Review :: George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead

Imagine that you are watching George A. Romero' seminal horror flick Dawn of the Dead. Now imagine that after all the delightful mall carnage and beautifully crafted social satire, an utterly redundant narrator comes on and says, "In case you missed it, the film's about consumerism. It's a metaphor. Get it?" Well, that is unfortunately what it's like to watch Romero's latest zombie foray, the miserable Diary of the Dead, a movie so obnoxiously mediocre and insipidly derivative it makes efforts like Cloverfield seem downright brilliant.

There isn't really much of a plot to summarize. Instead of continuing the established universe that every other Dead movie has built upon and expanded, Diary, in a poorly conceived (and an even more poorly executed) act of "revisionism," decides to go back to the beginning. The twist? Diary of the Dead follows a group of student filmmakers who were filming their own cheesy horror movie when the outbreak began and who, armed with the cameras and more "the people need to know" and blogs will save the day sentiment than is easily stomached, decide that they should document the deterioration of civilization. And that's the movie. Every single predictable zombie flick convention is present and accounted for, from the tense interpersonal relationships, to the inevitable and by now entirely procedural killing off of characters, and to the morally suspect militia and/or military groups, everything that you've come to expect is here. And it's just tedious.

It's hard not to think that Romero hasn't pulled a Lucas on us and simply revealed himself to be a bad filmmaker. The original trilogy of Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, and Day of the Dead are three of the most revered horror movies of all time, and rightly so. They were a nearly perfect combination of shock and gore horror, social satire and artistic vision. Land of the Dead, which I still enjoyed, was a disappointing misstep but still managed to carry the torch. But here... it's like Romero simply has no idea what he's doing. From the ghastly narration, which more often than not just makes horribly explicit whatever ghosts of subtext may have awkwardly floated into the previous scenes, to the third-rate special effects and gore sequences that simply look like made-for-cable sloppy seconds, Romero seems incapable of making the right decision on this film.

But the film's biggest problem is that it fails to execute its central conceit, that this is amateur footage shot by film students. The Blair Witch Project may have been more annoying than scary and Cloverfield may have been more hype than substance but at least both of those films obeyed their own rules and gave us films that stayed within the expected parameters. Romero, on the other hand, seems to think that splicing together several different feeds of video, using some awkward and non-traditional camera angles, and having whole lot of people tell the camera man he's insane for filming during a time like this translates as "amateur video." But instead of feeling like something you could stumble across on youtube, Diary not only still feels like an actually shot and edited film, it feels like a badly shot and edited film. Sure, there's a thin pretext for the film's "polish:" one of the students, for some reason, somehow completed, edited, scored and narrated their little apocalyptic documentary during the crisis because, apparently, uploading the movie and "letting the people know" is more important than survival, as if blogging or some tightly grasped notion of journalistic integrity would suddenly de-animate the dead and save the day.



I'm tempted to think that Romero has just run out of steam and is at this time running on name recognition only. Like Lucas, Coppola and Spielberg, perhaps he should just retire and leave the film business to a younger generation. Films like this tempt me to think that older directors should just stop before they make themselves look ridiculous. But last year William Friedkin released Bug, one of the most psychologically taught and ferocious horror thrillers I've ever seen. It was remarkable not only for it's audacity but also because it felt like the creation of an exciting up-and-comer, someone bristling with new ideas and concepts, someone like a smarter (much smarter) Eli Roth. There are plenty of matured filmmakers that still produce amazing works of art: Cronenberg, Herzog, and Scorsese, just to name a few. Romero, sadly, isn't one of them... and Diary of the Dead is the sad proof of that.

experto crede: unless you are a cinematic masochist, or someone who wants to see the mighty fall, avoid Diary of the Dead. It will only ruin your picture of Romero.

Sex and Video Games

Here's an interesting follow-up to my Grand Theft Auto IV article. In the last little while, several video game critics have begun to pop up, critics like the scabrous though quite amusing Yahtzee over at Zero Punctuation. Perhaps the appearance of critics indicates that at least somewhere someone thinks the medium as a whole has, or may one day have, artistic value. While I myself play video games, I'm very wary about the idea that games can be called Art (note the capital) or even artistic.

In my GTA article, I suggested that games could not be called art because they lack irony. In order to make my point, I may have exaggerated a little, however. I don't think that all art must be ironic; I do think that video games, whose fundamental gameplay elements are often based on violence (see, oh I don't know... nearly every RPG or FPS ever made), need a healthy dose of irony before they can legitimately be artistic.

Anyway, today I ran across a video that is actually quite interesting. I disagree, and rather strongly, on some of the things that Mr Daniel Floyd says in it but find that he does have some good points. Despite what he says, think there is a lot more holding back video game from the artistic threshold than only a prurient and juvenile fixation on hyper-sexuality, and so his seeming acceptance of games as an art form bothers me. But if nothing else, however, his video suggests that there exists within academia a growing critical awareness of gaming, which is no doubt healthy.

"Gold and Silver" by Stavesacre

Sometimes life seems to conspire against you. Sometimes things just seem overwhelming. Sometimes you need to retreat and regroup. Other times you need to pray that much harder. At times like these, almost invariably, I end up listening to this song by Stavesacre. They may not be the most well-known group... they might not be the best band ever... but they have always been my band. Their music has carried me through a lot. Sometimes, a song can say it all.

You slipped from my arms
I knew you had to go
Such a heavy heart
Who could hope to hold
And I know where you're going
And that's the hardest part
No matter where tonight ends
You won't escape you're broken heart

Stay a while

Helpless for the words
And it tightens up the air
It's not what you deserve
It's not for lack of care
Inside of me is screaming out
I'm praying for my prayers
Distracting and unworthy
Of each and every burning tear

Seems insincere

Do I see God in all of this?
Maybe all along?
It's just that we're so small
And simply not as strong
Strong like wings of silver
And feathers made of gold
To carry heavy hearts
To cover all our helpless souls

To cover all of us

Under wings of gold and silver sometimes we have to hide
For shelter from this bitter winter... at least tonight

If it were mine to give
I'd give you your own time
Turn it back or forward
Whatever you decide

Stay a while

I wish I could post an mp3 of the song. I won't. But I can point you to Stavesacre's MySpace page, on which you can listen to to the song. I would recommend that everyone listen to it. It certainly calms my soul. It's David to my Saul.

The Slip

If I were to be honest (and I frequently am), I'd say, without much reservation, that Nine Inch Nails is one of my favourites bands. I've always found Trent Reznor's combinations of moral outrage, schizophrenic self-resentment, and borderline apathy compelling, provocative and more than a little identifiable. But lyrics and poetry aside, on a purely musical level Reznor has always been on the bleeding edge of musical technology while still managing to avoid digital excess. Using samples and everything from the sharpest and most memorable hooks to the faintest and still entirely resonant aural echoes, he has been able to dredge sounds out of his soul that are alarming, other-worldly, and yet entirely human. Lately, Trent Reznor has been giving fans quite a lot to be excited about. Year Zero reaffirmed Reznor's artistic integrity after the slight misstep that was With Teeth; the follow-up Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D gave us exactly the kind of delirious self-revision that NIN has become famous for; and Ghosts I-IV, Reznor's first release after his much-publicized break with Universal Music Group (the parent company of Interscope Records), was a haunting, beautifully crafted ambient instrumental album that came out of no where and demanded instant attention. Now, Reznor gives us The Slip, a new full-length album available as a free download at nin.com. I just downloaded it and am listening to it for the first time as I write this. It's 100% Reznor: it's the full on noise-rock Reznor of Pretty Hate Machine and it's the ambient/instrumental Reznor of Ghosts I-IV. While on a first listen I'm not quite sure whether or not it ranks among his most important works, such as The Downward Spiral or The Fragile, I am sure that I love it and that it's worth a listen, especially if you have any interest in Nine Inch Nails. Hey, it's free; it's licensed under Creative Commons; if nothing else, it represents a new, more creatively free way of releasing an album and that in itself is pretty exciting. On the nin.com homepage, Reznor writes, "thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one's on me." Thank you, Trent. It's much appreciated.

Download The Slip for free at http://theslip.nin.com/

The Fall of the House of Usher (excerpt)

Okay, enough ranting. Not only have I been taking flak for Grand Theft Auto, but my beloved digital home away from home, Talking About Games, is experiencing a minor crisis and the emotions are running hot. I need to clear my head and Edgar Allan Poe is one of the best ways to do that. Enjoy.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me - upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees - with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium - the bitter lapse into every-day life - the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it - I paused to think - what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, what while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down - but with a shudder even more thrilling than before - upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Fall of the House of Usher." Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Tales. Ed. Julian Symons. Oxford, 1980. 62-78.

Video Games and Art :: Grand Theft Auto IV

This article was previously entitled Why I'm Not Playing Grand Theft Auto IV. I've changed the name because I have in fact, since writing the article, played the game. And enjoyed it. As far as I'm concerned, my enjoyment of the game does not invalidate what I say below. This article, though about GTA IV, is really a criticism of gaming itself. That said, perhaps I'm just a hypocrite.

In the last little while, I've got myself into a few discussions, some of which were rather heated, about Rockstar's latest release, the controversial and much-hyped Grand Theft Auto IV. Let me be clear about myself: I am a gamer but I am also a critic of the arts and sometimes I think those two are mutually exclusive. I've been playing video games for many, many years now and I think it's generally expected that all gamers, in some ill-defined act of solidarity and affirmation, will always rise up and defend a game like Grand Theft Auto against such critics as the now-famous Jack Thompson on the grounds that it's fun, dammit. However, I don't defend GTA. I do think gaming can be intelligently and critically defended against its many vehement critics but I do not think that Grand Theft Auto is the platform upon which such a defense can be successfully mounted.

These days anyone in the gaming community who challenges the merits of a video game is considered a puritanical, raving fundamentalist. It does not really matter if you are talking about Manhunt or Halo: if you suggest that some violence is too excessive or that some scenarios go too far you are ridiculed, ostracized and ignored. Not even film critics are this blindly devoted to their chosen art form; most will have the honesty to say that not every film is justifiable or healthy regardless of the ideology they embrace. Gamers, on the other hard, perhaps betraying a deep-seated anxiety about their chosen form of entertainment, see every single game as a representative symbol of gaming as a whole. It's as if censoring one game will lead to the censoring of all video games. The mainstream media outlets do not help on this point since as soon as a particularly violent video game is released they use it as an opportunity to attack all of gaming instead of the game in question.

Now, I'm not really a fundamentalist or a radical conservative; at least, I don't think of myself as one. I am not particularly bothered by depictions of either extreme violence or sexuality when both are connected to artistic and metaphoric purposes. I just finished a Takashi Miike marathon, for crying out loud. My shelves are filled with the movies of David Cronenberg, Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, etc, etc. As I see it, film, along with most of the art forms working with the concepts of narrative or character, is built upon fundamental notions of irony and detachment. It's one of the first things you learn as an English student: don't confuse the narrator with the author; don't mistake the main character's views with the author's. There's a fundamental disconnect between what happens in a poem, a novel, or a film and between what the author or the text actually means. This disconnect is called irony and it is perhaps the most important hermeneutical principle any critic should recognize. Video games, however, lack irony. Actions are not connected to a larger metaphoric scheme; stories, most often lacking real characterization or narrative innovation, are simply pretenses for gameplay. This is true of almost every video game, not just Grand Theft Auto. There is no moral disconnect between a players actions and a game's "artistic" purpose.



What makes Grand Theft Auto such a lightning rod for controversy is that, unlike most games, the gameplay is based upon criminal action. Players, instead of taking on the role of a superhero, cop, soldier, whatever, take on the role of a criminal who, through murder, robbery, arson, etc, rises through the ranks of a particular criminal organization. This sort of gameplay, severed from ironic or metaphoric intentions, becomes extremely hard to justify. It is, perhaps, unjustifiable. In GTA, there's no moral disconnect between the crimes performed by the protagonists and the financial rewards derived with those actions. This is different, much different, from the depiction of crime in cinema. In a crime or gangster movie, the idea that crime destroys lives is built into the very narrative framework. It may be exciting to see Ray Liotta in Goodfellas gain mafia power but we know that it's all going to end badly for him because of it and we know that it's right that it should end badly. It is this moral disconnect, the ability for the audience to recognize the inverse relationship between crime and mental or moral health, that makes films such as Goodfellas and The Godfather justifiable, compelling and important. In video games, however, there is no moral disconnect; there certainly has never been one in and of the GTA games. The player takes on the role of a criminal and never once is encouraged to think reflectively or critically about this.



(I don't agree with everything Glen Beck says in the video above, but I do think that his point about the desensitizing program used by the military and how that relates to video games should be thought about quite seriously.)

I haven't played Grand Theft Auto IV yet so perhaps I'm not qualified to comment on the game like this. I am a gamer, however, and I have played most of the games in the series that came before it, though I never really found any of them to be all that compelling. So I think I'm qualified to say that unless GTA IV is so radical in its narrative presentation that the player, instead of feeling rewarded for his actions, feels like his character should die or spend the rest of his life in jail, then it is once again just another un-ironic glorification of criminal action.

If there is one thing that in my mind could invalidate gaming as a legitimate form of entertainment and that could challenge the notion that games are art it is this lack of irony. Roger Ebert has famously said that video games are not art and, frankly, I'm inclined to agree with him. For every Bioshock that gets released (which is perhaps the closest that a game has ever come to being a work of art) there are a hundred games like Grand Theft Auto released. They may be entertaining, and games like Grand Theft Auto may be entertaining in a very prurient, misogynistic way, but as long as they lack irony, mere entertainment is all that they will remain and it should never enter into our minds to call them art.

And, since I'm not entertained by 30+ hours of mindless and un-ironic crime, I've decided not to play Grand Theft Auto IV.

"Auguries of Innocence" (excerpt) by William Blake

I've quoted William Blake a few times on this site because more than any other poet or philosopher Blake has shaped the way I think about the world, the church and art. The man in the flames to the left of this, the image that I've adopted as my own personal avatar, is one of Blake's many famous images. But it occurred to me that I've never actually posted any Blake on this site. Well, I've fixed that now.


To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

*****

He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
To be in a passion you good may do,
But no good if a passion is in you.
The whore and gambler, by the state
Licensed, build that nation's fate.
The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.
The winner's shout, the loser's curse,
Dance before dead England's hearse.
Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
We are led to believe a lie
When we see not through the eye
Which was born in a night to perish in a night,
When the soul slept in beams of light.
God appears, and God is light
To those poor souls who dwell in night,
But does a human form display
To those who dwell in realms of day.

Miike Marathon :: Dead or Alive (1999)

I was debating whether to review this or Ichi the Killer for my final entry in this Miike Marathon of mine. Ichi is probably the more (in)famous of the two but I ultimately chose Dead or Alive (not, not, NOT to be confused with the video game adaptation of the same name) for no other reason than that I like it better and find its excesses a bit more tolerable. Also, I think this film nicely rounds out a thematic overview of Miike's work.

If there is a cinematic equivalent to cocaine, Dead or Alive may be it.

In the closing comments of my Audition review I used the William Blake line "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." The reference was a little out of place since Audition isn't really a terribly excessive film. The comment really referred to Takashi Miike's entire oeuvre since many of his most famous works are experiments and excursions into excessive extremes. Dead or Alive is a perfect example of Miike's over-the-top filmmaking. In Dead or Alive, Miike fills, and then overfills, the screen with a boggling maelstrom of taboo-trampling, adrenaline-charged, adolescent wet-dream, fetishist notions of violence and sexuality, all of which play out in the brutal and cartoonish world of Miike's yakuza-infested Shinjuku district of Tokyo. When it comes to the outrageous and the ridiculous, Miike's cup runneth over. Welcome to the end of your mind.

Let me describe, or at least attempt to describe, the opening scenes of Dead or Alive. A naked woman falls to her death while clutching a bag of cocaine; random police officers brutalize random pedestrians; a homosexual liaison in a men's washroom ends in a fountain of arterial spray; a several metres long line of cocaine is inhaled; the term "eating disorder" is radically redefined; a hitman, after being passed a shotgun by a clown, executes a man in the middle of a crowded street. All of this happens quite literally during the film's first five minutes. It's a frenzy of kaleidoscopic edits and extreme camera angles that pummels the unprepared viewer into a state of semi-conscious, cinematic euphoria. It leaves the likes of Kill Bill or Death Proof gasping for breath.

Amidst all this chaos and cinematic bravura a plot does eventually emerge, although any plot at this point begins to look a lot like the flimsiest of pretenses. In Shinjuku, two crime organizations, the Japanese yakuza and their rival Chinese counterparts, are battling for supremacy. In between the two, playing both sides, is a group of (to use Michael Ondaatje's phrase) "international bastards" lead by the buttoned-down psychotic Ryuuichi. Wading through the ensuing carnage is Det. Jojima, a morally ambiguous but probably decent man struggling not only to battle crime but also to find enough money to finance an expensive medical treatment for his daughter. The two of them will spark a personal vendetta that will eventually explode not only their personal lives but all of Tokyo, all of Japan and even, perhaps, all of the world. In fact, the film's extraordinary ending dives headfirst into the deep end of metaphor so suddenly and so unapologetically that it threatens to drown its audience under a crushing wave of blinking disbelief. But it works. It works if for no other reason than that it is exquisitely satisfying to see this powder-keg of a movie lit off with an ending worthy of the incendiary excesses that have come before it. The battle between Neo and Agent Smith at the end of The Matrix Revolutions cannot hold a candle to this titanic and apocalyptic showdown.

Is there a point to such a film? Probably not. Unlike Visitor Q, Dead or Alive more than anything else feels like an exercise in over-the-top cinematic style, the Japanese equivalent to last year's Tarantino and Rodriguez-helmed Grindhouse. While it does have its moments of cinematic transgression (you may never look at a plastic kiddie pool the same way again), these excesses, rather than being the subject of intense or satiric scrutiny, form the landscape of a city and of a world that Miike is all too eager to rip to shreds.

Closing Thoughts on the Marathon. So that's Takashi Miike. Well, that's a sampling of Miike anyway. He is perhaps the most prolific director working today in Japan, in America, or in wherever. His career started in 1991 and since then he has helmed, at least according to IMDb, an astonishing 77 projects. He must not sleep.

As I've been watching his films, Quentin Tarantino has always been a quick and handy point of comparison for me, not because I find their styles to be particularly comparable but because both seem to act like children when it comes to making movies - they simply enjoy what they are doing and enjoy taking their audiences to unexpected places. They are both agitators: they take and rewrite the rules and conventions that you think should be governing them. Miike can disturb you, disgust you and make you laugh out loud, often all at the same time. He's directed comedies, musicals, and yakuza crime sagas. His experimental excursions into horror, such as his Masters of Horror entry "Imprint" or his Three... Extremes segment "Box," can cause your skin to crawl. The cartoonish and ultra-violent excesses of Ichi the Killer can make A Clockwork Orange look tame and can, in actual fact, give you an aneurysm. He can be sentimental and touching and he can be downright sadistic. It's hard to say who Miike is and even harder to define a Miike film. However, he approaches every project, at least the ones that I've seen, with enough verve, audacity and dripping style to make him never boring, always entertaining, and, perhaps, one of the more interesting directors to come along in a long, long while.

Miike Marathon :: Visitor Q (2001)

"Nothing is true; everything is permitted." These, according to the legend, were the last words of Hassan i Sabbah. As a theory of ethics or as an ethos, such words lead to decadence and anarchy and should, I believe, be strongly opposed by all who are sane. As a theory of art, however, they may have merit, though I'm sure art is not what Sabbah had in mind when he uttered them. In the most literal sense, nothing in art is true. This is what Plato meant when he banished the poets from his ideal republic. Plato had correctly noticed that fiction and poetry, though beautiful and often moving, are lies; however, they not the kinds of morally lapsing lies that he might have thought they were. Art, by lying, can tell us the truth. Poetic or artistic lies, freed from the restraints of empirical objectivity, penetrate deeper into the truth of things than any credible account of reality ever can. An allegory explains the universe; a simile reveals a thing's true nature; a metaphor cuts to the quick. When we see art in such terms, as a counter to reality that in fact reveals reality to us in new and important ways, it becomes clear that, indeed, everything is permitted, for if we accept that, in a very literal sense, nothing is true in art than everything in fact becomes on occasion for metaphor.

But what, you say, has all this to do with Takashi Miike and Visitor Q, of which, I presume, most people have not heard and are not likely to ever see? Well, I shall tell you. The above is a justification or sorts for the ridiculous parade of obscenities and horrors you will encounter if you chose to watch Visitor Q. If you are not convinced that everything is permitted in the service of art than you should probably avoid this film because it will likely shock into a coma or send you out into an apoplectic rage in which you will think it wise to tighten the laws governing censorship (which, as you might imagine, does not think everything is permitted).

Visitor Q is a family movie, or rather it is a movie about a family. This particular family, however, is in quite a lot of trouble. The father, a disgraced reporter looking to make a documentary on "young people today," goes to his prostitute daughter for material and ends up purchasing her services. His son, bullied by his peers, ferociously redoubles that scarring abuse upon his mother. His mother, to deal with the physical and no doubt emotional pain, turns to heroin, a habit which leads her also to prostitute herself to fetishists. In the harrowing world of Takashi Miike, this is Japan - depraved, decaying, and excremental. Into these ruinous lives enters the Visitor, a man who quite literally tries to knock some sense into this disintegrating family.

In its own way, Visitor Q is a redemption story. That it uses several murders, incest, necrophilia, rape and some of the most bizarre scenes involving breast milk in cinematic history to arrive at it only highlights the immediate need for that redemption. But don't be fooled by its seeming prurience and excess. Though it seems to play out like protracted telling of the aristocrats joke, Visitor Q is actually an example of some of the most scathing satire and sharpest black comedy you're likely ever to encounter. And I do mean ever. Unlike the pointless and pornographic images of, say, Salo, Visitor Q's extreme images are not connected with a self-immolating swan dive into the hellish flames of nihilism but are rather all connected to pressing social and familial concerns, concerns which are not only conservative and traditional but downright wholesome. That this family does not act like a family is the point; that they should act like a family is also the point; that they have no idea how to do so is once again the point. In one scene, the father, deliriously excited that his home is being destroyed by fireworks since it presents him with such an exciting moment for his documentary, yells out while taping the incident, "How am I supposed to feel? I don't know how a father should feel! But I know my family is being destroyed! So, what do you think?" It's almost too on-the-nose, but anyone who misses the levels of irony and metaphor in a movie character, himself armed with a camera, filming a scene of destruction, self-reflectively asking his own audience "what do you think?" has no business watching movies.

Miike has denied that his films are rooted in social concern or that they are metaphors for modern Japan. That's okay. George Romero tried to tell us that Dawn of the Dead was not about consumerism. (Psst... even if he didn't think it was, it was.) Some of Miike's films, like Dead or Alive and Ichi the Killer, are simply efforts in mindless, and mind-boggling, entertainment, though even they have artistic merit, dubious as that may sound to anyone who may familiar with either of those films. But a film like Visitor Q is something more than simple sensationalism. For one, it's not very entertaining, it is in fact quite sickening, if we try to see it as something other than satire. For two, the relevance of its satire and the blackness of its humour are simply too sharp to be accidental. Sure, it may offend nearly every audience that watches it but that shouldn't suggest that it is without merit. Remember, everything is permitted. In the hands of childish artist, this sort of freedom will likely result in self-destruction. In the hands of a genuine and mature artist, however, this freedom will shock, jolt and, if you let it, drop lightning bolts of serious thought into your mind. Visitor Q is such a film. Not every palate will appreciate it but those with an appetite for serious satire may find themselves enjoyably challenged by it if they dare to chew on it for a bit.

Once again, another take.

Miike Marathon :: Audition (1999)

Perhaps it was always inevitable that I would make my way to the films of Takashi Miike, not only because he is one of the most important names in horror today but also because his films, like David Lynch's, are often experimental, are usually drenched in surrealism and metaphor, and are constantly pushing the thresholds of the medium past their normal tolerances, all of which are elements that, in the hands of a competent artist - dare I say, auteur - like Miike, results in some truly spectacular cinema. Though his chosen grammar may contain a slightly more than healthy helping of arterial spray, Miike is a legitimate filmmaker who deserves to be taken seriously not only by the horror hounds but by serious film critics everywhere.

The Japanese precursor to (and one of the primary inspirations behind) such films as Saw and Hostel, Takashi Miike's Audition stormed onto the world's cinematic stage while the North American film industry was still trying to tell us that self-parodic films like Scream were scary. While not really a horror film, though its final act is rather horrific, Audition laid waste to many Western ideas of what was frightening and redefined what it meant for a film to be scary or disturbing.

A lonely Japanese man, Aoyama, is told by his son that he should remarry. His friend, a movie producer, offers to stage an audition that would allow Aoyama to pick and chose the kind of woman he would like to be with. Almost immediately he is drawn to Asami, even though his friend is unnerved by her and even though she seems to be lying about who she is. Aoyama and Asami begin a courtship that is awkward and charming and which, except for a few hints dropped to the audience, appears normal enough. Aoyama, it seems, is genuinely a decent man and he is more than a little ashamed of the false pretenses that brought them together. However, while he may have some skeletons lurking about his closest, they are nothing compared to Asami's, which include abuse, torture, murder and a very monstrous idea of what it means to love someone.

Unlike most horror films, Audition takes its time. Not worried about filling the screen with a constant barrage of blood and guts (Miike will do that in other films... but that's another story for another time), Audition is a slow burn. The first two acts simply smolder, laying the foundation and dropping the occasional and disconcerting hint about what might actually be going on. Even when its final act does begin and Miike's trademark penchant for nerve-jangling shock images takes over the style remains surprising restrained and deliberate, especially when compared to the outright psychosis and strobe light editing of Dead or Alive, which Miike also released in 1999.

While it may sound like an exercise in sensationalism (and this is one of his less sensational efforts), it is hard to ignore Miike's mastery of the medium. In one of the film's more daring sequences, Aoyama, drugged, is thrust into a dream-like altered reality in which he hallucinates things that we as an audience are already aware of but which he himself has not yet learned. Miike, in an act of dizzying virtuosity, has crashed the walls of dramatic irony and actually used the device as a narrative point.

This brash willingness to ignore convention, coupled with a wicked and bloody sense of humour that borders on - but never completely gives itself over to - sadism, defines Miike's work and makes him an important director not only in Japanese horror but also in all of world cinema. If I were to make a comparison, I would compare Miike with Canada's own David Cronenberg since both of them feel free to use often shocking or extreme images but they use them within a very specific and metaphoric context. William Blake wrote "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." While Audition may not lead to the palace of wisdom, or to any palace for that matter, its excesses and the excesses of many of Miike's films are artistically justifiable, I think, and make for a breathtaking, if somewhat unsettling, cinematic experience.

Here's another take on the film.

Of Our Elaborate Plans... The End

It's the end of another school year. I just wrote my last final. Some people listen to Alice Cooper's "School's Out" when the year ends. I listen to "The End" by The Doors.

Mini-Review :: Black Sunday (1960)

One of the first films by Mario Bava, the original master of Italian horror, Black Sunday (1960), though tame by any and all of today's standards for modern horror, was and remains a cinematic landmark. Nearly every gothic convention ever used in horror is being brought to life here, possibly for the first time. This is pure horror, before it became a stale victim of its own conventions. Like a more macabre and slightly less restrained Hitchcock, Bava executes his tale of vampires and satanic curses with great confidence and success. And while it may not be genuinely frightening anymore it's still damn entertaining.

Retro Review :: The Quiet Earth (1985)

It's been a while. I've traveled to the edge of the world and back (or at least finished another year of university) and let me tell you... the maps are right: there be dragons. With a little extra time on my hands for the moment, however, I've decided to catch up on some movies I've been meaning to watch.

Between Anchor Bay and The Criterion Collection, many sci-fi and horror classics have been deservedly saved from the abyss of cinematic obscurity that has been created by a society that seems to have no long-term memory whatsoever, at least (or maybe especially) when it comes to art or entertainment. Anchor Bay, in an effort to save even more films, has recently unrolled a Cult Fiction series of DVDs, a set dedicated to obscure and beloved films. The series isn't themed. Digging deep into the vaults of many different genres, such horror, sci-fi, grindhouse crime and exploitation films and even camp spoof, the series includes such gems as The Wicker Man, C.H.U.D., and even Werner Herzog's great Fitzcarraldo. Yes, it's a strange collection. However, many of these films deserve to be seen, if for no other reason then that they show us just how derivative much of our modern cinematic endeavours have become.

One of these Cult Fiction films is The Quiet Earth, a 1985 New Zealand-made apocalyptic tale about the last man on earth. Sound familiar? Sure, especially with a certain blockbuster currently cluttering up our mental airwaves. However, this is the movie I Am Legend should have been, wanted to be, but never had any hope of actually being.

At precisely 6:12 in the morning, Zak Hobson (Bruno Lawrence, who I'd never heard of before but who is astonishing here) wakes up to discover that everyone else in the world as disappeared. The buildings are all empty, the roads are littered with the wreckages of suddenly abandoned vehicles, and fallen aircraft take out entire city blocks in flaming death dives. There are no bodies; everyone has just vanished. Not even animals or insects remain. What follows is a character study of mental deterioration. With no other living being around him, Zak descends into madness. Remember those scenes in I Am Legend where Will Smith was running around, making friends and talking with mannequins? Remember how interesting they were compared to the poorly fabricated digital escapades that followed them? The Quiet Earth is like those scenes... only much, much better. Though those scenes can shamelessly harvest the organs of The Quiet Earth, they can't even begin to breath the kind of life into them that suffuses The Quiet Earth.

While other movies try to portray isolation and madness they so often do so by watering them down for us and by giving us a sanitized version of them. It's the Wilson effect and it assumes that an honest depiction of human madness would be too uncomfortable for an audience to handle, at least in mainstream cinema. Zak, however, has no volleyball. Neither he nor the filmmakers give us a buffer between Zak and his madness; they gives us no anthropomorphic crutch to temper Zak's isolation. So he rages about in a silk dress, brandishing his shotgun. He repeatedly, and without any real explanation, shoots a crucifix. While assuming the role of President of the Earth before an audience of cardboard cut-outs that include Hitler and Nixon, he confesses his crimes. In fact, for the first act of the film there are hardly any sci-fi or thriller elements to the story at all. What we get instead is a very convincing character study in effects of pure isolation on the human mind.

Unfortunately, the following two acts are not quite as interesting. The narrative is fleshed out a bit more and Zak eventually rebuilds himself and begins to piece together a theory of what happened to everyone. A few predictable plot devices ensue: yes, Zak isn't entirely alone; yes, humanity is probably too self-destructive for its own good. Nevertheless, despite a few missteps, the film is a triumph. While it is not "Quite simply the best science-fiction film of the '80s," as the quote on the box would have us believe (that honour goes to Blade Runner, after all), it is a film that deserves to be seen, not only by science-fiction fan but by anyone who loves good movies.

In the holy pantheon of science-fiction, there are only four films that, as far as I'm concerned, have achieved a full apotheosis: Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Andrei Tarkovsky's Solyaris (1972), and Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982). While The Quiet Earth is not quite as good as these films, it is perhaps one of those rare films that comes closes to matching their greatness. This of course means that it is by leaps and bounds better than almost any sci-fi flick you're likely to see coming out of Hollywood any time soon. Seeing The Quiet Earth has actually upset me a bit. 'Cause if I missed this one, what other great sci-fi films have I missed only because they have unfairly slipped out of sight and out of our short-termed, pop-cultural minds?

Eichmann in Jerusalem (excerpts)

I recently read Hannah Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem, her report on the 1961 Israeli trial of Adolf Eichmann, the so-called "architect of the Holocaust." The book is disturbing, not so much because it describes the crimes perpetrated on the Jewish people by the Nazis, but because it so clearly states that the people who committed these crimes, especially Eichmann himself, were not monstrous or psychotic but ordinary and "banal" people, people who for whatever reason abnegated their ability to think and discriminate and simply handed themselves over what they all could see was a murderous agenda. I chose these passages because they focus not only on the massive moral failings of the Nazis themselves but also on the personal and intimate failings of all the people the Nazis influences, which are in many ways more frightening because of these peoples' ordinariness.

"And just as the law in civilized countries assumes that the voice of conscience tells everybody 'Thou shalt not kill,' even though man's natural desires and inclinations may at times be murderous, so the law of Hitler's land demanded that the voice of conscience tell everybody: 'Thou shalt kill,' although the organizers of the massacres knew full well that murder is against the normal desires and inclinations of most people. Evil in the Third Reich had lost the quality by which most people recognize it - the quality of temptation. Many Germans and many Nazis, probably an overwhelming majority of them, must have been tempted not to murder, not to rob, not to let their neighbors go off to their doom (for that the Jews were transported to their doom they knew, of course, even though many of them may not have known the gruesome details), and not to become accomplices in all these crimes by benefiting from them. But, God knows, they had learned how to resist temptation."

*****

"'We knew this. We did nothing. Anyone who had seriously protested or done anything against the killing unit would have been arrested within twenty-four hours and would have disappeared. It belongs among the refinements of totalitarian governments in our century that they don't permit their opponents to die a great, dramatic martyr's death for their convictions. A good many of us might have accepted a death. The totalitarian state lets its opponents disappear in silent anonymity. It is certain that anyone who had dared to suffer death rather than silently tolerate the crime would have sacrificed his life in vain. This is not to say that such a sacrifice would have been morally meaningless. It would only have been practically useless. None of us had a conviction so deeply rooted that we could have taken upon ourselves a practically useless sacrifice for the sake of a higher moral meaning.' Needless to say, the writer remains unaware of the emptiness of his much emphasized 'decency' in the absence of what he calls a 'higher moral meaning.'

But the hollowness of respectability - for decency under such circumstances is no more than respectability - was not what become apparent in the example afforded by Sergeant Anton Schmidt. Rather it was the fatal flaw in the argument itself, which at first sounds so hopelessly plausible. It is true that totalitarian domination tried to establish these holes of oblivion into which all deeds, good and evil, would disappear, but just as the Nazis' feverish attempts, from June, 1942, on, to erase all traces of the massacres - through cremation,, through burning in open pits, through the use of explosives and flame-throwers and bone-crushing machinery - were doomed to failure, so all efforts to let their opponents 'disappear in silent anonymity' were in vain. The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to tell the story. Hence, nothing can ever be 'practically useless,' at least, not in the long run. It would be of great practical usefulness for German today, not merely for her prestige abroad but for her sadly confused inner condition, if there were more such stories to be told. For the lesson of such stories is simple and within everybody's grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that 'it could happen' in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation."


Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin, 2006. 150, 232-33.

"A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say,
"The breath goes now," and some say, "No,"

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of the earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we, by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do;

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearken after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like the other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.

Pictorial :: Sally Mann

These photos may be distressing to some people. While I think they possess an ethereal and fleeting beauty, a beauty that flourishes like a flower planted amongst the rocks, I can understand how they may make some people uncomfortable.

One of the great things about being a student is constantly being exposed to artists of who you were previously unaware. I'm currently writing a paper on the photography of Sally Mann, whose photographs of her own children are loving, sympathetic, distressing and entirely true to the human experience. In her own words, Mann says, We are spinning a story of what it is to grow up. It is a complicated story and sometimes we try to take on the grand themes: anger, love, death, sexuality, and beauty. But we tell it all without fear and without shame. These aren't just pictures of Sally Mann's children, they are an look into the heart of humanity with all its beauty and frailty, all its hardship and cherished memories. The particular occasion may be her children but they are about all of us. Enjoy.

Jessie Bites, 1985

Jessie at Five, 1987

Gorjus, 1989


Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia, 1989


Fallen Child, 1989


Emmett and the White Boy, 1990

Mann, Sally. Immediate Family. Aperture, 1992.

Review :: Be Kind Rewind

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) put Michel Gondry on the short-list of directors to keep an eye on. It was inventive, sincere, emotional and hallucinatory - but it was hard to tell how much of that film's genius should be credited to master screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich and Adaptation) or to Gondry, who was only known as a music video director before that, working with such bands as Massive Attack and My Chemical Romance. The Science of Sleep (2006), however, proved that Gondry could not only direct great material but write it too. Now with Be Kind Rewind, he solidifies his reputation as auteur in the making; in a time when "quirk" seems to be the name of the game (see Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited or Jason Reitman's Juno), Gondry is one of that game's young masters.

When the owner of a VHS rental store (Danny Glover) goes on vacation, he leaves Mike (Mos Def) in charge with only one rule: keep out Jerry (Jack Black), Mike's friend, who has a habit of inadvertently destroying things. Of course, Jerry doesn't stay out and shenanigans ensue. It seems that a failed attempt at sabotage has left Jerry rather magnetized and his presence in the store blanks all the tapes. Now, in an effort to save face with a certain customer who could report them to their boss, they grab a camera and film their own homemade version of the movie she wants, Ghostbusters. They soon realize that despite their amateurish efforts, their movie has began to gain a certain amount of notoriety and they soon find themselves filming their own versions of favourite films, everything from Rush Hour 2 to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

While not quite as provocative and intelligent as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or as compulsively inventive as The Science of Sleep, Be Kind Rewind is a clever and endearing look at how community is built not only around geo-political facts but also around certain intangibles, such as a shared experience or a favourite story. Be Kind Rewind continually blends these communal factors as Mike and Jerry not only create their own versions of films but end up doing so in order to raise money to save the historical, but condemned, building in which the video store is located. The film is a statement about the power of art and is a loving homage to culturally significant films, films which ran the gamut from slapstick humour to razor-sharp political commentary. Art, when it is released, becomes the property of its audience, becomes a part of the shared experience that shapes and informs our communities. Gondry perfectly captures this in Mike and Jerry's "do-it-yourself/youtube" sensibility that at once celebrates art and gives it back to us.



But the film's not perfect. At some times it is a little too given over to sentimentality, especially in the film's final scenes, which were a bit too predictable and feel a tad manipulative. Also, while the actor's are solid and for the most part wildly entertaining, Gondry has a tendency to let Black act out a bit too much, as if he simply turned on the camera and let Black take it from there, which sometimes works and sometimes does not. My feeling is that Jack Black is only interesting when a director has a tight reign on him, when he's allowed to be manic and silly but only within the governed bounds of the director's vision, as he was in Stephen Fears High Fidelity, where Black's over-the-top performance served the film instead of distracting us from it. For the most part, Gondry manages to do this, although there are a few moments when the performance calls too much attention to itself and we remember that we are watching Jack Black and not Jerry. But in the end, these criticisms are minor and don't really take away from the film's charm.

Be Kind Rewind is at its best when it simply indulges in its own brand of comic fantasy and heartfelt whimsy. Mike and Jerry's films, horribly underproduced and amateurish as they are, are the pulsing, glowing heart of this film and are a complete joy to watch. They are not spoofs or underhanded jabs at Hollywood and big budget filmmaking; they are a loving homage and appropriation of the films that entertain and inspire us. Gondry has captured the enthusiasm and the joy of artistic creation and has himself created a minor masterpiece. In a spring movie season that doesn't seem to be offering much, Be Kind Rewind is a must-see for anyone who loves film.

"The Hollow Men" by T.S. Eliot

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.

           A penny for the Old Guy

               I           

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
          
               II           

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
          
               III           

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
          
               IV           

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
          
               V           

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                   For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

                   Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

                   For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Hamlet 3.2

Some Hamlet now. Perhaps we can find the meaning of life in Hamlet. Perhaps we cannot. If we can or cannot, however, we still find ourselves in its text, staring back at us, as terrible and as familiar as we'd expect. Enjoy.

PLAYER KING. I do believe you what now you speak,
But what we do determine oft we break.
Purpose is but the slave to memory,
Of violent birth, but poor validity,
Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree,
But fall unshaken when they mellow be.
Most necessary 'tis that we forget
To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt.
What to ourselves in passion we propose,
The passion ending, doth the purpose lose.
The violence of either grief or joy
Their own enactures with themselves destroy.
Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament;
Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident.
This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange
That even our loves should with our fortunes change;
For 'tis a question left us yet to prove,
Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love.
The great man down, you mark his favorite flies;
The poor advanced makes friends of enemies.
And hitherto doth love on fortune tend;
For who not needs shall never lack a friend,
And who in want a hollow friend doth try
Directly seasons him his enemy.
But, order to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.

Hamlet, Act 3, scene 2.

Review :: Rambo

Rambo may be the best action movie of the year. It may be the best action movie of the last ten years. Sylvester Stallone gives us something we've been wanting for a long, long time: a grown up action hero, a franchise that's capable of growing up as much as its audience has. John McClane should take notes.

It seems to me that Rambo is Stallone's critique of the action hero. It is a story of one man, John Rambo, but it is also a meta-story, the story of all action heroes. Rambo has always been a tortured soldier but somewhere along the way his story was hijacked: the Vietnam vet was turned into just another 80's action icon, and suddenly all his torture, all his pathos evaporated. He became just another shining, muscled symbol of adolescent masculine fantasies. As entertaining as these fantasies may be (and their value as entertainment is certainly debatable) they are insincere and callous, almost nihilistic in their willingness to portray violence as entertainment. Most action movies, after all, only play at morality; they use only a basic distinction between good and evil as a thinly-veiled excuse to justify the graphic depiction and glorification violence. Rambo does not. At one point in the movie, during a voice-over/dream soliloquy, Rambo admits to himself, "You didn't kill for your country... you killed for yourself." It is as if, in damning himself for what he's done, John Rambo, and Sylvester Stallone, is damning us the audience for finding enjoyment in the mindlessness of the prototypical action hero, the cartoonish hero capable of inflicting massive amounts of damage without suffering the mental or spiritual aftermath.

Rambo, though one of the most violent movies I've seen outside of the horror or torture genres, subverts the average mindless action movie by giving meaning to violence, by grafting its violence onto something most action movies do not have - a moral theory. The film is a redemption story, the story a disillusioned soldier once again finding meaning in the chaos around him. But it's more then just that. I read the film as Stallone's own rejection of the action movie conventions that made him a star and the as the reinvention of the moral hero, of the hero that even thinking people can admire. Rambo is the work of a mature filmmaker, of a filmmaker capable of reflecting not only on the world around him but on his own part in creating that world. For all its violence, the film is introspective and reflective and will prove to be, I think, the best action movie of this year.