The zombie is ground zero for low budget horror filmmaking. It is the most democratic of monsters, the movie equivalent of punk rock. Anyone can learn two chords and add food coloring to Karo syrup and recruit some neighbors (everyone, absolutely everyone, wants to play a zombie) and make a decent dead pic. You don't even need a script! A zombie uprising writes itself.
Zed is therefore a natural ally of the populist (or faux populist, since the big-budget Cloverfield) microgenre pioneered by The Blair Witch Project — a movie that continues to grow in stature with hindsight. We now know that the Blair Witch crew were exactly eight years ahead of their time. Not until 2007, when every schlump on the street was toting a digital video widget, did the handheld docu-horror flick finally catch on. Three such innovators premiered that autumn, two of them thick with zombies. The third was Paranormal Activity.
That season also saw the release of Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii. What delight to discover that revolutionary gameplay had come not from a rogue upstart, as you might expect, but from the most venerable franchise in platformers! It's nice to have your trust reaffirmed. Likewise one of the aforementioned zombie docs was Diary of the Dead, the fifth volume in George Romero's flagship Dead series, a forty-year-old franchise still under original management and still breaking new ground.
The other undead innovator, however, was a rogue upstart. From Spain, of all places. I know Spain has produced a few high profile horror movies recently (The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth from Guillermo del Toro, and The Orphanage from some other hombre) but the country doesn't really have a well-identified horror tradition like, say, Italy. But all people of all nations are welcome to participate in the ongoing zombie apocalypse. So anyway, the title of this película de terror is [REC] — more of a glyph, really — as in "recording", as if to scream avant-garde. The almost-real-time running documentary approach is kind of novel, but the only truly mind-blowing aspect of this otherwise standard outbreak story is the rapid response time of law enforcement and public health officials: someone calls the cops when this old lady goes berserk in her apartment, and within like ten minutes the city has quarantined the building with a SWAT team and biohazard gear. This is absolutely unprecedented foresight on the part of municipal authorities in dealing with the sudden appearance of the living dead. Evidently the Spanish have much greater faith in the competence of their public servants.
An American remake was released one year later (again, rapid response time!), more sensibly titled Quarantine. I find myself recommending both versions. The Spanish original is better cast, with more naturalistic-looking actors; the American actors look like typecast character actors, which is what they are, spoiling the realism. But sometimes technical chops make all the difference. The higher-budgeted Quarantine is tighter, faster, more intense, with convincing gore and more brutal kills. Basically what you expect from the good ol' USA.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Dead Space + Left 4 Dead
[This week is Zombie Week. In anticipation of the theatrical release of Zombieland, which may or may not suck, several zombie-related articles forthcoming.]
The compass of the zombie is full of anger. The fundamental appeal is the idea of beating your neighbor to death with a club. That bastard had it coming, you see, because he's a stupid drone like all the others, shambling to the omnipresent tune of banality and injustice. You either fight or shuffle in step. Probably they'll overwhelm your resistance in the end.
Vampires aren't nearly so angry; petulant maybe. Disdainful. More often than not glamorously depressed: the inward obsessions of narcissism. The old superstition that vampires have no reflection is ironic, because in every depiction they only see themselves. The fascination with bloodsuckers is world-fleeing; the urge to slip away into a morphine bliss and leave a pretty corpse. Braineaters are the grim meat hook reality you face every day. The two monsters provide opposite forms of catharsis. I suppose we need them both.
But this is Zombie Week, dammit. Those dead-eyed fuckers are clawing at the door and you've got a twisted ankle, one shotgun shell and a garden hoe. Let's rock.
Suffering from extreme undeadicide withdrawal months after shelving my beloved copy of Dead Rising (best.zombie.game.ever), and forlorn in the knowledge that Dead Rising 2 is much too far away, like a health kit at the opposite end of a zombie-clogged mini mall, I hit the dealer for a quick fix.
The choice was between Dead Space, a sci-fi survival horror shooter set aboard a derelict spaceship infested by alien bugshit affixed to human hosts, and Left 4 Dead, a slick multiplayer shooter featuring the classic scenario: band of survivors versus wave after wave of hungry zedheads. The thing is, I do most of my killing solo — a partner is just a ghoul waiting to happen. I went with Dead Space.
It was the right choice. The zombie experience lives or dies by aesthetics; bone must crunch with a satisfying sound and blood must splatter with a certain joie de vivre. Atmosphere and tone must be sadistically controlled to instill paranoia and bring you regularly to the desperate blind-firing-your-last-five-pistol-rounds edge of panic. Dead Space succeeds inasmuch as it faithfully copies every page from the playbook of Doom 3, a stain-yourself terrifying game. The Alien-inspired art design is gorgeous to behold, especially during the soundless sequences on the airless ship exterior in view of drifting debris spotlit by a cold white star, as a tentacled fetus latches on to your head.
The game's primary selling point, emphasis on methodically dismembering your foes limb by mutated limb, is wicked fun*, at least until you acquire bigger guns that render precision shooting unnecessary and thereby undermine the mechanic. A major disappointment were the zero-g sequences; the prospect of floating around under attack from all 4π steradians had been a huge draw for me, but the actual implementation has your feet firmly planted on a stationary surface at all times. This is a missed opportunity: imagine in a dire situation wherein ammo is already scarce, and you've no jet pack, having to squander precious rounds to propel yourself through space, and hence every time you fire at an enemy push yourself off course. That'd be sweet.
Truth is I'm not going to finish the game. Despite initial immersion the gameplay stagnates by the halfway point with repetitive go-here-and-push-a-button missions and no compelling characters or storyline. Still, it was more enjoyable than the few minutes I recently had playing Left 4 Dead. The high-end shooter engines it uses is just too smooth for a horror game; you move and aim with unnatural fluidity, as if massless. The action is too bombastic and the environments under-designed. It's a shame, really. So few understand the art of the zombie.
* Expression not used in the Boston manner.
The compass of the zombie is full of anger. The fundamental appeal is the idea of beating your neighbor to death with a club. That bastard had it coming, you see, because he's a stupid drone like all the others, shambling to the omnipresent tune of banality and injustice. You either fight or shuffle in step. Probably they'll overwhelm your resistance in the end.
Vampires aren't nearly so angry; petulant maybe. Disdainful. More often than not glamorously depressed: the inward obsessions of narcissism. The old superstition that vampires have no reflection is ironic, because in every depiction they only see themselves. The fascination with bloodsuckers is world-fleeing; the urge to slip away into a morphine bliss and leave a pretty corpse. Braineaters are the grim meat hook reality you face every day. The two monsters provide opposite forms of catharsis. I suppose we need them both.
But this is Zombie Week, dammit. Those dead-eyed fuckers are clawing at the door and you've got a twisted ankle, one shotgun shell and a garden hoe. Let's rock.
Suffering from extreme undeadicide withdrawal months after shelving my beloved copy of Dead Rising (best.zombie.game.ever), and forlorn in the knowledge that Dead Rising 2 is much too far away, like a health kit at the opposite end of a zombie-clogged mini mall, I hit the dealer for a quick fix.
The choice was between Dead Space, a sci-fi survival horror shooter set aboard a derelict spaceship infested by alien bugshit affixed to human hosts, and Left 4 Dead, a slick multiplayer shooter featuring the classic scenario: band of survivors versus wave after wave of hungry zedheads. The thing is, I do most of my killing solo — a partner is just a ghoul waiting to happen. I went with Dead Space.
It was the right choice. The zombie experience lives or dies by aesthetics; bone must crunch with a satisfying sound and blood must splatter with a certain joie de vivre. Atmosphere and tone must be sadistically controlled to instill paranoia and bring you regularly to the desperate blind-firing-your-last-five-pistol-rounds edge of panic. Dead Space succeeds inasmuch as it faithfully copies every page from the playbook of Doom 3, a stain-yourself terrifying game. The Alien-inspired art design is gorgeous to behold, especially during the soundless sequences on the airless ship exterior in view of drifting debris spotlit by a cold white star, as a tentacled fetus latches on to your head.
The game's primary selling point, emphasis on methodically dismembering your foes limb by mutated limb, is wicked fun*, at least until you acquire bigger guns that render precision shooting unnecessary and thereby undermine the mechanic. A major disappointment were the zero-g sequences; the prospect of floating around under attack from all 4π steradians had been a huge draw for me, but the actual implementation has your feet firmly planted on a stationary surface at all times. This is a missed opportunity: imagine in a dire situation wherein ammo is already scarce, and you've no jet pack, having to squander precious rounds to propel yourself through space, and hence every time you fire at an enemy push yourself off course. That'd be sweet.
Truth is I'm not going to finish the game. Despite initial immersion the gameplay stagnates by the halfway point with repetitive go-here-and-push-a-button missions and no compelling characters or storyline. Still, it was more enjoyable than the few minutes I recently had playing Left 4 Dead. The high-end shooter engines it uses is just too smooth for a horror game; you move and aim with unnatural fluidity, as if massless. The action is too bombastic and the environments under-designed. It's a shame, really. So few understand the art of the zombie.
* Expression not used in the Boston manner.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Paranormal Activity
Would the Exorcist be as scary without the slime chucking and creative chiropractic? No, of course not. That stuff is freaky. But we all know the Exorcist was a one shot deal; it opened and closed the book on exorcism fu. Those crass tactics would never be truly effective again (especially now with CGI, which, if you are aware of it, is always just a tad more frightening than Svengoolie) because there's just no way to top what Friedkin did. One word: crucifucking — a moment so upsetting that it's rarely even mentioned, as if people are in denial of what they saw.
The Exorcist is the most Catholic movie ever made, the culmination of centuries of fanciful gothic scaremongering. By the same token the movie represents the death of the Roman Catholic Church, its last battle with the forces of darkness, its last moment of dignity after giving up all pretense of authority in Vatican II. Father Karras and Pazuzu both go down together. I've stood at the base of that precipitous staircase in Georgetown and do you know what I felt? Nothing. The old ghosts are gone.
Since then the demonic possession beat has been little trodden by any creations original and scary. The Evil Dead series was the most important thing to happen to horror between Halloween and the Blair Witch, but the only genuine fright it provides is the thought of Sam Raimi's ex-girlfriends. *shudder* In a way Evil Dead so thoroughly lampooned the concept of the Exorcist that it became impossible to treat seriously. As recently as this summer Raimi was still rattling the chestnut for yuks with Drag Me To Hell. But then it turns out that, two years ago, someone found a way to resurrect the kin of Pazuzu.
A no-budget independent movie called Paranormal Activity, shot as cinéma vérité with a single handheld camera, premiered at a horror film festival in 2007 and since then has been searching for a nationwide distributor. A one-night-only midnight screening was held at the Music Box on Thursday for a super-capacity crowd. A great night at the movies. Don't watch the trailer — in trying to draw an audience it errs by over-revealing. If and when this thing gets a DVD or wide theatrical release it should be seen and seen cold.
The film terrorizes in the vein of recent fare like Blair Witch, Open Water and The Descent: by exploiting the visceral fear of powerlessness. It's fun to be scared when you have a way of fighting back against the monsters and a chance of survival...not so fun when you are helpless, hopelessly lost and doomed. The makers of Paranormal Activity had an insight: Keep the demon, lose the priest. Now you're fucked. This experience, something like the drowning of your heart, is amplified by the implication that you are watching "found footage". What's even worse is that often you are watching stationary tripod footage of the characters being terrorized while they sleep. And there's nothing you can do.
The Exorcist is the most Catholic movie ever made, the culmination of centuries of fanciful gothic scaremongering. By the same token the movie represents the death of the Roman Catholic Church, its last battle with the forces of darkness, its last moment of dignity after giving up all pretense of authority in Vatican II. Father Karras and Pazuzu both go down together. I've stood at the base of that precipitous staircase in Georgetown and do you know what I felt? Nothing. The old ghosts are gone.
Since then the demonic possession beat has been little trodden by any creations original and scary. The Evil Dead series was the most important thing to happen to horror between Halloween and the Blair Witch, but the only genuine fright it provides is the thought of Sam Raimi's ex-girlfriends. *shudder* In a way Evil Dead so thoroughly lampooned the concept of the Exorcist that it became impossible to treat seriously. As recently as this summer Raimi was still rattling the chestnut for yuks with Drag Me To Hell. But then it turns out that, two years ago, someone found a way to resurrect the kin of Pazuzu.
A no-budget independent movie called Paranormal Activity, shot as cinéma vérité with a single handheld camera, premiered at a horror film festival in 2007 and since then has been searching for a nationwide distributor. A one-night-only midnight screening was held at the Music Box on Thursday for a super-capacity crowd. A great night at the movies. Don't watch the trailer — in trying to draw an audience it errs by over-revealing. If and when this thing gets a DVD or wide theatrical release it should be seen and seen cold.
The film terrorizes in the vein of recent fare like Blair Witch, Open Water and The Descent: by exploiting the visceral fear of powerlessness. It's fun to be scared when you have a way of fighting back against the monsters and a chance of survival...not so fun when you are helpless, hopelessly lost and doomed. The makers of Paranormal Activity had an insight: Keep the demon, lose the priest. Now you're fucked. This experience, something like the drowning of your heart, is amplified by the implication that you are watching "found footage". What's even worse is that often you are watching stationary tripod footage of the characters being terrorized while they sleep. And there's nothing you can do.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Korea VI. Chan-wook Park
Violence as art in the movies is conventionally dated to the blizzard of bullets of '69: Sam "Sonofabitch" Peckinpah elevated the gunfight to ballet in two sequences that bookend The Wild Bunch, introducing the slow motion death pirouette that, now, it's impossible to imagine the action movie without. This innovation was assisted by the brutal onscreen demise of Bonnie and Clyde two years earlier — the cultural impact can be felt in this passage from Roger Ebert's original 1967 review:
If one wishes to look further back into the art of the kill (Yes, please!) it is apropos to mention one of the most enduring images of violence in all of cinema: the face and shattered glasses of a nurse on the Odessa Steps, shot through the eye. This image from Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin (1925) has become a meme, perpetuated I assume by Film 101 at every institution of higher learning; once you know it I promise you will see it quoted in a new movie or show at least once a year (spot the reference in 9 at a theater near you). The most famous homage occurs in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, wherein the grand staircase in Chicago's Union Station doubles for the Odessa Steps.
De Palma himself has been much talked about recently in the wake of Inglourious Basterds and its nod to Carrie's inferno, with Tarantino citing De Palma as a primary influence and the first of the fanboy filmmakers (see also John Landis). De Palma more than anyone is responsible for making operatic violence fun. It had been developed as art in the 70s when Hollywood was all serious and shit, but Scarface in '83 succeeded in transmuting The Wild Bunch into popcorn. John Woo based his career on this new alchemy: Hard Boiled (1992) is the last reel of The Wild Bunch miraculously sustained for two hours of improbable cool, and it set the trend for gun fu in the 90s. Reservoir Dogs was released that same year, and while its importance is primarily for dialogue, the use of a certain Dylanesque, pop, bubble-gum favorite from April of 1974 during an otherwise routine mutilation cum immolation scene cemented a popular taste for violence as absurdity, surreality.
The baton was passed at Cannes in 2004 when Tarantino personally stumped for Chan-wook Park's artfully bloody entry, Oldboy. Park had toppled Shiri from the balcony of the Korean box office with Joint Security Area in 2000, which might have been a standard military-political drama along the lines of A Few Good Men if not for Park's uncommon ability to take the sketch of a simple story — like a procedural or, the simplest of all, a revenge — and trace over it with sharp lines of beauty and pain. He traces in blood, buckets of it all told, but every ounce dispensed with clinical precision and discrimination. So you feel it.
Joint Security Area, in exploiting the thrill of intrigue in the DMZ, is somewhat creatively constrained by the delicacy of the political situation and Park's adherence to rhetoric about the hope for reunification (especially evident in light of his subsequent emergence as an auteur), but its financial success enabled him to commence a series of thematically linked projects, now codified as the Vengeance Trilogy, that established Park as Korea's best director of popular films and the most internationally famous. (Ki-duk Kim is Korea's best arthouse director; Ebert recently appointed Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring to his Great Movies list.)
The trilogy consists of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, although one should also include in this series Cut, the short film Park contributed to "Three... Extremes", a collection of East Asian horror. This inclusion with horror films should give you the flavor of Park's recipe for a dish best served cold. He sees in our nature a weakness for the belief that we can get what we want by bargaining in flesh. We are shown a recurrent series of kidnappings and hostage-takings that provoke more of the same; a cycle of transactions conducted in persons whole and in part, involving as well the literal exchange of organs, digits and the odd tongue. Invariably Park finds that neither satisfaction nor redemption can be achieved in such a market; once horrible deeds are done, they stay done.
Park has now made a vampire movie, called Thirst, to be released on DVD in November. This makes perfect sense. (I can't believe I'm looking forward to another bloodsucker.)
* It is probably necessary to explain that Fearless Fosdick is a parody of Dick Tracy that appeared as a comic strip-within-a-strip in Li'l Abner (which probably requires its own footnote, but I'll leave it up to you). He was frequently riddled by bullet holes, to mild effect. Everyone knew this in 1967.
When people are shot in "Bonnie and Clyde" they are literally blown to bits. Perhaps that seems shocking. But perhaps at this time, it is useful to be reminded that bullets really do tear skin and bone, and that they don't make nice round little holes like the Swiss cheese effect in Fearless Fosdick.*Personally I think it's cute to imagine young Roger, in his first year as a professional film critic, positioning himself on the vanguard of the American new wave and hyping the modernity of its attitude toward violence. (Verily, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway are shot many times, but they are not by any stretch "literally blown to bits".)
If one wishes to look further back into the art of the kill (Yes, please!) it is apropos to mention one of the most enduring images of violence in all of cinema: the face and shattered glasses of a nurse on the Odessa Steps, shot through the eye. This image from Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin (1925) has become a meme, perpetuated I assume by Film 101 at every institution of higher learning; once you know it I promise you will see it quoted in a new movie or show at least once a year (spot the reference in 9 at a theater near you). The most famous homage occurs in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables, wherein the grand staircase in Chicago's Union Station doubles for the Odessa Steps.
De Palma himself has been much talked about recently in the wake of Inglourious Basterds and its nod to Carrie's inferno, with Tarantino citing De Palma as a primary influence and the first of the fanboy filmmakers (see also John Landis). De Palma more than anyone is responsible for making operatic violence fun. It had been developed as art in the 70s when Hollywood was all serious and shit, but Scarface in '83 succeeded in transmuting The Wild Bunch into popcorn. John Woo based his career on this new alchemy: Hard Boiled (1992) is the last reel of The Wild Bunch miraculously sustained for two hours of improbable cool, and it set the trend for gun fu in the 90s. Reservoir Dogs was released that same year, and while its importance is primarily for dialogue, the use of a certain Dylanesque, pop, bubble-gum favorite from April of 1974 during an otherwise routine mutilation cum immolation scene cemented a popular taste for violence as absurdity, surreality.
The baton was passed at Cannes in 2004 when Tarantino personally stumped for Chan-wook Park's artfully bloody entry, Oldboy. Park had toppled Shiri from the balcony of the Korean box office with Joint Security Area in 2000, which might have been a standard military-political drama along the lines of A Few Good Men if not for Park's uncommon ability to take the sketch of a simple story — like a procedural or, the simplest of all, a revenge — and trace over it with sharp lines of beauty and pain. He traces in blood, buckets of it all told, but every ounce dispensed with clinical precision and discrimination. So you feel it.
Joint Security Area, in exploiting the thrill of intrigue in the DMZ, is somewhat creatively constrained by the delicacy of the political situation and Park's adherence to rhetoric about the hope for reunification (especially evident in light of his subsequent emergence as an auteur), but its financial success enabled him to commence a series of thematically linked projects, now codified as the Vengeance Trilogy, that established Park as Korea's best director of popular films and the most internationally famous. (Ki-duk Kim is Korea's best arthouse director; Ebert recently appointed Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring to his Great Movies list.)
The trilogy consists of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Lady Vengeance, although one should also include in this series Cut, the short film Park contributed to "Three... Extremes", a collection of East Asian horror. This inclusion with horror films should give you the flavor of Park's recipe for a dish best served cold. He sees in our nature a weakness for the belief that we can get what we want by bargaining in flesh. We are shown a recurrent series of kidnappings and hostage-takings that provoke more of the same; a cycle of transactions conducted in persons whole and in part, involving as well the literal exchange of organs, digits and the odd tongue. Invariably Park finds that neither satisfaction nor redemption can be achieved in such a market; once horrible deeds are done, they stay done.
Park has now made a vampire movie, called Thirst, to be released on DVD in November. This makes perfect sense. (I can't believe I'm looking forward to another bloodsucker.)
* It is probably necessary to explain that Fearless Fosdick is a parody of Dick Tracy that appeared as a comic strip-within-a-strip in Li'l Abner (which probably requires its own footnote, but I'll leave it up to you). He was frequently riddled by bullet holes, to mild effect. Everyone knew this in 1967.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Korea V. So Yong Kim
I walked into the Gene Siskel Film Center one day and a Korean movie was playing so I saw it. It was called Treeless Mountain and it put me into the indie doze: that guiltily inattentive state of semi-consciousness that occurs when viewing an indie film that possesses artistic merit but you kinda don't really care. You are certain that the subject matter is very meaningful to a very narrow demographic to which you have no relation whatsoever. Also, you feel there has been excessive use of the close-up.
In her first two films, In Between Days and Treeless Mountain, director So Yong Kim has made a significant contribution to the world's supply of close-up footage of kindergarten and teenage Korean girls. I hope that she has received awards from the appropriate liberal-minded associations and funds. Meanwhile I shall quietly sneak out to go watch Raising Arizona.
In her first two films, In Between Days and Treeless Mountain, director So Yong Kim has made a significant contribution to the world's supply of close-up footage of kindergarten and teenage Korean girls. I hope that she has received awards from the appropriate liberal-minded associations and funds. Meanwhile I shall quietly sneak out to go watch Raising Arizona.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Weeds, Season 1
The most subversive aspect of the show is the way the creators do everything in their power to make Nancy Botwin genuinely likable — she is playfully attractive, fashionable, capable and sharp of wit, if charmingly naive at times — while dancing around the Joe Friday fact that she is neglecting and recklessly endangering the welfare of her children. The pluck and whimsy that livens every briskly-plotted episode is a seduction, luring you into an irresponsible diversion, gaining your lazy consent. The writers work with incredible dexterity to periodically expose and dismiss the reality of the situation; moments of clarity cut through the smoke. The watchword is responsibility. Unless someone calls a spade a spade relatively soon the outlook is *ahem* sticky for Nancy (but she's so cute!) and her kids.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Flight of the Conchords, Season 1
At first I wasn't prepared to let the gonzo splatterama of early Peter Jackson speak for the character and tastes of all New Zealanders (just as I'm sure most Baltimoreans would prefer not to be represented by John Waters), but after viewing the clearly Jackson-inspired Black Sheep (2006), that beguiling tale about an outbreak of vicious weresheep, I was beginning to waver in my conviction that not all Kiwis could possibly be quite so utterly barmy. But it does kinda makes sense. I mean, what happens when you take a fleabitten shipload of Welsh and Scottish nutters, turn them upside down and force them to gather wool for a century at the end of the Earth? Hey, even Australia considers New Zealand a laughable backwater.
So what's a novelty music duo to do but embrace the stereotype? The craziest damn thing about these perpetually shellshocked rubes is that they seem to like being thought of that way. Contrast Australia's designated rep, Mick "Crocodile" Dundee, who is secondly a yahoo but firstly a toothy Harlequin hunk. That's a rather more assured self-image but far less funny, even when the humor draws from the same fish-out-of-water premise. And whereas Mick is competent and canny in his element, one gets the impression that the Conchords (and Murray), for all their sweet sincerity, would be just as adorably out of step back down underer, as if it's impossible to get your bearings on the other side of Oz.
So what's a novelty music duo to do but embrace the stereotype? The craziest damn thing about these perpetually shellshocked rubes is that they seem to like being thought of that way. Contrast Australia's designated rep, Mick "Crocodile" Dundee, who is secondly a yahoo but firstly a toothy Harlequin hunk. That's a rather more assured self-image but far less funny, even when the humor draws from the same fish-out-of-water premise. And whereas Mick is competent and canny in his element, one gets the impression that the Conchords (and Murray), for all their sweet sincerity, would be just as adorably out of step back down underer, as if it's impossible to get your bearings on the other side of Oz.
NEW ZEALAND
DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH — YOU'LL LOVE IT
DON'T EXPECT TOO MUCH — YOU'LL LOVE IT
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Inglourious Basterds, Part XIV
14. Sabotage (1936) is the source of the clip of the boy trying to carry flammable nitrate film canisters onto a London city bus, only to be admonished by the conductor. I tack on this necessary installment to the IB film series for several reasons, one being that it is my favorite movie of pre-Hollywood Alfred Hitchcock, from whom Tarantino has inherited the mantle of master of suspense; a second being that echoes of the plot are heard in IB, involving propaganda bombings and central intrigue that revolves around a movie theater. Based on the 1907 Joseph Conrad novel, The Secret Agent, which foreshadows a century of violent terrorism in the service of revolutionary movements, Sabotage is darker, more horrifying than anything Hitchcock would make until Vertigo.
Monday, September 14, 2009
9
Within moments I was thinking of Myst, of the loving attention paid to small, functional objects and materials and their tactile quality, placed in context in an intimately realized space. Ray Bradbury would know how to describe that love. It has to do also with the natural delight taken in the working of simple devices and the way, under the close observance of a child, every thing seems to have something like a soul.
Note: Whatever had been reported about the use of a new CGI process to mimic the stilted movements of traditional stop motion animation (see Coraline) turns out to be unfounded, to my vague relief.
Note: Whatever had been reported about the use of a new CGI process to mimic the stilted movements of traditional stop motion animation (see Coraline) turns out to be unfounded, to my vague relief.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
To Mega Therion
Re: Communication Breakdown
If you've been listening to Katy Perry (or Guillaume de Machaut) all week you might reasonably balk at the task: Train your blissfully undamaged ears to distinguish between some two dozen willfully inaccessible subgenres of extreme metal (inasmuch as the genre distinctions are substantive and not meaningless inventions of the music press). Well, put your misgivings aside! We do not have any choice but to climb the metal taxonomy tree because, as George Mallory put it, it is there.
We shall bypass the NWOBHM roots of the extreme metal phyla, preferring the aberrant outgrowths therefrom, with one outstanding exception: Motörhead. Hurtling through old-time rock and roll on enough amphetamines to power Tokyo, Lemmy is bigger than metal itself, and he and his warts have long been considered trustees of punk rock.
Let's also get a nod to Metallica out of the way. They, like Green Day, functioned as a gateway band for many of us of a certain age, and we pay our respects. That being said, I have previously summed up thrash metal in one word: Slayer.
The following patchwork of notes pertains to my initial experience with the pioneers of black, doom, power and death metal.
The prehistory of extreme metal ends with Venom, the hallowed Geordie trio who first applied the brute aggression and DIY production of hardcore punk to heavy metal; their first album (Welcome to Hell) is prototype for the sound of America's thrash metal and textbook for the blasphemous lyrical and iconographic fixations of Europe's black metal. (The sonic template for black metal, however, was later set down by Bathory and Celtic Frost, to whom I'll return.) Critics invariably note that Venom were rather amateur musicians, but myself — coming from a position sympathetic to the one-chord wonder of punk rock, I hear an unsettling authenticity in Venom's professions of allegiance to Lucifer that slick production and showy fretwork would only undermine. Their primitive woodshed recordings never sound like anything other than three blokes banging on cheap instruments, and that's exactly what I imagine unhinged devil freaks do.
For pure entertainment I point to the farcical posturing of the black metal prince of Copenhagen, Mercyful Fate; good clean fun, in the unholy scheme of things — I challenge you not to snicker the entire time. Every song is a precious ritual diablo, drawn as precisely as a pentagram, and the stratospheric castrato cackle is exactly as threatening as Skeletor. Plus they can boast the hands-down funniest album cover in the long tradition of ridiculous metal artwork: a horned skull half-submerged in a wall of flames, with outstretched hand pointing directly at YOU and the terrifying admonition, "Don't Break the Oath". I want to drive all night with my evil friends and be awesome.
Now let's switch sides and be the good guys! Just reverse your reversible cloak and join ranks with the Excalibur-wielding wizard heroes of this most mystical tale — presto, power metal! You've been rocked by the DragonForce song on Guitar Hero III so you know how friggin' sweet Gauntlet-based rock and slash can be. The elder lords of this dorkus magnus genre are Hamburg's non-non-non-heinous Helloween; mandatory listening if ever you calculated THAC0.
If you prefer piracy to sorcery: Alestorm.
The village-stomping doom metal of England's Witchfinder General is what Black Sabbath would sound like if I liked Black Sabbath. (The thing about Ozzy Osbourne, let's face it, is that he is and always has been a whiny git.) More accessible to those who fear immoderate shredding, Witchfinder blew away my expectations (abstruse druggy drivel) with tight, stripped bare songcraft and gleefully calamitous burn-a-wench-drink-a-beer attitude. Smell the bitch cooking as the prior looks on with cool approbation. Cheers as well to a goddamn brilliant band name.
Most of these groups inspire a mixture of amusement and awe, but when listening to Bathory I feel an urge to fall to my knees and proffer a goat. The fourth track on Under the Sign of the Black Mark made me scream aloud in distress at what I was hearing. I had to shut it off and put on Robert Johnson just to chill the fuck out. Jeez...I felt like a Baptist schoolmarm reacting to Blue Suede Shoes, This is the devil's music! It's hard to say exactly what horrible images are brought to mind, but I think that's part of Black Mark's potency: it's an abstraction of pure terror.
To Mega Therion conjures more tangible nightmares. The second album issued down from the nape of the alpine glacier where dwell in isolation Celtic Frost, inventing and discarding the sounds that later bands would take up and call black or death, is announced by the baleful sounding of the horns of Hannibal's decimated legion. The muscular thrash that ensues is at times accented by the ringing of iron on anvil — hammer falls no doubt shaping some fell implement — and the coldblooded song of revenant whores. Lead vocals are frequently punctuated by a Hetfieldian Ooh! Indeed, Celtic Frost has been referred to as Europe's Metallica both in terms of their orchestration and unparalleled influence.
Death metal is however an altogether American folly. The sound can be described as Slayer, only more so. Frankly I'm having a hard time getting into it, at least the early stuff. As gestated in Florida by Death and Frisco by Possessed on such albums as Scream Bloody Gore and Seven Churches, the squalling infancy of metal's most brutal branch presents a serious challenge to the listener: the monotonic delivery deadens what should be very colorful subject matter. The death growl and blast beats and other raw materials are there — leave it to the Swedes to figure out what to do with them (I'm eager to visit the more melodic Gothenburg metal). But I've peeked into the later work of Death, which transitions into the frightening prospect of technical death metal, and am happy to report that upon hitting maturity in the early nineties the American scene is a well articulated monster.
Further up the tree it gets pretty woolly. Hold on to your butts.
If you've been listening to Katy Perry (or Guillaume de Machaut) all week you might reasonably balk at the task: Train your blissfully undamaged ears to distinguish between some two dozen willfully inaccessible subgenres of extreme metal (inasmuch as the genre distinctions are substantive and not meaningless inventions of the music press). Well, put your misgivings aside! We do not have any choice but to climb the metal taxonomy tree because, as George Mallory put it, it is there.
We shall bypass the NWOBHM roots of the extreme metal phyla, preferring the aberrant outgrowths therefrom, with one outstanding exception: Motörhead. Hurtling through old-time rock and roll on enough amphetamines to power Tokyo, Lemmy is bigger than metal itself, and he and his warts have long been considered trustees of punk rock.
Let's also get a nod to Metallica out of the way. They, like Green Day, functioned as a gateway band for many of us of a certain age, and we pay our respects. That being said, I have previously summed up thrash metal in one word: Slayer.
The following patchwork of notes pertains to my initial experience with the pioneers of black, doom, power and death metal.
The prehistory of extreme metal ends with Venom, the hallowed Geordie trio who first applied the brute aggression and DIY production of hardcore punk to heavy metal; their first album (Welcome to Hell) is prototype for the sound of America's thrash metal and textbook for the blasphemous lyrical and iconographic fixations of Europe's black metal. (The sonic template for black metal, however, was later set down by Bathory and Celtic Frost, to whom I'll return.) Critics invariably note that Venom were rather amateur musicians, but myself — coming from a position sympathetic to the one-chord wonder of punk rock, I hear an unsettling authenticity in Venom's professions of allegiance to Lucifer that slick production and showy fretwork would only undermine. Their primitive woodshed recordings never sound like anything other than three blokes banging on cheap instruments, and that's exactly what I imagine unhinged devil freaks do.
For pure entertainment I point to the farcical posturing of the black metal prince of Copenhagen, Mercyful Fate; good clean fun, in the unholy scheme of things — I challenge you not to snicker the entire time. Every song is a precious ritual diablo, drawn as precisely as a pentagram, and the stratospheric castrato cackle is exactly as threatening as Skeletor. Plus they can boast the hands-down funniest album cover in the long tradition of ridiculous metal artwork: a horned skull half-submerged in a wall of flames, with outstretched hand pointing directly at YOU and the terrifying admonition, "Don't Break the Oath". I want to drive all night with my evil friends and be awesome.
Now let's switch sides and be the good guys! Just reverse your reversible cloak and join ranks with the Excalibur-wielding wizard heroes of this most mystical tale — presto, power metal! You've been rocked by the DragonForce song on Guitar Hero III so you know how friggin' sweet Gauntlet-based rock and slash can be. The elder lords of this dorkus magnus genre are Hamburg's non-non-non-heinous Helloween; mandatory listening if ever you calculated THAC0.
If you prefer piracy to sorcery: Alestorm.
The village-stomping doom metal of England's Witchfinder General is what Black Sabbath would sound like if I liked Black Sabbath. (The thing about Ozzy Osbourne, let's face it, is that he is and always has been a whiny git.) More accessible to those who fear immoderate shredding, Witchfinder blew away my expectations (abstruse druggy drivel) with tight, stripped bare songcraft and gleefully calamitous burn-a-wench-drink-a-beer attitude. Smell the bitch cooking as the prior looks on with cool approbation. Cheers as well to a goddamn brilliant band name.
Most of these groups inspire a mixture of amusement and awe, but when listening to Bathory I feel an urge to fall to my knees and proffer a goat. The fourth track on Under the Sign of the Black Mark made me scream aloud in distress at what I was hearing. I had to shut it off and put on Robert Johnson just to chill the fuck out. Jeez...I felt like a Baptist schoolmarm reacting to Blue Suede Shoes, This is the devil's music! It's hard to say exactly what horrible images are brought to mind, but I think that's part of Black Mark's potency: it's an abstraction of pure terror.
To Mega Therion conjures more tangible nightmares. The second album issued down from the nape of the alpine glacier where dwell in isolation Celtic Frost, inventing and discarding the sounds that later bands would take up and call black or death, is announced by the baleful sounding of the horns of Hannibal's decimated legion. The muscular thrash that ensues is at times accented by the ringing of iron on anvil — hammer falls no doubt shaping some fell implement — and the coldblooded song of revenant whores. Lead vocals are frequently punctuated by a Hetfieldian Ooh! Indeed, Celtic Frost has been referred to as Europe's Metallica both in terms of their orchestration and unparalleled influence.
Death metal is however an altogether American folly. The sound can be described as Slayer, only more so. Frankly I'm having a hard time getting into it, at least the early stuff. As gestated in Florida by Death and Frisco by Possessed on such albums as Scream Bloody Gore and Seven Churches, the squalling infancy of metal's most brutal branch presents a serious challenge to the listener: the monotonic delivery deadens what should be very colorful subject matter. The death growl and blast beats and other raw materials are there — leave it to the Swedes to figure out what to do with them (I'm eager to visit the more melodic Gothenburg metal). But I've peeked into the later work of Death, which transitions into the frightening prospect of technical death metal, and am happy to report that upon hitting maturity in the early nineties the American scene is a well articulated monster.
Further up the tree it gets pretty woolly. Hold on to your butts.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Whiskey and Cookies
Re: Communication Breakdown
Whilst wending a course over and through this Walpurgian wilderness, trying to make sense of the cacophony and put like with like, I have kept in mind a favorite passage from Chuck Klosterman's indispensable Fargo Rock City:
And then Chuck goes on to pontificate about the "shackled genius" of Eddie Van Halen for two pages and never really finishes his point. I happen to think that the acid/punk account adds up nicely. Heaviness is the very quick of doom metal, the parthenogenetic offspring of Sabbath. Contrast the buzzkilling lethality of black and death metal, enervated by the seed of hardcore (not heavycore) punk. It's stupidly obvious.
Whilst wending a course over and through this Walpurgian wilderness, trying to make sense of the cacophony and put like with like, I have kept in mind a favorite passage from Chuck Klosterman's indispensable Fargo Rock City:
But what makes metal "heavy"? Good question. It becomes a particularly difficult issue when you consider that rock fans see a huge difference between the word "heavy" and the word "hard." For example, Led Zeppelin was heavy. To this day, the song "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" is as heavy as weapons-grade plutonium. Black Sabbath was the heaviest of the heavy (although I always seem to remember them being heavier than they actually were; early Soundgarden records are actually heavier than Sab ever was). Meanwhile, a band like Metallica was hard (as they've matured, they've become less hard and more heavy). Skid Row and the early Crüe were pretty hard. Nirvana's first record on Sub Pop was heavy, but Nevermind was totally hard, which is undoubtedly why they ended up on MTV's Headbanger's Ball (that was the fateful episode where Kurt Cobain wore his dress, thereby providing the final death blow to the metal ideology).
Clearly, the "hard vs. heavy" argument is an abstract categorization. To some people it's stupidly obvious, and to other people it's just stupid. Here again, I think drugs are the best way to understand the difference. Bands who play "heavy" music are inevitably referred to as "stoner friendly." However, "hard" bands are not. Find some pot smokers and play Faster Pussycat for them — I assure you, they will freak out. It will literally hurt their brain. They'll start squinting (more so), and they'll hunch up their shoulders and cower and whine and kind of wave their hands at no one in particular. I nearly killed my aforementioned drug buddy by playing the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" when she was trapped in a coughing fit. Her recovery required a box of Nutter Butter cookies and almost four full hours of Frampton Comes Alive.
Sociologist and Teenage Wasteland author Donna Gaines described the teen metal audience as a suburban, white, alcoholic subculture, and she's completely correct. The only drugs that go with "hard" metal are bottles of booze (and cocaine, if you can afford it, which you probably can't if you spend all your time listening to Who Made Who). Conversely, "heavy" metal meshes perfectly with marijuana, especially if you're alone and prone to staring at things (such as Christmas lights, the Discovery Channel, or pornography).
It's tempting to suggest that "heavy" metal came from acid rock (like Iron Butterfly), while "hard" metal came from groups who took their influences from punk (that would explain Guns N' Roses). This seems like a logical connection, but it rarely adds up. A better point of schism is side one of the first Van Halen album ...
And then Chuck goes on to pontificate about the "shackled genius" of Eddie Van Halen for two pages and never really finishes his point. I happen to think that the acid/punk account adds up nicely. Heaviness is the very quick of doom metal, the parthenogenetic offspring of Sabbath. Contrast the buzzkilling lethality of black and death metal, enervated by the seed of hardcore (not heavycore) punk. It's stupidly obvious.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Kill City Nights
My faith in radio was renewed last week when, whilst driving down a road that used to be the edge of town back when the town had edges and flipping stations between classic hard rock and classic album rock, I heard Alice Cooper's I'm Eighteen for the first time. Not since high school have I discovered a new favorite song via Marconi; I had forgotten such things were possible. As to how this essential track managed to evade me until now, well, these things happen. I admit to neglecting Alice Cooper, having only a peripheral awareness that Wayne and Garth were not worthy. Now I know why the Aurorans fell to their knees.
...
Most people probably think of Metropolis and Gotham City as alternate New York Cities: the Big Apple by day/night or, as their respective creators have put it, Manhattan above/below 14th Street. Well that's horseshit. A proper understanding of Americana places Metropolis nearer to the capital, somewhere on the Chesapeake Bay, while Gotham City adorns the rust belt between Chicago and Detroit. Frank Miller's Sin City belongs someplace out West.
Each of these serves its purpose in our national mythology, but I think there is room and need for another. A less conspicuous figure of the gothic Midwest as crossroads of labor and freight, situated upon the leviathan Mississippi and circumscribed by the brooding menace of the prairie. A watering hole for cowboys, truckers and sailors where the grain elevators stand sentinel and no one much looks at your face. At all times can be heard the rumble of a railyard. You can get there by heading west out of Indianapolis on I-74; else just follow the Lincoln Highway to the roller dam where the Rock River slips it to the Miss. Let's take our cue from Iggy, baby, and call it Kill City.
Heard in the roadhouses and subterranean downtown dives is the sound of rock and roll engine brakes and crane wreckage. A touch of the blues has wormed its way upriver. From out of every culvert echoes someone's last ruddy spittle and song. Have a listen: I call this sampler Kill City Nights.
[All songs made available for illicit download here — Get 'em while they're hott.]
1. What You Need — The Hookers
2. Gimme Danger — The Stooges
3. I'm Eighteen — Alice Cooper
4. Get It On — Turbonegro
5. Slicker Drips — The White Stripes
6. I Want You Right Now — MC5
7. Swing Low — The Gossip
8. Dear Hearts — Murder City Devils
9. Black Diamond — The Replacements
10. So Alone — Johnny Thunders
11. Kill City — Iggy Pop & James Williamson
12. Night Theme — Iggy Pop & James Williamson
13. Forming — Germs
14. Not Anymore — Dead Boys
15. Wall of a Song — The Whore Moans
16. T.V. Eye — The Stooges
17. Hospital — The Modern Lovers
18. So Cold — Rocket from the Tombs
19. Murder City Nights — Radio Birdman
20. Are You Ready (For Some Darkness) — Turbonegro
21. Broken Glass (live) — Murder City Devils
...
Most people probably think of Metropolis and Gotham City as alternate New York Cities: the Big Apple by day/night or, as their respective creators have put it, Manhattan above/below 14th Street. Well that's horseshit. A proper understanding of Americana places Metropolis nearer to the capital, somewhere on the Chesapeake Bay, while Gotham City adorns the rust belt between Chicago and Detroit. Frank Miller's Sin City belongs someplace out West.
Each of these serves its purpose in our national mythology, but I think there is room and need for another. A less conspicuous figure of the gothic Midwest as crossroads of labor and freight, situated upon the leviathan Mississippi and circumscribed by the brooding menace of the prairie. A watering hole for cowboys, truckers and sailors where the grain elevators stand sentinel and no one much looks at your face. At all times can be heard the rumble of a railyard. You can get there by heading west out of Indianapolis on I-74; else just follow the Lincoln Highway to the roller dam where the Rock River slips it to the Miss. Let's take our cue from Iggy, baby, and call it Kill City.
Heard in the roadhouses and subterranean downtown dives is the sound of rock and roll engine brakes and crane wreckage. A touch of the blues has wormed its way upriver. From out of every culvert echoes someone's last ruddy spittle and song. Have a listen: I call this sampler Kill City Nights.
[All songs made available for illicit download here — Get 'em while they're hott.]
1. What You Need — The Hookers
2. Gimme Danger — The Stooges
3. I'm Eighteen — Alice Cooper
4. Get It On — Turbonegro
5. Slicker Drips — The White Stripes
6. I Want You Right Now — MC5
7. Swing Low — The Gossip
8. Dear Hearts — Murder City Devils
9. Black Diamond — The Replacements
10. So Alone — Johnny Thunders
11. Kill City — Iggy Pop & James Williamson
12. Night Theme — Iggy Pop & James Williamson
13. Forming — Germs
14. Not Anymore — Dead Boys
15. Wall of a Song — The Whore Moans
16. T.V. Eye — The Stooges
17. Hospital — The Modern Lovers
18. So Cold — Rocket from the Tombs
19. Murder City Nights — Radio Birdman
20. Are You Ready (For Some Darkness) — Turbonegro
21. Broken Glass (live) — Murder City Devils
And I like it, love it, like it, love it
Monday, September 7, 2009
Flammen & Citronen
Gangland Chicago transplanted to occupied Copenhagen, 1944: That's right, we're in thriller heaven. We've got what appears to be the entire Danish resistance (all twelve of them) operating under supposed orders from British Intelligence to assassinate key Danish collaborators and Nazi officials, all of whom claim to be double agents when least convenient for our faltering would-be assassins. Matters slightly complicated by the fact that the Brits do not recognize the existence of a "German resistance". Need I mention the inscrutable femme fatale? Trenchcoats and Thompson guns shepherd black market munitions through daylight street bombings and running board getaways; substitute bootleg and the corner pub haunts and country safehouses of drizzly Zealand make kissing cousins to Capone's drizzly Chicagoland.
Make a point to see this.
Make a point to see this.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Taking Woodstock
If Ang Lee wants to make a doe-eyed tribute to the transformative power of good vibrations, I guess he has the right. But me, I need to watch Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas right away, to get out the patchouli stink.
We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled that 60s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him seriously — all those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy peace and understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole lifestyle that he helped create; a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the acid culture: the desperate assumption that somebody, or at least some force, is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
— Raoul Duke
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
