The Southern Gothic.

I met a troll today along the riverbank
Minding his business, for the most part,
Stringing some barbed wire on the lip of a riverbank.
His name was...well..maybe thats not important
I'm sure he wouldn't care too much.
He was working on building a bridge for the next two years
That made too much sense.

I found myself terrified of his hands
And where they had been.
They slapped and pawed at whatever they met
Like two steel jaws who had been at work
all their stale lives.
I could imagine them closing over me and I shuddered.
He didn't notice. Of course he didn't notice.
He wasn't a troll of small and meager emotions.
An inbred packhorse, more like it. A walking golem,
his backbone transformed to seedy granite.
His adam's apple bobbled like a stone,
chortling beneath his cracked skin.

His eyes never really seemed to focus on anything.
For too long, they had stared at the same tasks
Over and over again.
The mind starts to wander, perhaps,
Until it wanders too far.
And the eyes leave soon after.
I could hear him talking, but the orbs never really met.
They were just there, windows to an abyss.


He had plenty of stories though, great ones at that.
He has a girlfriend, and I find that too ridiculous to even deny.
Scratching the hair on his reptilian nape,
He told me stories of times long ago.
Times when he held 6 men at gunpoint,
Times when he spent months in jail,
Times when he worked on this road and that bridge,
Times when a man created his own grotesque code of chivalry,
Times when a man could become a monster
And the whole world never took time to notice.

I can sense him now, lurking in the night,
not in a dangerous way, but lurking nonetheless.
For how could something like that ever exist with peace?
What hideous mistake did someone make to allow that man
to come to this fate? What tragedy must have befallen?
Sometimes I shudder to think that at night, he
drops to the ground and sniffs the moist earth for
Stories from his fantastic ancestors,
His fellow Gothic monstrostities.

And yet,
I wonder where he trods off at times to sleep,
like a bear or a mammoth to hibernate.
I wonder what haunts his dreams, or what
plagues his past. I wonder why he prounounces iron as "Eye Run" and
where the Gap exists that he says he grew up within.
I want to follow him deep into the darkest hollows and
spy out his wretched lair.
I want to wrap my arm around him and laugh at the same time I shudder.

He's Bigfoot. He's Beorn. He's Grendel.

I met a troll walking along the riverbank.
And I wonder what he's thinking.

Autotune

The great thing about pop music is that it reserves itself in your memory as a distinct representative of a time in your life. Every once in awhile, the song goes beyond this idea and becomes a cultural icon, something to define a generation, at least in a canonical sense. Think MMMbop. But when that happens, the song really only puts things in an historical perspective. When I hear MMMbop, I don't dance, because I may or may not be having a history lesson from 1997. Thus, I must cling to the pop songs that succeed in attracting only MY eye, and not the general population. And, you know, it's amazing how fast a pop song can become absolutely miserable to endure. Bleeding Love may go down as the best song of 2008, but after 8 months of that song, it's like pulling teeth. So fuck that song. What we (or less pretentiously, I) must do is record the three pop songs from 2008 that will hopefully be retrofied by college students in 20 years. That thought comforts me.

3. Leaving by Jesse McCartney- Forget the lyrics or message; the initial happiness created from the opening computer twerks of this song never lets up.

2. Can't Believe It (Remix) by T-Pain and Justin Timberlake- Fuck you Lil Wayne. This version never lets go with its catchiness. Try not humming it. Try it. Also, the argument over Autotune has to stop. Who cares? Whether or not it adds to the song, it's part of it. No one wants to hear this song live anyways. It's best to listen to in the car or with all your white friends.

1.Forever by Chris Brown- Impossible not to smile when this song comes on. If anyone can step up to the ranks of Michael Jackson, look for Chris Brown and perhaps Timberlake. A Herculean task, yes, but have you listened to these songs? Forever undeniably challenges the rift between art and kitsch. Whereas film has established a post-apocalyptic trend, Chris Brown just wants to dance.


Fuego.

WWMD?

I can, I will, I MUST name the first animal I own Martin Riggs.

Sad

It's very foggy outside and I found a dog wandering around, unsure of exactly what it was trying to do. It kept sniffing and running and trying to figure out where it was going. I have no clue. I hate it that some most likely cunt of a girl decided to buy that dog and, obviously, not knowing how to handle a dog, here I find myself trying to figure out what to do with the dog. It's really sad; I may want a dog, but I hope I don't decide to do it just because I'm bored and I have no fucking life. It's hard to describe what's it is like to see a dog scared out of its mind running around in the fog, trying to find a home. It's hard to watch. I have to say, at this point, I am not proud.

The greatest film performace of all time.

And seconds later....






No joke. This ending was absolutely apocalyptic when I was little. I dare anyone to say "Let this be our final battle" to me and not expect to fucking die. Thank you, Frank Langella.

A Dream

Someone grabbed my hand and led me to the window. There were children around me laughing. They opened the window and threw me out. We were flying over a beach at night. The moon was brilliant and we were flying and the children were laughing and somehow I knew I was going to fall. The mansion on the cliff that I flew from was farther and farther away. I knew I was going to fall. I closed my eyes and I could almost feel the moonlight reflecting off me, through me, in me, and I knew I was going to fall. So I closed my eyes.

I waited for the water to touch my feet. I knew it would be cool against my moonlit skin, but not too cold. The water here was pleasant, possibly from the moonlight, from its radiance I think. The children were laughing. I squeezed their hands in the night sky.

I waited for the water to touch my feet. Pushing me to bed now, with a smile on her face.

Click

Things are starting to unfold around me.
Things are starting to make sense.
Like she said, you're at the top of your game.
Things are operating on another level.
That level you've been wondering if you'd ever see.
That level that hopefully leads to more levels.
Things are happening.
Things are happening now.
I think I'll play some videogames.

Lost In Translation

I saw Lost in Translation for the first time in tenth grade. It's weird how I forgot a lot about the movies that I enjoyed so much just a few years ago. I wonder if it's because a lot has happened in the last four years; seeing these movies again has led me to different conclusions, different musings, but altogether connected to that same emotional riff from the original viewing. I think it's because my emotions in highschool were so raw and inarticulate. I was just learning how to cultivate my emotions into expression. My emotional response, too, was often very extreme and demanding (Million Dollar Baby). In watching Lost in Translation again, I found myself digging deeper, noticing new things, full bloom. The ending wrecks me, still. Like ebert said, we don't deserve to know what Bob says to Charlotte; that's their story. His smile when he walks away says more than any word, any bold statement. I can't remember who said that the song at the end was the most effective conclusion to a movie of all time, but god damnit it works. All of this is an attempt to get some words down before I start the paper on previously said film; I've had about 48 hours now to chew on it, and I'm more and more looking forward to writing it. Trouble in Paradise is good, but I appreciate how the silences say more than the dialogue in Lost in Translation.


Also, just got done watching Intolerable Cruelty, which was a really big surprise. Slowly notching off the Coen filmography. Miller's Crossing was a bore.



More words need to be devoted to the movie-endings. Sometimes I can feel my heart reach out.

Wild Strawberries

Just wanted to get this thought down before it dissipates: I think the ending of Wild Strawberries is one of the best conclusions to any movie that I have ever seen. It is the only movie thus far in my 381 class that has brought me to the verge of tears. The harp-melody that plays during his memory, the quiet hush of breath and the creaking of the bed are beautiful notes to end on. I think he was a romantic at heart. The memory of the woods with Sara is almost maternal; the strawberry fields may be gone, but he surrounds himself with the womb of the forest. The image of the two fishermen waving to him, whether they are his parents are not, is sublime. It is absolutely stunning.


Note: Mill on the Floss, Brothers Karamazov, and now this seem to call back at the very end, moments of childhood. Why do we insist on returning to the moments of our youth?

So after being engaged by Hayao Miyazaki's beautiful images in "Howl's Moving Castle" but being let down by the actual story, I moved on to another Christian Bale outing, this one much better. Rescue Dawn really impressed me as a movie, sounding off typical notes at the beginning but moving into something much more than a Vietnam movie. Werner Herzog's best films seem to take place in the jungle, and this is no exception. Christian Bale is incredible as the extremely likeable Dieter Dengler, but the real star of the movie is the jungle. I would think that if the movie took place in a typical prison, a la Shawshank, it would lack the awe and timbre of the jungle that really drive the movie. My favorite moment involved Dieter and Duane on the river, with Dieter pushing the childlike Duane on the raft. After their near miss with the waterfall, they sit together and help pick enormous REAL leeches off each other. This part not only captured the loving bond between the two, but also showed the exotic dangers and quirks of the jungle. Herzog seems to have a love and deep fascination for wildlife; when Gene says there are snakes and tigers out there, Herzog wants to back what he says. Herzog's camera seems just as interested in the flora and fauna as it is on the characters. This shot, especially, deserves some attention. Dieter and Duane meet up with Gene and Proset, two of the other escapees. Both get in an argument and split paths, and the camera watches Gene a bit as he walks away, and then looks up to show the top of the embankment that they were hiding under. Why does he do this? Is he showing that someone could have been up there watching? Should they have headed up there to see which way to go? Is Herzog suggesting to look to the skies for rescue? Does he just think that the rocky undergrowth of the surface looks beautiful and therefore deserves to be filmed? I don't know, but I was attracted to his need to let the camera notice certain things that most cameras do not. The caterpillar crawling on the leaf, the snake sliding into the water (which, to my knowledge, Bale really is struggling not to get bit by when he holds it up in the air), Herzog has an attention to the animals that reminds me of Terrence Malick's "Thin Red Line".

Oh, and, by the way, the performances are just wonderful. Bale in particular, but I didn't notice any weak links. To see Dieter smile at the end as he's being rescued not once, but twice, emotionally jolted me. The smile looked too big on his sunken face.

Dreams and Ideas

I keep saying in my head that I want to do this, so here's a crude write-down of things that have surfaced somwhere in my head, somewhat sub-consciously

First of all, a few dreams. I need to get better at remembering them so that I can do neat little things like this. Perhaps the motivation comes from Robert Altman's inspiration to make films from his dreams.

I had a dream a long time ago, the exact time I am not sure of, but very recently the dream popped back into my head somehow. I am thankful for this because the images from the dream have brought me great pleasure somehow. I sat in bed one night and thought about how this could make a very interesting movie. The dream involves the field behind my house, and a broomstick. That's it. I walked out side one day (I remember it was overcast, my favorite weather). Outside, quite simply, was a broomstick hovering in the air. I did not say this was an original dream; rather, a simple one. I walked over to the floating broom, and, naturally, climbed up on it. And soon, I was figuring out the kinks of flying. I remember first thinking this was way too easy to fall off and kill myself, and that that would be a terrible thing to happen because then I wouldn't get a chance to explain to the world about the wonders of flying, nor would I get to fully experience the pleasure of flying. Then I remember in the dream the incredible sensation of flying. I can't describe visually, but I can tell you (myself) that when I woke up from the dream I felt like was high. I was so elated in my own subconscious that it carried over into reality. I like to think that in my sleep I had a big smile on my face. Wouldn't the idea of this dream make an enchanting movie? Everyone has the notion of flying; Brewster McCloud only helped justify this statement. There is also a sadness to it, however, when I think about it. It's the same sadness I get when I finish watching Peter Pan. There is something so immature, so childishly beautiful about flying. Waking up from my dream was realizing that reality and gravity keep you on the ground. Dreams themselves are like flying, brief fluttering moments of escape. Wendy only goes to Neverland because, in the next day, she will leave the nursery and begin "growing up". The reason this causes me so much sadness is because when I watched the movie as a little kid, I thought nothing more of that. The movie ended with Wendy back at home, and I moved on to the next movie for me because there was no more story to be told. But now, as I watch it, I feel the pain that Wendy doesn't yet have, but will soon understand. Growing up continues to haunt me, and it seems to be one of the most painful things to deal with as I get older. Needless to say, my dream I think could be made into a beautiful movie. A broomstick and a field. The possibilities of that are amazing.

In two other dreams, or should I say nightmares, I woke up unable to move. The first one is vague, but I recall the image of a butterfly, or at least, a flying insect covered in some kind of mucous. Mucous like the moray eel has on it. Not too big of an insect, but big enough to where I get the point. I was in an abandoned building, similar to Southview, with other people, but I can't remember who they were. Anyways, upon killing the bug, something happened that made the entire dream a lot worse. I can't remember exactly what it was. I think the mucous was some kind of acid that exploded all over the place. All I remember was there was a lot of them, and that was enough to make me scared.
The other dream involved a parking lot, very similar to the rant with poetic undertones that I posted earlier. It was nighttime, and I was walking back to my van. The lot was completely empty, and the streetlights above me were what kept me calm in the dream. As I got to my van, with keys in hand, a light flickered across the parking lot, temporarily blinding me. I looked over, and there was a man getting off a motorcycle. He was responsible for the light, and he was walking towards me, not saying a word. It was something very similar to the images and sounds of No Country For Old Men; darkness, an uncomforting silence, and a Man incapable of stopping. I remember the feeling of "there's no one around, he has to be coming for me, this is gonna get bad really fast". I tried talking to him to calm my nerves and make sense of what was going on, but the only thing that soon made sense was his hand going inside his trenchcoat and the gun he pulled out afterwards. I dove behind the car, and heard the explosion of glass above my head. I remember the feeling of cool glass shower down my head. I think I got on a motorcycle after that, and I guess that is the Deus Ex Machina of the dream, beacuse I don't remember getting in the van. Needless to say, I woke up and couldn't move. All I could do was catch my breath a minute, lean down, grab the remote, and restart 50 first Dates haha.

Also, SIDENOTE, funny image for a movie that will never get made.
The main character sits in his car at a stoplight for no reason. He's pissed and tired and it's HOT outside. He looks over on the small road he's on and sees a dead animal that is quite stinky due to the raging sun. He looks at it for awhile and is clearly grossed out and compelled to its pathetic stature at the same time. Eventually, he looks back up at the light which still remains red. Then, out of nowhere, the light turns green, and he looks back over at the road kill again, and a car speeds by beside him and runs over the animal. A goop of blood splatters the side of his car and the side of his face. He doesn't move, looking straight ahead, absolutely disgusted but tooo shocked and pissed to do anything except let the guts drip off his cheek. Behind him, a car honks its horn to tell him to go. ALSO, pending, a cut to show who was driving the car that hit him. A) it's three teennage boys/rednecks who are aiming for roadkill and keeping score. B) an old man with a trucker hat and thick glasses, listening to K92ish Nelly Furtado Jordin Sparks...and all he says is.....EHHHH!

Dreams and Ideas.

Pre Dark Knight Update

As the month of June closes out, I am very pleased with the summer season thus far. I'm writing right now in an attempt to continue my written recollections of movies that I watch too much of.

Ty Burr of the Boston Globe said that WALL E is not only the best movie of the summer slate, but the best American film to so far in 2008. A day after seeing it, I find myself agreeing. I was disappointed last summer with Ratatouille, a movie that I went into very excited to see. I don't know what it was that detracted me from the movie; I like to think that it was the simple concept that food is a romantic thing to make a movie about, which I just cannot agree with. I was even more shocked to then read about how everyone thought Ratatouille was one of the best films of the year, and how some critics thought it deserved to be on the Best Picture category rather than the Best Animated Feature. I thought it was well made, with some of the msot beautiful imagery that Pixar has created, but I struggled to identify with its characters and their interests.

That being said, WALL E is perhaps my favorite Pixar film yet. It has the sophistication of Ratatouille's imagery and characters, yet it holds as much charm as Finding Nemo and Toy Story combined. It's main character, I think, will become an iconic figure in the Disney canon, which is quite extraordinary considering it can't even talk! How Pixar created a romantic comedy out of two robots calls attention to a creativity and attention to detail that astounds me. I watched the entire movie in a state of dumbfoundedness, a 20 year old who felt mixed emotions of love and childhood blurred together. The "Define Dancing" part of the film might be a scene that is remembered forever, if not in film class, then at least in my heart. I cared for this little robot so much; the end of the film reminded me of this fact.

Also, just a little note, as I was watching it, I remember thinking of the headline, "Pixar gets political?" Post-apocalypse, Fat-America, these things made this G rated comedy have a little bite to it.

AND, I appreciate the film's recognition of earlier cinema. I still feel I am lacking in film history/appreciation, but I understand the winks to Charlie Chaplin, Hal 9000, and, in another wonderful Pixar short, Yensid from Fantasia.

The ants have ceased.
I'm so thankful they've stopped crawling over my ankles.
For now.
That only mean's the night is coming.
I can hear it.
My veins hear it.
Synesthesia.
The oncoming darkness will do that to you.
Rather, the inhabitants of said oncoming darkness will do that to you.
The ants know it.
They've known it.
True children of the earth.
What a farce.
I can't help but think it sometimes.
What else is there to do but think?
There's nothing out here in this paved desert.
This cracked, bleached, scarred, whored, motherfucked desert.
I want to bash my face in it.
I want to smash my teeth against it.
Let the blood flow over its cracked face.
I want it to know that I'm fundamentally intrinsically inherently different than it.
I won't say I am better than it because I'm not.
Otherwise it wouldn't surround me.
Otherwise I wouldn't worry about the oncoming night.
The tygers will be here soon.
I see their eyes glitter from the reflections of the dust.
I hear their shrieks slitting the horizon.
The banshees crawling against the earth.
Click Click Click goes their nails against the earth.
I know I'm not better.
I look around and see the scrapes of fingernails against the ground.
The very thought of it makes me want to vomit.
The sun is a sphere of blood.
An eye into hell.
Maybe I will vomit.
It's a defense mechanism for some animals.
Puts their scent into the air.
Marks their territory.
Piss and shit and vomit.
Perhaps I;ll drown myself in it.
All of it will dry against the sun and the bleached skin of this godforsaken land.
They are coming.
No use in denying that simple, undeniable fact.
They are coming.
The sun is hidden behind the lampposts now.
I wish they would turn on.
But they haven't turn on in millenia.
Or was it minutes?
Where am I?
Where the fuck am I?
In the Valley of the Vampires and Lepers.
In the Valley of the traffic lights and construction cones and speed limits.
In the Valley of infinite parking lots, where lost children wander forwards and backwards, ripping and clawing their eyes out, reciting the rituals of the fast food pagans, howling like rabid wolves further and further into the blazen threshold.

Childless earth.
Protect me from the night.


For here there be tygers.

A little over a month into the summer 08 season, I've been quite pleased with what I've seen so far. Last May, the season started off so disappointing with Spider-Man 3 and Pirates 3. Both of those movies seem to throw as much as they can on the movie screen at once, surrendering narrative suspense for mindless imagery. That can still work, but the images have to really wow me, which they didn't.


But this summer really started off on a high note, that note being Iron Man. It's been everything and more as a movie: It certainly pleased the Marvel maniacs who lined up on opening day, but it also really seemed to please the rest of movie crowd. Compared to Spider-Man 3, it was fresh, funny, not emo, and it didn't have Venom showing up for about 8 minutes only to get defeated by pipes. Don't bring an infamous character into a movie if you don't know what to do with him.

What the movies have done so far this summer is not only entertain me, but also inspire me to bring back the blog; you know, the blog where I struggle to put down original thoughts that I hope don't come across as indulgent and embarassing. To stray away from that, I want to try and put down words about the things that I love, that being the movies that I continue to waste my money on every week.

So, move all the way down to the weekend of June 13th. To begin with the retelling of Marvel's Frankenstein, there was the Incredible Hulk. To start off, I'd like to say that I actually enjoyed Ang Lee's 2003 take, un-incredibly titled, HULK. His version seemed to focus on things not yet touched in the comic book adaptation yet; rather than rely completely on action, Lee seemed to consider bringing the style of comic books to the big-screen. Shots were composed like they were in a comic book, and I thought it was pretty neat to see on the screen. Sometimes, it definitely was a distraction from the narrative, but it was creative and original. Also, I thought the music of the first film was excellent. I believe it was Danny Elfman, but I'm not for sure on that. I remember it was very different from what I expected; quiet, anxious, and haunting. Not what you'd expect for a not so jolly green giant. The music really added to the pathos that I believe Lee wanted to bring to the character, a being who Roger Ebert pointed out, is a superhero who sees his powers not as a gift, but as a curse.


Sadly, many people hated, hated, hated this moody, wimpy Hulk. I understand that. I too have my gripes. For one thing, the conclusion of the first movie tries to combine art and action. We see Hulk fighting off his father, who has transmutated his DNA as well to blend in with the elements of the earth. The fight that we watched on screen seems to be happening more on a molecular level; the images are interesting, but ultimately not justified to carry the conclusion for a summer would-be blockbuster. So what happens? 5 years later, we get a new, and improved MMA Hulk.
And this time he's labelled Incredible.

The good thing is that the rehash is a good movie. But it's not Incredible. There were times throughout that I could sense a whiff of formula, of studio control stepping in to make sure that the Hulk everyone wanted five years ago is here. Trust me, he is, but that seems to be all there is. The rest of the characters in the movie seem to exist simply so that Bruce Banner can have reasons to let his emotions go and Hulk out and punch things really hard. Liv Tyler's Betty Ross does nothing more than coo over her long-lost fugitive boyfriend. Her character is about as flat as they come. ALso, William Hurt's General Ross has nothing to brag about either. He growls a lot to get the Hulk, and that's about it. The only character despite Banner/Green Guy that I liked was Samuel Sterns, played by Tim Blake Nelson. He seems to have mixed intentions, which is more than I can say for everyone else. But then again, that's probably because of what he becomes in later Hulk stories, which is played out in a really cool way in this movie.

What this movie really is, then, is a showcase for its hero. Edward Norton is ideal for Bruce Banner; he's a little guy with a brooding tension around him. We believe him when he's on the run, that he is terrified of what's inside him. The opening shots in Brazil are outstanding as we see him training his breathing to suppress his anger. He's very believable as a scientist and a renegade. But it's his alter ego everyone wants to see. And what can be said? The special effects are fine. I thought that both visualizations of the Hulk were great; this one has a darker skin, and doesnt hop like the other one did.

The best part about this movie is, unsurprisingly, the action, This Hulk knows how to smash and punch. Each action scene pits Hulk against Blonsky; it's interesting to follow how Blonsky graduallyu progresses against the Hulk throughout. I was really happy with the fight on the college grounds. It showed Hulk out in daylight, and the effects held up really well. The final fight was a bit of a letdown, in that they didn't fight as much as I wanted them to. ALso, I really did not like Hulk and Blonsky's Abomination being able to talk. It may be necessary for the Avengers movie, but hearing Hulk say HULK...SMASH!!! was geeky. I didn't like it. What I DID like was what Hulk does with a police car. The previews tease you with it, but its delievery on the big screen brought a gasp.

Louis Leterrier has successfully made a Hulk movie. That takes away nothing from Ang Lee's conception; I liked both. Leterrier had some great scenes; I was very appreciative of his parallels with Frankenstein, King Kong, and Cloverfield. The action was top-notch, with some of the best choreographed fights of this year. The sound, especially Hulk's yell, is better than the first film's, but the music lacks the pathos that Elfman's brought to the character.

By the way, I really hope Tony Stark can and does assemble his team.