February 2005 Archives

Hunter S Thompson 18 July 1937 � 20 February 2005

It feels like my heroes have all decided now is as good a time to go as any. I'd been wondering in the last couple of weeks what Hunter was going to say about the last U.S. election after reading this piece in Rolling Stone Magazine last year.

A good friend of mine's mum was doing her PhD. on American Lit. in 1987 and she let me borrow her copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It set my 17 year old brain on fire with ideas and new ways you could think about living your life; narrative, subjectivity; and most brilliant of all: just the possibilities life can have.

Since then i've had copies of most of Hunter's books, most of the time multiple copies, I think i'm on to my fifth copy of Fear and Loathing which has managed to stay on the bookshelf and not be stolen for the last 3 or 4 years. That has to be a record.

Sadly, I just found out Danny Sugerman passed away a couple of days ago at age 50. If you've read Wonderland Avenue you may understand if I say it's amazing he made it to 50. If you haven't read the very wonderful book he wrote, you should. He was the guy who was replying to The Doors fan mail for them when he was 13 or 14 and eventually became their manager. The book is totally sex, drugs and rock n roll. It's so good that my copy disappeared onto someone elses bookshelf all too fast. Good books about rock often do, Keith Moon from The Who had a minder who wrote a book I read when I was 15 or so called Moon the Loon which is another excellent rock n roll excess book, another I owned all too briefly.

Having a weird day where it feels like some large changes might be about to take place, or maybe not too. It prompted me to write an email response to how i was doing with: "How many times does life turn upside down until it's the right way again?"

I recently wrote a couple of film reviews for a magazine called Lucid. One of the articles managed to go missing between the office and the printers, they might as well have some space here.

The last 5 years have given rise to a new wave of films being made within the horror genre that reflects something of the films made in the 1970's. Director's like Argento, Carpenter and Romero all made critically acclaimed films in the 1970's that often feature anti-heroes, demonic possession; or simply 'the bad guy' winning and triumphing over 'the good' or even the ordinarily mundane. James Wan's Saw [James Wan, 2004] sits comfortably within this style of filmmaking with stylistic flourishes that are consistent with filmmakers such as David Fincher, or many of the horror films that Hollywood seems intent on emulating from Japan, particularly if they have already found favour with festival or cult audiences.

Wan and co-writer Leigh Whannell have produced a film that uses a minimum of sets, and somewhat interestingly, relies on its actor performances to ramp up the audience's anxiety. The opening premise of the film is nicely simplistic. Leigh Whannell and Cary Elwes' characters have regained consciousness at opposite ends of a room with their legs handcuffed. Through pieces of information slowly revealed throughout the film they are given choices which may help their escape, one of these means of escape is the possibility of using one of the blunted hacksaws to cut off their own foot.

In particular, Leigh Whannell and Cary Elwes' performances are excellent, and for the most part when the film is isolated to the basement (that looks like a long abandoned butchery) the best of the movie's intrigue is played out. The dirty white tiling of the basement combined with the use of blue and green filters used in the shooting often make the spectator sympathetic to the terror induced nausea the characters are often feeling, in particular when Elwes' character explains in a series of flashbacks his relationship to the psychopath responsible for their confinement, the film seems to borrow from the palette of 1960's Hammer House of Horror films that will have your retina's running for the door.

However, the film relies a little too heavily on trying to make the audience guess who the psychopath might be. Although this follows normal Thriller Genre form, many of the links are weak, one of which briefly attempts to indicate Elwes's character. The casting of Elwes here is no coincidence, he's probably best known for his last high profile role as the psychopath in Kiss the Girls [Gary Fleder, 1997], and from near the beginning of the film he's under suspicion from Danny Glover, a police detective, who turns in an awkward performance as an increasingly deranged cop who seems to get the worst dialogue of any in the film.

If you have seen Shaun of the Dead [Edgar Wright, 2004] you may have experienced that peculiar phenomenon when leaving the cinema of thinking that every other person you pass on the street is a zombie. If you went to the 24 Hour Movie Marathon you know exactly what it's like to feel like a zombie when you emerge from the theatre having experienced not only some great films; but the sleep deprivation and multiple caffeine sources have produced a compelling mix of light-headedness and an uncontrollable flickering of your eye-balls. Did I mention the pounding headache that felt like someone had got loose with a jack-hammer in my head?

This was my first year attending the marathon, and I'd heard many good things from those who had attended previously. The one complaint I heard from one friend when I asked if he wanted to come with me was that he had no desire to attend this year because he wanted to keep whatever sense of taste he had left. Excellent, I thought, I'm gonna love it.

I wasn't disappointed, the marathon this year evenly split screen time between current pre-release films and films from the 50's through to the present. Insofar as my own poor taste in cinema, this is a moot point. However, and this is significant, the marathon provides an alternative antidote to the majority of festival screenings we currently have in New Zealand, because simply put, it's fun.

Like The Incredibly Strange Film Festival, there is a unique blend of old and new material, but the marathon also seems to embody a passionate love of the cinema for people who might like to call themselves cineastes, if only the term didn't sound so pretentious. The organizers of the festival and programme seem to say (and I whole-heartedly agree) NOT every film should be consigned to the dustbin of history when it's run has finished, assuming it even has one, and not every film that doesn't make it to your local multiplex, or video/DVD outlet is necessarily a bad film. And then there are many of us who think unintentional comedy is far funnier than the intended kind, and, well, bad craziness is a good thing. Of this kind of film making my personal favourites from the marathon were Russ Meyer's Up! [Russ Meyer, 1976], Night of the Lepus [William F. Claxton, 1972], and Fangs [Art Names, 1974]. Films like these often give the marathon the feel of a good friend having stolen the keys from your local film society and plundered all of the so-called 'second-rate' booty for a private party.

The new material selected for the marathon ran the gamut, and most will be appearing or have started showing at major theatres. From the sequel to Anaconda, Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid [Dwight H. Little, 2004] (that's right, throw in a bunch more snakes and it's bound to be scarier) to films like Paparazzi [Paul Abascal, 2004] that looked like some pseudo Michael Mann film from the 1980's. A disgruntled family man and up and coming action movie star starts killing off the paparazzi who stalk him and his family. I know, it sounds dumb already. The only thing of interest about this film is this unusual return to 1980's reactionary conservative values. Films like these really do grow on trees. The highlight of the new material for many was probably Team America: World Police [Trey Parker, 2004] or Napoleon Dynamite [Jared Hess, 2004]. Both were excellent and helped cement the tone of the entire 24 hours, and in-turn prompted a number of shout out loud one-liners for the rest of the marathon. The one New Zealand offering for the marathon was Geoff Murphy's Spooked [Geoff Murphy, 2004], I tried to take it seriously, but once I saw that New Zealand SIS agents look and act like Agent Smith from The Matrix, well, it just didn't seem very credible.

Like any real marathon or test of endurance you need to go prepared. That means caffeine and food, but I recommend a blanket, you may start getting cold about 3 am because you haven't really moved for several hours and by 7 pm you may want to sit on it because, well, a certain part of your anatomy is now numb and impossible to get comfortable. As I mentioned, by the time Return of the Living Dead [Dan O'Bannon, 1985] started (a great way to end the marathon) most of the audience were looking and feeling like the undead. I can't wait for next year.