film blog ('spretty boring for a name). Dunno.

RIP Alienated in Vancouver

2011-09-04T09:22:00.000-07:00

Okay, that's it. I've had enough of bein' Mr. Alienated, and am feeling less interested in covering the music scene in Vancouver (unless I'm bein' paid to do so!).

I can still see myself wanting to write about FILM in Vancouver, mind you - and so am starting another blog: http://vancouverarthousecinema.blogspot.com/

There's nothing on it yet, but look in as the VIFF gets a bit closer. This year might be a bit challenging for me, since I'm also returning to school, but... we'll see how things go.

Thanks to those of you who commented on my posts here, or read them (my "I Hate Downtown" rant is still the most popular, since Google turns it up as the #1 place to visit if you search for "I Hate Vancouver," which apparently many people do. I don't even hate Vancouver, but there it is. An old post on - I think the title was - "Sleep Apnea and Ear Infections" is number two, since many people seem to do searches for that, since ear infections appear to be part and parcel of using a CPAP!). I'll still respond to comments left, but what can I say, it's just time for a change...

Eugene Chadbourne vs. Nardwuar today!

2011-09-02T12:32:00.001-07:00

At 4pm (oops... actually, it's on now, started at 3:30!). Check out this whacked banjo solo/ interview with Doc Chad doing a Glenn Gould... or here's a song Eugene performed at one of his last gigs in town, as the Cobalt 1.0 was winding down...

VIFF, Eugene Chadbourne, Blank City

2011-08-31T02:40:00.000-07:00

Eugene Chadbourne, Darren Williams and Kenton Loewen, by Femke van Delft, not to be reused without permission

Still phasing myself out, but am realizing that the Vancouver International Film Festival is around the corner. I may pop back up to write about a film or two here, I don't know.

Meantime, note: next week,Eugene Chadbourne plays Kozmic Zoo with Darren Williams and... I'm not quite sure who is drumming, but it's on Monday September 5th. Then he plays Nyala (as part of the Audio Hallucinations accordion fest) on September 6th, alongside bands like Ejaculation Death Rattle. Eugene is the most exciting musician in America, by me, a true great and a true original. Nardwuar the Human Serviette will interview him on his show this Friday. See him here with departed Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black. A past interview with Doc Chad is here.

Eugene Chadbourne at one of the final shows at the previous incarnation of The Cobalt

Oh, and people who have cared about the stuff I've written about here probably will want to see the film Blank City, about New York in the '70s and '80's. Eugene doesn't appear to be in the film, which seems a curious omission. John Lurie is - a recent interview. Haven't seen it myself, but I guess I kinda have to!

Bubbles Galore tonight!

2011-08-27T11:13:00.000-07:00

...a Canadian funded independent film starring Nina Hartley and Annie Sprinkle? WTF? Bubbles Galore plays the Cinematheque tonight!

Jack Layton and JIM CARROLL?

2011-08-23T00:18:00.000-07:00

Whaaaah. So Adrian Mack, on the Straight blog, posted a clip of a film I was unaware of - Ron Mann's non-documentary feature Listen to the City, featuring none other than Jack Layton in a role. He points out that the scene "rings with all sorts of weird little ironies," which it does indeed - but there's one he missed. The patient in the other bed is played by none other than Jim Carroll, singer of "People Who Died."

How 'bout that...

RIP Jack Layton

2011-08-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

Photos by Allan MacInnis, March 20, 2004

I only saw Jack Layton in person once - at an anti-war demonstration in Vancouver where DOA played and Noam Chomsky gave a speech.

Any Canadian politician who'll share a stage with DOA and Noam Chomsky is okay by me.

(Actually, truthfully, I was always a bit ambivalent about Layton - he seemed too much a career politician, a species I mistrust on principle - but that never stopped me voting for his party, and I was happy to see him make the official opposition - a success he well-deserved.)

My condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. Jack Layton's letter to Canada - his last words to the nation, basically - can be read here.