Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

I find it a little odd to realize that the two films I’d be most interested in seeing if I were at Sundance this week are directed by the same guy: Michael Winterbottom. I can’t say that I’m a particular fan of his work, or anthing… I mean, I’ve only seen two of his films and while I really liked one of ‘em, I really disliked the other one.

“It’s like, ‘how much more black could this be?’ and the answer is ‘None. None more black.’”
— Nigel Tufnel

The Killer Inside Me
I am a huge Jim Thompson fan, and this is one of my favourite of his novels (along with the similarly themed Pop. 1280 which, itself, has been adapted to film as Coup de Torchon). The psychopathic Lou Ford is probably Thompson’s most depraved, perverse, and frightening creation and when I heard that the novel was being adapted to film, I wondered who on earth could play him… And when I saw the sales trailer for it back in November, I was delighted to see Casey Affleck bring Ford to life. (Sorry. I’d post the vid if I could but it’s been pulled down by Wild Bunch.)

Sheriff of a small mid-century Texas town, Lou Ford is, on the face of it, a rather calm, reasonable, cliché-spouting dullard but underneath that shallow surface he is as craaaazy as a bedbug. Thompson tells his story from the first person perspective, so you get right into the mind of this corrupt, violent psychopath.

The film caused an uproar at its two screenings this week. I have read of one of the leads walking out of a screening half-way through, loud protestations from audience members in post-screening Q&As, and allegations that the film is too damned violent and never really finds Thompson’s tone.

That last allegation is the only one that causes me some concern… Because, truly, there is humour in Thompson’s roman noir, and it is of the blackest of black kinds. My favourite kind, in other words. So if Winterbottom has missed the mark in the film’s tone, then we’re in trouble…

This film will not be for the faint-hearted. If it is faithful to the novel (and from the sounds of the reviews so far, it is), it will be violent–especially towards the female characters who Ford abuses. Probably turn-your-head-away violent, in parts. So consider yourself forewarned.

The Shock Doctrine
This documentary adaptation of Naomi Klein’s book of the same title is the other Winterbottom film that caught my eye at Sundance.

‘Only a crisis–actual or perceived–produces real change.’
— Milton Friedman

(Short film about Naomi Klein’s thesis, by Alfonso Cuaron)

The audiobook version of Klein’s The Shock Doctrine was one of the more compelling books I listened to on my commutes to and from work this past year. In it, she posits that there is a similarity between the shock therapy experiments that the C.I.A. secretly employed at Montreal’s McGill University in the ’50s and what she calls the “economic shock doctrine” that has been used to transform economies throughout the world ever since. At the most basic level, it’s an attempt to step in after the patient/country has been knocked for a loop and completely reshape his/her/its personality/economy.

Its inclusion at Sundance is timely… coming, as it does, in the wake of the recent disaster in Haiti, where the situation is ripe for a dose of economic shock therapy. In fact, at Klein’s website, she points out that the Heritage Foundation is already trying to push what she calls its ’so-called reforms’ in the region.

I made a list of other films I thought sounded interesting, too. If I had a festival pass, these would also be on my list…

Cyrus - by the Duplass brothers, who also did Baghead, which I thought was kinda cool

Double Take - a documentary that places Hitchcock’s films into the context of politics of the world when they were made

Enemies of the People - a documentary about the Khmer Rouge, featuring interviews with its members

Exit Through the Gift Shop - a “street-art” documentary by the artist called Banksy

Four Lions - which, as a comedy about terrorists, has the potential to hit that blacker-than-black comedy button I love

Frozen - something that’s been called “like Open Water, except on skis”, this is a small-scale horror film set on a ski lift (!)

Hesher - about an uninvited guest

Lucky - a documentary about lottery winners and how their lives change

The Perfect Host - about another uninvited guest

Poison - Todd Haynes‘ debut feature film has been sitting on my ZipList for ages but here’s an opportunity to see it on the big screen, which is always better

Splice - Guillermo del Toro is Executive Producer of this Canadian monster movie about genetic engineering

The Tillman Story - a documentary about the “friendly fire” death of former NFLer Pat Tillman in Afghanistan

The Runaways - admittedly, have doubts about this one–not just because of the danger of it being just another cliché-riddled film about a rock and roll band but also because it focuses more on Cherie Currie than Joan Jett (an odd decision, IMO)… but, hey, at least the music will be good

But the film I most wanna see isn’t actually playing at Sundance this week. It’s playing at Slamdance…

And Everything is Going Fine
Monologuist Spalding Gray’s (apparent) suicide in 2004 left me brokenhearted. I had long loved his hilarious(ly) self-absorbed tales, and had managed to see him perform onstage a few times. Steven Soderbergh, who cast Gray in King of the Hill and then helmed the film adaptation of Gray’s monologue Gray’s Anatomy has constructed his film from a career’s worth of monologues and other found footage so that Gray speaks for himself here. Soderbergh has made what certainly sounds like a fascinating and moving look back at one of the master storytellers of our generation.

Simply cannot wait to see it!!

Hooray! Spoon’s new album, Transference, is streaming at NPR. Givva lissen.

I was gonna post this on Facebook (I seem to be spending more time there than here these days, for some reason) but it struck me that it might possibly be too too for some of my FB friends, so it seemed smarter to post it here instead. ‘Round here, ya pays ya money and ya takes ya chances, I figger.

Sex columnist Dan Savage talks about one of his weirder encounters…

Yay! Lissen here:

You can buy it straight from the band, here, for only $3.99.

Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it’s supposed to nurture.

–Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Alex Kozinski (from his dissent in White v. Samsung, 1993, which can be read here)

Taking a circuitous route, I found myself at artist Nate Harrison’s site tonight, watching some of his video projects. I found “Can I Get An Amen?” (2004) particularly interesting.

“Can I Get An Amen?” is an audio installation that unfolds a critical perspective of perhaps the most sampled drum beat in the history of recorded music, the Amen Break. It begins with the pop track “Amen Brother” by 60’s soul band The Winstons, and traces the transformation of their drum solo from its original context as part of a ‘B’ side vinyl single into its use as a key aural ingredient in contemporary cultural expression. The work attempts to bring into scrutiny the techno-utopian notion that ‘information wants to be free’- it questions its effectiveness as a democratizing agent. This as well as other issues are foregrounded through a history of the Amen Break and its peculiar relationship to current copyright law.

Here’s the original song (which, ironically enough, is, itself, a reworking of the traditional Negro Spiritual, “Amen”)…

And here is Harrison’s work…

And anybody who wants the Amen Break for their own mixes can download it here.

No, I really haven’t forgotten about this joint. I’ve just been spending more time at Facebook lately. But I don’t really wanna start a blog-type thang over there because I like the privacy of this one. I mean, my whole family is on Facebook and one of the first things I was advised by a fellow blogger who suggested I write this thing in the first place was to keep a lid on it when it comes to my family. He said that even if I didn’t write about my family (which, largely, I haven’t), I’d prefer the freedom of not having to wonder about editing this or that based on the possibility of family reading it.

So this place is sticking around.

I do have lots to write about but am concentrating on getting my shit together at the moment, so, in the meantime, here’s an interesting documentary for you to watch.

I found it posted at Free Documentaries. It dovetails kinda nicely with the book I just finished reading a few weeks ago: Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, which is all about what she calls “disaster capitalism”. The film–a 2002 film by Adam Curtis, which aired on British television–is about how 20th century North American society became based on consumerism and self-interest. It’s quite a fascinating–and frightening, and frustrating–story.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4