I keep meaning to write but words fail me.
I read somewhere that constantly worrying about why you are the way you are is a sign of anxiety. So I've tried my best to stop worrying. Instead waves of emotion crash over me in unexpected ways and I simply try to brush them off. I do my best not to cry (although this is not always successful) and I try not to express things in words.
I don't know what's best any more. Everything seems to be moving along just fine and when I'm distracted there is nothing to worry about. In my lonely moments and in my dreams I'm distressed and drowning but words and expression don't fix anything. I'm flailing but there's no point in getting upset about it. If I end up getting washed away inevitably I'll be dragged back to shore by my continued existence, just trudging along, worse for wear but still moving, slowly.
Wednesday 28 March 2018
Monday 5 March 2018
Sunday 4 March 2018
On Body and Soul
As I've ranted before and could scream into the void forever more, I don't take much stock in awards that are doled out by various organisations. Once you realise that the film industry is operated as a business which is funded by public interest, it's hard not to see the cogs turning. Awards aren't given due to merit or talent alone. There is a whole system of campaigning containing various hidden rules and obstacles which are embedded within. So much glad-handing, so much exposure, so much momentum. Lest we forget that the credits at the end of any given film usually will list hundreds of collaborators and people involved in creating these pieces of art and only a handful are awarded for their individual efforts.
Oscar Nominations 2018
Best Foreign Language Film:
“A Fantastic Woman” (Chile)
“The Insult” (Lebanon)
“Loveless” (Russia)
“On Body and Soul” (Hungary)
“The Square” (Sweden)
Believe it or not, in my infinite wisdom and unending efforts to seem avant-garde, I usually take most interest in the foreign film category for the Oscars. I wouldn't say I put much stock in the film which inevitably wins as that typically isn't the one I like the most. The fact that the Academy feels the need to have such a category but doesn't award such films for their technical aspects and acting (only on the rarest of occasions) saddens me.
The more I watch world cinema the more in love I become with it. I prefer watching films with subtitles as I can absorb what's happening much easier. Reading and viewing at the same time has never been a complication for me. Plus there seems to be something much more difficult and unfathomable about the emotions and lack of easy answers presented in such films. Anything which compels me into deep thought captures my affection even if I don't understand it or don't love it in the traditional sense. I've always be drawn toward an element of unknowing as it fuels my imagination.
At the end of the day I always make an effort to watch films nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award just because... Well I really like seeing the world through a different perspective. There's something just very self-conscious about how Hollywood projects it's views to the world. I might be naive but there is something liberating about seeing the rest of the world create indelible art without being trapped in the system.
This brings me to On Body and Soul. In the briefest of descriptions it's about two people who work in an abattoir drawn together by their dreams. It's a tentative love story and it's mixed with brutal images of cows being slaughtered and a fairy-tale landscape in the snow with two deer wandering around together. It's such a whimsical and gentle film in how it manages its central relationship.
To say anymore would be to ruin it though so I'm just going to go on and completely change the subject. At work sometimes my colleagues will sometimes go off into discussions about the reality of ghosts and death and such. I'm not sure how these things happen but they have on more than one occasion. I just sit slack jawed and bleary eyed and make the occasional wry non-committal comment.
It feels a bit awkward of me to espouse my views on such things as I worry other people might think less of me. I am aware I shouldn't let what other people think of me define my interactions but in cases like this it most certainly does. My main concern about my views and feelings are that I can't trust them. They change like the tide, coming and going, shifting back and forth gradually eroding or reforming.
If someone discusses ghosts or religion or the propensity for humans to have a soul. I suppose the magic has dissipated due to my thoughts denying the possibility of anything beyond what I can rationalise. I can believe in life beyond the stars because that makes sense in a way. Space and the deepest oceans can still be the biggest mysteries to me and therefore the most terrifying things. Death and beyond seem mundane to me. But then again some days this could become fuzzier and less definitive. The 'what ifs?' creep in...
When it comes to religion. I read a lot of books from historical investigations of the Bible and religion to angry polemics by atheists and then some cogent counter arguments and the like. I came to the conclusion that death is the end. Life can come from death on a molecular level but beyond that my spirituality is non-existent. The soul is a trick of the brain. Something we have as a species convinced ourselves exists as we are conscious of being alive and do not live solely by instinct like most every other living thing. When you die you cease to exist on this planet. If every other living dies and does not go to heaven then I think it's only fair the same rules apply to everything.
This was developed mostly as a teenager trying to cope with the grief of losing my grandmother. I worried that she was sad and lonely and disconnected from feeling love and I didn't love her enough and that was the issue. I worried endlessly that she died feeling alone although I know my parents and granddad were constantly at her bedside. From all the reading and hoping I realised I had lost my grandmother and that religion and anything beyond that was a tapestry of hopes and dreams manifested by other people over centuries trying to make sense of the world.
That loneliness I could sense within my grandma was something I grew to feel in myself and something I deal with on a daily basis. Some days are harder than others. It's within everyone somewhere I suppose. I would hope from my understanding and caring that I could help people with this sliver of knowledge. I don't necessarily have to love them enough so they aren't depressed like I thought I could with my grandma. I hope that in my day to day life I do enough to stem the flow of loneliness within the people around me and the people I care about. That's all I can do.
Ha, that got weird! I'm not sure I've expressed myself very well at all.
Oscar Nominations 2018
Best Foreign Language Film:
“A Fantastic Woman” (Chile)
“The Insult” (Lebanon)
“Loveless” (Russia)
“On Body and Soul” (Hungary)
“The Square” (Sweden)
Believe it or not, in my infinite wisdom and unending efforts to seem avant-garde, I usually take most interest in the foreign film category for the Oscars. I wouldn't say I put much stock in the film which inevitably wins as that typically isn't the one I like the most. The fact that the Academy feels the need to have such a category but doesn't award such films for their technical aspects and acting (only on the rarest of occasions) saddens me.
The more I watch world cinema the more in love I become with it. I prefer watching films with subtitles as I can absorb what's happening much easier. Reading and viewing at the same time has never been a complication for me. Plus there seems to be something much more difficult and unfathomable about the emotions and lack of easy answers presented in such films. Anything which compels me into deep thought captures my affection even if I don't understand it or don't love it in the traditional sense. I've always be drawn toward an element of unknowing as it fuels my imagination.
At the end of the day I always make an effort to watch films nominated for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award just because... Well I really like seeing the world through a different perspective. There's something just very self-conscious about how Hollywood projects it's views to the world. I might be naive but there is something liberating about seeing the rest of the world create indelible art without being trapped in the system.
This brings me to On Body and Soul. In the briefest of descriptions it's about two people who work in an abattoir drawn together by their dreams. It's a tentative love story and it's mixed with brutal images of cows being slaughtered and a fairy-tale landscape in the snow with two deer wandering around together. It's such a whimsical and gentle film in how it manages its central relationship.
To say anymore would be to ruin it though so I'm just going to go on and completely change the subject. At work sometimes my colleagues will sometimes go off into discussions about the reality of ghosts and death and such. I'm not sure how these things happen but they have on more than one occasion. I just sit slack jawed and bleary eyed and make the occasional wry non-committal comment.
It feels a bit awkward of me to espouse my views on such things as I worry other people might think less of me. I am aware I shouldn't let what other people think of me define my interactions but in cases like this it most certainly does. My main concern about my views and feelings are that I can't trust them. They change like the tide, coming and going, shifting back and forth gradually eroding or reforming.
If someone discusses ghosts or religion or the propensity for humans to have a soul. I suppose the magic has dissipated due to my thoughts denying the possibility of anything beyond what I can rationalise. I can believe in life beyond the stars because that makes sense in a way. Space and the deepest oceans can still be the biggest mysteries to me and therefore the most terrifying things. Death and beyond seem mundane to me. But then again some days this could become fuzzier and less definitive. The 'what ifs?' creep in...
When it comes to religion. I read a lot of books from historical investigations of the Bible and religion to angry polemics by atheists and then some cogent counter arguments and the like. I came to the conclusion that death is the end. Life can come from death on a molecular level but beyond that my spirituality is non-existent. The soul is a trick of the brain. Something we have as a species convinced ourselves exists as we are conscious of being alive and do not live solely by instinct like most every other living thing. When you die you cease to exist on this planet. If every other living dies and does not go to heaven then I think it's only fair the same rules apply to everything.
This was developed mostly as a teenager trying to cope with the grief of losing my grandmother. I worried that she was sad and lonely and disconnected from feeling love and I didn't love her enough and that was the issue. I worried endlessly that she died feeling alone although I know my parents and granddad were constantly at her bedside. From all the reading and hoping I realised I had lost my grandmother and that religion and anything beyond that was a tapestry of hopes and dreams manifested by other people over centuries trying to make sense of the world.
That loneliness I could sense within my grandma was something I grew to feel in myself and something I deal with on a daily basis. Some days are harder than others. It's within everyone somewhere I suppose. I would hope from my understanding and caring that I could help people with this sliver of knowledge. I don't necessarily have to love them enough so they aren't depressed like I thought I could with my grandma. I hope that in my day to day life I do enough to stem the flow of loneliness within the people around me and the people I care about. That's all I can do.
Ha, that got weird! I'm not sure I've expressed myself very well at all.
Saturday 3 March 2018
Seven Psychopaths Revisited
So on Friday, 14 December 2012 I wrote a blog about how I went to the cinema on my own and watched this film with Sam Rockwell. I was sitting next to a couple in the back row who in the crevices of my mind, had a pink puffer coat resting over their knees which were resting on the seats in front of them. If I remember right they used it as a cover for whatever was happening between them which involved a lot of shifting and shuffling.
In my original blog I was thoroughly delighted by the now Oscar nominated Sam Rockwell who I wrote a blog about not very long ago. Needless to say, I still adore the cast. Now I can get excited about the fact that I recognised Harry Dean Stanton as Psychopath No 2 in the recount of his tale. Coincidentally I saw him in Wild at Heart the other day and found myself madly in love with him. In addition Christopher Walken is still (apart from Rockwell) the best part of this film.
Here I am. Watching this film again trying to discern how Martin McDonagh could potentially run away with the Best Picture Oscar tomorrow night. I realised that his style was somewhat perfected in In Bruges. Shifting his sensibilities to America seemed like a good place to make some money and fits his nihilistic view but when you take away Brendan Gleeson (admittedly replacing him with Walken...) you kind of lose the beautiful soul underneath.
Since 2012 a couple of things have happened. I don't go to the cinema on my own half as much and I got a 9-5 kind of job. I also signed up for Mubi which presents 30 films at any given time for streaming. They usually provide a varied array of old and new, world cinema and Hollywood, I like it.
So I watched Six Shooter on there, it was the first film directed by Martin McDonagh it is a short film (just under 30 minutes). It starred Brendan Gleeson getting a train ride home after his wife had just died. It is brutal and the blackest humour, it features a white rabbit and some bloody violence and it featured what I would confidently call McDonagh's first psychopath. I adored it.
In theory, from what I can see, McDonagh works exclusively in Psychopaths. This is his most messy film as (now that I've watched more of his oeuvre develop over the years) it looks like he's just toying with too many ideas and decided to make a film from them. The overwhelming sense of too much going on suffocates this film and prevents it from being a masterpiece. It works because for the most part I get the sense that the 3 main guys, Rockwell, Walken and Farrell are operating as 3 aspects of McDonagh's own ID. They are all voicing elements of his mindset and their core arguments in the second act seem to be dismantling the film's existence itself. But then these arguments are completely disregarded for the violent delights and humour.
The main thing which itches about this film is how long it goes on for. I mean sure, wring out as much insane violence and meta-commentary as you can but you can't make it 30 minutes shorter? It's just a bunch of dudes bickering with guns at the end and that's neither cute nor particularly funny. Walken sells the shit out of it though.
Then there is the way it treats it's female characters. A correction he desperately tries to make in Three Billboards. But as I've said before, Frances McDormand's character could be gender swapped with little issue. I stand by my issue with McDonagh being unable to write believable and remotely interesting females. But he tried... The fact that Woody Harrelson is more torn up about his dog than about his girlfriend is ridiculous but in a funny way, right? It's all one big joke.
The film appears to be warmly regarded due to the amount of humour injected into it. Rockwell's performance makes up the most of this. It has some lovely pensive moments in among the messed up insanity. Plus some ridiculous flights of fancy just for kicks.
One thing I can say with all honesty is that I loved the soundtrack to Seven Psychopaths. It has a winking old school style and a delightful irony woven through. P P Arnold singing The First Cut is the Deepest and some of The Walkmen playing and the Stone Poneys along with everything else. A drink for the music editor!
It's just such a movie, it doesn't even try to exist in any form of reality. Sure the characters have some delightfully human reactions in their acidic exchanges but for the most part nothing happens in any kind of realistic way. We're not in Kansas anymore, we're in the world of Oz where nothing quite makes any sense but everything is engineered to solely entertain. Beautiful women, adorable dogs, charismatic actors with flights of fancy baked in for fun.
It remains, in my mind, not essentially a good film but it's one that prompts much thought. Furthermore at least Billboards went some way to correct the course and work towards something more. I admire ambition and appreciate black humour, therefore I don't think I will ever quite get bored of seeing where McDonagh goes in the future. Plus watching Sam Rockwell indulge in his most charismatic lunacy is a never ending treat.
In my original blog I was thoroughly delighted by the now Oscar nominated Sam Rockwell who I wrote a blog about not very long ago. Needless to say, I still adore the cast. Now I can get excited about the fact that I recognised Harry Dean Stanton as Psychopath No 2 in the recount of his tale. Coincidentally I saw him in Wild at Heart the other day and found myself madly in love with him. In addition Christopher Walken is still (apart from Rockwell) the best part of this film.
Here I am. Watching this film again trying to discern how Martin McDonagh could potentially run away with the Best Picture Oscar tomorrow night. I realised that his style was somewhat perfected in In Bruges. Shifting his sensibilities to America seemed like a good place to make some money and fits his nihilistic view but when you take away Brendan Gleeson (admittedly replacing him with Walken...) you kind of lose the beautiful soul underneath.
Since 2012 a couple of things have happened. I don't go to the cinema on my own half as much and I got a 9-5 kind of job. I also signed up for Mubi which presents 30 films at any given time for streaming. They usually provide a varied array of old and new, world cinema and Hollywood, I like it.
So I watched Six Shooter on there, it was the first film directed by Martin McDonagh it is a short film (just under 30 minutes). It starred Brendan Gleeson getting a train ride home after his wife had just died. It is brutal and the blackest humour, it features a white rabbit and some bloody violence and it featured what I would confidently call McDonagh's first psychopath. I adored it.
In theory, from what I can see, McDonagh works exclusively in Psychopaths. This is his most messy film as (now that I've watched more of his oeuvre develop over the years) it looks like he's just toying with too many ideas and decided to make a film from them. The overwhelming sense of too much going on suffocates this film and prevents it from being a masterpiece. It works because for the most part I get the sense that the 3 main guys, Rockwell, Walken and Farrell are operating as 3 aspects of McDonagh's own ID. They are all voicing elements of his mindset and their core arguments in the second act seem to be dismantling the film's existence itself. But then these arguments are completely disregarded for the violent delights and humour.
The main thing which itches about this film is how long it goes on for. I mean sure, wring out as much insane violence and meta-commentary as you can but you can't make it 30 minutes shorter? It's just a bunch of dudes bickering with guns at the end and that's neither cute nor particularly funny. Walken sells the shit out of it though.
Then there is the way it treats it's female characters. A correction he desperately tries to make in Three Billboards. But as I've said before, Frances McDormand's character could be gender swapped with little issue. I stand by my issue with McDonagh being unable to write believable and remotely interesting females. But he tried... The fact that Woody Harrelson is more torn up about his dog than about his girlfriend is ridiculous but in a funny way, right? It's all one big joke.
The film appears to be warmly regarded due to the amount of humour injected into it. Rockwell's performance makes up the most of this. It has some lovely pensive moments in among the messed up insanity. Plus some ridiculous flights of fancy just for kicks.
One thing I can say with all honesty is that I loved the soundtrack to Seven Psychopaths. It has a winking old school style and a delightful irony woven through. P P Arnold singing The First Cut is the Deepest and some of The Walkmen playing and the Stone Poneys along with everything else. A drink for the music editor!
It's just such a movie, it doesn't even try to exist in any form of reality. Sure the characters have some delightfully human reactions in their acidic exchanges but for the most part nothing happens in any kind of realistic way. We're not in Kansas anymore, we're in the world of Oz where nothing quite makes any sense but everything is engineered to solely entertain. Beautiful women, adorable dogs, charismatic actors with flights of fancy baked in for fun.
It remains, in my mind, not essentially a good film but it's one that prompts much thought. Furthermore at least Billboards went some way to correct the course and work towards something more. I admire ambition and appreciate black humour, therefore I don't think I will ever quite get bored of seeing where McDonagh goes in the future. Plus watching Sam Rockwell indulge in his most charismatic lunacy is a never ending treat.
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