Have had cause to watch Star Wars a couple of times recently, and what has really stuck out has been the utterly unecessary tinkering George Lucas did for the updates. The TV version on ITV a few days ago was presumably the 2003 rejig, the Gold Edition VHS I have is from about 1997.
In both of them, the new CGI and composite inserts are truly horrible to behold in the Mos Eisley sequence.
Mos Eisley is a desert town, where many would shelter out of the daytime sun by siesta-ing the day away in those little dome roofed buildings pimpling the sandy surface of TAttooine. But no, George decided it had to be a bustling, busy, diverse metropolis; a hive of activity. To achieve this, he decided to comp in losts of people and ...er...things, walking directly sideways across the shot, horrendously out of scale and blocking out what we really want to see.
For example, Lucas and Co reckons the scene where we first see "The Fore" being used, on the Stormtroopers, is best served by being totally obscured at first by walking giants, passing speeders, and leather beast of burden lizards.
When flat as pancake people aren't walking past getting in the bloody way, we are treated to hideous slapstick robot and creature vignettes - ooh look, the creature fell of the dew back, ooh look at the little robot get hit - setting us up for Jar Jar Binks. Ugh, why did they bother?
Let us have the original vision George!
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Tourettes and the Tunnels of Work
I work in a land fit only for escape; fit only for dreams day and night, dirty plastic floors delivering static shocks into the bodies of the otherwise waking dead. Cockroach traps are insectoid death trap christmas decorations in dark corners; sometimes a bird arrives through the lorry doors and can never get out again.
In the middle of is am I, stressed to the thirteens let alone the nines by the awfulness of it all, body flailing sometimes as somekind of electro chemical surge breaks the barriers of restraint and people try and ignore it and I'm not sure what kind of reaction I want. Not laughter. But not studied ignorance, the pretence of not being bothered.
I don't know what my own head is telling me, and I don't know what I'm trying to tell it.
So I head for the maze, the caves, the world in the racking created by creaking unsafe girders racked by the weight of stores and spares and topped by a thick caking of dust. You stand in the main aisle, it's like The Mines of Moria, stretching way into an artificially lit distance.
Within here the mind wanders and people can be hidden from until the crisis passes. Worlds are visited, words are written on invisible paper with invisible ink and stored until you can go home in a slanting rain. Imagine Maximillian from The Black Hole chasing you down here looking to gut you with his propeller fingers; can you find a turn off in time he'll ignore?
Vader may be awaiting next to the floor cleaning machines, and you won't know if he's being good or evil. Cryogenic suspension tubes litter the top of the racking and you wish you can climb in until the job, or more likely the world, ends in a salvo of violet lightning.
Fight the mech warriors, hide from demons of the darkness. Or just stand there rocking back on your heels and looking at the radio speakers on the ceiling waiting for the escape route to be broadcast.
Here there are no managers, just other worlds far far better.
I'm creating them every minute.
--------------------------------
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 17/10/2012
In the middle of is am I, stressed to the thirteens let alone the nines by the awfulness of it all, body flailing sometimes as somekind of electro chemical surge breaks the barriers of restraint and people try and ignore it and I'm not sure what kind of reaction I want. Not laughter. But not studied ignorance, the pretence of not being bothered.
I don't know what my own head is telling me, and I don't know what I'm trying to tell it.
So I head for the maze, the caves, the world in the racking created by creaking unsafe girders racked by the weight of stores and spares and topped by a thick caking of dust. You stand in the main aisle, it's like The Mines of Moria, stretching way into an artificially lit distance.
Within here the mind wanders and people can be hidden from until the crisis passes. Worlds are visited, words are written on invisible paper with invisible ink and stored until you can go home in a slanting rain. Imagine Maximillian from The Black Hole chasing you down here looking to gut you with his propeller fingers; can you find a turn off in time he'll ignore?
Vader may be awaiting next to the floor cleaning machines, and you won't know if he's being good or evil. Cryogenic suspension tubes litter the top of the racking and you wish you can climb in until the job, or more likely the world, ends in a salvo of violet lightning.
Fight the mech warriors, hide from demons of the darkness. Or just stand there rocking back on your heels and looking at the radio speakers on the ceiling waiting for the escape route to be broadcast.
Here there are no managers, just other worlds far far better.
I'm creating them every minute.
--------------------------------
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 17/10/2012
Thursday, 4 October 2012
STORY - To the Centre, Rosas!
Instant story written at the library, inspired by the music of Steve Reich and the dancing of Anna Terese de Keersmaecker
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 04/10/2012
Wednesday, 26 September 2012
The Taste of Literature
When I talk of taste, I'm not talking of "Jolly ho, I've such excellent taste in literature" or "People are developing a taste for fantasy in the light of Game of Thrones" or even "What the hell are you talking about, people have and always will have a taste for fantasy".
No, I'm actually talking about, well, a form of synaesthesia, that strange ability that some "people" have for seeing sounds, or hearing colours, or feeling tastes. That sort of thing. I've developed my own version of it.
I now have a taste for words. Words leave a taste on my tongue.
Whenever I think of the word "literature" I get this strange, large, flat, slightly tangy, slightly bitter, taste spreading all over the back of my tongue, feeling like it is filling my mouth from side to side, like a piece of lemon soaked rice paper. Thinking about not words, but the construction of words, the writing of letters, drops drizzle lime onto the back of my throat.
Like a literal word soup is rising out of my throat; not in a nasty, vomity way, but an enjoyment of the construction of letters, one after the other, the gap after a group of them then more.
Reading Clive James fourth chapter of his life story "The North Face of Soho" brings on the same feeling - not the actual act of reading it, but the thought of reading it. The taste is there when I think of "Blue pencilling" "Slugs of hot metal" "adjusting the balance of a line".
What makes it all even more bizarre is that this must indicate a subconscious desire to do all this, and BE a proper writer slash journalist slash essayist slashy "Man of Letters" because the actuality is that everything I write is straight out of the neurons in my head, 6 rounds rapid fire...
It's like sucking a lemon after slugging tequila.
A hard shot of words...
No, I'm actually talking about, well, a form of synaesthesia, that strange ability that some "people" have for seeing sounds, or hearing colours, or feeling tastes. That sort of thing. I've developed my own version of it.
I now have a taste for words. Words leave a taste on my tongue.
Whenever I think of the word "literature" I get this strange, large, flat, slightly tangy, slightly bitter, taste spreading all over the back of my tongue, feeling like it is filling my mouth from side to side, like a piece of lemon soaked rice paper. Thinking about not words, but the construction of words, the writing of letters, drops drizzle lime onto the back of my throat.
Like a literal word soup is rising out of my throat; not in a nasty, vomity way, but an enjoyment of the construction of letters, one after the other, the gap after a group of them then more.
Reading Clive James fourth chapter of his life story "The North Face of Soho" brings on the same feeling - not the actual act of reading it, but the thought of reading it. The taste is there when I think of "Blue pencilling" "Slugs of hot metal" "adjusting the balance of a line".
What makes it all even more bizarre is that this must indicate a subconscious desire to do all this, and BE a proper writer slash journalist slash essayist slashy "Man of Letters" because the actuality is that everything I write is straight out of the neurons in my head, 6 rounds rapid fire...
It's like sucking a lemon after slugging tequila.
A hard shot of words...
Saturday, 22 September 2012
Cat People
I am sure discerning readers are familiar with this;
The most memorable scene, in my view, of many from Quentin Tarantino's superb Inglorious Basterds, backed of course by David Bowie's Cat People.
And that brings us on to the under-rated 1982 remake of "Cat People" which features this scene of, again in my view, equal beauty and greater mystery, in which Natasja Kinski finds out her origins. The backing this time is Moroder's original take on the song "Cat People".
The train shots cannot but help me of the video for "There Goes The Fear" by The Doves.
Cat People. Not a great film, perhaps not even a very good one. But this scene lives with me always. And Mr Bowie is present somehow in both!
Enjoy.
The most memorable scene, in my view, of many from Quentin Tarantino's superb Inglorious Basterds, backed of course by David Bowie's Cat People.
And that brings us on to the under-rated 1982 remake of "Cat People" which features this scene of, again in my view, equal beauty and greater mystery, in which Natasja Kinski finds out her origins. The backing this time is Moroder's original take on the song "Cat People".
The train shots cannot but help me of the video for "There Goes The Fear" by The Doves.
Cat People. Not a great film, perhaps not even a very good one. But this scene lives with me always. And Mr Bowie is present somehow in both!
Enjoy.
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Doomsday
I bought Doomsday a while back, another "off to Cash Converters" £1.50 spent on a DVD, a DVD sold for god only knows what desperate purpose.
Profiting out of misery. That's what me and Cash Converters do.
Anyway, Doomsday is a film that crops us often enough on Sy Fy and I watch out of the corner of my eye, cut price Angelina Jolie - but more attractive and less haggard - and former Lara Croft Rhona Mitra throwing some eye patched shapes while coping with Bob Hoskins using the same voice he did in thar Paul Hardcastle song that wasn't "19".
"Fink of the maaahney! Imagine what you caaan do wiv it!"
That one.
The film is from the same team that came up with the far superior Dog Soldiers and The Descent, and large chunks of the cast of those two films are lurking about here in minor to middling roles, leaving Mitra, Hoskins, Doctor Bashir from Deep Space 9, concrete voiced professional Scotsman David O'Hara and Malcolm "Mark of Quality Cinema" McDowell upfront. Sean Pertwee also gets to do his trademark dying before half time shtick.
The film is terrible. It is also brilliant. It is a blatant Mad Max rip off, not only of 2, but 3. The acting is bobbins, the script mainly terrible apart from some decent off beat humour and the plot largely an irrelavance compared to the odd, jarring but decently different jolt from chain saw custom buggy mayhem to Excalibur style sword maiming and a lengthy section that seems to exist only for Adrian Lester to show off his martial arts moves.
But to me, the whole sequence in the cannibal emo stadium makes the movie worthwhile; fantastically soundtracked by Adam and the Ants, Fine Young Cannibals (you'll never hear me say that again) and Siouxsie and the Banshees, a mohawked future death punk serves up crispy fried Pertwee to his minions while yelling great stuff about catching, cooking and eating his enemies. Fishnetted pole dancers strut and sway, and a busty lady in a bad tribal facial tattoo does some serious leering.
It ought to be worse than Tina Turner doing her "Welcome to Thunderdome" chain mail bra routine with Angry Anderson not singing the Scott and Charlene wedding song, but it isn't; the sequence works really well. Which makes me wonder, with the brains behind the movie that there were, the film isn't a whole lot better than it is.
Profiting out of misery. That's what me and Cash Converters do.
Anyway, Doomsday is a film that crops us often enough on Sy Fy and I watch out of the corner of my eye, cut price Angelina Jolie - but more attractive and less haggard - and former Lara Croft Rhona Mitra throwing some eye patched shapes while coping with Bob Hoskins using the same voice he did in thar Paul Hardcastle song that wasn't "19".
"Fink of the maaahney! Imagine what you caaan do wiv it!"
That one.
The film is from the same team that came up with the far superior Dog Soldiers and The Descent, and large chunks of the cast of those two films are lurking about here in minor to middling roles, leaving Mitra, Hoskins, Doctor Bashir from Deep Space 9, concrete voiced professional Scotsman David O'Hara and Malcolm "Mark of Quality Cinema" McDowell upfront. Sean Pertwee also gets to do his trademark dying before half time shtick.
The film is terrible. It is also brilliant. It is a blatant Mad Max rip off, not only of 2, but 3. The acting is bobbins, the script mainly terrible apart from some decent off beat humour and the plot largely an irrelavance compared to the odd, jarring but decently different jolt from chain saw custom buggy mayhem to Excalibur style sword maiming and a lengthy section that seems to exist only for Adrian Lester to show off his martial arts moves.
But to me, the whole sequence in the cannibal emo stadium makes the movie worthwhile; fantastically soundtracked by Adam and the Ants, Fine Young Cannibals (you'll never hear me say that again) and Siouxsie and the Banshees, a mohawked future death punk serves up crispy fried Pertwee to his minions while yelling great stuff about catching, cooking and eating his enemies. Fishnetted pole dancers strut and sway, and a busty lady in a bad tribal facial tattoo does some serious leering.
It ought to be worse than Tina Turner doing her "Welcome to Thunderdome" chain mail bra routine with Angry Anderson not singing the Scott and Charlene wedding song, but it isn't; the sequence works really well. Which makes me wonder, with the brains behind the movie that there were, the film isn't a whole lot better than it is.
Saturday, 15 September 2012
To Write Like Ballard
More of an influence than Burroughs on me to be honest, although I have nothing in common with either of them, having neither shot my wife in the head nor been brough up in a Japanese Internment Camp. Formative years, a negative blank of non distinguishment, life the same as most others, fishing village to small town, nothing shot up, brains not blown out.
No Nova Mob graced my upbringing.
I like natural diasters, winds gutting the earth to the mantle, rains and humidity drowning the earth and leaving everyone counting back along their cervical vertebrae to a primieval jurassic park, primitive nervous system like the crocodile's bleeding up into a future where sophistication hinders not helps.
It appeals, as does sitting under endless rain under a tarpaulin with only rum and tea for company, grey clouds lowering to face level, and if the idea of fucking a cailipered cripple appeals not, I wish I could have thought of it as he did. Fuckholes lined in jagged metal; he saw it, I didn't. I can't.
Again I dream of having that power in my pen or the tips of my fingers; a dream, but a good dream, no? We'll see how it turns out, hammer the keyboard till you bleed, and let the words come
No Nova Mob graced my upbringing.
I like natural diasters, winds gutting the earth to the mantle, rains and humidity drowning the earth and leaving everyone counting back along their cervical vertebrae to a primieval jurassic park, primitive nervous system like the crocodile's bleeding up into a future where sophistication hinders not helps.
It appeals, as does sitting under endless rain under a tarpaulin with only rum and tea for company, grey clouds lowering to face level, and if the idea of fucking a cailipered cripple appeals not, I wish I could have thought of it as he did. Fuckholes lined in jagged metal; he saw it, I didn't. I can't.
Again I dream of having that power in my pen or the tips of my fingers; a dream, but a good dream, no? We'll see how it turns out, hammer the keyboard till you bleed, and let the words come
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)