Stephen McClurg's Blog, page 52

Recent Viewing: February

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Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)

I expected to not like this as much the second time around, though it’s been about two decades since my first viewing. I think I like it even more. This is not a movie for everybody: cruelty, violence, and an all little person cast, which then throws up the “exploitation” flag for some viewers. One of the wonders of the cast is that they are interesting to look at because they are real, regular people. They likely aren’t actors, but that doesn’t matter much in the fantasy of the film. I sometimes have a hard time watching Hollywood movies with a bunch of “beautiful” people. It makes me ill. Like looking at contemporary newscasters or reality stars. They make me uncomfortable.

One of my favorite things about the movie is how it appears to be a universe of little people, while everything in the universe is built at “normal” size. Now there’s a Herzogian existential metaphor for you.

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Eat Drink Man Woman (1994)

I liked this much more than I expected, and in terms of worldview, it’s a polar opposite to the one presented in Even Dwarfs. It’s also not as sultry as the posters would have you believe. I was reminded of Ozu’s family dramas. People trying to make it in the world. Love. Anger. Work. Desire. The title even suggests pursuits of happiness and the film often asks what happens when a person’s choice for happiness doesn’t match the choices of their loved ones?

For a ‘90s film, there’s a refreshing lack of hip irony. Maybe I just get softer as I get older, but there’s a truth to trying to understand our reactions to watching ourselves and the world change. I think any kind of understanding of this came intellectually to me through Heraclitus in a class on the Presocratics. Though I had experienced true life-changing events, I don’t think I was ready emotionally to deal with them. I think I started to be able to do that when I started obsessing over Kurosawa: Ikuru (1952), Dreams (1990), or Madadayo (1993), etc. Maybe now Kieslowski is my favorite director of this sort of film that explores possible responses to the inevitable. Our worlds will end, but with fewer capes than represented in cinema today.

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I Saw the Devil (2010)

That Time of Year You May In Me Behold

School is incessant. Essays pile up. Standardized tests becloud the horizon. My feet are unfailingly wet. Either my children have hydrokinesis and practice on my socks, or they are careless around water.

Despite the times, Friday saw the release of Jasper Lee’s Mirror of Wind LP. Jasper’s most well-known music is on the score for You’re Next (2011). His new record is fantastic and I’m thrilled that I got to be a small part of it (bass on one track). He talks about his musical inspiration here and literary inspiration here. You can hear some of the record in that last link. Quaint Gothic Spring! Check out Alabama Bound and other releases from his group Them Natives.

Mark Ehling and I have a piece in the new issue of Territory, a really wonderful project that we’re both happy to be a part of. Go check out Mark’s book!

And how about this: Jasper mentions Tarkovsky’s Sculpting In Time as an influence and Mark wrote a comic with clowns discussing Tarkovsky’s Sculpting In Time.

Synchronicity!

Recently Read: January Edition

My Ántonia

Willa Cather

1918

A vision of the American West that was already gone when this went to print. I love novels from this period. Cather makes the scenery come alive, similar to what Wharton does in Ethan Frome, though often achieving opposite effects. To oversimplify, one could say Ántonia is hot and Ethan is cold. I love that the book is about the difficulties and joys of growing up in migrant and farm communities. Though I won’t use this time or space to explore this, my sense is that Cather’s narrative voice works similar to Joyce’s in Portrait, without the overt structural and stylistic elements. Cather’s adult Burden is narrating, unlike the young to old Stephen in Portrait, but the idealism he sees in his surroundings and in Ántonia, changes to a kind of realism by the end. There is a sequence about wolves that I liked so much I haven’t gone back to reread it. Like Jim’s first vision of Ántonia, I’m savoring my memory of it before I start examining its reality of phrase and clause.

 

Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film

Carol J. Clover

1992/2015

Considered a classic by those that read this kind of thing, it’s also the origin of the term “Final Girl.” Though she tackles sometimes complex theories Lacanian and otherwise, Clover has a readable, even admirable, style. I found the first half of the book a particular pleasure to read, and the second half not as much (and by that I don’t mean it was bad or anything). Maybe I wasn’t as interested in the material. Maybe I should have slowed down my reading. I plan on rereading; I’ll figure it out then, but the problem was likely me. There’s only so much I can process on a first read.

 

Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

Zadie Smith

2009

I’m kind of embarrassed that I haven’t read any of Smith’s novels yet, but I’ve watched and read hours of interviews and was excited to learn about this essay collection. I love hearing people who love books, whether or not they are writers, talk about them. She’s an avid reader of both classic and contemporary literature. In more than one interview she has also mentioned living in uncertainty, doubt, and indecisiveness, hence the collection’s title. I appreciate the willingness to say “I don’t know” or “I can’t decide right now.” I say these statements all the time. I came for the essays on Pnin and David Foster Wallace, but I left remembering the essays about her family, particularly those about her father.

 

Off Message

Joel Brouwer

2016

Brouwer is one of my favorite contemporary poets. One of the few poets that I’ve heard rather than read first. He read a poem about boring dreams that had an allusion to Un Chien Andalou (1929), which immediately won me over. We were in the Chukker. I don’t recall ever speaking to him face-to-face, except I may have awkwardly told him I liked his writing. His first book came out around then and I’ve been reading them ever since.

There’s an engagement with the present, even when he’s writing about the past, that I like about his work.  That engagement includes an intelligent and comical way of handling contemporaneity in which the speakers give themselves over to the experience of it all, while simultaneously interrogating it. This within-the-worldness is something I appreciate about his poems and have wanted to do in my own. Maybe there’s something Beckettian there I’m sensing or reading into it. Maybe none of this makes sense. Either way, his work is a continuing inspiration.

 

 

Recent Viewing: January Favorites

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“Interplanetary Revolution” (1924)

If you think that sounds like a Sun Ra tune, you’re not far off. If you like Russian futurism and constructivism, you’ll likely enjoy this small gem originally made to be a part of another fantastic film Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924). The Soviets send Marxism to Mars!

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Accattone (1961)

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Alice, Sweet Alice (1976)

A quirky film that combines elements of Argento, Don’t Look Now (1973), and ‘70s TV movie aesthetics and somehow manages to still be worth watching. One of my favorite killer kid movies.

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The Amityville Horror (1979)

Though I was shocked by how flat the ending is, James Brolin and Margot Kidder are fantastic to watch and really sell the young couple trying to move up in the world and provide for their newly constructed non-nuclear family. The American Dream, or maybe its death spasm, is the true nightmare. Feels like an American precursor to films like The Babadook (2014) and Under the Shadow (2016). While the score doesn’t seem to go beyond anything Herrmann did, it still sounds “classic” and is worth a listen, especially for the hot disco version of the theme.

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Mystics in Bali (1981)

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[REC] (2007)

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The Reef (2010)

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John Berger or The Art of Looking (2016)

Just discovering what I’ve missed by not knowing John Berger.

Test Prepper

After an unintentional absence,  Test Prep is back. This entry is about the original Friday the 13th (1980). I was surprised to enjoy the film after a recent viewing.

Once I hit page nine, I realized I was only about halfway through the argument I was setting out involving Northrop Frye’s commentary on genre and comedy and the arguments about how conservative or liberal slasher pics are. It’s roughly 1500 words now, less than half the original.  I hope to continue it later.

Tomorrow’s Terror Test tackles Friday the 13th, Part VII: The New Blood and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.

The guys are taking a tour of horror around the world this year and the first stop will be Australia in two weeks.

 

to be warm and tired/without some impossible flame in the heart

I’m reading J.H. Prynne’s The White Stones for the first time and while enjoying it, I often find myself feeling lost. I don’t find that a negative response; I have often felt that way with works that have become favorites. There are themes and images that connect across the poems and I’m just barely getting an overall understanding of the work.

Like that joy and perplexity that exist together, sometimes I get baffled by winds of deep sadness and loss, seemingly without reason or at least a clear cause-and-effect. Anomie? Alienation? Having children also spins the psyche to extremes. Normally, I let that fuel writing. That usually works. Sometimes I need the words of others.

Prynne’s poem below, “The Common Gain, Reverted,” came at the right time. I can’t even say I understand the poem yet, but I had that deep response to it, a feeling of an inevitability and “rightness.” That sounds kind of silly, but it’s been one of the constants in my life since first reading Silverstein or Poe somewhere in elementary school.

Ah, Terence, thanks for your stupid stuff.

 

The Common Gain, Reverted

The street is a void in the sequence of man,

as he sleeps by its side, in rows that house

his dreams. Where he lives, which is the

light from windows, all the Victorian grandeur

of steam from a kitchen range. The street

is a void, its surface slips, shines and is

marked with nameless thoughts. If we could

level down into the street! Run across by

the morning traffic, spread like shadows, the

commingling of thoughts with the defeat we

cannot love

                                  Those who walk heavily

                                  carry their needs, or lack

                                  of them, by keeping their

                                  eyes directed at the ground

                                  before their feet. They are

said to trudge when in fact their empty thoughts

unroll like a crimson carpet before their

gentle & delicate pace. In any street the pattern

of inheritance is laid down, the truth is for our

time in cats-eyes, white markings, gravel

left from the last fall of snow. We proceed

down it in dreams, from house to house which

spill nothing on to the track, only light on the

edge of the garden. The way is of course speech

and a tectonic emplacement, as gradient it

moves easily, like a void

                                    It is now at this

                                    time the one presence

                                    of fact, our maze

                                    through which we

                                    tread the shadow or

                                    at mid-day pace

level beneath our own. And in whichever form

we are possessed the surface is sleep again and

we should be thankful. By whatever movement,

I share the anonymous gift, the connivance

in where to go as what I now find myself

to have in the hand. The nomad is perfect

but the pure motion which has no track is

utterly lost; even the Esquimaux look for sled

markings, though on meeting they may not speak.

                                   The street that is the

                                   sequence of man

                                   is the light of his

                                   most familiar need,

to love without being stopped for some im-

mediate bargain, to be warm and tired

without some impossible flame in the heart.

As I walked up the hill this evening and felt

the rise bend up gently against me I knew

that the void was gripped with concentration.

Not mine indeed but the sequence of fact,

the lives spread out, it is a very wild and

distant resort that keeps a man, wandering

at night, more or less in his place.

~J.H. Prynne

Recent Viewing

The Bat (1959)

Dir. Crane Wilbur

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By no means even a good film, but for Vincent Price and “old” movie fans, it’s not completely terrible. Though it’s more thriller than the traditional horror films Price is known for, he plays a familiar character here. The Bat, a mysterious criminal and killer, gets one of the laziest and oddly effective costume designs I’ve ever seen. I enjoy the way these films feel, the atmosphere of how they’re filmed, how they sound, the imaginative worlds and spaces they create.

Accattone (1961)

Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini

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A real surprise. The only Pasolini film I knew was Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975), one of the most disturbing films I’ve ever seen. Back when there weren’t so many streaming possibilities, my Netflix DVD account was a paradise for an Alabama film fan with few resources. I would watch everything in print by particular directors or watch films based on themes. I used to make more lists and I think I’ve mentioned I used to organize my cash by serial number somewhere on here before. All those days are gone, and that’s probably for the best. Anyway, I decided to watch a series of banned films and Salò was at the top of the list. For good reasons. But, the film is more than its brutality, likewise, Accattone is more than its subject matter.

Accattone is about pimps, prostitutes, and thieves in Rome. Pasolini worked with both Fellini and Bertolucci, so if you know those filmmakers, you may have a rough understanding of what to expect. This movie had to have influenced Martin Scorsese, especially films like Mean Streets (1973), Taxi Driver (1976), and even Gangs of New York (2002).

The entire film is shot in natural light, I believe, except for the night scenes, which seem to be filmed under regular street lamps. The filming techniques are as raw as the story. There are a few scenes where a boom’s shadow can be seen, but production “mistakes” like this don’t detract from the film.

Last year I watched the fantastic The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), and felt like I discovered a type of Grail for Guillermo del Toro’s films and his child protagonists. Accattone, felt similar, but for ‘70s Hollywood drama of the down-and-out, in particular, the aforementioned Scorsese work.

[REC] (2007)

Dir. Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza

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A Spanish horror film that does a great job with a found footage conceit. The movie opens with a film crew shadowing a fire department. They get an emergency call to a building and once inside, get locked in and quarantined by authorities. An old lady covered in blood begins trying to chew on them. Creepy and fun, though some may disagree about the end when things turn into an Aphex Twin video, kind of gross, silly, and weird. There’s an American remake called Quarantine (2008) that’s good, too.

Kool-Aid Man in Second Life, 2008-2011

Dir. Jon Rafman

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Shana Moulton and Jon Rafman are two of my favorite contemporary artists and filmmakers. Rafman has made a few different found footage film series using video games. As the title says, this particular series is about Kool-Aid Man inhabiting the game Second Life. There is a lot of material on and by Rafman out there and I’ll likely be checking out as much of it as I can this year by him, while continuing my Moulton obsession.

This is not going to be for everyone. People do some strange things in Second Life, evidently. Meditative. Bizarre. Enveloping. I need to see it more before I can really say much of substance about it.

The Adderall Diaries (2015)

Dir. Pamela Romanowsky

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A solid drama that pursues the nature of memory, friendship, and family. This reminded me of the family dramas that seemed more frequent in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. Just a glance at reviews shows the disgust many critics leveled at this. I just didn’t think it was that bad.

In many ways this could be paired with my Recent Reading, Accattone, heck, even Kool-Aid Man in Second Life.

Recently Read

Too Loud a Solitude

Bohumil Hrabal

1976/1989

This was recommended by a friend who went to Czechoslovakia and had this book recommended to him by a bookstore clerk as representative of the nation’s literature.  Solitude is just over 100 pages and reads a little like Kafka, and a little like Beckett. The book deals with the nature of life and work, alienation, loss, etc. It reminds me of Jan Svankmajer’s films, particularly something like Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), in which characters begin building surrealistic pleasure machines. Maybe it’s because both artists (and Kafka now that I think about it) have roots in Prague, but I think there’s more to it that would best be explored at another time.

I think Hrabal deals with love in a way that most people can relate to, whereas in Kafka and Beckett there is an alienating sense to interpersonal relationships which also makes connecting with the characters difficult with many first time readers. I admit, that’s a general statement that may not hold up, but that’s my sense of it at the moment.

The novel is about Hanta, a hermit and paper crusher, who is soon to retire. He hopes to buy a crushing machine of his own so that he can continue creating artistic cubes of wastepaper. He’s constantly pulling art and philosophy books from the piles, so much so, that he essentially lives in a precariously built cave of books. There’s much more to all this; a summary doesn’t do it justice. It’s a fantastic little book.

 

Witchita Stories

Troy James Weaver

2015

Speaking of fantastic little books (and art and memory and love and loss), Witchita Stories is a bildungsroman (of sorts) and Weaver’s debut. It hints at a novel, while each chapter functions as a piece of flash fiction. One of the strings of narratives involves the fictional Weaver dealing with his brother’s addictions and breakdowns. The spelling of “Wichita” in the title gives us the cue that Weaver is playing with fact and fiction, and the pieces show possibilities of how we individually construct life, memory, and truth.

Several chapters are lists, and unlike many books where that structure seems forced, the inclusion of that device, and others like it, fits Weaver’s narrative and structure. Some of these pieces include pop culture references, particularly of musicians, which again, the references, like the lists, aren’t empty. It’s a book that captures growing up in and among particular groups of social outcasts in the late ‘80s and ‘90s. Punkers. Skaters. Stoners. Metal heads. Goths.

An author’s first book is always interesting because there are always seams that show. Writing a novel is difficult and the struggle to put a narrative together is often easier to see in a young writer. Weaver’s form here works well, though I imagine some may not like it, but I find he strikes a nice balance between the chapters that feel like flash fiction pieces and the telling of an overall narrative. It feels like a novel, but it also doesn’t, and by that I don’t mean it’s a failed novel, either. It is called Witchita Stories, after all. The structure fits the themes of the narrative and though the pieces are short, the overall effect is no small feat.

The First of Possible Weekly Updates That No One Asked For. You’re Welcome and Happy New Year!

Since we’ve had threats of snow this week, the kids and I watched The Snowy Day adaptation on Netflix. Ezra Jack Keats’s little book is one of my favorite children’s stories, and, to be expected, gets much altered in an extended animated version. It does capture Keats’s art and the atmosphere of his story, though I love the small world created in the original.

We also had this conversation:

5YO: “That’s Snow Peter!”

3YO: “Yeah!”

Me: “This is a movie of that book we like.”

5YO: “We have a big book with Snow Peter, a little book with Snow Peter, and now this? We have too many Snow Peters!”

3YO: “Snowpedoes! Snowpedoes! Snowpedoes!”

Some of the other pieces of the week:

Listening

I have two listening modes these days. One mode is for music that I can write to. The other mode is more about pleasure listening, finding new stuff to enjoy or just take in. I only operate in the second mode a few times a week if I’m lucky.

I’ve been listening to Charanjit Singh this week and his music falls into both modes. Unfamiliar with his work, I saw that he had been a session musician for composers like RD Burman. Singh’s work hits quite a range. I’ve been listening to these albums:

Instrumental Film Tunes (1975)

Synthesizing–Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat (1982)

Both of these records can function as background music, and both reward close listening. Instrumental Film Tunes is what you would expect from someone who was a session musician for RD Burman. The tracks feature interesting arrangements that sound easier than they are to pull off. They tend to feature the “East meets West” instrumentation that Burman was famous for.

Synthesizing seems like an uninteresting gimmick, but it’s much better than that. Evidently, it’s considered one of the first “Acid House” records.  Some may still find it uninteresting, but beyond it being a great recording for writing to, the electro disco beat keeps pushing me forward without being overbearing. I guess I need to check out some Acid House records.

As a sidenote, through Singh I discovered the world of Indian slide guitar. Sublime Frequencies put out a collection that’s a blast.

Here’s a Singh performance of a Burman track from it:

And this led me to Van Shipley, who I feel like has been recommended to me for several years and I just never checked his work out. Here he is in action:

Writing

I’m currently more than halfway through my first Test Prep column of the year and will post it soon. It’s about Friday the 13th (1980), a movie I find more interesting and fun to watch now than I did as a kid.

Currently helping a friend get through some edits of an essay of his that’s likely to lead into a larger collaboration. It’s about the South, identity, language, glossolalia, among other things.

Along with writing my current poetry manuscript, I’m also editing and revising poems to get started on the submission process.

Hope you’re having a good start to your year. I’m gonna go gnaw on a leftover candy cane.

The Year in Viewing 2016

My favorite films from the past year of viewing. Considering that this isn’t even all the movies I watched this year, I’d have to say that I’m compulsive. I genuinely love film.

Also, I need to look at this list every time I think I don’t have time to write.

Films in bold are particular personal favorites.

Animated

Neighbours (1952)

Fantastic Planet (1973)

The Sand Castle (1977)

Asparagus (1979)

Suur Toll (1980)

Dver (1986)

Son (1988)

Alter Ego (1989)

Creature Comforts (1989)

The Old Lady and the Pigeons (1997)

Harvie Krumpet (2003)

Documentary

Grey Gardens (1975)

Osamu Tezuka: The Secret of Creation (1985)

The Beales of Grey Gardens (2006)

Chantal Akerman, From Here (2010)

Horror Europa with Mark Gatiss (2012)

Art and Craft (2014)

Giuseppe Makes a Movie (2014)

Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau (2014)

The Nightmare (2015)

Art House

La Jetee (1962)

Flaming Creatures (1963)

Chafed Elbows (1966)

Fat Feet (1966)

Hold Me While I’m Naked (1966)

Mindscape (1976)

Vertical Features Remake (1978)

A Walk Through H: The Reincarnation of an Ornithologist (1979)

Forbidden Zone (1980)

Screamplay (1985)

Mala Noche (1986)

Cat in the Brain (1990)

Laurie Anderson: The Collected Videos (1991)

Schizopolis (1996)

The Heart of the World (2000)

DU3L (2009)

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Every Angle Is an Angel (2016)

Horror / Sci-fi / VHS Weirdness

King Kong (1933)

The Vampire’s Ghost (1945)

The Black Sleep (1956)

Tormented (1960)

Black Sunday (1960)

Last Woman on Earth (1960)

The Birds (1963)

Monstrosity (1963)

Black Sabbath (1963)

Queen of Blood (1966)

Messiah of Evil (1973)

Scream Blacula Scream (1973)

Dark Star (1974)

The Living Dead of Manchester Morgue (1974)

The Devil’s Rain (1975)

Don’t Go in the House (1980)

Friday the 13th (1980)

Ms. 45 (1981)

The Aftermath (1982)

Conquest (1983)

Octopussy (1983)

Rats: Night of Terror (1984)

Breeders (1986)

Demons 2 (1986)

TerrorVision (1986)

I Was a Teenage Zombie (1987)

The Monster Squad (1987)

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (1991)

Cast a Deadly Spell (1991)

Murder Party (2007)

Cloverfield (2008)

The Reef (2010)

Whistle and I’ll Come to You (2010)

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Tusk (2014)

Bone Tomahawk (2015)

Crimson Peak (2015)

Everything Else

Safety Last! (1923)

The Wheel (1923)

The Freshman (1925)

Master of the House (1925)

Strike (1925)

Le Million (1931)

I Was Born, But…(1932)

Elevator to the Gallows (1958)

Red Desert (1964)

The Naked Kiss (1964)

Band of Outsiders (1964)

Fat City (1972)

Black Mama, White Mama (1973)

Lady Snowblood (1973)

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

All That Jazz (1979)

Blank Generation (1980)

Blow Out (1981)

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains (1982)

Cabaret (1984)

The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984)

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)

Multi-Facial (1995)

Creed (2015)

Television

Professor Balthazar (1967-1978)

The Great Chefs of New Orleans (Mostly episodes from 1983-1984)

Tales from the Darkside (1983-1988)

Tales from the Crypt (1989-1996)

Penny Dreadful (2014-2016)

Neil Breen

No one makes movies like Breen. For a variety of reasons. A friend of mine got me hooked on these one-of-a-kind creations. I love these movies. I am excited about seeing his new film, Pass Thru, soon. [As I’m posting this, I’m getting ready to screen this with aforementioned friend. I can’t wait.]

Double Down (2005)

I Am Here….Now (2009)

Fateful Findings (2013)