Kurt Brindley's Blog, page 4

Best Horror Film of 2024

I’m always looking to be spooked in an intellectually plausible and unsettling cinematic way. Unfortunately, most modern horror flicks consistently fail me.

However, I just watched a production that hits the mark spot on and it has chilled me right down to the marrow of my bones.

Just never imagined such a horrific accomplishment could be achieved through an Apple advertisement…

Bravo, Apple… bravo.

No More

I finished a new book last summer and, in an inexplicable fit of delusion, I decided to try to have it published traditionally and submitted it to several independent publishers.

Yeah, guess how that’s gone so far…

Anyway, in the interim since finishing that presently wayward and unwelcomed novel, I have been unable to home in on a new story to which I would be willing to commit a year or so of intellectual effort/struggle.

I don’t know how it goes for you, but for yours truly, writing does not come easy and it is one long angst-ridden struggle. Hence my saying, which occasionally serves here as a tag line but at present is on the bench:

Writing is sorrow; having had written is sublime.

Lately, to nourish the parched creative side of my brain, I have taken to music – no, I still cannot play any instrument beyond my ability to torture three unfortunate chords or so on an acoustic guitar.

By music, I mean the garageband app on my iPad.

I decided to would try to reimagine my novels, their themes, or perhaps even scenes within them, as songs. The first novel I choose to contemplate rhythmically was Rainy Season.

Love hurts, as they* say, and Rainy Season makes every effort to live up to the truth of this wellworn saying.

So I wrote a sad, desperate song to express how the sad, desperate novel strikes me.

To help further express this sad, depressing Expressionistic Rainy Season vision of mine, I decided to include a visual element to it.

So I turned to French director Jean Epstein’s haunting 1928 silent film “La chute de la maison Usher,” which itself is a filmic expression of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic masterpiece “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and which, conveniently for me, recently entered the public domain – the film, I mean, because surely all of Poe’s work has been in the public domain for many, many o’ moons.

For you nerds who like to know, to edit and adapt the film to the song, I used DaVinci Resolve, also for the iPad (the free version of course).

So, are there more music/videos to come?

Maybe, at least until I come up with an idea for a new novel (redundancy intended).

Apologies in advance…

*non-gender specific

Sunday Songs to Spark the Spirit and Summon the Spirit of the Dance

Lately, ever since the earthquake succeeding, apocalyptic-inducing solar eclipse in fact, it has been nothing but blustery low-pressure days of rain and wind and dark gloomy clouds in my secluded hilly hood down in Southern Pennsyltucky.

Well, we all know how those old saws go – In like a lion and out like a lamb, and April showers bring May mosquitos, or something to that effect, so it is all to be expected, climate change notwithstanding.

But today is beautiful and warm and full of promise and Vitamin D.

Just imagine, after traveling 93,000,000 miles (149,668,992 km for those of you not of the Imperial mindset) or so, those sun’s rays are still so warm and toasty and lovely to the touch.

Time to go out and touch a few of ’em all while shaking our money makers to Mr. Johnny Nash’s greatest hit…

It’s gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiny day…

As a tribute to celebrate our worship of the sun, free books.

Get ’em while they’re hot!

#sunscreenwedontneednostinkingsunscreen
#unlessyourepastywhitelikeyourstruly

As the Speare Shakes…

Wikipedia

We all know William Shakespeare, right, one of the biggest balls in the whole white, Y-chromosome-ladened round of the Western canon…

Now, I’m far from being a Shakespeare aficionado, and even farther away from being one who has read and/or watched all the great Bard has, apparently, plumed for us, but I’m no Shakespearean slouch either.

And as much as I enjoy and appreciate that little of his which I have read and/or watched, I enjoy almost equally the intrigue that surrounds him. Is he really the one history has assigned to being the greatest English voice of all time, or is he just a front for another who for some reason or another has preferred to stay anonymous?

My opinion on the topic sways with the wind and is mostly dependent upon which documentary and/or article about it I’ve recently watched and/or read.

Now, I knew that there has long been intrigue surrounding his sexual orientation, but I didn’t know, or I don’t remember that I knew, that there was intrigue surrounding his religious practices, the whole Protestant/Catholic thing that was/is all the rage, literally.

That is, I didn’t know that I knew, until now…

In the tucked-away document, which heavily cites an obscure 17th century Italian religious tract called The Last Will and Testament of the Soul, the writer pledges to die a good Catholic death. If the writer was indeed John Shakespeare, who remained a devout Protestant until his death in 1601, it would have indicated a major shift in his beliefs and suggested a clandestine life during an era when secret allegiance to the Catholic Church in Elizabethan England could have been dangerous. For this reason, many experts have suspected the document to be forged.

But in the new study, Steggle used internet archives to track down early editions of The Last Will and Testament of the Soul in Italian and six other languages and concluded the document could have only been written after John Shakespeare’s death. That left Steggle with just one other “J. Shakespeare”: Joan.

A Remarkable Discovery of a Document Shatters One of Shakespeare’s Biggest Mysteries, Popular Mechanics, March 26, 2024

If you don’t have a Popular Mechanics subscription, which I’m guessing you don’t, you can read the article with an Apple News subscription, which is where I found it.

And if you don’t have either, the article, referencing a recent study in the Shakespeare Quarterly (which of course you need a subscription to view the study beyond the extract), goes on to surmise that since new information now appears to prove that his sister Joan was a closeted Catholic, perhaps ol’ Willy himself was as well, which may be why we know so little about his personal life, particularly that part of it spent in his hometown, homevillage?, Strafford-on-the-Avon. He feared, perhaps, of being outted for being a papist, which of course was a big and bloody no no back in his day.

I know, I know, all this historical intrigue and speculation is high level nerd alert stuff that, considering all the strife inflicting our pretty yet petulant planet right now, is very inconsequential.

But so is my mind, which is why I enjoy it all so much. Enquiring minds want to know, you know (if you’re familiar with that quote/slogan, then it not only dates you/me, it also tells us so much about your/my intellectual taste, or lack there of).

Anyway, I guess if I had to guess who I think the real Shakespeare is if it truly isn’t Shakespeare himself, then I guess my guess would have to be Sir Francis Bacon, mostly because that was who Mark Twain guessed it to be, and I guess we all know that Mr. Twain was a lot smarter than I pretend to be…

Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons than to me when principle and personal interest found themselves in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let principle go, and went over to the other side.  Not the entire way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case.  That is to say, I took this attitude, to wit: I only believed Bacon wrote Shakespeare, whereas I knew Shakespeare didn’t.

Is Shakespeare Dead? From my Autobiography – Mark Twain

Yeah…

verse / 20240326

spring winds sing cold / branches yet to bud sway, hum / winter's last refrain

Stephen King has words…

Wikipedia

A lot of them.

Usually that’s okay because he is such a great storyteller, one, I believe, who (whom?) deserves to be appreciated literarily well beyond the horror genre. Few can convey the human condition, its perils, its pleasures, as well as he.

But, to me, his overzealous output of words is always a fine line issue because, even though I usually finish any novel of his that I attempt to read/listen to, the ones that I don’t finish are always because I become overwhelmed by what to me seems an abusive overwriting of character and plot asides, a la…

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Even four years after the sudden death of his wife, best selling novelist Mike Noonan can’t stop grieving, nor can he return to his writing. Now his nights are plagued by vivid nightmares of the house by the lake. Despite these dreams, or perhaps because of them, he decides to return to Sara Laughs, the Noonans’ isolated summer home. In his beloved Yankee town, he finds himself falling in love with a widowed young mother, who struggles to keep custody of her 3-year-old daughter. He is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs, now the site of ghostly visitations, ever-escalating nightmares, and the sudden recovery of his writing ability. What are the forces that have been unleashed here – and what do they want of Mike Noonan?

Amazon

Bag of Bones is a perfect example of this. Weighing in at a hefty 752 pages it is immensely overwritten in my blurry view. However, the story is limber and sinewy enough that I was able to make it through to the final round.

I know, I know, enough of the boxing metaphor. I get it.

Another example of an overwrought novel of his, you ask?

Well, funny you should ask because I just finished fighting my way through one…

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A terrible accident takes Edgar Freemantle’s right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. When his marriage suddenly ends, Edgar begins to wish he hadn’t survived his injuries. He wants out. His psychologist suggests a new life distant from the Twin Cities, along with something else:

“Edgar, does anything make you happy?”
“I used to sketch.”
“Take it up again. You need hedges…hedges against the night.”

Edgar leaves for Duma Key, an eerily undeveloped splinter of the Florida coast. The sun setting into the Gulf of Mexico calls out to him, and Edgar draws. Once he meets Elizabeth Eastlake, a sick old woman with roots tangled deep in Duma Key, Edgar begins to paint, sometimes feverishly; many of his paintings have a power that cannot be controlled. When Elizabeth’s past unfolds and the ghosts of her childhood begin to appear, the damage of which they are capable is truly devastating.

The tenacity of love, the perils of creativity, the mysteries of memory, and the nature of the supernatural: Stephen King gives us a novel as fascinating as it is gripping and terrifying.

Amazon

Duma Key maintains the unbelievable fighting weight (sorry, I can’t seem to shake the blasted metaphor) of 783 pages! Strangely enough though, it doesn’t seem quite as flabby as BoB.

Now, as one would assume, these books are for all intents and purposes horror novels; ergo, I listened to them instead of reading them, for, to me, horror is served best via the ear versus the eyes. You know, ghost stories around the campfire vibe and all that.

One of the best attributes of BoB as an audiobook is that the King himself reads it. He’s a fantastic narrator, and he doesn’t seem to mind at all having to read all the extraneous words he wrote.

Duma Key is narrated exquisitely by none other than John Slattery. The only problem with him as narrator is I could never get Roger Sterling out of my head while listening.

And if you don’t know who Roger Sterling is, then take a lap!

In fact, take two!

Seeing that it’s Sunday, Palm Sunday no less, and we haven’t had a Sunday Song to Spark the Spirit and Summon the Mood of the Dance in quite a long while, why not have the King himself get us groovin’, eh?

Chekov, as timeless as is endless life’s coil of mortality

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“Uncle Vanya”

More:

Original public domain image from Library of Congress

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‘Uncle Vanya’ by is licensed under CC-CC0 1.0

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This brings me to Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” (1897), a singularly psychologically destabilizing piece of theater that’s now being seen anew as a study of post-Covid paralysis, not to mention the existential dread of watching your life slip away by the spoonful. Although first produced in Moscow in 1899, it feels just like our present American age, when nobody hears anybody else because listening hurts too much; when the most comforting activity imaginable is a long, solitary walk followed by an even longer interlude of silence. This is a drama about being driven insane by the sound of other people’s desires, complaints and aspirations when you’re already being tortured by your own. The pandemic and the boorish political and public discourse that followed drove us inward, unable to fight back, going nuts like poor Vanya.

Why ‘Uncle Vanya’ Is the Play for Our Anxious Era, The New York Times Style Magazine, March 21, 2024

This is an interesting take on the play, one hard to dispute since, you know, one’s take or opinion or impression of a work of any art is completely subjective and just as valid as anyone else’s.

Especially with Chekov’s work, which is just about as timeless and universal as anything written, and which is hard for me to see it anew as a post-Covid paralysis, or anew as post anything.

“Uncle Vanya,” to me, just like all of the Chekov I have had the pleasure to read, which, unfortunately, is not yet all that he has gifted us, is simply about our fear of death, the fear of our suddenly being planted into the soil to become nothing more than worm dirt without ever having done anything of lasting value, of becoming, in a sense, immortal.

Both images from “The Scream” Wikipedia page

Again, just my subjective take but, as Chekov was a man of medicine not unfamiliar with the attack of mortality we all are certain to become inflicted with, it’s no wonder it made such easy and often literary fodder for him.

And of course, related to our fear of death, there is the persisten nag of FOMO, the fear of missing out. While we are fretting incessently over leaving behind nothing of lasting value when we die, we fret almost as much during our short time we do actually have alive on this pretty yet petulant planet of ours of missing out on all the fun and excitement that everyone else seems to be enjoying with such ease.

Anyway, “Uncle Vanya” is chock full of such fear, longing, and regret. To wit, Serebrakoff (Uncle Vanya’s nemisis and whose young wife Helena he longs for) to Helena:

I want to live; I long for success and fame and the stir of the world, and here I am in exile! Oh, it is dreadful to spend every moment grieving for the lost past, to see the success of others and sit here with nothing to do but to fear death. I cannot stand it! It is more than I can bear. And you will not even forgive me for being old!

Uncle Vanya, Scenes from Country Life in Four Acts, Act II, Project Gutneberg

Of course Vanya rants and raves about pretty much the same thing, but it’s a bit more ironic showing Serebrakoff’s angst since it is he who Uncle Vanya idolizes and envies and, ultimately, despairs over.

So yeah, Uncle Vanya could easily be read anew as a study of our post-Covid paralysis, I guess, just as it could easily be a study of our post-yesterday or post-tomorrow paralysis, as well.

But, you know, that is just my subjectively humble take on the timeless tale…

The Pretense of Arthouse Movie Pretention

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Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

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If you are of the persuasion to roll your eyes and shake your head in dismissive disbelief when hearing the terms arthouse or slow cinema, wondering how anyone could suffer through such pretentious nonsense, perhaps a la El Toro as discussed in a couple of blathering posts ago, then you need to watch something/anything from the Hungarian auteur – and I do not use the auteur designator lightly as many seem to do nowadays (I’m looking at you Mubi) – Béla Tarr.

Now, admittedly, there are some serious stinkers when it comes to arthouse, but that can be said of any genre. When doing my laborious nightly scroll in search of a fresh flick to fetish over, I often find myself in complete and utter disbelief at the quantity of cinematic detritus there is out there. Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to scroll through all the waste in all the landfills of the world.

I mean, it seems like for every Tangerine (thank you Sean Baker) or My Own Private Idaho (thank you Gus Van Sandt) produced, there are hundreds of brain mass reducing messes made that never should have gotten past the point of being a bad idea let alone being allowed on even the most obscure and unwatched streaming service.

But alas, art is hard and as we know and as was stated during our recent cult classics post, someone’s cinematic trash is another’s treasure.

Now, if you typically are down on arthouse films and/or this is your first introduction to Béla Tarr, I certainly wouldn’t dive straight into his seven-hour masterpiece Sátántangó, which is why I am recommending one of a little bit lighter fare, of his anyway, in The Turin Horse. It’s one not much in the way of dialogue, but it is everything in the way of art and how great the potential of cinema can be.

You can watch it, Sátántangó, and a couple of others of Tarr’s work on Mubi.

Mubi synopsis: After witnessing a carriage driver whipping his horse, the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche ran to the scene, threw his arms around the horse and collapsed—never to recover. This is the story of what happened to the carriage driver, his family, and his steed.

verse / 20240320

life isn't all pain / sometimes there are calls to smile / winter's end is one

Jodorowsky’s Doom

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Photo by Amine M’siouri on Pexels.com

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The MSN stalker bots do their job well and today I was easily hooked with a well-baited article entitled The Greatest Cult Movie Classics of All Time.

All the usual suspects are on the list of course: The Big Lebowski, Plan 9 From Outer Space…

And of coure The Rocky Horror Picture Show tops the list. That’s a no brainer. I have fond memories from my wily teenage years of rounding up rolls of toilet paper and heading to the local theater for the midnight showing of it on many occasions. I’m sure my sister, who was said theater’s manager at the time, does not have quite as fond of memories of the show with all the mess and hoopla it inspired.

So yeah, I’ve seen many of the pictures on the cult classic list, pretty much all of the ones I wish to see. Typically when I hear cult classic I cringe inside because, let’s face it, one person’s cult classic treasure is another person’s cult classic trash.

I was surprised not to find Highlander and Weird Science on the list.

One movie I wish had a large enough cult around it to be even considered for the list is Henry Fool, which happens to be one of my all time favorite movies. Chances are you haven’t heard of it. I don’t know how I stumbled upon it so long ago… probably some obscure bin in some obscure long expired video store. I managed to snag a VHS copy of it somewhere, a copy of which I still have. Unfortuanly, I no longer have a working VHS player. You can imagine how happily surprised I was to see it popping up on Prime. I dare you to watch it. If you do, please report back.

What I was surprised to find on the list was Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo.

El Topo has been on my Mubi watchlist for a long time (It’s currently not showing on Mubi but if you speak Spanish, unlike yours truly, you can watch it over on the Internet Archive. Useless FYI: I am a watchlist=creator-aholic. And typically, even if I watch a movie from the list I will leave it on the list for historical reference purposes, a la this lengthy blather.)). I actually did start watching El Topo when it first popped up on Mubi; unfortunately, right away it begins with Jodorowsky’s son parading around naked in the desert so I decided to take a pass on it at the time. To me, exploiting a child in such a way is not cool, even if it is for outlandish foreign arthouse cinema of the early Seventies. So yeah, I was surprised to find the flick on the list.

But when I got to the end of the list, I understood why it was included. They had to showcase at least one of Jodorowsky’s movies just so they could justify giving him an honorable mention for a film he never even made… but almost did.

And that of course is Dune.

And we know this because of the amazing documentary about the failed project entitled Jodorowsky’s Dune, and which is currently available on Max.

I have been going through a Dune phase ever since the trailer for Dune 2 was released. I loved the first iteration and I can’t wait to see the second. Although, I’m not much of a theater goer these days because, you know, people, so I guess I can wait for it to hit one of the streamers.

Now I’m no science fiction fanboy, particularly of the literary pursuasion; but I am always willing to give a sci-fi flick the benefit of the doubt, especially for Dune. And especially for Star Wars when I was a twelve-year-old kid watching it with unmitigated amazement in the aforementioned theater, sans toilet paper.

Dune the movie made me do something I have never done before, and that is read Dune the sci-fi novel.

And yes, I now understand why it is the best selling sci-fi novel of all time.

And why the author Frank Herbert was so pissed off at George Lucas for ripping off so much of Dune for Star Wars.

And I also understand now why Jodorowsky was so inspired to make a movie about it.

Unfortunately, he was too inspired… and too weird for the Hollywood producers of the time, or any time probably.

Which is why David Lynch ended up with the project. While Lynch’s weird does not take a back seat to anyone’s, not even Jodorowsky’s, he had just proven that he could direct a serious film in The Elephant Man, which was nominated for eight Oscars.

Now I am a huge fanboy of Mr. David Lynch and I would never call any work of his bad, not even his attempt at Dune. Perhaps I would call his Dune a bit misunderstood though. Yeah, okay, it’s bad. But I think it’s bad in a good way, like most of the greatest cult films are.

Anyway…

Jodorowsky was so into making Dune, he was devastaed when it was taken away and given to Lynch. And watching the documentary, I felt crushed for him and feel it is a shame we never got to experience it. I really feel that had he been able to create his vision, there would never had been a need for a Denis Villenueve Dune, which also would be a shame had it not been created, but then we never would have known to miss it.

But the movie was taken away for Jodorowsky and as he tells it, it pretty much ruined his life…

And his son’s, you know, the naked tike from El Toro. He was slated to play Paul… hopefully clothed but we’ll never know.

Long story short, watch Jodorowsky’s Dune and see for yourself what the passion of a truely inspired artist looks and feels like.

And if all you know of David Lynch’s work is his Dune, then you really need to get out there and watch his entire ouevre. Start with his short film The Spider and the Bee. You won’t regret it.

Oh, and by the way, two of Lynch’s flicks were on the list* if anyone is keeping score. I’m sure you can guess at least one of them…

*having written the word “list” so many times in this endless blather, I’m reminded of this classic SNL skit…