Amanda M. Blake's Blog, page 26

Fools

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Everything else is feeling too close to home right now, so I’m pulling out “Fools.” I wrote it while half-listening to Sandra McCracken’s “Fool’s Gold” (nothing like this song, just saying), but it’s always sounded more Patty Griffin in my head.

It was another attempt at an extended metaphor that ended up working in two directions. Because I can only talk about things that matter to me in the most indirect way possible, don’t you know.

FOOLS

They carve through the earth

Through granite and curse

Searching for something to make it worthwhile.

Under pressure and birth

The chisels all hurt

Cutting through veins with a wink and a smile.

The men are all strapped

They point and they laugh

Boasting that any time they’ll strike it rich.

The more cunning the craft

The more they rush past

Leaving behind nothing but holes left unstitched.

The girl don’t shine bright enough in the dark

In searching for gold, they’ve torn her apart

And when they move on, she still takes it hard

‘Cause only fools find gold after piercing a heart.

She tries so to glitter

But it’s all only glass

The soil tastes bitter

Down under the grass

The tools have all scarred her

Above and below

And Midas can’t touch

Where the red rivers flow.

For crystals and stone

They’ve left her alone

She’s cold and she’s empty with nothing to lose

The gold in their bones

She’ll save for her own

When everything they gain can no longer be used.

The girl don’t shine bright enough in the dark

In searching for gold, they’ve torn her apart

And when they move on, she still takes it hard

‘Cause only fools find gold after piercing a heart.

Vultures

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(I have a review of TEETH that’s been sitting in my notebook since April, but I just haven’t had a hot second to transcribe it. I’m going to try to get that in this weekend, maybe?)

“Vultures” is one of the first pieces I wrote, so naturally I wanted to do something ambitious by doing a full social commentary metaphor, because why ease into this new thing I’d never done before? But I do that a lot now to channel anger in an indirect way.

If I had to provide a style comparison for “Vultures,” it would probably lean early Sarah McLachlan.

(Apologies to actual vultures, who are awesome.)

VULTURES

Scavengers caught in cages

Different stages of difficult phases

Fangs filed, claws clipped

To the bone, wings snipped.

Ribs press against skin

As spectators stare in

At beasts who never stood a chance

And never stand a chance again.

Fresh apples in dead mouths

Fresh blood, draining down

Decaying flesh, begging hand unfurled.

When did vultures get to rule the world?

Gold glints in their eyes

Black velvet circling the skies

Safe from the kill, prey the predator’s own.

When did vultures get to rule the world?

Beasts of work, beasts of burden

Unburdened by strain of security

Best to stay low to the ground

Better to maintain the purity.

Hungry eyes, the grass is greener

Where it isn’t needed.

What’s a hare to do

With something to care for, my dear?

Just another bit of roadkill.

No one’s crying, my dear.

Carrion desiccation

Unrepentant desecration

Each poor dying soul strung like a pearl.

When did vultures get to rule the world?

Everything collapses

And dignity lapses

There’s always dissatisfaction

For them to feast upon

A battered, bloody violent reaction

For them to feast upon

As though it doesn’t matter

Which beast they feast upon.

And the predators know

To leave a generous share.

Let the thoroughfare war

Over whether it’s fair.

There’s always more dead to go around.

Always something to blame farther down on the ground.

When did vultures get to rule the world?

When did vultures get to rule the world?

Music Box

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Another simple lyric. Since it’s called “Music Box,” I’m guessing you know what it’s supposed to sound like. It’s been another hard week.

MUSIC BOX

I rise when they raise me

I sleep when they close

Round, Rosie, round

When I stop, no one knows.

Lullaby dancer, princess ballet

I turn and I spin, pirouette and sway.

Round, Rosie, round

Forever and ever I’ll stay.

My music turned on

By someone else’s hand

Wind me up, winding down,

Still as a statue I stand.

Silhouette on a mirror

Glitter trapped in my eye

Reflection ‘comes clearer

Too porcelain to cry.

I’ll dance to your music

And bow when you close

Round, Rosie, round

When I stop, no one knows.

I’ll guard all your treasures

For here I have none

No pain and no pleasures

My music is done.

My Captain

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A few of my friends know I was irrationally upset by the new Cap story line in the comics. Which is silly, because I don’t even read the comics. I’m a movie!verse fan.

I can’t imagine it was a symbolic way of dealing with other feelings I’ve been having or anything, since I process better through fiction. That’s just ridiculous.

Anyway, I wrote this because I just have a lot of feelings still, even after the storyline in the comics resolved itself. Must be nice.

MY CAPTAIN

O Captain, My Captain

Emblem of an anthem left long behind

The last living legend, ice and time confined

Willing to walk that harrowing line

O Captain, My Captain

She has your heart, so you can use mine.

O Captain, My Captain

Ideal icon of the land that I love

Is it too much that we’re asking you of?

Land of the warhawk, while you hold a dove

O Captain, My Captain

We don’t deserve, but you’re never enough.

Bridge:

You’re everything we dreamed we could be

You stand for all we should be

But until we know why we made thee

Fight for what we thought we would be.

O Captain, My Captain

Betrayal hurt more than I could have known

False idol, false friend, forging a false throne

The one in your place denied, to fight alone

O Captain, My Captain

Tell me, what have we done?

O Captain, My Captain

Tell me what we have become.

Anything But a Diamond

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I’ve decided to start sharing some of these songwriting pieces as I go, in part because writing wants to be shared. I’m also scared to share, but I need to get over that if I don’t want to be an absolute wreck every time I put out a book. (I lost it a few times while putting out Nocturne.)

So…starting small with one of my first pieces. The style is meant to be something quiet that Miranda Lambert might sing. If this is my version of romantic, I’m going to have a heck of a time trying to write typical love songs. That’s okay. Plenty of other people out there to do it better.

ANYTHING BUT A DIAMOND

Stay away from candlelight

Don’t get down on one knee

No violins serenading

Anything but a diamond, please.

No kiss under a bright full moon

No soft island breeze

I don’t need angels standing by

Anything but a diamond, please.

I never asked for forever

All I asked for was now

All I wanted was you and me together

I never wanted a vow.

At my best I was never romantic

I kept expectations low

When the fairy tale waits too long to come by

It’s too easy to choose the devil you know.

I don’t want a fairy tale ending

No happily ever after for me

If you love me, then just say it out loud

Anything but a diamond, please.

Songwriting Goals Achieved

For the purpose of accountability, I just wanted to share that my challenge to write an average of one song a month has been met well before the deadline. I’ve discovered I have two lanes when it comes to subject matter, but they don’t exactly go together, so if I ever decide to produce anything, who knows what kind of EPs I’d come up with.

REVIEW: Gothika

[image error]This is one of those movies where I can’t figure out if it’s deceptively good or just a personal pleasure, regular as comfort food.

It pushes one of my major buttons by being set in a psychiatric facility, which forgives a multitude of sins. When you’re crazy, I suspect you either love or hate psych ward suspense. I’m one of the ones who loves ’em. I process a lot of my shit through fiction, and psych ward horror brings up a lot of issues that I can healthily address through it, even when it’s sensationalized and mentally ill people othered for effect. So yeah, it’s problematic, but it still helps me deal with my problems. You just take some things with a grain of salt or a spoonful of sugar.

As horror movies go, this one suffers most in its script, with jarring lines all over the place. Here’s one of the juicier tidbits:

MIRANDA: I’m not deluded, Pete. I’m possessed.

PETE: I don’t believe in ghosts.

MIRANDA: Neither do I. But they believe in me.

Someone just thought they were so clever coming up with some of these lines and wouldn’t give them up for anything. I’m tempted to say they paid Halle Berry so much that they couldn’t afford a good script, but it’s more likely the script was destroyed in production, so I won’t unilaterally blame the writer, who has very little control over what happens when the script is out of their hands.

But a solid cast makes the most of cheap lines. You see Robert Downey, Jr., pre-redemption, which is a treat. With Penelope Cruz, Charles Dutton, and John Carroll Lynch rounding out the cast, it’s hard to go wrong. The only gross miscast would be Bernard Hill, who brings every ounce of gravitas he can to a fundamentally silly film. They really should have stopped with Dutton and Lynch for legitimacy.

And can we talk about the title for a second? A title that has absolutely no connection to the story, but someone thought it might have a Hot Topic baby goth kind of appeal? Sure, the story is pure modern Gothic—a looming psychiatric prison, female madness, a cool, dark palette, gaslighting. But where the hell did the K come from? Considering the motif of NOT ALONE, they should have just gone with that instead.

Okay, now that I’m writing this review, I’m pretty sure the movie is just a guilty pleasure.

But there are things about GOTHIKA that do work and let you see the good the movie could have been. The palette alternates between a gentler gray blue and a sickening green (a common palette for horror in the early 2000s, but it really worked here). Like the contrast between clean institutional rooms and rundown Gothic architecture, it visually disorients in a setting where you think they’d be more interested in soothing its inhabitants (except the place is for the criminally insane, so maybe they kinda want to punish them, too).

The role gives Halle Berry somewhere to use her earnest emotional energy in a place where it fits. Most of the time, I want her to dial it back a click or two, but in a story essentially about the perception of female hysteria, her brand of emotion feeds that question of sanity, and she does small, fierce, and determined very well. The trouble is, when she’s playing the doctor, she’s supposed to be the best, yet her more clinical lines come off as those of a novice (script, again), and she doesn’t seem to even take herself seriously as a doctor. Her demeanor lacks assertiveness or authority. If I thought that was a deliberate choice to highlight female mollification of male ego or a case of Imposter Syndrome, I’d be more forgiving. But because I suspect she’s supposed to seem competent, I can’t be quite so forgiving.

However, once the instigating incident occurs and Berry’s character Miranda is incarcerated among her patients, including Cruz, things become much more interesting, if not exactly consistent. Even allowing for flawed communication between the living and the dead, the ghost makes very little sense, and the story deserved better. However, the motif of NOT ALONE throughout the movie appeals to me, because the meaning changes each time, yet each meaning holds its own weight—and might sound terribly familiar in the midst of the #MeToo movement.

[HERE THERE BE SPOILERS]

When it comes to the suspense payout, though, the farmhouse reveal lost me a bit when it comes to timeline logic. When Dutton’s character is addressing the camera, is he addressing his wife directly, with the anticipation of bringing her down there soon (or again)? Is the woman in the video the one chained down there or Miranda herself? There’s a suggestion that she might have been a victim herself and not known it, connecting her with Cruz’s character and continuing with the theme of repression for the purpose of survival that was introduced through the conservation Dutton’s character had with his wife in the beginning. Was Dutton’s character addressing himself as a continuation of that conversation? Does he say “I love you” to himself, his wife, his victim, or his partner? The malleability of NOT ALONE may point to all of these options as being possible and open to interpretation, but I might be too generous, and in order for all of them to work, there needs to be solid evidence for all like the NOT ALONE motif, but instead, there’s not solid evidence for any.

When I first saw the movie, I wasn’t as aware of Lynch’s reputation, nor had I learned to recognize certain thriller patterns, so I didn’t see the twist coming, but as endings go, it suffered the horror curse of being underwhelming, with amateurish FX, not to mention more jarringly bad lines that did not work. What kind of doped-up villain sees a ghost and goes, “No…this isn’t rational”? Seriously.

The epilogue was similarly ‘why?’ Although it was good to have a reunion between Miranda and Cruz’s character Chloe, since the movie opened with them, I think there could have been a much better way of handling it—perhaps back at the facility, something to reinforce Chloe’s survival to bookend the repression-as-survival concept. Really, they didn’t focus enough on that, and I wish they had. They only really discussed it in terms of doctors using repression as a reason to dismiss women’s stories.

So the ending wasn’t quite satisfying, but the story’s main strength comes in the middle, in the space between the sane and insane, when Miranda grapples with that question herself and the people who knew her as the doctor suddenly start treating her like a child. It’s as Chloe explains, “You are not a doctor in here. And even if you the tell the truth…no one will listen. You know why? Because you’re crazy. And the more you try to prove them wrong, the crazier you’ll appear. You are invisible now. Can you feel it?”

The treatment, infantilization, and utter dismissal of the mentally ill as though we have nothing to offer (in the parts of our brain that are unaffected, but even in the places where our perception is different) is worth shining a light on—as though skewed perception in one area steals credibility from everything else as well. In the case of women, it’s long been used as a way to interpret the slightest bit of emotion as hysteria, rebellion as insanity, and all that as a reason to lock a woman away for her own good. People totally believed that, and sometimes still do. Because once you’re labelled insane, all of a sudden you have no voice. No one listens to what you have to say, only to what a doctor says you mean. (This is a big reason why I sometimes have to listen to Emilie Autumn.)

Some of the best scenes are between Miranda and Chloe, as well as Miranda with Robert Downey, Jr.’s character, Pete. Easily the best scene in the movie is after Miranda wakes up in the institution, when she’s sure she’s sane and doesn’t know what’s happened, but everyone’s treating her as dangerously psychotic, and she’s terrified and vulnerable. When she fights Pete’s hold, the sexual tension established between them becomes so twisted, which it’s clearly supposed to. Then Berry and Downey engage in a clinical back and forth that’s just beautiful in its quiet simplicity. The entire bit has such nuanced performances from each actor, it’s a real gem in an otherwise middling movie.

All in all, it’s a film that could have been better, but I still love it in all its hot mess glory, and it has enough rough gems to mine that it’s worth a watch if you like gaslight horror or are interested in a shameless popcorn movie on a rainy night.

Seriously, though, at least three-quarters of the movie takes place during a downpour, so waiting for a rainy night really helps.

REVIEW: Would You Rather

[image error]I’ve been wanting to write a review about this movie for a while, but I just didn’t have anything substantive to say about it, other than that it pushed a lot of good buttons. I’m a fan of locked-room horror, because it feels almost like a play. It evokes intimacy, then as things get more intense, claustrophobia. I also have a soft spot for adolescent games turned dark, which is why I liked TRUTH OR DIE and will probably love TRUTH OR DARE when it comes out next month.

The cast is also fantastic and varied, with Brittany Snow, horror alum Jeffrey Combs, Robin Lord Taylor, and Enver Gjokaj, plus a number of other familiar faces. Really, in dinner theater, there’s nothing better than bringing together an amazing cast, because even the small parts are given greater intensity.

(Side note: It also has a wonderful, subtle opening credit sequence that I love. Reminds me of the opening credits of MADHOUSE in terms of beauty and CABIN FEVER in terms of slow-burn subtlety—which was about the only thing in the original CABIN FEVER that was slow-burn subtle, by the way.)

On its surface, WOULD YOU RATHER is a simple sadistic tale in a post-SAW gorescape of bringing a group of flawed people into a space and making them torture each other. For WOULD YOU RATHER, though, a smaller budget makes the situations seem much more realistic in scope and execution and less of a spectacle. As gore goes, it’s minimal, playing off implication and imagination rather than showing the blood. Not that it goes easy on you.

The premise: Wealthy patron invites down-on-their-luck individuals for dinner for a chance to win a substantial amount of money. The exact amount is never specified, but it’s suggested that it will take care of all immediate debt and whatever else an individual needs to get back on their feet, and then some.

It doesn’t go well.

The reason I decided to finally write a review is that this small, scrappy little gem takes on a disturbingly relevant tone these days.

Haves versus have nots is an old conflict. Ever since we’ve had an economy, we’ve had wealth disparity and its resultant tension. But as wealth disparity grows and the poorer get blamed for it, that tension’s only going to get worse. As our present administrations continue to cut safety nets and entitlements, as health care costs soar, as student loans continue to burden the generations entering adulthood, as corporations continue to blame millennials for their own lack of wealth that makes the increasingly more expensive markers of adulthood out of reach, as affordable housing and decent food and other staples rise in price against stagnant wages…the tensions continue to escalate. Between the haves and have nots, of course, but also between each subsection of the have nots, because it’s an insidious strategy to pit the have nots against each other in the blame game so they don’t have enough energy to combat the haves. (See: THE HUNGER GAMES. Also: A BUG’S LIFE, which is unexpectedly political.)

And here we have a wealthy, white psychopath and his lazy, spoiled brat rapist son bringing debt-ridden people together to torture each other for their own entertainment…because they know they can. At the very beginning, we see the signs. In the doctor’s office where he courts Snow’s character to the dinner party, he’s eating either peanuts or sunflower seeds on the couch and discarding the shells on the cushion next to him. Not in a bowl, not in an ashtray, not in a tissue, not in a trashcan. He’s in a doctor’s office, discarding his trash on the furniture without any regard to the impact of his actions. We see where he’s put himself in the hierarchy.

The host laughs as he convinces a vegetarian to eat meat for ten thousand dollars. He laughs as he convinces a recovering alcoholic to drink a bottle of scotch for fifty thousand. In a world where one major illness can wipe out everything, where mental and chronic illness can make functioning to production standards impossible, where addicts are entirely blamed for their addictions when one moment of weakness shouldn’t lead to a lifetime of damnation just because of an exploited trick of brain chemistry, where being poor is so goddamn expensive while rich people get free things handed to them on the platter as though they’re lucky cats…blaming have nots for their own circumstances has become more unconscionable, yet the rhetoric seems to have only increased.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a white millennial with the additional privilege of parental wealth. I’m still angry on behalf of friends who get shit on. And frankly, on behalf of total strangers, too. This doesn’t have to be personal and I don’t have to have stakes in the game for me to care.)

But here we have a self-made man who sees a table full of losers, who feels he’s completely entitled to do anything he wants, because he has the money and they want it and are willing to do anything for it. All they have to do is sacrifice everything. And even then, only the winner gets it. All of them will sacrifice everything, but the winner takes all. So you see, friends, if you just work harder… Never mind that luck plays a significant role in the game as well.

Suffice it to say, the movie feels far more allegorical than the first dozen times I saw it. Even the deaths and how each player relates to each other seems more significant. For instance, it doesn’t seem coincidental that the pretty blonde protagonist gets as far as she does.

Don’t get me wrong. She’s a driven young woman. And though she’s hardly the physically strongest person there, quite slight in stature in comparison with everyone but Sasha Grey’s character, the Lambrick Foundation chose her because she’s fighting for someone else, and that sometimes makes a bigger difference than fighting for yourself. Brittany Snow does a fantastic job leading the ensemble with her vulnerability, and it’s worth watching her reach the point where she changes from a scared, passive victim to someone determined to survive.

But it’s still a stunning lesson in privilege, presided over by a man with a Draco Malfoy-like son who thinks he’s superior because he was born into wealth by no effort of his own and, like his father, is bailed out of his own criminal activity, excused for it supposedly because of the trauma of his mother’s death. Yet somehow, he deserves his wealth more, and everyone else in that room deserves to sing for their supper until they die.

It’s a blistering indictment. It really is. When a dinner party turned slaughterhouse is a rich man’s solution for who deserves his charity (which, when it has strings, isn’t charity at all), when compassion doesn’t even enter the conversation, when dire straits are viewed as just deserts and help something you must earn at the cost of your life or someone else’s, something is seriously wrong. The one percent may not be putting people through such individualized, intimate torture, but it is actually a matter of life and death. People are dying. And on their potter’s field headstones, it might as well read: Should have bootstrapped harder.

In that light, easily the most chilling line: “You know, you agreed to be here. You’re basically asking my family for a handout. The least you could do, pig, is show a little fucking respect.”

Beyond the social horror, though, the low-budget torture goes back to the classics. Really, there’s no need for genius, Inquisition-level engineering. The standards are standards for a reason, and the impact isn’t lower because of the utter, beautiful, sadistic simplicity of it all. As the players submit to the deadly game in their own desperation and will to survive, you’ll be asked the same questions. “Would you rather?” stripped down is just “Under the right circumstances, what are you willing to do?” As countless unethical social experiments have shown, we’ll always be horrified by the answer.

Another blog to check out

[image error]I’m in the process of completing two new long-form horror movie reviews, and if I’m lucky, I’ll get some more written during the week.

I have a great love of most forms of media and multiple genres. I consume so much music. I watch so much genre film and TV (granted, usually years behind everyone else). I’ve been a voracious reader all my life. But I’ve only ever felt qualified to write about horror movies. That’s a niche where I feel comfortable, where I have enough of a foundation to explain what works and what doesn’t, and I’ve read and written enough horror that I like trying to figure out what fixes could have improved a weaker script. I feel comfortable having opinions that might differ from the rest of the critics, and I’m usually pretty good at explaining why.

I think the fact that I can find the good even in the mediocre speaks to a real love of horror, and I sometimes feel like you have to love something to properly criticize it, because then you know any negative criticism isn’t an indictment or dismissal of the entire genre, or even of the movie itself.

Outside of horror movies, though, I like to joke that I have no taste. I just like what I like, and there’s no shame in that.

And I almost always add that my brother has far better taste than I do. He consumes even more media than me and has many more thoughts on the matter, with a greater critical understanding of a broader variety of entertainment. I do horror, and I love talking with him about horror movies, because it’s one of the few things where I feel I come from a place of authority. When he was younger, he used to be terrified of horror, but I slowly helped introduce him back to it when he grew up and our relationship was changing from that between two children to two adults. So we kind of built a new relationship around that.

But he does everything, and I love to read his takes on the rest of popular culture and critical response. We grew up on geek culture, and we’re both unapologetic nerds. We just went in slightly different directions with it.

Do check him out, and start with his ranking of the movies of Stephen Spielberg HERE.

Organ Donor

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Roses are red.

Violets are blue.

I am a zombie.

Let me make you one, too.

BRAAAAAAAINS!