In Two Thousand One and Three a Cenobite I Should Turn to Be

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 20/06/2012

ndeed, I shall leave it a year. Watching the Olympics in a low key fashion might be rather difficult with nail and cheese wire impediments.

And then, in 2013, two thousand one and three, I shall seek out the Lament Configuration Puzzle Box and run inquisitive fingers over it's strange symbolic engravings, as the sky greys to black and sinisters coloured bolts of energy course along its structure.

And then, shall meddling open the box, and I will taken away from here, taken away from a world of drudgery and tedium, low paid humilation at the hand of low-bred in-breds, and taken to a world where “Pain and Pleasure are Combined”. My skin flayed, nails hacked out and my blood replaced by an agonising preserving re-animating fluid, full of parasites to perpetually stimulate the evil centre of my brain and eat away at the good.

And in a year, pvc clad and looking rather different of face and denture, I shall return and Lo! Shall all my life's irritants shall feel rusty chains rip through their plebeian flesh! But although, Cenobitically enhanced I may be, the more louche aspects of my ensavaged personality remain – and I shall drink Cuba Libras and Caparinhas with one hand, smoke Sobranie with the other into lungs pulled apart by rusty wire; all while kicking an enemy in the face with a spined boot, piercing cheek flesh again and again and again.

And then I shall listen to the Velvet Underground and crank out chirpy bon-mots such as “Your sole...my pleasure” and “The road of pain is a less travelled one, but as you can see the journey is worth it” to some dotty American 19 year old who repeatedly refuses to tell their arse from their elbow.

And I shall attract acolytes, and followers ignorant of the true extent of my powers, and so shall statues be made of me. Worship me if you will, but remember to always quake in fear.

My boots trample the still quivering dead. Is my life so far gone that this future seems preferable to anything else. I shall tell you later.

In two thousand one and three.

Soul-less Sci Fi

I hate CGI and shiny surfaces; films sculpted out a block of marbled perfection, road tested by preview audience robots.

This is not the sccience fiction creation I aspire to.

I like rubber and latex suits where you can see the zip up the back, I like models where you can see the dinky drilled holes and the hairdryer parts and cannibalised airfix model kits.

I like planets with stupid names and pinky orange matte painted skies; where the mad scientist holds court amidst the fearsome buzz of Tesla Coils and robots menace damsels with heads made of an anglepoise lamp. I like rubber rocks being thrown, I like the papery thwack of collapsing polystyrene sets.

I like spaceships that look like breasts or phalluses with a November 5th sparkler providing the propulsion; I like craft with pointless wings in the unforgiving vacuum of space that emit sounds that you shouldn't hear in the void.

I like creatures that are tentacled entities of frightening antipathy towards the human race; or the occasional interplanetary policeman telling us to stop fucking about with atomic weapons especially if they have massive foreheads and strange hair.

I like grit. I like dirt. I like being able to see the fucking join. I like mistakes, failure and fun. I like being entertained.

And in modern sci fi, I get dazzled. And more often than not, I get bored.

Hard On for Trailers

An obsession about trailers is the same as any other fetish really...

There is no difference between the fanboy sweating and getting hot at the latest Prometheus trailer and the man watching an amply sized woman crushing bananas down her cleavage. The kid looking for details upon Batman's new cape is the same as the man who peers intently at the speculumned delicates of his lady love as she rides a shiny set of medical stirrups.

I gave up on it. I got vaguely excited at the Prometheus trailers in a follow-the-herd sort of way, then after the first one wondered why I was bothering...if I want to see the film, I'll see the bloody film, not analyse frame frame by tedious frame some 60 second snippet of it product placing its way into your psyche.

I don't recall the Harry Potter books being read out on the radio, random page by random page, still less anyone getting excited about it. Watch the movies people, don't give in to the endless hype machine of squid-enema-medical-eyeball licking-furry playing trailer porn.

Its getting boring.

Screenplay writing...

...is coming along, but not quickly. I just grab an hour or two at it when I can, I made this scene by scene plan, but realised this followed the book rather slavishly at times, so  ultimately I seem to be not using that and have done essentially a quarter of the screenplay straight off the top of my head!

God knows if I can do the whole damn thing this way...it is so difficult as it is! But, if, or rather when, I finish draft one, I will be so damn proud of myself.

Then, the tricky stuff starts. Tidying it up, re drafting, redrafting, redrafting, cutting out all that does not drive the story. Can I do it? Can I do it? And what will I do when I finish it?

Dreams of Teide.mp4

OPINION - Sphere and the Weakest Movie Ending Ever

As is my habit these days - dictated by my genetic scottish tight fistedness - I buy most of my DVDs from Cash Converters the UK Pawn Shop chain. Second hand DVDs for a pound or a pound fifty, viewing pleasure mined from the dismal fate of junkies flogging thier own or other folk's stolen film collections to pay for the next hit...

It's a sad place to shop to be honest, but I do pick up occasional gems there for next to nothing. Zardoz. Witchfinder General. Yesterday I bought Sphere for £1.50, the "Special Edition", of which I can safely say in traditional style, if that was the special edition I'd hate to see what the original theatrical release looked like.

The film is dreadful. That it wasn't cheap is shown by some nice big undersea FX shots, but the story is confusing, the script terrible, and the casting of Dustin Hoffman in an action movie like this baffling, as he mumbles and gumbles away like a scientist version of his Rainman character. I liked Sharon Stone's haircut, but Samuel L. Jackson, as he always is if he is underwater, was dire.

Like Contact, the attempt to make a film about alien contact that had some sort of scientific credibility produces a film that is utterly and bloodily boring.

None of this is comparable to the ending however. A big sci fi production surely needs a big sci fi ending, doesn't it? Battles, blood, or a twist so vicious it could be a theme park attraction?

What we got with Sphere was three people holding hands, counting to three, and then a big golden golf ball flies off. That was it. 80 million dollars spent on the worlds most boring seance and a lame gag about men holding hands.

Tempting fate it was...

For did they not think, the film-makers in all their sun kissed LA wisdom, that if you have an ending in which the whole point is merely for everyone to forget the whole thing, then the audience will probably do the same?

STORY - Mixing Bowl

A bit of five minute short story writing here, screenplay duties have kept me away from my instant short stories!

I don't write about blood enough.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 11.05.2012