Due to personal circumstances I am no longer capable of keeping this web-log up and running. It’s been fun, though. Thanks to all who dropped in on a regular basis. And if you ever start to miss me – the articles in the archives can still be accessed. Have a good one, folks. Adios. Oh, let me leave you in style, with a few cool links I stumbled upon: here here here
Okay, I’ll go Leonard Maltin style on this film and give you a capsule review.
King Kong
(2005-USA) C-187m *** D: Peter Jackson. Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, Andy Serkis.
Despite my belief that a director should be allowed to bring his vision to the screen, I also believe that a producer or studio can be very useful in making sure the film maker doesn’t let himself get carried away. What Jackson unleashed upon the world is a film that takes just about forever to get going. The first hour offers a colorful re-creation of America’s Great Depression era, but little more. When the main attraction, Kong, finally makes his appearance there is almost an hour of unrelentless action and adventure. Alas, it’s also too much of a good thing as some of these sequences are drawn out too long. When Kong is caught and the damsel in distress is saved from his lovesick paws, we immediately cut to three months later. Too bad, as I believe it would have been interesting to show what happened on the way back to New York; Jackson easily could have cut half an hour from the journey to skull island and spend the extra time on the journey from skull island. The grande finale is spectacular, but I could have done without that silly playful Central Park interlude. Not a flawed masterpiece, just a good film.
[sarcasm]Even though I was delighted by all the warm reactions to my season greetings post[/sarcasm], I deleted it because the picture didn’t load very well. I would also like to tell you that this web-log is now film review only. Personal stories can be found on my myspace site. Cheers.
Dear readers, today I should probably address you as ‘lucky devils’. Why is that? Well, I am too ill to partake in any of the pre-Christmas exams, so I am sitting in bed with my laptop, providing you with a new log entry. Tell me something, aren’t you just thrilled?
Today’s log entry will offer you an exclusive look at what it is I’m spending 1500 euro on college fee for. It’s one of my assignments for the course Art and Television.
We were supposed to write a fictional story that answers the question ‘Can television be art?’ And the following is what I handed in.
JACK’S HEADACHE (SHORT STORY)
VISUAL ART AND TELEVISION
TV AS ART – ASSIGNMENT II
When the sun went down, Jack Pearson closed his notebook with a loud, annoyed groan and moved away from the desk. His world had gone tits up (at least, that is how one tends to feel when losing the love of his life); how could he be expected to work on his creative writing assignment at a time like this? Theories on this, that or the other thing seemed so unimportant and useless to him now. Was this what he really wanted – a lifetime of establishing and re-establishing his self-image as an intellectual? He didn’t want to spend his working life having to impress his academic peers over and over again while life, practical life, was already way too short. ‘There is a whole world out there, waiting to be explored and discovered’, he said out loud to his empty room.
O, how he would love to get away from this all. A plane ticket to Los Angeles was on top of his wish list but there was nothing inside his wallet except a blue button and a happy little moth.
Jack paced through his room, lit up a cigarette and tried to get his head clear. Two more years and it could be all over. He could be a college graduate in two years if only he’d pull himself together. But then what? He and his college friends often joked that they’d find a map to the nearest wellfare office printed on the back of their diploma’s.
How much money did he already spend on college? Five thousand? Six thousand? ‘In some parts of Europe a college education is cheaper than a night on the town. And if you’re a straight A student it won’t even cost you a penny!, Jack said while blue smoke (and the scent of menthol flavoured tobacco) ecaped from his mouth.
Poor old Jack, 23 years old and already carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Don’t call me Ishmael, call me Atlas. And don’t cry for me, Argentina.
He stubbed out the cigarette and now had to find something else to do. Going back to work, perhaps? Fuck no, anything but thát. So he turned on what his mother still referred to as the idiot box.
Another Twin Peaks re-run on the Bravo channel. ‘When is a director not a director’, was the rethoric question Thomas Leitch had asked. When Alfred Hitchcock launched his television series Alfred Hitchock Presents, Leitch’s answer seemed to be ‘When he directs for television’. Yeah, what a shock when such an acclaimed film director slips out of the fingers of his intellectual fans to embrace such an inferior medium! And Bruce almighty, if that wasn’t enough, Hitchcock also started to poke fun at his own cartoonesque appearance by making his stocky silhouette the trademark of the show and (gasp!) he also dared to undermine his status as an auteur by appearing at the beginning and ending of every episode to unleash some dry wit on the viewers. Jack chuckled when he envisioned Leitch and other self proclaimed intellectuals standing at the sideline, pouting and vowing that they were not gonna share their beloved Hitch with the Joe and Jane Q. Public’s of the world.
Jack snickered, shook his fist in a salute and said: ‘Way to go, Mr. Hitchcock!. Some people might like to use your work as a tool for intellectual masturbation, but you stayed true to your colours, you showed them that you are not in this bussiness to cater to the view, but because it is fun to explore your creativity and you realised that this can be done in other media than just the “High Art” of the motion picture industry. You did what you had to do, wanted to do, and you left it to others to judge and label your work!’
Hitchcock paved the pay for future directors to to the same thing. David Lynch had been a critic’s darling and after the critical success of Blue Velvet he joined hands with Hill Street Blues’ Mark Frost to create the mini-series Twin Peaks, which managed to, without missing a single beat, make you laugh at some character’s antics one moment, and go jelly legged with fear the next. Twin Peaks could also be incredibly soapy at times – the last episode of the first season ended with almost every principal character in serious jeopardy. Parody? Maybe, but if so, it accomplished this without turning any of the characters into caricatures. Yeah, Twin Peaks reminded us that television indeed could be art and have the atmosphere and look of a feature film. It also paved the way for television shows such as Picket Fences (networks now dared to let a small town be the focus of a television show) and The X Files (complicated plots and the supernatural were, at least for the moment, no longer a Neddy no no). Or how about the Danish mini-series Riget and Riget II, which also featured sardonic preludes by it’s co-creator Lars Von Trier who, until then, had been, just like Hitchcock in his time, a serious cinematic auteur?
Jack watched how special agent Dale Cooper smashed the bathroom mirror with his head, thereby revealing he was now possessed by the demonic Killer Bob. Wrong!, Jack’s mind cried. It’s not Cooper, it’s his doppelganger, ya schmuck! Jack shrugged, that head wound would require some stitches anyway, doppelganger or not. End credits started to roll and Jack flipped to another channel. A smiling Larry Hagman appeared on the screen, it was the opening sequence of Dallas. Hagman as (who shot) J.R. Ewing. Can television be art?, Jack asked himself. Sure, but not per definition. In 1982, Ien Ang graduated with “Watching Dallas“, a thesis on soap opera’s in general and Dallas in particular. Her thesis makes for good reading but was it really much more than an 80 page defense? When he had to study the thesis for an exam, Jack had jokingly dubbed it ‘Why it is okay to watch Dallas – with an academic stamp of approval on it‘. Did all the genuine fans of the show really watch Dallas because they were attracted by what Ang called (drum rolls, please) A Tragic Structure of Feel? Was that really what Ang had read between the lines of the 30 something letters she received from people who reacted to her request for opinions? To Jack, those letters from fans seemed to be the result of painstakingly trying to put into words why they liked the show and of no more value than the answer “because she is so sweet and beautiful” to the question of a dating show host why a contestant chose a particular girl. Some feelings are way too abstract to satisfyingly put into words and any attempt at that should be taken with more than just a few grains of salt. Isn’t the real answer much more mundane? Aren’t our tongues covered with taste buds that can recognize and enjoy different flavours? ‘Speaking of taste buds’, Jack thought, ‘while we are giving ourselves headaches by worrying about stuff like this, how about the chef of a fancy restaurant? He probably regards his creations as culinary High Art and when he sees me or my fellow students chewing away on Big Mac’s or Whoppers (with extra cheese, of course), he probably regards us as ‘the masses’, sheep who have to be protected from turning into culinary, mindless zombies. And what does this culinary master do when he gets home after a hard day’s or evening’s work? Does he pour himself a glass of Chardonay and watch Dallas? Isn’t it a fact of life that we are all part of the masses in one regard and part of an elite in another? Is there a chef out there who wrote something called “Eating Whoppers”? Did he ask people to send him letters and explain to him why they eat at hamburger joints? Did the chef came to the conclusion that we eat Whoppers and Quarter Pounders because of A Tragic Structure of Grilled Beef?
We don’t need any excuse or approved reason to why we sometimes watch or eat pulp. The taste buds on our tongues and in our mind live in harmony and can enjoy all sort of efforts. Having a Big Mac for supper can be tasty and satisfying at times, just like watching a soap opera can be highly entertaining. But is it art?
‘I don’t think so’, Jack mused, ‘I guess something is art when sincere creativity was a key ingredient. Creativity can be dangerous, because it’s easy to make a misstep and fail. Junk food and soap opera’s generally play it safe, they are custom made. You go in getting exactly what you expected. A nice, simple little snack. And any attempt to make it more (or less!) than that, is ludicrous.’
Jack’s train of thought was crudely interupted when a housemate knocked on the door, informing him that the shower was available now. Jack glanced at his watch. Ten O’clock in the evening already. He had spend most of the evening lost in thought. He looked at his notebook and realised there was no way in hell he could get his creative writing assignment done in time anymore. His lips formed the words ‘So be it’. A nice shower and after that a couple of beers in the tavern downstairs was what he needed and wanted. He left his room, and when he returned there five hours later, more than just a little tipsy, he fell asleep, alone and lonely, but with a content smile on his face.
Around this time last year, I was just about to conclude a month and a half of analyzing the motion picture Don’t look Now for my Film and Audiovisual Culture course.It is a rather interesting film, but during those seven week I felt uneasy. Don’t look Now could be described as an arthouse horror film. Instead of focussing on knife wielding looneys and scantily clad girls screaming at the tops of their longs, the film wallows in an overwhelming atmosphere of death, grief and despair. Due to personal reasons, I recently re-read my final paper on the film, studied the sources I used more thoroughly and will offer you a brief summary of it with some new ideas added.
In my paper I argued that leading character John is actually going through the five stages of dying. By the end of the film he has completed his journey. John is not ill, John hasn’t been told by a physician that he has only a few more months to live. Yet, his death doesn’t come as a complete surprise, least of all to himself. John has the sixth sense and he is seeing and experiencing certain things that symbolize an upcoming tragedy. John deals with these omens in a way that resemble the five stage of dying as described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She is right up there with Freud who, despite the fact we should all be treated as unique inidviduals, believes we all inhibit certain fundamental aspects that makes it possible to catagorize us into rough archetypes. When someone gets the bad news of hearing he or she has not much longer to live, that person will go through a psychological journey that starts with denial. The subject matter simply cannot believe this is happening. It must be a joke, a mistake. Or, like Keanu Reeves may have cried in Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, ‘no waaaaay’. The second stage of this journey is anger. Anger aimed at God: ‘why me?!’. Anger at others, envy that they get to live, anger at the doctors for being the Reaper’s messengers. The third stage is bargaining. ‘What if I do my utmost best to show God I deserve to live?’, or ‘what if I take this or that medication? I am using this cheap medication now, so what if I switch to the more expensive one, that might help. It could help!’ The next stage is one of depression. The reality of the situation kicks in and the person realises the truth of his or her predictement, the fact they are gonna lose the life they were, hopefully, enjoying. The final stage, as John clearly displays when he finds himself cornered by a serial killer in the grande finale, is acceptance. John does not scream or defend himself. Instead, he becomes totally devoid of emotions. He knows he himself cannot change his faith anymore. So he just accepts the reality of his situation and whatever the outcome will be.
I got a nice grade for my paper, but looking back at it now I wish I would have done a bit more with Ross’s theory because ‘the five stages’ can be applied to other circumstances as well. For instances, let’s say you are watching television, there is an important football game in process and then….the screen goes blank. So you think simply turning it off and on the set will fix the problem (denial), when this doesn’t work you’ll bitch slap the set and scream obscenities at it (anger), when that doesn’t help either, you try to sweet talk the darn thing, actually praying to the television: ‘Oh, please, just let me see the rest of the game, sweetie’ (bargaining), when that proofs to be equally useless, you realise you are gonna miss the game, and it saddens you (depression), and after a couple of minutes you are more capable of putting things in perspective and say ‘o, well, I’ll just read about it in tommorow’s newspaper’ (acceptance).
Anyway, what would have been interesting to do for my paper, is also paying attention to the reactions of the people around John, the person who is dying. For people around a dying person will go through similar stages that are yet substantially different.
The people around the person can be, to go back to Freud and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, easily catagorized. They are going through the same stages (denial, anger, depression, acceptance) but there can be a wide range in variety concerning what comes after that. Group A will re-establish or re-discover their true, and sometimes previously hidden or denied feelings for this person, and consequently display and express it. Group B will will also re-establish and re-discover their genuine emotions for this person, yet choose to deny it or put it away deep inside (a combination of bargaining and denial: ‘I did not know him/her that well anyway’ or ‘I didn’t really like him/her anyway’ or ‘Maybe he/she will get better anyway’). Now that the person will die soon, they want to keep a distance. Because the person’s situation confronts them with their own mortality, or because they are afraid that allowing themselves to love the person will only cause pain in a near future. For Group B-1, this can result in choosing to break all contact so they do not have to deal with it. This is actually a fall back to the stage of anger. In this stage, the dying person can experience a feeling of envy and anger aimed at the healthy people around them. The people around this person, however, can feel angry feelings towards the dying person themselves: ‘how can we focus on our work, school or have fun when we keep getting confronted with his/hers illness?’. An exellent example of this feeling can be found in Alex Garland’s novel The Beach. After a member of a small island commune is mortally bitten by a shark, the whole group turns against him. As the first person narrative explains: ‘he should either get better, or die’. What they do not want is their island idylle ruined by screams of pains and illness. So, when the chap continues to keep lingering between life and death, they simple drag him to the other side of the island so they cannot hear his pained cries anymore.
Group B-2 does choose to keep in touch with the dying person, yet the contact tends to be awkward. They start to see him or her as ‘the sick one’. Conversations tend to center around, focus at, or limit to the person’s ill health; they deny or forget or don’t want to acknowledge the person as an individual with qualities that made them care for him or her in the first place. For the ill person, this is actually the most painful way of being dealt with. He or she is already in a crisis because life as he or she knew is over/will be over soon and the need to be acknowledged, treated, loved, and respected as the person he or she always was and to have as much fun in the company of his loved ones as possible is more important than ever in these final stages. It could even have a positive effect on the outcome of things, and most definitely on the state of mind of the ill person.
To get back to Don’t Look Now, that is exactly what happens to John – when he is murdered, his wife and kid aren’t even in the same country as he is, unable to change or influence his fate.
Hehe, having written this is realise why I didn’t bother to include this angle in my final paper; it simply would have gotten way too long. Anyway, if you’re in good spirits and some melancholy won’t bother you, give Don’t look Now a try. As for me, I know I prefer a little dose of Chevy Chase at the moment. At that is exactly what I am gonna do now during another sleepless night: I am gonna watch National Lampoon’s Vacation. Cheers!
My Christmas wish used to be to finally spend it with with a person I deeply care for. Now that I know this is not gonna happen and I am not sure if there’ll ever be another chance at that, I have a new wish. After spending yet another afternoon in the doctor’s office today, I no longer wish for love or warmth. I simply want this christmas to be without too much pain or worries. And I hope that is not too much to ask. Have a good one, people.
Well, I just got home from work. This was my last day for about a month or so – why would the company pay for my services when they can get (yet another) intern from ‘surveillance school’ for free, right? It was a hectic afternoon that started with me being ten minutes late. My boss balked at me for this and I felt like yelling ‘Listen, asshole, I just spent an hour in the bus after being poked and probed all morning so come off it, will ya?!‘, but I managed to hold back. I even managed to hide from them that I am not really feeling all that well. Anyway, now that I am fully aware of my attitude problem, I’ll do my utmost best to keep it under control and respond in a normal, calm way. I think I am getting quite good at it. Even when a junkie, covered with bloody bandages, was bothering other customers, I dealt with him in a calm, friendly way. I didn’t get angry so he didn’t get angry and there was no problem whatsoever. Good. After that, an electrical appliance broke down and even though I wasn’t sure if I would be able to fix it, I accepted the challenge, took the thing back to my desk and got busy. At a certain point a woman and her kid daughter passed my desk and when the girl asked her mother what I was doing, the woman answered: ‘He is probably a mechanic, repairing and maintaining all the equipment in this building‘. I briefly looked up and realised that my desk, now covered with dirty rags, screw drivers and spare parts, indeed looked like a work bench and with my black uniform and greasy, oily hands I indeed looked like something of a mechanic. Without realising it, that woman had given me a very welcome compliment. I might be a part timer who doesn’t always enjoy his work, but damn it, I ám a professional. And lo and behold, I actually managed to repair the thing and with a hint of a proud smile on my face I re-installed the machine. So I returned home feeling sorta satisfied but it’s been also a long, tiring day and my headache is getting worse again so I’m just gonna post the following review, which I wrote in the bus and train to pass time, take a few painkillers and then gonna try and get some sleep. Enjoy!
These windows are the eyes of the soul. Or something. The supposedly haunted house in AmityvilleThe Amityville Horror starts with the claim that what we are about to see is based upon The True Story. Not ‘A true Story’, but ‘The True Story’, as the producers assume (and probably rightly so) that just about everyone in the western world has heard one or two things about what went on in the town of Amityville. Producer Michael Bay’s previous horror remake, The Texas Chainsaw massacre also claimed to be based upon facts, but actually there is extremely little or nothing true about that that film. With The Amityville Horror, things are slightly more complicated. We know for a fact that the massacre that starts the film truly happened. Ronald DeFeo did go from room to room in his house to dispatch every member of his family. It is also true that a year later the Lutz family occupied the now vacant home and fled the house in less than a month, leaving behind their personal belongings. What is less clear, though, is what actually went on in their house during their short stay. Several and individual accounts contradict each other and themselves. The Lutz family, and especially father George Lutz in particular, have claimed that the house was haunted. Ask a hundred ‘witnesses’ what happened and you’ll get a hundred different testimonials. Some mundane (voices in the night that could have been wind going through the rusty plumbing), and some really out there (blood was pouring down the walls). According to more than one account, the Lutz’s simply fled their house because they couldn’t pay their mortgage and tried to use an elaborate ‘this joint is haunted, y’all’ hoax as a mean to get rid of their debts. But whatever went on in there, it’s extremely unlikely that things were as crazy as what we are served here. In a way, it is rather unethical what is done here. They use a real backstory and real people that are, to say the least, portrayed in a less than flattery manner. In the end though, all of this has jack shit to do with how good or bad The Amityville Horror is as a film, and specifically, as a horror film.
Real life drama. Ronald DeFeo murders his family in the eye popping prologue of The Amityville HorrorGeorge Lutz, his wife Kathy and her three children, move into a nice country house that was a crime scene just a year before. The daughter develops a special bond with a imaginative friend (actually the apparation of the DeFeo daughter), dad starts to behave like he’s seen The Shining one too many times, and Kathy and the other kids tried to cope with things as well and for as long as they could. Once again, no one can accuse the film makers of showing much restraint or respect dealing with a, at least in part, true drama. They went to town on the premise and then slapped the commercially attractive ‘based upon real shite’ stamp on it. A real life drama as the mold for a succesful horror film franchise.
Upon a first viewing, the high production values will probably impress most viewers. I know I raved when end credits rolled, but after the second viewing I was a bit bemused. The film is actually rather shallow. First time director Andrew Douglas sure has a keen eye, he knows where to place a camera, and he also manages to get some powerful performances from his cast. The prologue of the film is a little masterpiece as a stand alone and underlines what a creative chap Douglas is. Alas, when the Lutzes move in, it is strictly Haunted House 101 shanagans that are thrown our way. A few stand out scenes (rooftop!) aside, there is not much remarkable going on here. In an attempt at creating tension, Douglas overly relies on a visuals tricks, and fails at creating, let alone sustain, a growing sense of threat and doom.
Toddler on the roof. Little Chelsea is about to fall victim to the ghostsEarlier, I mentioned The Shining. That film was also about a father growing hostile against his family during their stay at a Bad Place. But what made that movie special was the fact that the Bad Place didn’t create his murderous feelings, it merely acted as a catalysator of surpressed feelings. In many analyses of The Shining, it is even suggested that the Bad Place isn’t haunted at all, but that the stuff the families sees and experiences mainly comes from within. In Amityville Horror there is no doubt that the house is indeed haunted. George Lutz has no surpressed anger towards his family. He is used as a tool for the house’s bloodlust and as soon as he is taken away from the house, he snaps out of it again and is the loveable husband and father again. So there is no real arc here, nor a real point.
What remains is an entertaining yarn that could have been so much more.
O, and one last thing: RCV, the Dutch distributor that released this film on DVD, should be ashamed of itself. Their releases always tend to be a bit crappy but in the case of The Amityville Horror we do not even get a main menu! I have seen a lot of lousy DVD releases in my life, but this one takes the cake.
Playing footsie. One of the few times the Lutzes have fun in their bedroomFor those of you who saw the film and are tasty for more, check out some of these sites that offer all sorts of goodies about the infamous 1974 case:
http://www.amityvillemurders.com/
http://www.prairieghosts.com/amityville.html
*** out of ****
A couple of weeks ago, I thought ‘Why the hell did I start a myspace page?. I have this trademarc web-log for more than two years now and it’s been doing pretty well (although very few of my visitors feel the need to leave a reaction) so last summer I figured (always thinking as the film director I’d like to have become): success warrants a sequel. But whatever the reason is people visit trademarc, no-one was interested in trademarc2, so last week I pulled the plug. But to get back to my original and, perhaps, rethorical question, I do not know the answer. I do know why I am maintaining it, though. Because browsing for other people at myspace is rather easy and I found a lot of people who, in some way or another, I can relate to. And even though I do not wish other people ill, it is sort of a relief and a great support to know there are others out there who are struggling with their physical and emotional wellbeing. It is comforting to know that I am not alone in this. In a way, I always had and still have the tendency to tell myself ‘O, come on, don’t be such a cry baby, think of the little starving kids in Timbuktu someplace. Now, théy are the ones who are leading a shitty life. So put things in perspective and put your chin up!‘ Well, today, I finally dared to face my reflection in the mirror and tell myself: ‘Well, be that as it may, I am not a starving kid somewhere in Pakistan, I am me, and I am not gonna play down what I am going through. This is my world, this is my life and in my own way I am going through hard times‘.
I cannot sleep because I feel ill and when there is a day I feel slightly better I don’t sleep well either because of my worries. I feel lonely, even though I have plenty of friends. But, and the same things goes for when I visit my therapist, I feel good or, more accurately, less ill when I am with them, but as soon as my time with them is over for a while, my distracted problems start knocking at my door again and I am back to where I started. I do not need to stroll through life wearing a Disney Grin on my face 24/7, that is not something I strive for, but I long back for the days I woke up well rested and all ready for the day (carpe diem, yes) and went to sleep satified. I long back for the days I felt truly loved and people seemed interested in my artistic output. I long back for the days my body was in a tip top shape. ‘Long back’, that is right, as I had a taste of it a while ago. I was content, I had good things to look forward to. But how things have taken a turn for the worse. I am not content, I do not feel well, I wake up panicked about how the hell I am going to get through the day and in this uncertain time I do not even know how much of a future I will have. And some, but thank God not all of my friends notice it, feel it, maybe even smell it. They choose not to be around me (anymore), or to at least keep a certain distance, because I scare them, or confront them with certain abstract emotions they don’t want to deal with, or because they just moved on and last thing they need in their lifes is someone like me to be a part of it. Maybe they also fear to catch what what I have, even though they should know that even if I’d cough or sneeze on them, or inject my own blood in their veins, they cannot be infected.
The only one who is responsible for your happiness is yourself. That is something I agree with. Hell, it’s even something I could have said myself. But if you agree with that line, then maybe you also agree with that your state of mind (and body) isn’t positively stimulated when the same people who were with you in happier days, turn away away from you when you are going through a rather shitty period. So, if you read this and you are also ill or feeling depressed, even if you are a perfect stranger, maybe it is comforting, maybe it gives you strength to know you are not the only one. To me, having the knowledge there are others like me out there, even if I don’t know them, helps a lot. Especially in a time when everywhere around you, on television and radio, and on the streets you are confronted with that this is ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ and that you are expected to feel and behave all happy and cheerily. Be well and the best of luck.
