Waffle

Yesterday my girlfriend and I decided to rent a movie, as we often do. Our tastes differ quite a lot; I am prone to liking A-movies that didn't quite make the grade: films starring James Spader, Kevin Costner or Kurt Russel immediately catch my attention and I usually enjoy them. Maybe it's because I expect very little and often get more than a little in return. I'm pretty sure a movie like 3000 Miles to Graceland flopped bigtime, at least I'm pretty sure it was instant video fare here in the Netherlands. But I enjoyed it bigtime. I even, dare I say it, enjoyed waterworld. The odd thing is I absolutely hated succesful movies like Gladiator and Spider-man 2. Go figure it out Well, as you can imagine I have yet to find someone to share this oddity with. Fortunately I like many Arthouse films as well, though my local video-store, located at crawling distance, is poorly stocked in that department. My girlfriend has a tendency to look for the saddest stories she can find, if possible based on true stories. Not per s? my thing, but relationships are about give and take, I guess. So yesterday we rented Lilya4ever. It must be the saddest fucking movie I ever saw. As Reinder put it, it makes the collected works of Ingmar Bergman look like the Benny Hill show. It tells the story of a Russian teenager being abandoned by her mother, left to fend for herself. This eventually leads to prostitution, once she runs out of money and the heat is cut off in her dreary apartment, and there's no more food on the table. Her only friend is an even younger boy whose only joy in life is playing basketball with an empty can and sniffing glue. Soon she's shanghaied by a "lover boy," a good looking young man being nice to her and shipping her to Sweden, promising her a Better Life. In Sweden she's locked in an apartment and only let out to prostitute herself. Not trying to spoil the ending for you, this ain't no feel-good movie. It is a beautiful, well made film, though. Superbly acted, well directed. But oh, so fucking sad.

I'm feeling too much like a zombie myself to write about this at any length right now, but Jeroen and I watched Shaun of the Dead ("A romantic comedy. With zombies") on DVD last night, and gave it two thumbs and two big toes up, each. That's a lot of digits in the air. It's a funny, well-written, well-shot movie that was just what we needed because both of us are under the weather. It's very English, by the way, which means that it was full of normal-to-ugly looking people, the group that was fighting off the zombies didn't do anything outrageously stupid until the stress started getting to them (despite the fact that one character is pretty damned stupid — his stupidity is believable), nobody knew how to handle a gun and British idiom were used throughout.

The Dutch media were too chickenshit to repeat it, but Theo van Gogh's short film "Submission" can be viewed at genoeg.nu.

Two comments:

1. Genoeg.nu seems to exist only to disseminate "Submission"; it has no other links on its front page. Don't know what that's about.
2. The movie is pretty good if a bit heavy-handed. Keep in mind while you're watching that it consists of three different narratives.

Controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh has been shot dead in Amsterdam, the radio reports. More when I have it.

Theo van Gogh was a columnist, filmmaker and chain smoker known more for his provocative attitude, slovenly dress and outspoken views about social issues, particularly about Islam, than for his actual movies*). His last work, a TV movie called Submission, got quite a bit of publicity though: it featured misogynistic verses from the Qu'ran projected on the nude bodies of Muslim women. Van Gogh courted controversy and thrived on it. His commitment to freedom of expression was absolute, and while he made many bitter enemies in 20 years of polemical writing, he always made a point of assuring that his enemies could at all time have their say. He made no distinction between attempts to silence his opponents and attempts to silence himself.

The news now says van Gogh had received death threats recently.

Van Gogh, a third cousin of the 19th Century painter, was stabbed and shot dead on the streets of Amsterdam at 9 AM on Tuesday. The gunner was pursued by the police and shot in the leg before being arrested. One police officer was also wounded. The murderer's motive is not clear at the time of writing although undoubtedly pundits will spend the rest of the day guessing.

Van Gogh left behind one young son.

Update: The gunman was somebody known to the Secret Service, AIVD. Also, I forgot to mention that a pamphlet was pinned to van Gogh's body. The contents are as yet unknown. BBC coverage mentioning that the gunner was a Moroccan in traditional dress | CNN coverage | Harry's Place responds. | Review and report on Submission from the Taipei Times

Latest: I just heard someone say that doing one thing or another that I didn't catch was "In de geest van Theo". Brace yourselves for another episode of mass hysteria.

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Spike challenges us to recommend

science fiction films where the pursuit of science isn't cast as a monumental act of hubris against God and Nature. Seriously. Please tell me all about flims you enjoy that feature technology or scientific experimentation, but are as devoid of evil/insane scientists, researchers, or cold, faceless sci-tech corporations gettin' their comeuppance as possible.... I'd prefer a moral that doesn't involve things MAN, in all-caps, was never meant to do, because MAN (also all-caps) was never meant to wear underpants, rent climate-controlled re-conditioned lofts in the meatpacking district to impress their girlfirends, be immunized against polio, or live past thirty-five. ...Taken to its logical conclusion, the assertion that scientific curiousity or advancement isn't what's meant for humanity means we should all still be living in trees, trying to find a comfortable way to sit on an estrus swelling and working termites out of the branches with twigs. Unless you people have a problem with twigs now or something.

To which I can only respond with a rousing "RAH!" but no actual recommendations. Some of the Star Trek movies might qualify but I'd like to think that she wants to hear about movies that are actually worth spending 90*) minutes on for artistic and entertainment reasons as well as scientific ones.

*) If it's much more than 90 minutes, the bar gets raised much much higher than any Star Trek movie is capable of clearing. I don't know if the Dogma manifesto had a rule about movies needing to be concise, but it should have had one.

Friday, I went to see Nosferatu *), at the Lutherse Kerk in Groningen, with live accompaniment from the church organ. Nosferatu is a silent classic made in 1922, and for the most part has stood the test of time. As with most silent movies, there are some elements that now look vaguely silly: the acting is straight out of the stage melodrama, the make-up artists also seemed to think they were working for the stage, and some special effects fall flat (the best example being the use of a spotted hyena traipsing through the Westfalian rocks to represent a werewolf). But it has great (if slightly slow) pacing, beautiful romantic/Gothic imagery (shot, largely, on location in Westphalia) and best of all, one of the best, most convincing movie spooks ever. The title character, first shown in the shadows of castle Orlog, a tall, gaunt, bald creature standing in a stiff, upright pose with his hands folded like the claws of a predatory monster at rest, is genuinely scary even with the over-the-top make-up. I wonder if Max Schreck, the name of the actor who played his, was a pseudonym - it was certainly aptly chosen.

I have had the DVD of this movie in my house for some months without ever getting around to watching it. The booklet notes mention that the problems I had with the acting were addressed by the director, F.W. Murnau, in later movies, in which he tried to get rid of holdovers from stage drama. Bully for him, and for all I know, his later movies may be even better than this one.

At this screening, music was provided by Joost Langeveld, a reputed improviser on the organ. He worked well with the pacing and suspense of the movie, using prepared themes for the characters and for certain key moments. The church organ at the lutheran church is a mighty instrument which Langeveld often seemed to treat as a synthesizer or sequencer. A wholly appropriate backing for a great horror movie (not everyone I spoke to afterwards agreed, though). However, I would have preferred to hear music based on the original score, which is said to be pseudo-Wagnerian (the DVD doesn't have it either).

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Two months after everyone else in the whole wide world, I saw Fahrenheit 911 the other night. This was what all the fuss was about? 45 minutes of solid but pedestrian documentary making about the troops in Iraq, their experiences and their background, preceeded by 75 minutes of snark and innuendo? That said, the editing was very strong, the soundtrack would be a worthy edition to my music collection and the portrayal of President Bush's personal ineptitude and lack of seriousness was right on the money. Also, the bit about the alert colors and the culture of fear resonated with me, having just read Imperial Hubris: Why The West Is Losing The War on Terror.

But these things could have fitted into a much shorter, much less manipulative movie; or one that treated these issues in greater depth. That would have earned F911 the appellation "Documentary", instead of it being merely a luke-warm polemic.

I was once again convinced of this statement when I saw Cory McAbee's movie "the American Astronaut" today. It was such a Cap'n-esque experience. It was not about the story, which was downright silly. It was an ode to film, to images. The lighting, the shots, the acting... The movie spoke of such a love of film. There was song and dance, comradery, a heroic male lead, a great soundtrack. I got really, really pissed off when people in a row behind me jabbered during the movie, laughed in all the wrong places... I had a feeling they had absolutely no idea that this was the work of an artist, this was a movie made with love (and absolutely no budget!) It's a sci-fi movie where there are hardly any special-effects. There was even a scene where you could see the microphone so obviously that it had to be deliberate. I wanted to stand up and shout: "shut your effin' faces! this is a work of art!" (I think this also had to do with the fact it reminded me so much of what I try to do with my webcomic Cap'n.) I didn't ofcourse, and was baffled at the end of the movie when they talked to eachother of what a great movie it was... Anyway, go see it, rent it, whatever, if you don't feel the need for things to make sense, just be as a creator thinks they should be...