The Rebel Spell tonight in Vancouver

Great band, whose new album I've written about twice, here and now here, in a feature in the Georgia Straight this week. It's a very different sound for them, and one thing I didn't say in the Straight story is that I'm not actually that wild about the way Jesse Gander has handled Todd's voice; you pretty much NEED the lyric sheet for this album, compared to their past releases, where you could at least pick out 60% of what Todd was saying. Then again, spinning the new record and It's a Beautiful Future back to back only really serves to highlight just how muted and indistinct Erin's guitar sounded on the last album, compared to the amazing, up-front clarity that Gander brings to the mix. I have never been able to pick out her individual guitar parts before, and now I can, so that's cool. Check out "Pride and Prejudice," for a taste; that's some pretty stingin' guitarwork! Erin sent me a gear geek email that I couldn't work into the interview, but, besides the main amp being the one she always uses, she writes that "for the guitar tracks the rhythms were doubled: the first set up being my stage sound (Marshall JCM 900 with a Marshall lead 1960 cab), the double was a Peavey 5150 (that's the Eddie Van Halen signature amp) through a Mesa cab, and the leads were an orange Rockerverb 50." The show is at 333 Clark, with various opening acts. Highly recommend being there!

A few more VIFF thoughts: Altered States series, The Fool, a moment for Michael Massee

Compared to All the Time in the World, written about below, I haven't seen anything else that I've loved at the VIFF, but I've seen five other films I liked.

I enjoyed the BC-made Bloody Knuckles a lot more than Adrian Mack, who took the bait a bit when it comes to the film's sexism, racism, and so forth. The film does gleefully offer some ridiculous stereotypes - particularly its Chinese Canadian gangsters, who cut the hand off a cartoonist who has mocked them. For some reason, rather than being offended at its risibly evil Asians, I kept thinking about how much fun it must have been for the actors who played them to be such unremitting bad guys. Juvenile as it may be - the whole thing is basically a cartoon castration fantasy - contra Mack, I'm actually not sure that Bloody Knuckles doesn't have things to say about censorship; particularly self-censorship, since the artist in question, after his hand is lopped off, sinks into a despair and self-pity and stops to make art. That is, until his severed hand returns - pretty much in Evil Dead 2 mode, but ruder - to poke him into action. Maybe it's just that it reminded me of things I've heard from Robin Bougie (who appears in the film!), but I give Bloody Knuckles a severed thumb up.

Also in Curtis Woloschuk's Altered States program, I had a pretty interesting time with A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. One thing I kept thinking of was the comparison to Jarmusch in the catalogue. It's definitely apt, but I remember watching Jim Jarmusch's early cinema and thinking at the time that he'd taken a lot of his aesthetic from Wim Wenders, in Wenders' more dour, black and white moments - Alice in the Cities, Kings of the Road, The State of Things - only being a bit more playful about things. Maybe I wasn't giving him enough credit, but it didn't seem, at the time, that Jarmusch's voice was exceptionally original or different. Somehow, tho', he now seems like the dominant reference point for a certain kind of art cinema - drily funny, slightly slow, quirky, black and white films made from the point of view of a quizzical outsider. I know that it's actually been at times pretty difficult for Iranians to see American cinema, so I kept wondering if the director - Ana Lily Amirpour - might not have gotten her style from somewhere else? It would be a pleasant discovery, though I suspect, no, she's probably just seen a lot of Jarmusch.

Anyhow, it's an interesting film. It seems to be about changing roles for women in Iran, coupled with a mistrustful ambivalence about what, for purposes of simplicity, I will call "the west." I imagine it can never be shown in Iran - there's female nudity, for one, and pretty frank depictions of prostitution, drug addiction, and other "that-happens-in-Iran?" kinda things; hell, there's even a fellatio scene! But some of its images - the female vampire skateboarding down a sidewalk - are pretty indelible, and the film is undeniably successful at what it attempts. I saw it after a hard day at work, and found myself fighting the "movie nap," so I did miss a few things, like: was the gully filled with corpses ever even explained? But I liked it, I liked it.

I also liked The Well well enough, though I can't blame a certain friend of mine as shrugging it off as Mad Max with water instead of oil (and no cars). Oh, and a strong female lead (Haley Lu Richardson, pictured). But why the hell not, it's a well told story, even if it's a bit more about style than substance sometimes (like, you know they introduce the samurai sword not because there needs to be a samurai sword in the story, but because it will look cool to see people killed with it!). It's certainly the driest-looking movie to be shot in the Pacific Northwest. For some reasons, the deserts out here don't get a lot of screentime, don't fit with people's image of the place.

In the end, I think my strongest reaction to The Well was, gee Michael Massee has gotten old! (Followed by gee, he isn't onscreen for very long). I've enjoyed his work for a very long time, since I caught Monika Treut's 1991 lesbian sex comedy My Father Is Coming, also with Annie Sprinkle, but it's weird to me that that film is still probably the biggest role I've seen him in. Someone should make a movie with him as their lead, if they haven't yet; he's really good at what he does, but he always pops up in some small weird place, like the guy who runs the sex club in Fincher's Seven. Let us have a moment of Michael Massee fandom, shall we? I can find no stills of him from this particular film online yet, but as he ages, he's kinda looking a bit like Jean Claude Van Damme. Someone alert Peter Hyams, get him to make a picture where they play twin brothers, one raised in Europe, one in America, who... oh, nevermind.

And then let's move on to It Follows. Anyone who has experience of an STD, be it a caught one or a close encounter, will find some things to identify with in this film, but you know, even though its ostensibly a story about a sexually transmitted demon, I really have no idea what the theme of this movie was. The way its young people talk about sex and love, and work with each other to help their afflicted friend, seem to be more the point than the whole demon thing, though obviously the world of sex for these youth is somewhat fraught with danger and uncertainty. The creepiest moments in the film, though, aren't summed up by such a theme, have an irreducible what-the-FUCK? quality to them that make them memorable. And I haven't seen the suburbs look this creepy in awhile. Good film! I thought the John Carpenter-ish soundtrack was a bit weirdly loud at times, enough to be more distracting than enjoyable. My only real quibble with the film.

Another good film, though not an Altered States one: The Fool. It's a story of corruption and idealism in Russia, with a lead actor, the award-winning Artyom Bystrov, who rather channels Ethan Hawke, in the role of an engineering student trying to convince bureaucrats to do something about a building he is sure is going to collapse. The VIFF catalogue description, linked above, is perfectly accurate and adequate to convey what you're getting, and to offer any more would be a spoiler, so let's leave it there. I've had Russian friends who I think would agree with the film's grim assessment of the Russian condition. It's a pretty dark film, but quite effective.

VIFF repeats go on all this weekend. In particular, I've heard Wild Tales is a must see, even if you're not an anthology-film type; I gather the first and final stories in it are the best. Didn't get to see it, myself; probably won't. But I enjoyed everything I saw this year (except maybe Jauja). Now it's time to eagerly wait to see what gets picked for the Rio Grind, coming later in October, and to salivate for the Vancity and Cinematheque programmes of horror movies (including the director's cut of Nightbreed, which I will host).

The Furies Way of Life on Youtube

My second ever video posted to Youtube, from Friday at the Fairview... My not too old interview with the frontman, Chris Arnett, here.

VIFF Reviews, 2014: All The Time in the World, and others

To my surprise, VIFF 2014 has been dominated by a film I wouldn't even have seen if it hadn't been for my girlfriend, Erika; All the Time in the World, a documentary about a family's experiences - as shot by the Mom! - going off the grid in a cabin in the wilds of the Yukon, with no electronic devices besides the equipment used to document the experience, no neighbours, no school, no grocery stores - nothing but the family and the forest and the cabin. They live there for nine months, wintering there. There are no cell phones, no TV, no internet, and no one for the three kids (two girls and a boy) to play with other than each other (and their parents, and two cats and a dog). While much of the warmth of the movie comes from the family's interactions, there's a serious and rather inspiring message about our overreliance on technology (also including clocks!) and about how really we're not as dependent on it as we might think - if we're willing to do a bit of work, that is. I normally don't recommend family-friendly, heartwarming, uplifting films, but this one is all of those and yet still terrific and important.  That I see, there are no added screenings of the film at present but the director, Suzanne Crocker, advised us to keep an eye on the website for news, as they try to find a distributor. I wonder if there's any way to get a copy of it to Ted Kaczynski? The guy probably could use some cheering up. VIFF listings for the film here.

Nothing else I've seen has quite captured me the way that documentary did - it's head and shoulders above all other films so far - but I've liked several of the movies I've seen. Probably the second-most interesting one I've caught is Elephant Song, a film which reminds one of Equus on a few levels, since it's based on a play in which a psychiatrist talks with a patient at length, where both are vulnerable to the other's observations. Plus it has a dominant animal in the background (I'll let you guess which). The film reminded me of a Jay Haley article I read a long time ago, "The Art of Being Schizophrenic," which, if memory serves, posits that schizophrenics are engaging in purposive behaviour, using their own mental illness to manipulate relationships in their family - though in this case, the family is the doctor, played by Bruce Greenwood, and a nurse who is his ex-wife (Catherine Keener). Quebec director Xavier Dolan, as the patient, really steals the show; I have yet to catch Mommy, the film he directed in this year's fest, but I enjoyed Tom at the Farm last year, and Elephant Song convinces me that whatever happens with his own career, he may just end up as a superstar actor in English-language cinema, if he's not careful. It's an attention-getting role. And of course, Bruce Greenwood is always great to watch.

The Two Faces of January is very much made in the mode of The Talented Mr. Ripley, and based on a novel by the same author, Patricia Highsmith, whose works, as readers of my blog may know, I rather love. The film touches on several aspects of her work - murder, ambivalent father-son relationships, forgery, guilt, and the state of being an expatriate; Highsmith herself, Texan by birth, spent most of her adult life in Europe. There may even be a hint of homoeroticism in the relationship between the two male characters, though that element is kept well in the back of things compared to the very overtly queer-themed Matt Damon Ripley adaptation. It's is a solid, nicely realized thriller, involving an American couple (Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst) who are taken under the protective wing of a morally questionable young tour guide (Oscar Isaac) in Greece. There's a striking lack of trust all around, which proves more than justified, the more we learn about our characters, and there's a lot of tension generated by not knowing who is going to be the "bad guy" or how the relationships will play out... but in order to create this tension, the film holds us at a very deliberate distance from the three characters, so that you don't over-invest in any one of them and are kept off centre, not knowing who you're rooting for. That very strategy works on one level but also limits emotional involvement, at least until the film's last act; its virtue is, in a way, its downfall. Only then does it come clear what the film's themes are. It will play the Vancity Theatre after the festival, so fans of Highsmith should check it out.

Can't exactly recommend the other Viggo Mortensen film I caught this year, but it's a very different offering, called Jauja, with Mortensen ably handling both Danish and Spanish for the dialogue, as part of a group of male soldiers exploring the Argentine coast (superficial resemblances to Beau Travail deserve to be commented on but then ignored, since they are indeed superficial). It has an odd, sad, and at times strikingly surreal and dreamlike quality to it, particularly in an early scene where a soldier is seen masturbating in a rocky tide pool with elephant seals in the background. That's my favourite moment in the film, in fact. At times in my life when I was hungrier for "art cinema" I might have appreciated Jauja more, particularly in that it resembles a recurring dream structure of mine, where I'm lost in an unfamiliar landscape, trying to find someone I'm supposed to be taking care of, whom I know is likely in danger (in the case of the film, Mortensen's daughter, who appears to have been abducted by locals). But it requires a great amount of attention to stay engaged with Jauja: most scenes are presented as static shots, some lasting several minutes, with very little standard intercutting from character's points of view, and while this gives the film a painterly quality, it also ended up sucking more energy to stay attentive than it ever returned, and at times I found it nearly impossible to stay awake. I always think that film reviewers should refrain from criticizing films they admit they didn't understand, particularly if they napped several times during the course of the movie, but the whole thing seemed a bit pretentious to me, actually, was more of a headache than an inspiration; the amount of effort invested in making an arty, unusual film seemed out of whack with the rewards. I'll take Jodorowsky over this any day.

A more enjoyable - but far less ambitious - experience was The Womb, a Peruvian film about a wealthy woman who (more or less) abducts a girl with the intention of stealing her unborn baby. The director, Daniel Rodriguez Risco, present at the festival, told us how the film ended up becoming, against the odds, a big hit in Peru, getting major studio support; it's only just now begun to be shown outside South America. Risco seemed an intelligent, pragmatic man, and advised young filmmakers and screenwriters to follow his example and make genre films early in their career, rather than leaping right off to a "personal" film, as so many are told to do. The movie does have ideas in it, about class privilege and so forth, but it's mostly an effective, well-crafted thriller, made with Hitchcockian economy. The most striking moment for me was a scene where someone gets bludgeoned with a crucifix, since I had just written about the vintage noir, Edge of Doom, which also involves a crucifix-bludgeoning. It was nice to be able to ask Risco about this; turns out it was just a coincidence, - there was no reference or anything; he merely wanted to show after the various futile attempts of the protagonist to enlist the aid of the Virgin in her plight, she can get some use out of her faith (like, if nothing else, you can hit your enemies with a cross). The one issue I had with the film is that I could tell throughout that it was shot on digital video; I have no problem with that format, but I don't like its use to be obvious.

The other really worthwhile film in the fest was the transgendered sex comedy Two 4 One, in which a transman, helping an old girlfriend artificially inseminate herself, ends up accidentally impregnating himself. It's a rather charming comedy, written as "wish-fulfillment" by the director, insofar as there is almost no trace of transphobia or (a couple of references to "fruit beer" aside) even homophobia in plot - which is a good thing; since the main character's situation is quite challenging as it is. Gavin Crawford is really good in the lead role (Maureen Bradley did account to the VIFF audience why she couldn't get a transman to play the part; she did try!). Gabrielle Rose, who seems to suddenly be everywhere these days, is enjoyable as always, as our protagonist's mother. Filmed on Vancouver Island, over the course of - I think Ms. Bradley said it was a fifteen day shoot? I expected something a little more politically wrought and instead had a great deal of easy fun with the film (though as Bradley noted to us, none of the film's fun is at her main character's expense; we're laughing and groaning with him throughout).

There's still lots I hope to see. At the very least, I need to see It Follows (pictured above), which I'm told is quite terrific (and which does have a screening next week). I'd like to catch The Vancouver Asahi (added screenings October 9th and 10th) - I had initially assumed this was a mere documentary, but it's actually a Japanese feature film, directed by Ishii Yuya, who directed the previous VIFF film Sawako Decides, Then there's Still Life (with the always great Eddie Marsan - if you haven't seen The Disappearance of Alice Creed, don't let its ubiquity on discount racks mislead you; it's a terrific thriller, which I wrote about previously here), Altered States wise, there are also screenings of The Well, The Incident, and the Iranian vampire movie A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Yep, an Iranian vampire movie! With luck I will catch a few of these - though it's unlikely I'll be doing further blogging on the VIFF (having a dayjob will do that to you).

One wee techical postscript: the Playhouse is an interesting alternative venue for films, but a) there is a problem either with the acoustics or the sound system, since it is quite difficult at times to make out dialogue; both myself and my girl found ourselves straining to hear parts of Elephant Song and The Two Faces of January, and another VIFF attendee reported a similar difficulty with a different film there. Also, it should be noted (b), that that glossy black paint on the stage below the screen is quite reflective, so those sitting higher in the house are going to have to contend with a shiny doppleganger of the movie immediately below, unless it's covered up, say with a black sheet? (However, those with screenings at the Playhouse should note - especially if you have longer legs or a bigger butt - that the seats in the front row are quite a bit wider than those in back, that you have a lot more leg room, that the reflective surface isn't so much of an issue from down low, and the screen is low enough and far back enough that you don't get neck strain trying to see it from in front. SFU's cinema is such that you needn't fear the front row, either!).

Happy VIFFing!

Fantastic film noir: Edge of Doom

So here we are four days into the film festival, and I haven't been able to see a single VIFF film that wasn't a Vimeo screener. Been either working on a piece of writing I promised, or else keeping Mom company, or prepping for class, or commuting, or working, or running errands of one sort or another. Haven't even hung out with my girl in a few days - feels like a very long time, actually. It's been an exhausting month, and I have very little I can make time to say here. I barely slept last night and am soon to collapse into bed.

The one thing I have been able to do, though, is watch a few films noir with Mom. We've caught some great ones, like Women's Prison, with an evil Ida Lupino as a warden who won't admit her errors, even when they start costing lives; and Preminger's Angel Face, with its wicked sucker punch of an ending, razor-sharp dialogue, and super-cool Robert Mitchum performance. But the one that moves me to write, the one I have to urge people out there to see, is Edge of Doom. Bar none, it's the best noir I've encountered since I first saw Gun Crazy - it's that good. Mark Robson, who made a bunch of great Val Lewton horror films, directs; Farley Granger and Dana Andrews star. It's one of the bleakest noirs you can imagine. Granger is a good boy, somewhat embittered at the church that they wouldn't give his father a consecrated burial after he committed suicide. His own principles run in a different direction, and he's nursing a grudge. He's looking after his sick mother, and expects that the world will care: that the boss who he's delivered flowers for will give him a raise after four years, for instance, so he can move his mother to Arizona, where her health might improve. But his boss, while protesting that he's a friend, thinks only of business; from him, Granger gets only hot air, and when he later presses his case, gets fired. When he tries to talk to his landlady about his mother's health, there's a brilliant moment where the noise in his apartment - his cynical neighbour placing bets on sports over the hallway phone, or children fighting over their toys in the other cheap flats - rings with the grating insensitivity that the banal chatter of every day life has to the ears of the troubled; Robson isn't overt about this, but thems that have been there will recognize the moment. When his mother finally dies, Granger feels guilty - he's failed her - so he wants to at least give her a nice funeral, except he's broke. He wanders an indifferent, got-troubles-of-my-own city, pleading his case to various parties. No help comes. And no one he talks to is more hardened and insensitive than the very priest who had previously denied his father a consecrated burial.

And so he breaks, and in a moment of rage, our young protagonist bludgeons the priest to death with a crucifix.

I can't tell you more than that, really. If you don't need to see a movie shot in 1950 where the protagonist bludgeons a priest to death with a crucifix, and retains our sympathies, you probably aren't the sort of film viewer I'm writing for anyhow. And by the way, my reveal here is not really a spoiler, since you'll see it coming; there's a framing device where the film is being told as a story with a moral from one priest to another, so we know that Granger is going to kill someone, and the moment his hands brush the cross on the priest's desk, while they're arguing, you'll go "aha." But there's a lot more going on than that, including an ending that supposedly (overtly) restores moral order to the film's deeply troubled universe, while covertly smirking at how pat and unconvincing it is, and acknowledging that the real message of the film is considerably more sour than what's been put up for show. (Kind of what I always thought the last line of Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly was doing - "Papa spoke to me!" - but in this case there really does seem to be a cynical smirk behind the image. Yeah sure, there is something in Granger's character that speaks to the good in the world: but what about the other sonsabitches around him?

Edge of Doom is definitely a must-see.

Heads up Sonics fans! No Nardwuar!

...speaking of gigs, the Evaporators are apparently bowing out of opening for the Sonics because Nardwuar has injured his back! Bummer, man! Thee Manipulators are apparently going to fill the void... It's all academic to me, since I can't go anyhow, but I hope Nardwuar gets well soon...

Poison Idea versus The Liquor Kings: The Liquor Kings win!

Fuck it, I'm going to a gig this Friday! And guess what: it's not going to be Poison Idea.

Prepare to hate me, bacause I have a confession: try as I may, I never really got that excited about Poison Idea, to be honest. Feel the Darkness has some cool songs, but I've actually never been more entertained by them than I am by their covers CD, Pajama Party. I'd rather hear them do "We Got the Beat" than an original! They have a cool sound, are undisputedly the real deal, punkwise, and I feel a sort of fat-guy solidarity with them, but their songwriting actually has never really blown me away - it's not hooky enough, not anthemic enough, not fun enough, which is why I guess I'd rather hear them do covers. And there's something just a little debauched and unwholesome about the band, y'know? It ain't like they keep it a secret - there's sort of an aura of vice, self-destruction, and menace around them, and while that sort of thing doesn't scare me, exactly, I'm trying to discourage that side of my personality these days...I probably would go if Pig Champion was still around, you know? And I *would* kind of dig one of their t-shirts:

...but in fact I'm actually more tempted by that gig because Piggy is on the roster, and I have neglected Piggy - with Ron Reyes, of that recent ill-fated Black Flag venture, on lead guitar - for a long time -

- except The Furies are opening for The Liquor Kings at the Fairview that same night, and I've been neglecting the Furies for even longer, especially considering they're one of my favourite Vancouver live acts. I like the Liquor Kings, too, with Eddie Dutchman's quasi-Keithley snarls, catchy guitar-driven anthems of debauchery and vice, and a sort of rockabilly-meets-punk-in-the-garage vibe (I will try to find a better way to phrase that when I review the new album). Undisputedly also the real deal, but it's a different deal, a little more middle-aged-Dad-rockers than debauched-and-dangerous, if you know what I mean. I mean, I don't even drink that much - god knows what substances Poison Idea abuse! At the Liquor Kings album release, I'm just more likely to a) have fun; b) not get beaten up; and c) not alienate the girlfriend (because never mind that she doesn't enjoy the heavier stuff, I frankly would be terrified to bring my gal to see Poison Idea at Funky's; I'd be traumatizing her, putting her in harm's way, and would have to spend the whole gig making sure she was okay...). Call me a milquetoast, I guess, but...

Actually Ed Hurrell of the Liquor Kings was telling me that he was actually at that June 1977 Japanese Hall gig where the Furies and "Dee Dee and the Dishrags" ushered in the first wave of Vancouver punk. "I remember you could bring your own beer into the hall, you wouldn't get that nowadays. And it was so early in the game that the 'punk rock look' had not been established yet. Mostly people were wearing thrift store/ Salvation Army clothes. You saw the odd studded leather jacket, but..."

Hope the more hardcore of you enjoy the Poison Idea gig. No doubt I'll be looking back someday in awe and disbelief that I missed it (which I occasionally still do about my decision not to go see the Exploited at the Cobalt)...

Red Herring versus My Many Other Commitments

So it totally excites me that ("Vancouver's best underrated '80's art-punk band," though Elizabeth Fischer may have other ideas) Red Herring has gotten their old (but classic!) EP remastered for CD. Of course, CDs are very nearly extinct these days, but digitized versions of music most definitely are not, and for some years, I've been earnestly trying to find digitized Red Herring songs to put on mix CDs of my own (or listen to on my phone: yes, I too now listen to music on my phone). Other than the option of ripping audio from Youtube - something that is kinda not my cup of tea - only one Red Herring song has ever turned up anywhere that I've looked: "If You Work For Me," which someone apparently transferred from the Undergrowth tape. Now all my favourites - "Taste Tests," "The Crab Song," and the recent addition "Love Machine," which I had to see the band play live to realize how much it kicked ass - are going to be there for phone listening and so forth, for the cost of a mere CD (I still don't use iTunes or such - I find it very weird to pay for disembodied songs - but I still do buy the odd CD, and will definitely get this one ASAP). Exciting stuff!

However, my dear Red Herring, what with my commute to work in the city, my suburban dislocation, the need to look out for my mother, and my general state of disorder and disarray my life finds itself in, it seems very unlikely that I will be at this show. I am currently in Maple Ridge, and well behind on my writing, and I promised the Dishrags and a certain US punk magazine that I would get an interview I did with Jade Blade transcribed this weekend. And maybe get started on a big Dave Dictor thing I did quite some time ago, which another magazine is waiting for for next week, which I really have to get done. I already have done a Red Herring interview, but... much as I would like to buy your CD (and see you guys live again, this time at the Railway Club, where I have never seen you), the whole "commute from Maple Ridge" thing makes tonight's show totally inimical to my getting any work done at all. So I do think I'm going to have to pass. Again. The writing (and the need to have one weekend where I don't commute anywhere) trumps all. I mean, I've got a media pass to the VIFF, too, but do you know how many movies I'm going to see this weekend? NOT ONE, guys, not one. The first ones I'm even going to TRY to see are on Monday - The Fool and maybe Maps to the Stars, if there are tickets. Not even free movies can get me out of the burbs this weekend.

So. Have a good show, but sorry - this is yet another Red Herring gig that I will miss. I haven't even mentioned the marking I'm behind on, the prep I have to do for class this week, and...

Cool thrash metal record collection at a thrift store!

Note: most of these are now gone. 

Attention thrift store shoppers and vinyl fiends... the Ridge Meadows Hospice Thrift Store (on 224th at Dewdney in downtown Maple Ridge) has just acquired a collection of really cool metal vinyl , now awaiting pricing in their backroom. As an occasional volunteer there, I recommended an average price of $15 each for these, since they want them to move, though one or two - like Wermacht's Shark Attack - I suggested going higher on. (Note: they had already set them aside to look up prices so it's not like you'd be getting them for a dollar if it wasn't for me). All seemed to be first (Canadian) pressings, and kept in decent shape in plastic record bags; the only caveat is that a couple appeared to be markedly warped due to poor storage. (But most were great!). I took home the one SNFU album in the lot, and a Dayglo Abortions record (Guano) with no record in it, and left the rest for more metal-hungry peers. These included three albums by Destruction, three by Venom, two each by Voivod, Razor, Celtic Frost, and DRI, and isolated titles from Death, Post Mortem, Exodus, Hellhammer, Whiplash, Bathory, Nuclear Assault, Anthrax, and many, many others, all from the 1980's. Quickly and clumsily photographed below... hurry down, this is a rare find!

The Two Faces of January: a new Patricia Highsmith film at the VIFF!

Damn I love Patricia Highsmith (seen above in a rare nude photo). Gotta love a cranky old misanthropic weirdo writing stories about snails killing people (she has two completed ones on that theme, and a third unfinished one about a planet that has been taken over by snails). I love that she was a lesbian who apparently hated women (cf. Little Tales of Misogyny) and who tends to write novels involving sexually ambivalent male characters who commit murder and get away with it. I love her for being an alcoholic with Aspergers, for her occasional anti-Semitic rants, for her charismatic poses for photos, and for her novels, which are often brilliantly observed (my favourites are the first Ripley, The Cry of the Owl, and Deep Water; the only one I don't recommend is The Tremor of Forgery, which feels like she's trying to be Graham Greene or something, which might explain why he praised it so). And I've yet to see a really bad film made from one of her novels, and there's quite a few great ones: Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley and Purple Noon (both from the same novel), Ripley's Game, The American Friend, The Cry of the Owl (two versions - I'm partial to the English language one). All are great; and while I'm particularly excited to see what Todd Haynes is doing with her pseudonymously-published lesbian novel, The Price of Salt (AKA Carol), I'm also keen on the newest film adaptation of a novel of hers, The Two Faces of January. It's upcoming at the VIFF, and will then promptly open at the Vancity Theatre. Haven't seen it yet, but I'm excited.

Now someone just has to make a film out of "The Quest for Blank Claveringi" (my story about that story is here, but here's someone else's. My thanks to Bill Chance, I presume, for tracking down the illustration below).

Black Fly and Sitting on the Edge of Marlene: BC Film in the VIFF

My first VIFF feature of the year is for the Straight, not my blog! I thought Black Fly a solid drama - a little brutal at times, but quite gripping. In a section that didn't get used, comparisons to Winter's Bone were discussed, though the director, Jason Bourque, thought A History of Violence and Straw Dogs more apt. It was somewhat odd to interview one of the stars of the film, Dakota Daulby (above left), in the same town where it was shot. Thankfully he seems a bright, cheerful guy, not the walking wounded survivor you see in the film...

Actually, there was an amusingly jarring moment in Sitting on the Edge of Marlene, which Daulby also co-stars in. The film is about a young woman's relationship to her impossible, but charismatic mother - a substance abuser, con woman, and not-so-ethical slut who burns too bright for anyone's good. As I say in the article, it has a very Sirkian quality to the costumes and set designs; I was a bit hard pressed to figure out what era it was set in - it seemed to be set more in the land of cinema than any one decade, as different scenes evoke the 50's, 60's, 70's, and the present day - but there are a few shots in the film where I felt very happy with the location scout. They used a small pedestrian tunnel that connects the bottom of 224th to the Fraser River area and the train tracks not once but twice; I always thought it had a very cinematic quality, have long had attachment to that tunnel, and was pleased to see it used in a film. Imagine my surprise, though, when in one shot, you see the apartment building where I live in the background! It wouldn't have been so startling, except that I was in that selfsame apartment, watching the movie on my computer, and there was a brief who's-watching-who moment... was I inside when that scene was shot?

Busy!

Sorry folks, I'm very busy this month. The VIFF is, of course, upcoming and I do plan to write about what films I manage to see, but I also have bigger fish to fry (including VIFF-related articles in places more people look at than this blog). I will be back ASAP.

Odd dreams

I woke up with memory of several moments in dreams last night.

One involved picking up a snake; I believed it was a harmless little garter snake, so I allowed it to bite me. (I might have been showing it to my girlfriend, who does not generally care for such creatures). It did bite me, but in a way no snake has ever bit me before, unhinging its jaw and attaching itself open-mouthed to the palm of my hand, where it proceeded to suck my blood. It was just a tiny snake, but I could feel it sucking hard, and I began to feel worried...

In another dream, I was in Japan. Or maybe the USA. Or maybe both. My mother was with me but I left her to gamble, to I could look for books to sell. Adrian Mack was coming to town, and I went up an alley hoping to find, perhaps, some strange Japanese item as a souvenir for him. One store at the end of a lane had groceries, and I was about to leave when I noticed a toy section. On one wall they had an odd cross between a triceratops and a bird that I thought might be interesting. I asked the shop girl if she spoke English, and then in a cross between English and Japanese asked if she could show me what the thing did when it was turned on. (I couldn't remember the Japanese for "batteries," which is interesting, because often when I'm dreaming of Japan I speak better Japanese than I could in my waking life; but awake, now - even tired as I am - I seem to recall that "batteries" is "denki" or "denshii" or something like that). After waiting on another customer, she obliged me, put in the batteries, and turned it on, and it began to sort of writhe up and down, and I determined that it wasn't a very interesting motion. I apologized - if that's all it did, I wasn't interested.

I walked back to a place where my mother was, in another part of town. She told me, happily, that she had won $10,000 gambling! I had my doubts that she had her figure right - it was probably only $1000. She was standing in a town square with other people, looking at some sort of billboard or electronic display where there were figures. I said that  there was a bookstore I wanted to go look at, to see if I could find a particular item. It was, in fact, a restaurant. Someone had reported seeing a rare Edward Abbey book there - I forget what it was supposed to be, but it was worth a lot of money. I left Mom in the car, because apparently we had a car, and went through the restaurant, looking for this book; there were a few books in corners, stacked up, but none were valuable. Then I saw outside that there was a bin of books they were selling. I dug in, and dreamed of several books, including one less-rare Abbey title in the box (it occurs to me just now that "Abbey" is the name of the person who replied to my Criterion post on their website). I even saw some UFO pamphlets and thought, hey, these would be a good gift for Mack. I had quite a stack of books when I realized that I had left Mom waiting a long time.

Then suddenly the bin of books was a car, I was in the back seat, and Mom was waiting outside. I let her in. She said, in broken, aphasiac speech that she had worried where I'd been; and then she let two Japanese women into the front seat of the car, and they brought with them two cats and a dog. Both cats began to jump all over me. They were similar, note, to my girlfriend's cat, which has suffered a tail injury recently, but they were unharmed, and because they were two of them and they were quite excited, I began worrying that they would spray on me. I opened the car door to let them out, but they jumped back in again.

Somewhere in there, I woke up.

Re: Criterion's Love Streams - more on the amazing disappearing breasts...

Well, Criterion has replied to my query about the missing material from Love Streams (see the comments section of that article). I fully trust that Abbey, the poster, is sincere in the belief that the Criterion release represents Cassavetes' own wishes, and accept that Michael Ventura may well have heard Cassavetes' say that he was uncomfortable with the nudity. That would be, perhaps, all the justification necessary for changing the film, though it doesn't necessarily explain who changed it. In any event, I am very happy that Abbey acknowledges that the change has been made, and prepared to accept that it was made in accord with Cassavetes' stated desires.

However: it's not five frames that are missing, as Abbey asserts - which would be about a fifth of a second, which is faster than even my sharp eye can catch - but just under three seconds. Previous vagaries on my part ("a few seconds") can be dismissed. For the purposes of an accurate count, I went through the minor nuisance of converting my computer to Region 2 and timing the French DVD - albeit on a sped-up PAL DVD, so it might be more like 3.2 seconds or something on NTSC. Abbey is minimizing the (admittedly already minimal) change.

And it's not the case, as Abbey says, that only the Cannon VHS has the full nude scene; so does the 2003 French DVD, and so did a version I saw twice in the 1980's at the Cinematheque. An Amazon commenter says he saw the full scene in the 1990's, as well. Three versions of the film I encountered, and one someone else saw, had the scene, prior to the 2006 restoration. Cassavetes died in 1989, so if this is indeed his preferred cut, why did it take so long to surface? Abbey does not say that the change was made posthumously, by someone else, but surely that's what all the evidence points to. I find myself unsatisfied with the response, though obviously soon I have to let matters go.

...but just to be clear, when I mention an "agenda" to sanitize Cassavetes' works, it is not Criterion I am casting doubt upon. I'm just seeing the changes to Love Streams in light of the fact that someone somewhere cut about ten or so minutes from the VHS release of Husbands (Ray Carney accuses Gena Rowlands on that count). And according to Carney, a post-sex scene is missing from DVD releases of Minnie and Moskowitz, as well (I've been unable to confirm this but I do believe him). There does seem to be a pattern here; and the common element is not Criterion, but on the one hand, Cassavetes' estate, and on the other, Sony (involved, to my knowledge, in the distribution of all these films at some point).

Anyhow...

Zebedy Colt: genius of transgressive sleaze (note: Spalding Gray tie-in)

I have decided, after my conversation with Cinema Sewer's Robin Bougie, below, to see all the the Zebedy Colt films I can. He's kind of my entry drug into the world of sleaze: where Annie Sprinkle seems fundamentally brave and open minded (but basically a nice person), Colt appears to be a porn auteur at war with social sexual norms, returning again and again to themes of degradation, incest, urine, the Occult, and other weirdnesses in his films, both as actor and director. That he identified as gay and had previously, before his porn career got underway, released an album that is today hailed as a landmark of queer culture, makes it very tempting to read him as a someone with an agenda to subvert both porn and society, someone with a hard-on to sabotage, or at least trouble, "normal" sexual relations between men and women in the stories of his films (and thus sabotage sexual norms in the minds of their viewers). He's a weird guy, in short; I think I sympathize with him politically, much as I sympathize with Ms. Sprinkle - and the two of them worked together in several films - but he seems altogether a little less wholesome than Annie, a little less trustworthy, a little more hostile. Maybe it's just because he's a man...

I should mention the context - why I'm all excited to write this piece. I came online this morning to see that, overnight, I had finished downloading what appeared to be a torrent of his second-to-last work as a director, Babylon Nights, which is some sort of meta-porn comedy, spoofing the values and attitudes of porn producers; it was distributed under the alternate title of Spreading Joy, since the main character's name is joy (and perhaps because the industry doesn't necessarily want to be thought of as being associated with "Babylon"). Alas, what the torrent, which I found under the alternate title, actually proved to be was a Santa-themed porno, beginning with a fat man with red pants (played by an actor identified only as "Uncle Milty") having his crotch rubbed by Mrs. Claus, while John Coltrane and Red Garland play "Traneing In," I believe it was (a jazz number that riffs on "Santa Claus is Coming to Town.") Or, well, they'd lifted something jazzy and Christmassy from somewhere; I can't check if I've pegged it because I've already deleted the file. Win some, lose some: ah well. There's still plenty of Zebedy Colt out there to be had.

Colt was a legit actor, appearing in small parts on and off Broadway, and doing regional theatre on the side. He apparently has a small role as a child actor in The Adventures of Robin Hood, with Errol Flynn, and supposedly can be seen as a slave in The Ten Commandments. He was born Edward Earle Marsh, which name  he used for his "straight" career. Zebedy Colt was the stage name he first took to record an album of gay torch songs, called I'll Sing For You, recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1969, when Marsh/ Colt was 40. Lots more details of his musical career, which pre-dates his work in straight porn, can be found here, on the Queer Music Heritage website. Two of the songs off the album can be heard here and here; as you might notice, the guy could sing - though in a style I have pretty much no interest in, like a gay Perry Como or Frank Sinatra or such. (The Queer Music Heritage website has streamable versions of the rest of the album, for the record, including a couple of songs Colt wrote himself; my interest is actually sufficient - and my taste for the obscure sufficiently deep - that, straight or no, I may live with these songs for awhile, to see if they grow on me). Colt writes (also linked on that site):

I am a man, not a head or a square or a queen or a drag or a sissy, just a MAN, and the object of my affection, my lustful desires, my frustrations, joys, hates, sorrows and ecstasies, is another man, not by social pressures, or diseases, or a possessive mother, or physical or psychic instability, but by PREFERENCE. And to prove my point and strip away any and all excesses of theatrical nonconviction which has turned into social conformity, I chose to sing 'straight' songs usually associated with... heterosexuality. A simple statement made simply without bombastic or psychedelic contrivance.  

What other areas are there left for pioneers these days? THE WILDERNESS WITHIN AND WITHOUT HAS BEEN CONQUERED OR LAID TO WASTE. TECHNOLOGY, CHEMISTRY, AND NATURE ARE PRETTY MUCH EXHAUSTED. HUMAN TOLERANCE AND UNDERSTANDING ARE THE ONLY PRIMITIVE REGIONS LEFT. WELCOME, VOYAGER!" 

The article continues with a long letter from Zebedy (to GAY magazine, title apparently also rendered all in caps, though the rest of the letter, thankfully, is not), where he expresses to the editor his disappointment at his difficulties recouping his investment on the original album ("I am not bitter, John, I am just broke") and his many frustrations with the queer scene.

For me, that's when Zebedy Colt's work really starts to get interesting, since his pioneering attitude continued to apply when he made the career move of acting in straight porn, to finance his other work. I'm not entirely sure about how he made his transition to porn, though it took place around 1975; there's a story quoted in one of the interviews on QMH that it began when a "gay porn producer" asked him if he could use a couple of his songs in a film, then asked if he'd appear in the film in question. The article makes it sound like that film was The Story of Joanna - a Gerard Damiano S&M film, loosely lifted from The Story of O, in which Colt plays a bisexual butler (and gives head to Jamie Gillis!). The trouble is, if films are in fact listed in sequence, IMDB cites Colt as having acted in two pornos (The American Adventures of Surelick Holmes and The Amazing Dr. Jekyll) and even having directed one, Terri's Revenge, a rape revenge porno thriller - by the time of The Story of Joanna; it seems more likely that the film Colt is referring to is actually a piece of gay porn, not yet identified, and that The Story of Joanna came a bit later that year, after he'd been established a bit. Suffice it to say that 1975 was a busy year for Mr. Marsh; in addition to his Broadway work, he appeared in five films identified on IMDB, nine as identified on IAFD, and no doubt got started on making his second effort as writer/ director The Farmer's Daughters, released in 1976 - the earliest film of his I've yet to see. 

But what a film it is. It's technically a mess; whatever odd ideas it has, it is still very difficult to watch on the level of craftsmanship, since there is very little in evidence. The first reel is presented, by design, without synch sound, with horribly dubbed (and horribly corny) dialogue and fake moaning playing over images of a farmer (Colt himself) fucking his wife (played by Gloria Leonard, of High Society magazine). The second reel, and the rest of the film, does have synch sound, but the version I've been able to find has the dialogue go totally out of synch in places, though whether this is due to damage to the film or problems when making it I cannot say; there also "appears" to be censorship of the golden shower scenes, for instance when said daughters humiliate and abuse a farmhand who spies them watching their parents have sex, and later, when the farmhand gets his revenge on the daughters, forcing them at gunpoint to have sex with each other, their parents, and a trio of sadistic convicts who stumble on the farm, led by a young Spalding Gray (!). The young, pissed-on (and pissed off) farmhand instructs the convicts - only two are left at that point, since he shoots one - to pee all over the girls, and Gray shrugs and delivers a line about how he needs to take a leak anyway, which will be the high point of the film for Spalding Gray fans; but the actual piss seems to be missing from the copy of the film found online (maybe a better print exists?). For the record, though the film is kind of brutal at times, there is no indication anywhere that anyone is doing anything non-consensual; people are acting, or at least trying to...

The film has two endings: Colt, as the father, grabs the shotgun and kills the convicts and the farmhand, restoring patriarchy to the farm; then we "flash back" somewhat incompetently through highlights of the film, until we arrive back at the scene of the farmhand's initial golden shower, where it is revealed that the farmhand imagined the entire subsequent scenarios with the convicts as a sort of ineffectual psychic revenge on the girls (reminding me, oddly enough, of Corruption, that rather entertaining Peter Cushing re-discovery, which I highly recommend, even though I've just spoiled the ending). They splash him with water to wash the pee away, and then the film ends. It would feel all the more disturbing if only it had a modicum of craftsmanship; with incest, Femdom humiliation (even a bit of CFNM action, since the girls remain clothed for a bit while tormenting the lad), and plenty of urination, it is certainly not your average porno film (plus one of the convicts is African-American, which no doubt lent the film an even more transgressive edge back in 1975, when, say, he's raping the white Mom).

The Devil Inside Her, the next of Colt's films I've been able to see, is a vast leap forward in terms of craft. As with The Farmer's Daughters, it's all too sick and too conceptually overburdened to actually be arousing, unless you get off on the "idea" of transgression (Georges Bataille would have loved it, I suspect). But it has moments that bring to mind both Fellini and Ken Russell, albeit in a low budget, low craft fashion. The story goes like this: there are two daughters, Faith and Hope, being raised by a strict Protestant father (Colt again, in the role of male authority; there's quite an irony to his occasional casting of himself in the role of patriarchal authority figures in his films, in fact, since as director he spends much of his time subverting or complicating the Law of the Father). Both covet a buff farmhand (Dean Tait, pictured in "possessed" mode to the left, who has one of those physiques, like Francois Papillon, that immediately tip you to the likelihood that he did his share of gay porn as well - at least when he wasn't weightlifting). When the father finds out that Faith is in love with his employee, he has her strip and beats her cruelly. Hope - gamely played by Jody Maxwell - is less innocent about her desires. Having watched her sister punished, she prays to God or Satan, whoever will listen, to deliver her man to her.

Satan is first on call. Played by Rod Dumont, he wears heavy makeup throughout, looking rather like a fifth member of KISS, and appearing with an odd strap around his scrotum - a body part which he had, I gather, worked hard to stretch over the years; to speak plainly, so long do his balls dangle that it's at times hard to keep track, when he's tugging on both, whether it's his penis in his hand or his balls and sac; both stretch about ten inches from his body and at one point, so frenzied do his ball-tuggings get, that I expected sperm to shoot out from the crack between the middle of his testicles, like he could ejaculate from both ends. I'm not sure exactly who would find this performance sexually arousing; it's kinky as, um, hell, but it's also somewhat vile, and more than the sheer grossness of his greasy-seeming body and makeup, there's the ideas he represents, which are both repugnant and hot at the same time, in a way clearly designed to get under the skin of of the viewer. He proceeds, at Hope's command - with a little help from a witch who makes Hope a love potion - to transform himself into the farmhand, who rapes Faith; then - well, it's a bit hard to keep track, but over the course of the narrative, Satan also transforms into Faith and sluttishly seduces the actual farmhand, who is very much an innocent; transforms himself into Hope and Faith's father, to fuck Hope; and at some point he transforms himself into their mother, too, who, if memory serves, seduces her own daughter, or starts to. Hope also has a big vegetable-sex scene, for no reason I recall, though I don't believe Satan is manifest in cucumber form or anything; it's a rather filthy scene, quite literally, with garden fresh dirt smearing Jody Maxwell's thighs as she works her veggies. Somewhere in there, she also has sex with a wood sprite, who appears to be able to shape-shift into a parrot, but thankfully that's as close to bestiality as we get (nice to know Colt had limits!). At the film's climax, Hope attends a witches' sabbath orgy, where Annie Sprinkle, as the most game attendee, gets peed on by a group of men who roughly manhandle her, and various odd sexual scenarios take place, including one that I believe is bisexual; Colt denies us a closeup, but there's a scene where three men are shown grouped around one girl in frenzied coitus, and unless I have a failed grasp on the laws of physics, the guy at the back must surely be penetrating the guy ahead of him, based on their body positions. It's kind of hidden-in-there, "slipped in," as it were, in the midst of a beast-with-four-backs scenario.

If The Farmer's Daughters is borderline incompetent on the level of craft, The Devil Inside Her shows that Colt was a fast study; made only a short while later, it's vastly more artful, and at times quite impressive (when you consider that it's a low budget porno that is; it isn't ever going to be mistaken for a mainstream film). The climax is shot with red filters, Satanic sets, and scored with creepy-sounding soundtrack music (including a bit lifted from Kubrick's 2001!); it's all quite unsettling, compelling, deeply sinful, and... well, I got to admit it, it's totally fascinating, as entertaining as hell, even if only for its sheer weird you-won't-believe-this-shit audacity. At the end of the film, Faith is saved, but Hope is dead, and her soul accompanies Satan to the underworld. Having learned his lesson, the father repents of his past sternness, assenting finally to Faith marrying the farmhand she so loves...

The other must-see Zebedy Colt film I've encountered is controversial insofar as it is not clear that he actually directed it; most people - including horror movie expert and musician Stephen Thrower, in his book Nightmare USA - seem to treat him as the film's author, and apparently Colt himself regarded himself as such, though that's not what it says in the credits. This is Sex Wish - ostensibly a Death Wish rip off, but so much weirder, so much more complicated. Colt plays "the Night Walker," a pervert armed with a briefcase of sex toys, who bursts in on couples and single women and forces them into bizarre sexual situations, toggling as he binds them and torments them between speaking in the voice of a strident, twisted child who wants to have fun and a cruel British governness (the "mother"). Then he murders them, in scenes that mercifully lack any of the convincing quality of what has gone before. One would be unsurprised if it turned out that David Lynch, for instance, was a fan of the film, before creating the character of Frank Booth ("Mommy! Baby wants to fuuuuck!"), since the Night Walker definitely brings Booth to mind. These scenes are played out at great length, and get more and more uncomfortable, with a truly grotesque analogue synth score enhancing the sickening effect. The Night Walker's first target is the wife of straight businessman Harry Reems; his second is a woman Reems knew, so it starts to seem like Reems might be the Night Walker's true target. Reems, hungry for revenge, ends up going on a vigilante hunt for the Night Walker in the gay bars the man is said to frequent; when he finds him, dressed in drag and playing piano, he chases him down and pulls out a gun. Just before Colt is shot, he cries out to Reems, "but I did it because I love you!" or words to that effect. Bang, he's dead. Writes Stephen Thrower (Nightmare USA, page 498, where the film is given substantial discussion): "that this formula should produce anything other than a hateful homophobic exercise is testimony to the... commitment and energy of its bisexual star player, Mr. Zebedy Colt." Thrower also describes the film as Colt's "twisted revenge on heterosexual porn" and says "gay viewers of political sensitivity may find the film homophobic, despite its bisexual provenance... For a gay viewer not to be offended by the film, they must be able to enjoy the... extraordinary performance Colt contributes."

I'd go one further: I think, in fact, that despite his character arc, the main point of identification for the viewer is supposed to be Colt; that he's a cipher for whatever ambivalences and resentments the lone broken weirdos of the world out there might feel for happy loving couples out there, and his crimes and the "pleasures" they afford (?) are vastly more important to the film than his ultimate fate. Reems, while giving a fine performance, is a bore, a more or less one-dimensional character who is simply no fun for the viewer to inhabit. The real star of the show is Zebedy Colt, and the film, I suspect, is vastly more hetero-hostile than homophobic, no matter what might be necessary for closure. Sex Wish may be impossible to enjoy as sexual stimuli - let's hope! - but it's impossible not to find fascinating as a film; there's a really devious mind at work here - and a very talented actor; as others have observed, if it wasn't for the film belonging to a disreputable genre, this would be seen as a star performance, every bit as compelling and outlandish as Dennis Hopper's in Blue Velvet - and perhaps even moreso.

I've only briefly skimmed through the other Zebedy Colt films I've managed to track down, such as Unwilling Lovers, which, I gather, adds necrophilia to the buffet of perversions in his cinema (again, it is faked; no one gets harmed in the making of these films - though Jody Maxwell nearly had a fatal fall in making this one, we gather: Robin Bougie talked to her about it in 2005). Colt plays a mentally challenged man being led into weird sexual scenarios by Rod Dumont again (Colt appears to have had a little repertory company in the porn scene that appear in his films again and again). It's going to have to wait for an opportunity for me to see it; since 75% of my film consumption these days is either with my Mom or my girlfriend. I think it's better all round if I don't try to share Zebedy Colt with them, don't you?