You were the chosen one
|
 |
Today Mer and I hit the top rung of the ladder, by doing the One Minute Film Festival's "dog and pony show" at our own alma mater, the film program at York University. We've done our fair share of colleges, but actually getting to go back to the well and make like a York prof was a longstanding ambition of mine. The experience itself? Kind of a mixed bag. At the colleges, we were being brought in as a legitimate added value in the various curriculums; here, it was like we were selling Girl Guide cookies. And the specters of the past remain, well, spectral. (But more so.) We were, however, treated to a good tour of the facility by our friend Jon, who is the studio's current Lee Paquette. The improvements of the technical resources of the institution - including an actual bluescreen stage! - were very impressive, and were more than enough to cement in my mind the fact that if I can just deke around some of the limitations among the faculty, York remains the obvious choice as a venue for me to do an eventual Masters. But that's just pie-in-the-sky talkin', now.
There was a long time between the first lecture and the second lecture, so Mer and I just hung out in York Lanes, talking about our much complicated lives. It was good. I had a sandwich at Berries & Blooms. And yeah, after a while I could remember the fun bits, along with the not.
Death and dismemberment
Mar 28 2005 -
7:52 p.m.
 |
I was surprised to learn (in my Star Wars Insider, no less) that Amrish Puri died a couple of months ago. He played Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which would make him, literally, about the second or third scariest person in my entire life, right up there with Geemo and the Red Coated Pirate. In lieu of further eulogizing him, I'll just reprint a little e-mail exchange between Mark and I on the subject:
MARK: "How did he die anyway, fire pit?"
ME: "No, he was 72 and he had a brain hemmorhage. Which, actually, kinda works too. Like he was exerting himself so heavily with all that Doom that he just ripped his own brain apart."
Buffy Checks Out
Mar 26 2005 - 9:31
p.m.
I'm a good girl. Pop says to become something, first you have to imagine it, which worked for him because when he first moved here, he drove a delivery truck for a 24-hour fruit and vegetable store, and now he owns one. It keeps him out late at night alot, because the night guy is always being "unreliable." Pop tells me to never be "unreliable." He says to always be at work a little bit early, and to stay ten extra minutes at the end to make sure nobody needs any more help, even the other cashiers, even the ones who hate me. I always stay anyway. It makes my boss like me more.
Ma is worried about Pop most of the time, because he's not young any more, and because the walk home from the store to our house takes him longer than it used to. Ma worries about me too, because I have a job at a different grocery store, and cuz I wear eye makeup and have a friend named Eric who calls me on the phone. But I'm a good girl. I wanted the job to make things easier for Ma and Pop, because it's hard to ask them for money for stuff like makeup and clothes because my parents aren't from here and they don't understand why things like that are important for a girl like me. Some days Ma gets very angry with me and says things that aren't fair, about the way I dress and the friends I hang out with, but I try not to ever get mad at her back because she's had it so very much harder than me. Pop tells me that sometimes, when we talk in the kitchen after he gets home from work. I know that he's right, and I know that working in the store, he knows more people than Ma and has a better idea of what it's like here. Sometimes when Ma is against something I want to do, Pop lets me do it.
So I imagined that I would get a job, and Pop was right because I got one pretty soon after that. I imagined what kind of job I would like, like working in a hair salon or maybe a business office. I don't think I imagined working checkout at the IGA, but when I saw the sign in the window it seemed so easy, like when I used to help Pop with the register at the fruit store, so I filled out the application and Mr. Hylas hired me the next day. He taught me how to do register even though I already knew how to do it. And that was the first time "it" happened. The cashier next to me - her name is Beata and she hates me - was staring at me the whole time and when Mr. Hylas was done, she came up to me and asked me if I knew who I looked like.
I get it from the customers alot too. A few times a day, really. When her face is on one of the magazines in the rack, it happens more often. Sometimes they hold the magazine up next to my face and tell me things like "it's uncanny" or "you look just like her" or "you could be sisters." I guess it's dumb to mind, because they're probably right. I'm blonde. Pop says I'm pretty. I've got kind of a smushed nose, and green-grey eyes which are my favourite thing about me. Yeah. Okay, so I look like her.
Buffy.
I don't watch the show or anything, because it's usually on when I'm at work and Pop uses the VCR to tape the soccer game. I know it's not a bad thing to look like her, because people think she's pretty. I know that she's like a superhero or something, too, which is nice because that means she probably helps people and I'd like to be like that. One of the girl at school says she also has sex with vampires but I don't think she was telling me the truth because I thought Buffy was supposed to kill vampires? And that doesn't make sense if she also has sex with them.
I know there are vampires. And demons, too; one of them lives next door to me, although Pop tells me that she's just an old woman with a disease, but I've never seen anyone with a disease like that, except the old woman's daughter, who has the exact same lumps all over her skin just like my neighbour. Once I was helping her with her groceries - the old demon lady, not the daughter - and I accidentally touched her hand and it felt like a rubber boot. But I washed my hand real quick after that, just in case it really was a disease, but nothing happened to me. I think she's a demon, like the ones Buffy kills.
I got a book out of the library to learn more about vampires just in case I ever saw one. The book says that lots of the stuff on TV and in the movies is wrong, like vampires don't have scary bumps on their faces and they can't turn into bats or anything. The book says that vampires are very obsessive compulsive though, like my cousin Richie who is usually fine but who has to wash his hands alot after he goes to the bathroom because he's afraid of germs. I don't know if vampires are afraid of germs too but the book says that they usually "exhibit compulsive behaviour" like not being able to leave shoelaces untied even if they come upon a pile of shoes a mile high, or having to pick up sesame seeds if they fall on the ground. The book says that this can be helpful in identifying vampires, and also in defeating them, cuz if a vampire was chasing you, you could just spill a bunch of sesame seeds on the ground and the vampire would have no choice but to pick them up while you ran away.
Beata isn't a good cashier like me, because she's always getting angry at the customers. Like one time, we were having a contest in the store where we had to give out little game cards to all of the customers when they paid for their groceries, and Beata forgot to give some to this one woman, and the woman got really mad at her for it. But Beata didn't say she was sorry, she just started yelling back at the woman and calling her names. Mr. Hylas was away that day or else I know Beata would have got fired. But she came up to me after and told me that if I told on her to Mr. Hylas about what happened, she would see me after work and find out if I really had superpowers like Buffy, or if I was just a shrimpy little Greek girl like I looked like.
I'm scared of Beata. She's mean and she's got rough skin and even though she's my age she doesn't go to school and she has a boyfriend who's like 45 years old or something. And I really think she'd beat me up if she ever had a reason to. But I also kind of like watching her yell at the customers. When someone tells me I've done something wrong I apologize right away because I'm a good girl and I don't want anyone to get mad at me. But Beata never apologizes. And sometimes, she stares at the customers just to see if they'll say anything, and they never do. It's like a superpower, like she can't be stopped or killed or something.
Buffy was killed once. It said so in Entertainment Weekly. I saw her on the cover, at the library, so I checked it out when I was reading the vampire book. Buffy died but then the producers on the show brought her back to life on another network. Maybe you can't bring a character back to life on the same network if you've killed her. But it's cool that she came back to life even though she saved the world and died because of it. That's what should happen when you save the world.
One day at work Beata was being extra mean to everyone, including me. She'd always get quiet and polite when Mr. Hylas was close to her, but the rest of the time she was swearing and calling people names and making trouble. I tried to ignore her, and I even helped Jim stock shelves for a while because she wouldn't stop calling me bad things like "slut" and "skank" and telling me that she knew that I did sex stuff with my boyfriend in the back room of the store sometimes.
I don't even have a boyfriend, not even Eric although that's what Ma calls him. Pop knows it's not true, though, cuz he can't get me to blush when he mentions Eric's name and he says that if I was in love with Eric, I'd blush. I'm not really interested in anyone, either, because most of the boys at my school are pretty stupid. Sometimes they call me names like Beata does, too, but I ignore them. Sometimes I wonder if I saved them all from vampires, if they'd be nicer to me. But they probably wouldn't even notice. That girl in my class said that about Buffy too, that nobody knows that she kills vampires. I guess if everyone knew how strong she was, they'd all be afraid of her.
I stocked shelves with Jim until closing and then stayed ten extra minutes to see if anybody needed any more help. Nobody did, so I got my things and went out the back way to go home. I heard Beata yelling at someone in the alley, but that kind of thing happens a lot. Still, I went to see if she was okay, even though she hates me, because I know that if something bad ever happened to her, I'd feel bad about it. I know I'm a good girl.
When I got there, though, Beata's boyfriend - the one who's like 45 years old or something - was doing something to her, kind of pushing her up against the brick wall and Beata was trying to hit him and push him away but he wouldn't go. The only people I'd ever seen in fights were boys at school. I'd never seen a girl in a fight with a man. It was different, it wasn't as fast and it didn't look like Beata's boyfriend was being very fair because she was just trying to get out and he was choking her and hitting her in the head and making her hair go everywhere. Beata hit him once in the chest and a bunch of coins came spilling out of his jacket, and he swore at her and hit her on the mouth, and then he started crouching trying to pick them all up. It was like he completely forgot she was there for a minute, because it was so important for him to pick up everything he'd dropped. Beata was trying to catch her breath and she was bleeding from her mouth and also her eyebrow where she used to have her piercing.
I didn't think what to do, I just went over and took my backpack
and hit Beata's boyfriend on the head with it as hard as I could. He swore at
me and grabbed at my ankles but then Beata grabbed his hair and started to pull
and while she was doing it she was screaming really really loud and really high
and he pulled on my ankles and I fell over but I hit him again with my bag as I
fell and then I was on the ground and the ground was muddy from the rain but I
kicked out with my shoe and hit him in the chest and he was grabbing my thighs
and Beata was punching the side of his head and I kicked him in the mouth and
he reached out and grabbed my belt and then punched me really hard in the face
and my head hit the ground and it really really hurt and I thought I was going
to cry because my head felt like it was blowing up like a balloon and then I
couldn't see as good any more and then
I remember that for a long time I just lay there and wondered
about something. But I'm not going to tell you what I wondered,
because
When I woke up I was in a room in the hospital, and a lot of people were there. Pop was there, and his eyes were all red because he'd been crying. Ma was there, and she was still crying a little bit. A doctor was there, in a white coat. A policeman was there, and I could see the gun on his belt. Beata was there, and she had bandages on her face and she was talking to the doctor and the policeman. And everyone was facing away from me because they all thought I was sleeping.
I could feel my body and it was all there. I could feel a bandage on my head like the one on Beata's. I could see some cuts and bruises on my hands, but my hands worked fine and didn't hurt. And I could see that Ma and Pop were worried about me, because they always are.
"I'm awake," I said.
-- For Demetra.
Scars (part 3)
Mar 25 2005 - 9:24
a.m.
Scars are sexy. I don't know when that started, but it's been true for me for a while. They're better than birthmarks, better than tattoos, and in a collection, they're fantastic. They're a system of communicating information, a sketch of visual history - I love the scars. I want there to be scars. They're suggestive, they're indelible, they're delicately emblematic of imperfection. And since no juiced-up mega-tittied porn star or supermodel ever did it for me, I look for imperfections as the first line of defence - this person is real, this person has a body, this person is touchable. This skin wants company.
Scars are silvery. They are skin that shimmers and shines, like precious metal. The nature of this remade flesh is so singular, so unlike anything else, that I find myself drawn to it again and again - to trace it, to walk around it, or just to stare at it and wonder how it got the way it was. Little strands of silver tissue paper criss-crossing the human body, drawing a map, telling a story. Wonders inside of wonders.
For a phrase that implies so much nastiness, "tortured flesh" - which I've heard associated with scars since before I can remember - is a surprisingly harmonious-sounding line... but wholly inaccurate, I guess. Scars may be banners of past wrongs, but they're also totems to past rights, the body's ability to heal itself outright, to remake the ruined - this is where the blood came forth, this is where we held the line, this is where we ultimately won. Scars are the laurels of the survivors. They mark the time, mark the place, mark the act of overcoming. They show you that a person is really there.
The Lure of Lawless States
(another manifesto for the
bitten)
Mar 24 2005 - 2:04 p.m.
We're all bitten, not just queers and vamps and feminists, but the entire everloving race, all walled in with complications beyond measure and self-awareness so pale we'd never know ourselves if we passed our image by on the street. A civilization of blind doppelgangers, an endless harmonized crowd bobbing up and down in compressed telephoto-lensed images, holding our hats. There's a reason why the smell of pine or the sound of a single, solitary hammer still envigorates, or why the first thing to go when we're all alone in the wilderness is the willingness to wash: it'll always be the surroundings that define us, not the evolution, and if the street is made of mud instead of concrete, we're less likely to worry about coordination and timelines and efficiency, and more inclined to enjoy the whiskey in front of us and the pleasurable company in the room upstairs. There's something about letting the cloak get muddied, or the boots become careworn. There's a reason why so many of us can feel the adamantium claws without being able to call them forth, can see the pale ones standing in the shadows of alleys, waiting for the sun to set, why a bleeding cut is more vivid and present than a month's worth of hi-definition TV. We're chained to the second law, no matter how high we climb, and if back to the green we are all bound to fall, then why not sooner? Plug in, hook up, fire off e-mail after e-mail with the sure and certain knowledge that when the power finally dies, all of these electric signals will cease to exist, and we'll be back to the basics: boots, and mud, and hammering needs doing. Stars above the downtown core; sixty storeys of steel and concrete as sculpture and art.
We're bitten, but barely; hickeys that hurt more and last less, temporary tattoos of intent we were never serious about. We need a deeper bite, need the sound of cartilage and bone crunching between the jaws. We need puncture scars. This time, we have to bleed.
Scars (part 2)
Mar 22 2005 - 10:16
a.m.
Heather Anderson put a stop to all that chasing at the end of grade 6, when she found out about my longstanding crush on her and decided to call me names in front of the majority of our assembled class. I suppose this would be an excellent choice for "most embarassing moment" on any and all quizzes that ask such a question, but it doesn't particularly sting any more. It's another scar that has faded, but I'm beginning to think that they all do. Or maybe either I'm unbelievably lucky to have such weak traumas, or I'm chronically detached from everything that's ever happened to me. A few weeks ago Caitlin and I were having lunch and she was remarking about just how much of the fine detail of the family trauma that afflicted us when we were both in our teens has completely evaporated from my mind; 3 years of anguish boiled down to a diffuse recollection of two or three key events. It should have been the stuff that years of therapy were made of; it ended up being approximately 6 months with a fat Jamaican psychiatrist, and a haze of purple pills that I stopped needing long before they stopped needing me.
There's the small scorch mark from my first broken heart; I leave it there to pay honour to that crazy half-year. It's a survival tattoo. I have scars from bad circumstances, little eddies in my memory stream - a long drive home in the rain, a phone call unanswered, a failed cremation in a little brassy can - that seem all bound up in darkness and grief no matter how intently I reasssess the realities of the scene. Loss leaves scars; four grandparents, one pet, one classmate murdered and another fallen. These things still wake me up at night, still walk with me in my dreams; sometimes the ghosts are here to help, and other times, they're just intent on terrifying the shit out of me. It's strange knowing people who have crossed over. They're the scars that are the most vivid; they're the patches of tortured flesh that I'll carry for the rest of my life. Those scars don't fade.
One of my favourite books is The White Hotel, which introduces the concept of future scars - the wound that will kill you, hurting before you have it. A lingering ache in the abdomen becomes the spot where the knife will go in. That last moment of strange euphoria - I've known this, I've expected this, I've always known it would be this. There's something very real in that to me, every time I smell a fork in the road that I've just barely missed, a glancing blow that should have been a kill. Phantom pain, phantom limbs, phantom scars.
Scars are formative. They change the nature of what they mark. They are permanent difference, an unending inability to go back to the original function. They're the bends in the road, the reason we jigged left when we meant to go straight.
I check my emotional body regularly. Surely there is an entry wound? Surely there's a scar somewhere, for the thing that made me like this?
Vampires and their discontents
Mar 21
2005 - 1:49 p.m.
It's thick in the air, thick as pomegranate blood, hidden in open windows and clean sheets and long mornings and endless tracks of meltwater snaking along the sidewalks like a river delta seen from a helicopter. It's been growing in me for a week, finally the curtain lifting, the red mercury rising, the spores in the air digging deep into the lungs and growing into new, green things. Calling backwards, one year, eight years, eleven years. That time in the park. Being twenty. Being simple. My idol and his idol. The Merchant of Venice. That Cardigans CD, and the girl that goes with it, probably frigging herself into sweet oblivion in her yellow room or yelling out the window in the middle of the night. The smell of leather, the taste of salt and iron, the sunlight that no longer stings or chills. Folding my ears in, feeling the cold skin inside me. It's really starting today, though, boy, the luckiest dayof the year. Scrubbing away month-old soap scum and feeling real breezes and that smell, that balmy smell, of mud turning to earth and wood turning to leaf. Colour is draining back into the world and I am drinking from the jugular.
Scars (part 1)
Mar 21 2005 - 10:28
a.m.
The best scars I ever got happened in 1990. I was riding my bike, with my brother either a little ways behind me or a little ways ahead of me. I took a corner too hard onto Mildenhall, skidded over a patch of sharp gravel, and went tumbling off my bike, landing (primarily) on my left hand and my right knee. On the palm of my hand, I still carry a little bit of gravel that was driven so far under my flesh that it couldn't be cleaned out. On my knee, I've got a beauty scar from where a sharp piece of rock sliced the skin wide open, so wide that it should have received stitches (but Mom was out for the night, and Dad's afraid of hospitals). When that cut still hadn't closed a month later, my doctor put the knee in an immobilizer, and now I have a nice fat scar. It's my favourite scar, because it's still there, albeit in a shadow of its former self. Scars shouldn't go away, and mine always do.
When I was seven, I was chasing Heather Anderson (what else is new?) and I slipped in the playground and scraped my upper right arm, creating a bloody oval that resembled the biggest scar in the galaxy, Jupiter's great red spot. That scar faded after about six years, as did the beauty scar I gave myself by grabbing a brilliantly hot retort stand in Grade 12 chemistry with my thumb and forefinger. The scars from my teenage zit festival have also gone away, in spite of the constant remonstrations that squeezing zits will leave scars - if that were true, I'd be the visible equivalent of the Elephant Man. My face would be unplottable on any map. I don't know why my scars vanish, but in that case I guess I should be grateful.
There's only one scar on my whole body that is as vivid as the day I received it - the circumcision scar. I don't mind my circumcision scar. That's the horrible flipside of all my anti-circumcision ranting and railing; as far as dick scars go, I think I made off on the good end. When my son asks me why mine isn't like his, I'll tell him the whole story, and the use of the word "scar" will feature heavily. But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter too much. Scars aren't much use if they've been there since before you can remember. Scars should have stories; even accidental scars should be under some measure of your control. (I was riding that bike. I took that corner too hard.) A scar's not a scar if you can't remember getting it.
Did your parts touch each other?
Mar 20
2005 - 10:45 p.m.
Well, all in all, I'd say this was a pretty good day.
Everyone comes to Tederick.com
Mar 19
2005 - 1:56 p.m.
It's been all about the Bloor this month. Usually I go to the Bloor about once a year. Now I've been, like, four times in March. I'm making that little yellow membership card work like a bitch!
 |
Yesterday it was a programme of the short films nominated for the Academy Award last month (excluding the documentaries for some reason, which was odd). It was just a ratty DVD projected on the Bloor's ratty video projector (shut up, I see the irony), but it was still a fun afternoon with largely excellent films. Ryan (the Canadian animated flick that won the Oscar), though, blew everything else completely out of the water. This flick is balls-to-the-wall brilliant. I don't know if I'd had any idea what it was about before I saw it, but it so completely surprised me that I spent most of the next short film scribbling furiously in my notebook. How do you even pitch something like this? "I want to make a documentary about the downfall of Ryan Larkin, but I want to build it around a surreptitiously tape-recorded conversation I had with the man, and create digital clones of myself and him, but with great chunks ripped out of our heads from where our art has injured us?" If I pitched that to a Canadian funding agency, I'd be assassinated. Assassinated.
I've bought the DVD off of the NFB web site, and will study this film further. (And interesting side note for the Yorkies: a supplement on the DVD is a longer documentary about Ryan Larkin, made by non other than our own Laurence Green.) Last night was a great one for getting my juices flowing anyway, hanging out with a bunch of people who were actually as passionate about art-making in Toronto as I oughta be. It was thick petrol.
In terms of other local productivity, I've finally been reading Girls Who Bite Back, a Toronto-based anthology of fiction, essays, and other mishmash concerning and critiqueing female superheroes. I bought the book because Rose Bianchini has a story published in it; I read hers, and promptly tossed the book under my bed like a jerk. Now I'm about seven pieces into the thing and am enjoying it thoroughly. And it's giving me all manner of good ideas. And Chris bootlegged me a Metric EP the other day that is really kicking my ass right now.
My girlfriend makes pumpkin ravioli. It's the sweetest ambrosia on the face of the earth. Today's our half-an, so I'm getting it tonight. There is no kinder fate.
Get Out Now
Mar 18 2005 - 10:27
a.m.
I am entering data.
It's looking like Mer and I will be guesting at various York classes at some point in the next couple of weeks. This is, essentially, a dream come true. Should drum up submissions for this year's festival fairly effectively, and besides which, it will be nothing short of hilarious to be there, doing that. I'm really looking forward to it. In the meantime, my brain has started turning forward to figuring out exactly what I'm going to be trying to achieve at Celebration III in terms of documentary, and what support material I'm going to need in order to do it. Otherwise, other than buying the exclusive action figure and the exclusive mini-bust, my entire 4-day experience is fairly wide open at this point. I dunno, I guess at some point I'll have to look at the schedule (is there a schedule yet?) and figure out exactly where I want to be, and when. Other than Wicket and Ackbar, the celebrity guests haven't blown my skirt up, although I'm looking forward to seeing if McCallum's got anything interesting to say.
Mmmm. Star Wars.
I love typing random, yet meaningful, words into my iTunes search. Yesterday it was "Willow" and the results were spectacular. Warwick Davis, Alyson Hannigan, a couple tracks from the Eternal Sunshine soundtrack, and some Buddhist monk chanting for some reason.
All right, enough procrastination, I'm finally switching fully over to FireFox. Wish me foxy.
Wonder Whedon? Or is it Whedon Woman?
Mar
17 2005 - 11:34 a.m.
Happy Green-shit-that's-supposed-to-be-another-colour Day, everyone.
Kate and I watched "Not Fade Away" this morning (Chris stop reading this blog RIGHT FUCKING NOW), the final episode of Angel, which ties up my complete Joss Whedon TV/DVD experience for ever more. In the last few months, of course, we've received word that the Angelverse is going to continue in a limited fashion in various comic books, including an Angel-centric 4-parter that's streeting this summer and which will, they say, offer clues as to which of the four made it out of that alley.
Me? A year later, I actually prefer not knowing. The conclusion of the series leaves me with enough that I'm just happy to spend the rest of my time speculating on whether Gunn's injuries were that severe, whether Spike shanshu'd, whether Angel got reamed up the ass by that dragon, and whether Illyria can actually be killed. I don't need no funnybooks showing me the way.
 |
(I'm still going to buy them.)
Meanwhile, the "End of Days" Buffy action figure has been announced as a Tower Records exclusive. I'll probably sit out the imminent Lorne/Wesley wave, but I am looking forward to this Buff. Hopefully the deal includes Towers in Canada, so I don't have to go hardcore Ebay berserker on the doll's ass.
And yes, Joss Whedon has been confirmed for Wonder Woman. ("Two days" was all Joel Silver would say on Tuesday. I hate it when producers are prescient.) In spite of my fabled love of both Joss and Wonder Woman, I remain sceptical about the project - I've never really believed a Wonder Woman movie could be work. It'll be up to Whedon to change my mind.
Mouse droid
Mar 16 2005 - 8:54
a.m.
To celebrate her birthday last night, Brandy brought home some DVDs and a whole bunch of thai food, and she, Erik, Mariana, Chris and I all sat around in the living room, eating and watching. It was actually exactly what I needed, even if I didn't know it. A lazy group movie night around here is surprisingly few and far between, for a household of three filmmakers.
We watched Saved!, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but in a completely different way from how I was expecting, and then we started Sleepover, but I had to call it quits after fifteen minutes. The flick stars the sister from Spy Kids, and the sister from Blue Crush, and probably a bunch of other sisters, and is the feature film debut of Joe Nussbaum, that dude who made George Lucas in Love back in 1999. Remember GLIL? Remember when it was a major news story that this kid, making that flick, had scored a big "development deal" with Dreamworks? Well, let's call Sleepover the final proof that no one ever gets anywhere making a Star Wars fan film, even the best, most-recognized one in the world. Five years of doing nothing (where has he been getting his salary for all this time?) and now this nearly-straight-to-video dump. Boy howdy, nerds, if you're gonna blow thirty grand on a short film, make it one you can actually sell.
I've been deep in Star Trek for the last couple of days; I bought First Contact on the weekend, in spite of the fact that it vies with Nemesis for worst movie of the franchise. Who would have thought that, huh? Who would have thought that Star Trek I and Star Trek V could ever have been successfully challenged for their bottom-dwelling status, not once, but twice? The truth is that as horrible as I and V are as movies, they are movies; somehow, Nemesis and First Contact seem to fail on even that most basic level. (Insurrection does as well, but there I don't mind it as much. Muddled as the film is, when played on the small screen, it works fairly successfully as a Next Generation TV movie. The others do not.) It makes you wonder what went missing. When any other TV show is thrown onto the big screen, the filmmakers usually try to do a film that will adhere to the original concept while blowing the minds of the fans. Did this fail to happen with The Next Generation, simply because no one ever bothered to stop treating it like a TV property?
Let's do the from-best-to-worst thing, because this is a nerdy, "here's what I think!" blog, and also because as a non-Khan, I'm unusual:
- Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
- Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
- Star Trek: Generations
- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
- Star Trek: Insurrection
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture
- Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
- Star Trek: First Contact
- Star Trek: Nemesis
At some point I should revise my reviews, since they're fairly piecemeal, but you can browse through them starting with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, right here.
Skin hunger
Mar 15 2005 - 10:07
a.m.
When I was 17 or 18 and easily 5 years behind in my understanding of sex and sexuality (I've since closed the gap to 3), Talia Wooldridge was turned backwards in her seat in whatever class we were currently sharing and she was basically telling me (patiently, as always) that I was thinking about sex incorrectly; I was prioritizing orgasms and penis-pleasure too much; that the entire sexual act could often be secondary to the simple pleasure of naked skin against skin. It sounded nice at the time, and rung something inside me that I couldn't presently articulate, but it took a few more years for me to really understand what she was talking about (girls are so much more mature than boys). Now it's readily filed under Most True Things Ever. Talia picks up another point - what, because she needed one? That girl was always a freakin' genius.
Touch is the only one of the five human senses that is considered medically essential to survival, but we barely touch any more. Mer's been talking about this for years, and again (girls are so much more mature than boys) it's taken a while for me to catch on to its fundamental truth. André Du Toit wrote a short story in our Grade 13 Writer's Craft class about the internet, technological disconnect, and the loss of human contact, which was science fiction in 1995 and glaring reality ten years later. We don't touch. America, Canada, and the UK are the three worst countries in the world for human contact - the occasional hug, maybe, and kisses only between expat Europeans. Teachers are legally forbidden to touch their students in many places in the States; parents stop touching their kids when their kids start sprouting body hair. The denormalization of human contact is leading to the hyperactualization of basic human needs in teenagers long before they have the emotional or sexual knowledge to properly interpret them. Adults who lose their partner or live socially limited lifestyles, the elderly who are disabled physically or mentally, are withering and dying from the simple lack of human contact.
There have been periods in my life where the skin hunger was so strong, I thought I might start tearing out what little hair currently stands on top of my head. Holding hands, getting a massage, touching pinky toe to pinky toe, whatever... the craving is so fundamental, and the results are so immediate and vital. It's good now. Now I can get completely obsessed with flesh; with the feel of it, the smell of it, the taste of it. I love skin. But in many ways, the boundaries persist. There are so many people in my life who, if they go to touch me, my skin just crawls, paradoxically refusing that which it needs the most. I don't know how it got this way; I'm just grateful that there are some people I can touch, who can touch me. I'm grateful that I know I'll touch my kids more than I was touched, and that slowly, we'll fight the hunger off.
Jessica MacLeeode
Mar 14 2005 - 10:09
p.m.
I've stopped watching Survivor. I said I was gonna do it and now I've done it. My interest in the show has been decreasing measuredly with each installment since Africa, and it finally just fell off the edge of the map. I think if they scaled back the frequency and only did one Survivor per year, this probably wouldn't have happened. But two games per season is just too much to keep track of. I don't know what the fuck is going on in Palau. I don't know who any of the people are. Probsty's cutting remarks no longer satisfy. I am done with Survivor, done with E.R. Both of these once-passions are just eating time and space now, and I'm sick of it. The Amazing Race is brilliant. House is brilliant. These are the shows I look forward to each week. I realized that with Survivor and E.R., I was just keeping up with the inertia, staying out of obligation, and struggling to do so. Fuck that jive! Give me Simpsons and give me sfoo! Give me television that works!
Meanwhile, I am not Matty Price. I've got about two dozen DVDs I haven't watched, and fully a hundred and forty commentaries I haven't listened to. Yeah, that's right. I'm not even close. I'll probably never even get close. But I'll keep trying, boy, I'll keep trying.
DyXXXtopia
Mar 14 2005 - 12:12
p.m.
If plans aren't currently underway to market a Homer Simpson Buddha doll, I'll do it myself. That's as close as this world ever comes to a "sure thing."
So it's looking like Matthew Vaughn can join David Yates in the 2005 sweepstakes for Person You've Never Heard Of Directing A Movie They Don't Deserve. What the fuck is going on here? Has anyone even heard of this guy's movie? Jesus, the meteoric downturn of the X-franchise could end up being one for the history books. (All right, admittedly, Joss Whedon is a director with a single obscure feature film to his credit, as well. But he's Joss frickin' Whedon.)
I've been missing the writing process, and Matty Price put a buzz in my ear on Saturday about an idea and now it's percolating nicely into something that might actually become a script. It's got a nice THX/Blade Runner/1984/Handmaid's Tale potential flava flave to it, and that's where I live most of the time anyway, so I might run with it. I know, I really oughta be responsible and finish the renovation of subculture's first half-act before starting, but... well, let's face it. I'm just a really fucking irresponsible person. The System quakes at my approach.
Everywhere I go, I'm thinking of you, Gary; I don't know what
to do, Gary
Mar 13 2005 - 1:30 p.m.
The number of cats in my life has exploded in the last six months. I mean, there are cats freakin' everywhere right now. So, to make things a little easier for Tederick.com readers (and to catch a little of that Cats and Pants mojo), here's a handy guide to the regulars:
 |
Zam
Nicknames: Fatty, Bumhead, Pissles, Puffles,
Barfles, Bitchface, Paul
Zam is my cat. She is the only cat that I actually own. I purchased her for $75, because she prayed at me when she was in her cage at the Humane Society. She has the best feet of any cat I have ever seen. (They are white.) My relationship with Zam has its ups and downs; it's currently very good. We reached a new level of understanding last weekend and now, for the first time in her life, she actually seems to enjoy limited human affection. It's the whole new thing. She still will not tolerate being picked up by anybody, but I'm hopeful that this may someday change.
 |
Sammy
Nicknames: Stinky, Stupid Sammy
Sammy lives with Zam and I. He's Brandy's cat. He hates and fears everything in the Universe, so I rarely see him, and when I do see him, he hisses at me. He runs flat out from Brandy's room to the kitchen to eat, when his hunger finally outpaces his fear. If he finds a human in the kitchen, he runs back to safety and doesn't even attempt to eat for several more hours. This cat has serious mental problems. He and Zam seem to stay fairly well away from each other most of the time, but other times will tolerate each other's company.
 |
Texas and Gary
Texas Nicknames: Tex, Texican,
Texo
Gary Nicknames: Gare-Bear, Garican, Scary Gary Kensington,
Gare-Bo
T&G are Kate's four-month-old kittens. They are brothers. Tex is buff and Gary is grey (or gray, as we like to anagrammatically say). Texas is an idiot. He's a hyper-spastic turbo-charged moron. But he's the sweetest thing on this side of the Mississippi, so no complaints. He sneezes on everything and purrs like a buzzsaw at even the slightest provocation. A big suck, Texas loves (and needs) people more than any cat since Woogie. Gary, on the other hand, is a quiet criminal mastermind. They're like Pinky and the Brain, with Gary being the Brain. Gary is calmly plotting all of our deaths. I don't mean to suggest that he doesn't like us; far from it. He loves people, but he's more shy about it. He really likes my pants and becomes obsessed with them whether they're on me or off me. But when you look at Gary, you can just tell his figuring stuff out that cats weren't meant to figure out. Oh and he farts a lot. And he has the best nose. Ever.
 |
Mojo
Nicknames: Momo, Momolo, Molly Josephine,
Stupid, Dennis
Mojo is my sister's cat, who lives at my parents' house. She doesn't like me too much, but she's also a big wuss and reasonably easy to catch and cuddle against her will. She has a caramel belly, which I'm very fond of. She was taught the ways of the world by the late, great Woogie, but she has certain emotional issues that she needs to work out before she'll be up to his level. For one thing, she resents every other cat on the earth, particularly the neighbours' cat, Mini-Me. Mojo has literally knocked herself unconscious while trying to batter her way through the window to attack Mini-Me. A sense of perspective on this issue would do her some good.
 |
Other Gary
Nicknames: Original Gary
Other Gary belongs to the people who live downstairs. He's grey, so when Kate met him (before she had her own Gary), she called him Gary. Then the new Gary came along and this Gary got demoted to "Other Gary." His real name, as we just learned, is Cobweb. But that has too many B's in it, so we still call him Other Gary.
 |
Mister Kitty
Nicknames: Miss Kitty, Cow Cat, The
Belly That Walks Like a Cat
Mister Kitty is the big fat cat who (we think) lives next door. Or is possibly just really fond of the giant chunks of chicken and meat that our crazy old demon wart lady neighbour leaves on her porch 24 hours a day. When we first met Mister Kitty, he had a pink collar, and we called him Miss Kitty. When the collar colour was changed to blue, we changed his gender and now he's Mister Kitty. If the collar ever goes green, I don't know what we'll do; maybe we'll call him Indiscriminately Gendered Buddha. He looks like a fat old asian fellow.
 |
Big Anus
Big Anus is a local black cat with the biggest, most striking anus I've ever seen on a cat. I don't know where he lives, but he's often on our porch, eating the aforementioned free meat from crazy old demon wart lady. If that whole black cat / bad luck thing is true, all of us are fucked beyond recovery, because he's in our path 24/7.
 |
Woogie
Is dead. But still very cute!
Blef!
Mar 13 2005 - 9:30
a.m.
I love being the first person up at 3QF on a Sunday morning. Last night was loud and boisterous, a four-hour Simpsons Hit & Run marathon that turned Brandy, Daniel and I into screaming road ragers, and stuffed all of the house's occupants with greasy Hut goodness. Salt and fluid warred for control of my system until midnight. Now the kitchen looks a bit like it's been hit by a bomb, but otherwise everything's quiet and simple. I owe a film review, and I want to do some storyboarding today and some comic book reading.
We finished Chris' movie yesterday, ahead of schedule. I don't know if I really earned an "A.D." title; maybe my credit can be "Subtle Force of Impetus." Actually that would amuse me in a lot of ways. I was also an extra, and occasionally a grip, and occasionally a layabout. There was fridge movement and driving of vans. I bitched about it for most of the week, but there's no denying that I enjoy being on set, even in the runner/flunkie position. I'm not exactly a seasoned vet, but it's work that I understand and enjoy. It was a lot of fun, and we got out early having achieved everything we wanted. You can't say fairer than that. The day also (as usual) raised my hackles a bit more on wanting to get something fast cheap n' easy done soon. I was talking to Chris and I realized that it's very nearly time that we got into the sexual imperatives of Shirley and Clovis, the puppets from Fuck: the Fuckumentary. I think I could make an entire feature film about them. It would be called No Glove, No Sockfucky and would involve both colour and black and white segments, and at least three guest-directed sex sequences.
 |
For the inevitable Star Wars component of today's blog post, I'm all about the Code 3 sculpted Return of the Jedi poster right now. When I first heard about this, I was like "no way, gay, lame, no." Because who wants a big honkin' piece of resin the size of a movie poster hanging on your wall? It would cost a fortune to ship and would probably rip the drywall clean out when you tried to mount it. Then I found out that they're only 8x10, and relatively inexpensive, and yeah, I think a sculpted Return of the Jedi poster of that size, for above my desk, would be just the ticket.
Meanwhile, the shipping estimate for my lightsabre has been changed from April 2 to "April/May." Which does not bode well. Last night I dreamed I met Harrison Ford at Celebration III and he refused to sign my Raiders jacket. Connection?
(Yeah that's right. Deep code!)
As we get closer to May your blogs are becoming less and less
understandable
Mar 12 2005 - 9:34 p.m.
I've got my own "he's back:" Wat!
That's some good Wat.
Old man smell
Mar 11 2005 - 10:13
a.m.
It's definitely Palpatine's war to win now. The most impressive aspect of the new trailer, for me anyway, is just how badass Palpatine comes off now that he's revealed himself to the Jedi. The only problem is, I really don't like the makeup. The makeup bugs me a lot. When you wait 20 years and then go ahead and cast the same dude in the prequel trilogy as you cast in the original trilogy to play the same character, it comes with the caveat that you'd damn well better make him look like he used to. Otherwise, where's the fun?
Here's Palpy as we know him and love him:
See, he's creepy. He's a creepy old man. He's tiny, and he's frail, and he looks like he's disappearing under that cloak. He doesn't get enough to eat. He's probably got diarrhea. His hands are gross. You don't want to to touch this guy. And that's what makes him extra scary when he whips out the FORCE LIGHTNING ON YOUR ASS! Ho!!!
The quintessential image of Palpatine! It sucks that his Force Lightning powers are revealed in the prequel trilogy, because it would have been way better if he saved this smack down for the very end! If at the very end of the very last movie, the Emperor could still surprise you with something you'd never seen before! Oh well, it didn't go that way. At least, though, Palpatine at the end of Jedi was some seriously successful incarnation of the "Ultimate Evil" vibe. He was Evil-er than any other Evil we'd ever Eviled. Eeeeeeeevil.
Then this happened:
Wuh-oh, trouble. The new DVD of Empire had this new Palpatine in it, shot while they were filming Revenge of the Sith. And it just ain't the same Palpatine. Neither was Old Monkey Eyes from the original version, I agree, but this is a whole different ballpark of "not Palpatine." This Palpatine seemed greasy and bloated and far too comfortable. There's a Jabba connection I'm not happy with. The cloak doesn't hang right. Ian McDiarmid even seemed to be struggling to find the voice! It was portentous of bad things to come.
Bad Things To Come, a.k.a. "Fat Palp." Yeah. Palpatine's fat now? That sucks balls! Sure he's winging Senate pods at Yoda and jumping over his desk to hack Mace Windu's head off, but he ain't scary. Hell, he was scarier in The Phantom Menace than he is as Fat Palp. Are we to believe that Anakin actually fell under the thrall of Fat Palp? That hundreds of star systems would willingly succumb to his villainous leadership? If I saw Fat Palp coming towards me, I'd just be like "get outta here you manky old pervert."
Yes, in Jedi it was just pathetic white fright makeup on a 40-year-old actor. But it worked like gangbusters. Now with all the money in the world, they can't even come close to replicating the effect. I hang my head. And, as ever, await the day.
Ripped in half
Mar 11 2005 - 12:33
a.m.
Palpatine's smarm. Obi-Wan surrounded by droids. Bail screaming. Padmé crying. Darth Sidious getting the jump on Mace Windu. The Jedi Council burning. The boots of the stormtroopers. Aayla Secura on the jungle planet. Nute Gunray getting cut in half. Yoda getting surprised by Force lightning. A hyperactive camera. The battle of wills. The swinging duel. Vader with his master. "You were the Chosen One." And the Emperor throwing entire freakin' Senate pods at Yoda.
Lost our Lisa
Mar 10 2005 - 12:55
p.m.
So apparently, last week in Michigan they recorded 215 people playing Hurley's numbers in the lottery. If they'd won, every player would have received less than $5,000. Of course, they didn't win, but you have to admire such a classic case of "not thinking it through."
Today I went mental in the 3QF kitchen. It started with wanting to reorganize our tea area (we have a lot of tea around here, and it wasn't particularly accessible in its old location) and went on to me reorganizing the space useage for most of the room. I also threw out the plastic bag collection in the closet, which was kind of a thick wadding that filled the bottom three or four feet of the space. It's gone now. We shall never sail the house to Cuba.
I popped into the Toronto forums at TheForce.net this morning and found that plans are indeed afoot for the third and final incarnation of the Toronto Long Line, currently targeted at May 13th-19th in front of the Grande theatre at Sheppard & Yonge. Now, while our Attack of the Clones line at the Grande was a lot of fun, the Grande itself was a fairly shite theatre in terms of sound presentation, so I doubt I'll be seeing Revenge up there with the lineketeers this time around. But I'm definitely looking forward to swinging by a few times for some Epic Duels.
Meanwhile, on April 1st - yes, the same day that Sin City is coming out - the Silver Snail is planning to have a midnight opening to release the Revenge of the Sith action figures. I really feel for these guys right now. Hasbro has been leaning on them really hard to not breach the prescribed street date, yet you can walk into just about any Wal Mart in Canada and find the entire line of Episode III figures already on the pegs. It's gigantically unfair, a classic example of a big corporation using dirty practices to outmaneuver a small company, so I'm holding off on my toy hunting and waiting for the chance to buy 'em legal at the Snail on April 1. They're currently estimating a whopping forty-six figures on the shelves on that date. Warm up your spending finger!
Unchain me sister
Mar 9 2005 - 11:13
p.m.
I remember when I was a kid, my parents made me watch Walter Kronkite's final broadcast as host of the CBS Evening News. I was vaguely aware that I knew who Kronkite was and that he had been a kind of fixture in my life, but he was of course a news guy and "the news" was the very definition of televised anathema for me at that age - everything that television should not be (boring, grown-up, monochromatic, etc.). Even now, I almost never watch televised news, but when I do, I still tune in to the CBS Evening News, because my parents did, and because it's what I grew up with. It was never Kronkite for me, though; I grew up with Dan Rather. I didn't watch his entire final broadcast tonight, but I did catch the last few minutes, and there's no denying the lump in my throat as he intoned his final words of peace and hope to all of his viewers. I love that guy. I'm really going to miss him.
This is just excellent. Creepy, but excellent.
Kate and I went to see The Woodsman today; I had planned an evening of DVD watching, but the intensity of the flick just made the notion of watching any other movies today totally repellent. I'm going to do some Seinfeld and some commentary tracks instead, and sip my tea.
I have found your Achilles' Otto!
Mar 9
2005 - 1:01 p.m.
From here on out, I'd appreciate it if everybody would call me Uchenna.
Yes, 3QF lost power last night. It was me who did it. I dared to make popcorn. It was a mistake. It blew out 6 of our 8 fuse circuits, all at once. It turned out that there was a big mega-fuse dealie in the basement of our downstairs neighbours' place. It also turned out that one of our neighbours is not only an electrician, and not only a film electrician, but a hot film electrician. Go get 'im, B-Dizzle!
Gonna spend March trying to tidy up some of the films I should have seen last year, which are now working their way through the reps. There's nothing good out in the mainstream theatres right now anyway; the whole world (or at least, my whole world) is waiting for Sin City. The new trailer is even better than the old trailer. At this point it's looking like Chad and I will try for at least 2 screenings on opening day... yeah, it's one of those movies. Meanwhile, the Revenge of the Sith poster is out... I have beautiful framed copies of the posters for Episodes I & II, but nowhere to hang them, so they're currently in my parents' basement. This gives me pause on whether I should be buying the Ep III deal, or waiting until I know where/if I'm going to hang it. But I suppose there's a degree of inevitibility about the proceedings.
Well, clearly
Mar 8 2005 - 8:05
p.m.
You are Frylock
You're the true leader of the Aqua Teens. You are wise
and powerful, unlike your teammates, who are always getting into trouble. You
keep everyone in line without pushing people around. |
Boy, I am all over this blog today, huh? I'm on this thing like stink on shit. Follow that in your mind.
The Schulmädchen Report
Mar 8 2005 -
5:30 p.m.
"I'm going to Iceland" is becoming Dave Tebby's excuse for everything.
Guess what super troopers? Airwolf is coming to DVD. (Along with everything else.) Yeah, I don't know if I'd buy Airwolf... I liked the theme song and the helicopter more than anything on the actual show. When I was a kid I saw a dude flying a remote-controlled Airwolf model helicopter around Wanless Park and I fell massively, overwhelmingly, ass-over-teakettle in love. I gots ta get me some RC Airwolf.
Thanks to my post office pickups, I now own the DVD I've wanted like poison for the last 18 months, Temps du Loup, and also a pornsploitation CD so good, I might have to frame it. The sheer breadth of my aesthetic interest can't help but make me smile.
For a while now I've been saying that I have no interest in the celebrities at Celebration III, because meeting Tony Daniels in '02 pretty much fulfilled all of my Star Wars celeb-meeting ambitions in the best possible way. Well, last week Kate me realize that I was wrong, when she and I got all excited about the fact that Warwick Davis is going to be at the con... and today Jason called me and excitedly reported that Tim Rose is going to be there. (There was a short pause... then... "Admiral Ackbar?!") See? Isn't it nice to find you can still get excited about stuff?
Sometimes, when I find myself perched precariously, sinking slowly but inexorably into some thing, I think to myself... "I could do this all day!"
Cooking with gas
Mar 8 2005 - 2:31
p.m.
Why can't the Canada Post flunkies ever ring the damn bell? Or at the least, replace the "you were out" rhetoric on their parcel pick-up tags with something more akin to the truth, like "I didn't bother to find out if you were actually in your home to receive your parcel, because I am a lazy, stupid, overpaid jackfucker with absolutely no intention of doing my job properly"?
After receiving my 2 parcel tags today, it took a full ten minutes to realize that the pickup of said parcels, and the mailing of the aforementioned film festival submissions, could in fact be accomplished at the same post office. It took the sting out of the situation, but added the sting of "exactly when did I start slipping?"
Flowback
Mar 8 2005 - 1:04
p.m.
Sight of the Harry Potter cover gave me the warm tinglies. I finished Phoenix in 4 days - Prince is going down in three. I've already started hatching mad schemes to boost Bex out of Menno camp for the midnight sell if need be.
 |
I've been lax in my filmmakerly duties of late, so I finally kicked my own ass hard enough to start tripping Leap out to the various festivals - one in New York, one in Germany, one in B.C., and for purposes having more to do with my own vain fantasies than any realistic chance of success, about five in New Zealand. Maybe I'll be the new toast of New Zealand. Maybe they'll fly me down to Wellington just to see if I can indeed leap freestyle across Taranaki Street. That'd be some sweet pap.
It's a bit humbling that Leap is the best I can show for my 2004 crop; I do wish I'd settled down and filmed something a bit meatier, like Cold, or I Have a Hibachi at my Wit's End. I don't feel very calling-cardy about any of my work in the past several years, and that worries me. On the other hand, although it's only a minute long, I think Leap is pretty much perfect. It's been a long time since a movie I made has so precisely expressed the original vision behind its creation. Sensitivity could have been made by anybody, but Leap was scruff-to-tallywacker 100% Matt Brown. Let's face it, I'm usually not very good at this filmmaking gig. At this point, it could very easily end up being a personal diversion rather than a career, because my ability to build momentum basically sucks. But once in a while, the doing of it actually is satisfying enough that the icky after-parts aren't nearly as annoying and confidence-draining as they usually are, and I feel like I really want to make the next one, and the one after that, and the one after that. It's good, because drive is fairly scarce on the ground these days. I'm finding it, and making good use of it, but mercy, it's hard to sustain it.
Yesterday Chris brought home a bucket of KFC because he needs me to design him a non-copyright version for his movie. (I wanted to call it "Big Fat Mammy Chicken" but the resulting image was too far, even for me.) I haven't had KFC in a couple of years so I immediately gulped down a leg and a wing. Then today when I was passing the restaurant on my way down Pape, my guts actually twisted in revolt. Stay off the gooniebird, folks. It ain't good for ya.
We played a team called Tony Danza in soccer last night, so naturally I wore my Bea Arthur t-shirt; my sitcom icon had to represent. In the second half, I was taking a corner kick and the ball winged farther right than I'd intended, and clocked one of the opposing players clean in the face while she was sitting in the stands with her cohorts. Everybody cried out with shock and dismay, and then one of the players looked at me and said, "Is that Bea Arthur?" Timing really is everything.
I'm moving. Just very slowly.
I was born a nerd and I'll die a nerd (a.k.a. the Elimination
of Indistinct Categories)
Mar 6 2005 - 5:07
p.m.
This morning I finished eliminating "Soundtrack" from my list of genres in iTunes. I did this because, as a soundtrack collector, the category had essentially become meaningless - with over 2000 tracks thusly classified, it was about as helpful as using "Music" as a genre. So first I split out all the orchestral stuff into a custom genre called Score, and then went to work on the rest - Funk, Rock, Film Dialogue, Unclassifiable Weirdness, etc. I've been working on this off-and-on for a couple of months. Now it's done.
Then this afternoon I realized that I've been way too liberal with my use of the "Need It" classification on my DVD wishlist. (Profiler gives five classifications for wanted items, from "Need It" down to "Vague Interest.") So I winnowed the "Need It" pile down to about twenty titles from the original fifty. Everything else got moved down various rungs as necessary, and a bunch of stuff got kicked off the list altogether. I mean, there's shit I just don't want. Why was it ever on there? Why the fuck was Zardoz on there?
I've been quite spectacularly lax when it comes to picking up that sweet crack cocaine of the DVD universe, Criterion Collection disks. I'm grabbing Kagemusha at the end of the month, but maybe I'll make like a responsible film buff and buy a Criterion every month for a little while. What's money, really?
Yes, this is how I spent my Sunday. And it felt good.
Close the Book (Part 3)
Mar 5 2005 -
11:57 p.m.
I'm done with Lord of the Rings. I re-read the book, I watched the entire trilogy back-to-back, and to finish things off, I started at the beginning and watched all of the production featurettes on all three DVDs, as one continuous mega-miniseries. I'd had a mad notion of trying to do this in one massive 19-hour marathon, but that seemed impossible; I thought I might get it done in a week, but even that proved too daunting. In the end, it took over a month. Now it's finally done. I am as LOTR-sick as it's possible to be and still be breathing. I have completely exhausted this entire filmmaking era. I've seen it, I've done it, I'm moving on.
What's really impressive watching all of this material again is just how wide and diverse it's become over the three DVDs, in spite of following the same basic rules. Where the Fellowship supplements contained interviews with probably 2 dozen people, the King disk must be made up of over a hundred individual contributors, really bringing home the vast familial environment that went into making these films. I wish I had a pack of hot Kiwis following me around making my movies for me.
Since people like records of these things, here's how I see it as of now, and probably forever:
- Return of the King - theatrical
- Fellowship of the Ring - theatrical
- Two Towers - extended
- Return of the King - extended
- Fellowship of the Ring - extended
- Two Towers - theatrical
And I'll not hear a word against it.
Yup, I'm done. Thoughts of a Close the Book (Part 4) left my mind almost as soon as they entered it - I won't be doing the IMAX marathon. It's not enough to lure me back. I've seen it. I've done it. I'm moving on.
To Be Continued...
Mar 5 2005 - 10:30
p.m.
 |
Boy, when Lucasfilm commissions a direct prequel to Revenge of the Sith, they don't fool around. The last page of Labyrinth of Evil is, literally, the very last thing that happens before the crawl rips through space at the beginning of Episode III. This being the case, the book was fairly irritating to read; great tracts of it are spent in "mini-histories," sketching out for once and all the last 13 years in the lives of Count Dooku, the clone army, Master Syfo-Dias, and various other loose ends who will never be tied up by George Lucas himself. The entire second half of the book, also, is little more than a fleshing-out of what we already know at the beginning of the final Star Wars film: Coruscant's been attacked, Palpatine's been taken, and Anakin and Obi-Wan are on the way. Given that we know that there can be absolutely no resolution to this story (and given that we know that the Jedi's search for Sidious, which frames the first half of the book, will be fruitless), Labyrinth is a very thin book. In fact, in terms of actual Things That Happen On Their Own, it's probably not more than 40 pages of new content. The rest is endless call-backs to prior events, or call-forwards to future ones. Not sure what I was expecting that would have been different from this, but there you go.
I am looking forward to Grievous now, although I expect his screen time to rival Darth Maul's for sheer brevity and pointlessness.
Replicas
Mar 4 2005 - 11:12
a.m.
A few months ago I had this notion that I was gonna fuck around with A.I., because A.I. is one of my favourite ongoing mental puzzles and artistic lodestones. Well, obviously, like everything else in my filmmaking life, it didn't happen. Vast stretches of time passed. Now I'm looking at my notes for the project... and I don't understand a single one. Honestly, I'd have to make a movie about deciphering these notes before I could ever make the movie that these notes were supposed to be for. I remember that I was going to have Andria sculpt me some statue heads, one each for Kubrick, Spielberg, and Lucas, and that I was going to age them like the Gondorian heads in Lord of the Rings, bury them in the snow, and then composite them into the snow search sequences at the very end of the movie. Otherwise, it's a complete blank. The puzzle of A.I. grows.
Meanwhile, Kate and I saw Inside Deep Throat yesterday, and in one of the reviews of the film I found a reference to Stanley Kubrick having wanted to make a porn film, in that brief corridor in the 1970s when porn almost became legitimate. I haven't been able to substantiate that rumour, but the mind boggles. Having never (I think???) seen an actual porn movie in an actual movie theatre, I must say that seeing the clips from Deep Throat in the movie yesterday, projected big n' tall on an actual movie screen, was a really new experience. There was very little actual hardcore material shown, except for one sudden, and somewhat stunning, close-up of Linda Lovelace's mouth sinking downward on an erect cock; it was a truly unique visual event in my life. What porn I have seen in my time has always been on a small TV screen or even smaller computer window, but I'm finally getting the fact that porn was something entirely else when it was actually bigger than its audience. The rumour may have been bullshit, but can you imagine what Stanley Kubrick would have done with penises the size of double-decker buses, vaginas as wide as restaurants, and money shots like fire hydrants with their cap pulled off? It's an entirely different visual language, and it's been tapped only by filmmakers with the most rudimentary of skills. What if a real genius was thrown into the fray? The mind boggles.
Now I am the Master
Mar 3 2005 - 7:37
p.m.
Holy crap, I can't believe I just did that.
........
.........
[adjusts collar]
Anyways.
I haven't seen that since I was 11¾ years old
Mar 3 2005 - 7:26 p.m.
Some days, Internet, you thoroughly fail to impress.
I could rant about the TTC fare increase. Oh boy could I. I could wax philosophical at length about the moral turpitude of a company that is actually hoarding tokens right now in an effort to prevent riders from saving ten measly cents per ride by stocking up on their fares before Monday. Really, I could rant the hell out of that. But I've been told that I'm batshit crazy when it comes to the TTC, so I ain't gonna go any further down that road. I will, however, point out that several of the people who were leading the "batshit crazy" charge are now completely onside with me, and grumble about the TTC with equal zest and fervour.
I could probably say something bad about Americans. But come on. Is it really a secret?
So mostly I'm just going to put out the clearest understanding I've had all week: this incarnation of The Amazing Race will not be satisfying to me unless someone sets Boston Rob on fire.
Not eliminated. Not even killed by a falling bus, which was the fatality-of-choice for prior irritants such as Myrna & Shmyrna and Hyperspazboy. Nope, I want someone to come up to Boston Rob in an airport and set him on fire.
That is all.
J'aime tes toutons et je voudrais joer avec eux.
Mar 1 2005 - 4:58 p.m.
I've been scouring my stats, looking for bandwidth-thieving bitches. I finally found the gormless bungfucker on the Fark forums who was using my Jasper images for his signatures... replaced the one he was using with some "creative phraseology." Fun.
And then I found out that some dude/dudeita was using an image of me in my Spike costume. He/she had this to say: "Ogni tanto qualcuno prova ad imitare Spike, non ho però ancora visto un sosia credibile. Chi glielo spiega a questo tizio: sosia che non è esattamente così Spike? Questa è la foto venuta meglio: sangue Notare le action figure sul Tv."
Rude! Well maybe. Google says it means this: "Every a lot someone test to imitate Spike, but I have not still seen a counterpart credible. Who glielo explains to this tizio: counterpart that is not exactly therefore Spike? This is the photo come better: blood To notice action the figures on the Tv."
But that doesn't make any fucking sense.
Was it the hump or the hoof?
Mar 1 2005 -
2:06 p.m.
 |
Since this blog is now apparently condemned to be little more than a chronicle of human folly in all things sexual, here's a lovely snippet from the neo-Victorians to the south: the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear a case challenging Alabama's ban on sex toys. Here's my favourite part: "The law prohibits the distribution of 'any device designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.' First-time violators can face a fine of up to $10,000 and as much as one year in jail." That's right - a goddamned year in jail for buying a fake vagina. A dildo. A fucking vibrator. No wonder this thing is so popular - even the company that makes it refuses to admit that it's a sex toy.
And naturally, the story was reported under "CNN Money." Can't talk about sex, but they can sure talk about money. If anyone needs any further evidence that Americans are the most sexually fucked up people on the face of the earth, please let me know; otherwise I'm officially considering the matter closed. God help them all.
I'm going to CAYA and buying the place out.