Gore-Gore Girl

Just cuz

2007-07-13T14:48:00.001-07:00

So, I checked it out, and on a daily basis I break 8 of the 10 commandments.

So, it was like a giant drum circle?

2007-07-11T16:29:00.002-07:00

77 BOADRUM

If you weren't there, you're a communist. Because it was awesome, and communists hate awesome.

And here I am being happy about being there.

Sorry guys, it's summertime, and I won't be watching movies for a while. I'll probably be in the park.

LOCK AND LOLL!

2007-06-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

Wild Zero (2000) Tetsuro Takeuchi

So, I keep picking movies to write about that largely speak for themselves. Wild Zero, for those who missed it, was the Rock 'n Roll zombie alien gender-bending guitar-sword-spaceship-slashing epic I had been waiting for my whole life. It's chock full of Guitar Wolf's sloppy, noisy punk antics, complete with excessive hair combing and beer drinking as well as concert footage (R.I.P. Bass Wolf). If you're not already totally convinced that you should run out and rent it right now based on what I just said, ummm....we're not friends anymore.

I could review this movie, instead of listing genres that it could possibly belong to (guitar-sword-spaceship-slashing? Whatever). But it's not that kind of movie. It's way too Rock 'n Roll. Which brings me to what I've really been thinking about.

Rock 'n Roll is NOT over, baby! Rock 'n Roll NEVER DIES!

So can we all just go out sometime this week, buy some cheap beer, put on the Cramps, or the Ramones, or Elvis, Guitar Wolf, or hell, even the Murder City Devils, and remember that anyone with a guitar can be a hero for 5 minutes, and we aren't above loving them for trying. In fact, God Bless the talentless, scrawny boys of the world who first picked up a guitar because they thought it could get them chicks. God Bless them, every one.

My heart is all aflutter...

2007-06-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

Go watch Tears of the Black Tiger RIGHT NOW! I'mna watch it again...

Have I ever mentioned how much I love epically stylized movies saturated with bravado, heroism, and heartache? Yeah. Well it's a lot.

Vent

2007-06-15T10:43:00.001-07:00

I'm about to feel sorry for myself. Please ignore me, I just have to throw this out into the void. Because I have nowhere else to release it to.

I'm in a new city (well, 7 months isn't that new, but it's new enough) at a new job. My closest friend is my husband, who is having some problems right now and taking them out on me. My job is very exciting, but as a 23 year old with naught but an undergraduate degree I'm responsible for a million dollar, multi-site R01; and a very ambitious one at that. They finally got me an assistant, but she won't be able to help with any of the development, technical or theoretical, that's giving me a heart attack right now. I've been given an impossible task: to replicate a study and add novel techniques and measures to it without purchasing any of the equipment used in the former study. So I've been laboring away; writing software, modifying hardware, attempting to adjust the functionality of neurophysiologic tools we do have that were designed for completely different purposes. And I'm doing it. And I'm doing it well. But I'm not doing it fast enough for them, we have NIH deadlines and recruitment schedules, hospital administration breathing down our neck...all because when they hired me to do this no one considered that we might need the equipment neccesary to perform the experiment.

On top of that, my husband does not seem to think it's important to pay me back any of the money I've loaned him over the years, and in fact lost his job (and me) because of his problems with alcohol. And I'm flat broke. So I work nights as a phone sex operator on a no taboos line, pays OK. I get up every morning at 7:30, go to the hospital, frantically try to pull off nearly impossible feats of coordinating folks at three different sites in three different states, do my best to not have any bad news for them regarding the development I'm breaking my back over, get yelled at anyway because it wasn't done yesterday, and then get snide little snaps from the psych associate who has decided I'm disorganized and lazy even though she has nothing to do with my project and has never seen my work output. Then I try to clean my house, as well as feed myself and my kitten, before I have to log into the chatline at 7 and then have phone sex with strangers who are allowed to discuss bestiality, pedophilia, rape, and drugs until 11. I'm pretty good at everything but the black and the domination lines, although most of the young girl calls end up being domination anyway. I have no outlet for human contact or support, because I have no family and my husband just lashes out at me and tries to hurt me as much as he can whenever I try to talk to him about his problems, let alone mine. Other friends I have shy away immediately if I even come close to opening up to them; they want to have fun with me, drink sake and talk about movies or hear my crazy stories and dance to the cramps all night long, but not hear me talk about myself. My husband said once, when he was really mad at me, or just hurt because I told him I couldn't be with him anymore unless he stopped drinking, that I was a bitch all the time, and that's why no one cared about me. I've been assured by my friends that this is not the case. However, none of them care enough to listen.

Happy summer.....

2007-06-08T22:16:00.001-07:00

everyone....

Ode to Brigitte Lahaie

2007-05-31T10:35:00.000-07:00

When my girlfriends invited me to go see a midnight viewing of Pirates last night, my first thought should have been: "Arrrrrr," followed by brash enthusiasm; but all I could think was 'God, and stare at Keira Knightly for nearly three hours?' Now I know, I know, that the main draw of the movie is Johhny Depp, followed closely by both swash and buckle; but what happened to the days when this kind of crowd-pleasing fluff included some cheesecake? Why even have a female lead if she's going to look like a 12 year old boy?

Now, I believe that the trend towards slim models and actresses has about as little to do with teen eating disorders in America as Metallica has to do with Columbine, or whatever nonsense people spew about that sort of thing. My problem with Keira Knightly and, for that matter, every other plain faced stick figure on the big screen today is not the example they are setting for the youth of America. Their presence in big budget Hollyood productions says something terrifying about America's relationship with women. And I'm not even sure what it is.... but I know it has to be negative. The sexuality exuded by Keira Knightly in the Pirates movies is...non-existent? Completely! And what is a pirate movie, really, except for treasure, violence, and heaving bosoms in hot corsets? (also rum) At least in the era of Russ Meyer, Jayne Mansfield, Brigitte Lahaie, Barbarella, Isabel Sarli, and Reiko Ike, female sexuality was celebrated. Russ Meyer's movies are joyful; filled with bouncy, big breasted, oversexed women who can be badasses too. Brigitte Lahaie and Isabel Sarli shared with us two of the most beautiful naturally occurring human forms in history. Mansfield and Ike are flawed women that we love to love anyway, because of their ability to go to extremes, to touch us where we haven't been touched (giggle)...and, well, you get the idea. In essence, we were at one point getting off on women getting off. And that's hot. So whatever happened to cheesecake? Where is the Brigitte Lahaie of 2007? Jenna Jamison? Seriously? I'd rather take the GRE again than watch her take her clothes off. And what is the Barbarella of recent years...Aeon Flux with motherfucking Charlize Theron? Is that what we've been reduced to? What are all these joyless, sexless hags doing on my screen?

I think that one of the causes of this problem is that there's no joy in filmed sex anymore. Russ Meyer loved tits, and it's his genuine enthusiasm and fetishism, as well as the burlesque-esque writing style and tone he adds to his films, that made them great. Brigitte, Isabel, Jayne, and Reiko were in movies because they had presence and were physically representative of the ideal woman; and not because they were made of plastic and willing to do double penetration. Or, alternately, whatever it is that makes people hire Keira Knightly. It sure as hell isn't talent, or screen presence, or physical attributes. The best thing I can come up with is that as a celebrity, her name is a marketable attribute, and will draw a certain number of viewers. Or something. Really, I just don't know, it's totally beyond me. So what happened in between the late 80's and today that made us stop valuing female sexuality? Why don't we feel comfortable with celebrating joyful, overblown vampiness anymore? Why aren't we actively demanding the return of the sex-kitten?

I just hope Rodriguez's remake of Barbarella will remind America of what we once had, and how silly it is that we don't have it anymore.

Update: Dolly Parton is the shit. Linked is a decent article about why, exploring some of the female sexuality related issues I'd like to have something bright to say about.

P.S.- I got no beef with skinny girls, or androgynous girls, just the role Hollywood MAKES them play in representing female sexuality (although, Shane from the L Word, you rock it Japanese pillow book old school and make that skinny, androgynous look wicked femme positive). Seems to me that typically these girls are made to represent women who do not embrace their own sexuality, which I got beef with. I know it can be a thin line to walk, in between exploitation and celebration when it comes to female sexuality; but especially in a medium where female sexuality is not just the icing but the cake( I'm talking 'bout pirate movies...): somebody's gotta try! And, as is evidenced by the L word, when you put forward genuine representations of female sexuality, it's legit even though it's hot! In fact, it's more legit because it's hot! Whatever, ask Dolly Parton, she's smarter than me.....

Double failure

2007-05-24T21:52:00.001-07:00

Possibly even triple.

So I know I'm not doing Acephale anymore, but some things just gotta get said. Basically, I just had the most amazing sex ever, twice, followed by a brief cuddle session that lasted exactly the right amount of time so that I didn't have to ask him to leave. I let him out, still feeling that glow, took a hit and hit play on my computer, and it's fuckin' Elvis's 'Do the clam" on my itunes. If anyone in the world is in a better mood than I am right now, I'm really happy for them.

Failure!

2007-05-23T11:57:00.000-07:00

I'm a total failure at writing about movies right now.

HOWEVER- my new apartment has an ant problem, and I was about to be really bummed about it, when I remembered what Richard Feynman wrote in Surely you're Joking, Mr. Feynman, about ants. They navigate by smell, and confusing their scent trail will...well, confuse their trail. So I dosed my kitchen sink liberally with some perfume someone gave me at some point, and what do you know: now my kitchen is ant free, without the use of pesticides; and it smells like that French girl I made out with in high school. So I guess reading that book wasn't a complete waste of my time after all...

Grindhouse cinema

2007-05-07T14:14:00.000-07:00

As we are all being forcibly made aware of grindhouse film by the illustrious Mssr. Tarantino, I'd like to put in my two cents about this genre, which is near and dear to my heart. While I have yet to see Tarantino's (or Rodriguez's) nod to one of my favorite kinds of movie, I am reasonably sure that Tarantino's attempt at emulating this will be a failure, since the elements of exploitation cinema that interest him appear to be those stylish, cool-factor bits and not the raw ugliness that comprises what is really interesting in these films. Additionally, Tarantino's dialogue heavy format and bent for pseudo-philosophical content will not lend itself well to the genre, and I seriously doubt he can manage to broaden his scope. I might be wrong, but I'm willing to bet that I called this one.

So I will review one of the ugliest, one of the worst, and one of the most representative grindhouse features that I'm aware of: Lucio Fulci's New York Ripper.

New York Ripper is barely a film. It barely has a plot, it barely even has a premise, but of all the messed up junk I enthusiastically show to whomever will watch, this is the one that most frequently elicits: "That changed me," and I certainly will go back and watch it, and watch it change people, again and again. The film opens with an elderly gentleman tossing a stick for his golden retriever in a recognizable, NYC location(a classic feature of grindhouse flicks, which were predominantly shown in the 42nd street grindhouses). In a trite, cheap shot moment, the obliging pooch return to it's owner carrying not a stick, but a severed human hand. And it only gets worse from there. The basic, overarching premise of the film is that there is a serial killer on the loose, targeting women in the manner of Jack the Ripper, antagonizing the police, and generally being up to no good. Character development is achieved largely through the assertions of other characters in the film, and "she has an IQ of 142," is supposed to be enough to convince us that some simpering blonde nitwit who behaves like she couldn't put her pants on by herself is smart. Similarly, much of the police work/mystery unraveling is necessarily made by a leap of faith; "After reviewing these tapes, it is clear to me that the killer is well-off, from a cultured background" (after listening to a tape of a man saying "you're stupid" in a donald duck voice). Like many grindhouses, this film exists as a vehicle for two or three truly shocking set pieces, and the rest of it is poorly connected, compulsory plot-furthering situations. So I'll review this film how it should be reviewed:

Set pieces:

1) Razor to the nipple

2) Razor to the eye-ball

3) Broken bottle to the crotch, w/ crotch POV shot

4) Foot rape

Themes/gimmicks:

1) SM

2) Voyeurism/exhibitionism

3) Donald duck. You heard me.

Grindhouse films are ugly. These films were made to deliver a blow, to touch something in members of society who wanted to feel: anything. I think things like this are worth seeing because they are a naturally occurring phenomenon that I find fascinating. Those things that are most telling about them now, (their emotional salience, themes of misogyny and violence against women, one of the only glimpses into the lives of certain fringe elements of society, one of the truest glimpses into the real fantasy life of at least one section of Americans...), came from someplace true and important to understand. This particular type of escapist relief, this particular kind of head trip, is deeply interesting but a sad and curious artifact of deep hatred and loneliness; of film-makers and film viewers. If Tarantino delivers as much emotional scope and complexity in his polished, kick-ass retro piece as I take away from New York Ripper, I'll be very surprised.

The Host part II

2007-04-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

Or 'insomnia part 80 billion' or something.

I still don't have the energy to really say anything about 'The Host,' but I will relate this anecdote to those of you who have seen it. So I work in a Children's Hospital, and right outside the door to my office is a wall where the feeding disorder kids hang their art therapy projects. These kids are between the ages of 2-10, I'd say, and were probably almost all born prematurely. At any rate, I am always largely impressed by these projects, and am particularly enamored of the work of a young girl of about 4 named Claire, whose last project "snazzy feet," I actually considered stealing before I realized what I was considering. This week Claire has painted a large, watercolor mural; of a river flowing, and the sun, and some plants, and.... a large, indiscriminate amphibious looking blob? And the word HAN scribbled in big yellow kiddie letters, with an arrow pointing to the river. Now I'm sure there's some perfectly reasonable explanation for this; if you figure it out, let me know.

Science!

2007-04-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

Hi all, sorry for the shocking lack of content in recent weeks. Tomorrow I am off to IMFAR (International Meeting for Autism Research) to present a paper; this is why I haven't had any time to write about movies. Although I haven't managed to stop thinking about them... At any rate, wish me luck, it's the first thing I've ever been first author on.

Feminism, apparently

2007-04-18T10:07:00.001-07:00

Alright, let's talk about vagina. In film. I'd like to preface this by saying that I am by no means a feminist, educated about feminist theory, or even really a huge fan of feminists as they appear to me to exist today; nor am I really very similar to most women and therefor close to being able to understand how they feel about gender roles and all that jazz. So here goes what looks to be pretty much a shot in the dark.

I specifically want to talk about feminism in the context of two films: Catherine Breillat's 'Anatomy of Hell,' and Peggy Ahwesh's 'The Dead Man'. Both of these films purport to be explorations of female sexuality, sans "the usual patriarchal-porn trimmings" (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, on The Dead Man). Both are adapted from literary sources (The Dead Man from the short story by Georges Bataille, Anatomy of Hell from Breillat's own novel Pornocracy). And both are very focused around one overwhelming mood: revulsion.

I didn't choose to talk about these movies because they are good, and, in fact, I'm pretty sure Breillat's movie sucked, but they did make me think.

'The Dead Man' was interesting in that it has been heralded as a feminist film, as is evidenced by the above quote, but damn if it isn't absolutely true to the Bataille story. In the story (and the film) a young woman discovers her lover's corpse. She leaves her country home and wanders, naked under a raincoat, out into a storm and engages in a series of acts that convey that she has completely relinquished her self control; the violent situation produces a series of violently unstudied actions. Our heroin, naked, soaking wet and already at the edge of experience enters a bar and things escalate until she is engaged in raunchy public sex acts with the lecherous local yokels; falling down drunk and not above squatting on the bar and urinating on one of it's patrons before being unceremoniously fucked on the floor. Ahwesh's treatment of the subject matter is pretty much verbatim, and I don't think Bataille would be at all displeased with her decision to include acting so bad it made the audience squirm almost as much as the image of one of her actors pulling on his limp dick, or the very long and simply shot sex scene on the floor, with all the drunken grunting and thrusting that that involved. As the original story was written by a man, and the film is, in fact, shockingly true to the tone of the story, it is interesting that it is considered a feminist film. My best guess would be that this is a reflection of the perception that works that are violently confrontational and have female characters that make us uncomfortable are feminist works. Exactly why it is important, to the end of establishing gender equality, that we be made uncomfortable, that we be confronted with a revolting woman, I can't say I know. Needless to say, I thought the dead man was the most awesome movie ever.

The Anatomy of Hell, on the other hand, was deeply flawed and at times obnoxiously preachy. It did, however, leave an impression, as some of the images are burned into my retinas until the end of time, or at least the end of this week. In this confused head trip, a gay man(aging Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi) happens on a woman, in a gay bar, slitting her wrists. They enter into an agreement in which he will be payed to watch her while she sleeps at her isolated country home. What follows is a lot of terrible dialogue about how revolting women are, and how (straight) men want to possess them. The heart of the film, however, is the imagery and without the dialogue obnoxiously spelling out what must have been basically the entirety of 'Pornocracy,' the mood in this film is basically the same as that of 'The Dead Man.' Important differences are that the female character in Anatomy of Hell is in no way rooted in psychological realism, in fact I'm pretty sure that as this was in conception and execution a feminist film, she must necessarily be less specific than that and be representative of women. In addition, she has complete control, and although she's asleep for most of the action (and she's quite a deep sleeper), appears to constantly be doing things to poor Rocco. Rocco does an excellent job of being deeply affected by all this, and calmly drinks the reddened water she prepares for him by infusing it with her used tampon, but I have trouble buying the importance of the shit that he's so deeply affected by. Also of note is that Rocco's big, hard, beautiful cock makes a number of appearances in the film and female anatomy is, well, made revolting. I guess we'd have to ask Breillat how this forwards the feminist agenda. The film is absolutely violently confrontational, although when coupled with the explicit feminist 'men want to own me period blood is OK' dialogue it seems as if we are being asked to feel guilty for thinking the disgusting, confrontational imagery is gross rather than being asked to push ourselves to the limits of experience, perception and understanding as I feel we are in 'The Dead Man.' Overall an interesting idea in that it's violent and confrontational about sex, but, well.

So those are my thoughts on at least this one specific aspect of feminist film.

Anatomy of Hell available through netflix, The Dead Man available for rental(16mm) from the NY film makers coop

Acephale

2007-04-13T07:48:00.000-07:00

So, for all one (possibly two) of you who are wondering what's up with Acephale... The lovely foreign boy that I married three years ago and I are about to embark on that leg of the journey towards a green card in which, we have been told, the government will start to interview people, monitor our monitorable communications, and snoop around generally making sure we're really married. It might be overkill but I don't plan on losing this boy or this battle with the department of homeland security, so I'm going to kill Acephale temporarily. Given that it's taken 3 years to even get this far, temporarily might mean any number of things. At any rate, maybe it will give me some time to come up with new material. Damn shame about the timing, as I just found out that Mia shares Hitler's birthday, and more than a few of my interests...

!!!!

2007-04-09T23:08:00.000-07:00

This isn't film related, but it was so cool.

I visited my grandfather on the north shore of lake Ponchetrain(outside New Orleans) over the weekend and last night as we were sitting on the porch drinking coffee we started talking about... well shit, I don't remember. Somehow music machines came up, and my grandfather pipes up with "My neighbor Randy collects antique music players and machines, why don't we go and ask him to show us?" We call Randy up and moments later he is graciously ushering me into the house, obviously tickled that we asked to see his collection, of which, my grandfather has told me, he is very proud. He starts in the dining room, with an old gramophone and a 50's juke box he has restored, with before and after pictures. Then he showed us the phonograph cylinders, and several music boxes that dated back to the 18th century, more juke boxes, and all kinds of things I can't even remember the name of, before taking us back into the room where he kept all the really good stuff. I don't even know what to call the thing I saw.... It was, I guess, a fully automated band from 1918, which read from a paper roll. It had been re-done in the 30's when an accordion was added and it was given an art-deco makeover. Apparently there are people, somewhere, who still transcribe music onto rolls for these things, and Randy said he had a bunch of Beatles and some Hank Williams from sources like that. Did I mention the size of this thing? It was monstrous, with the instruments a few inches above eye level and a giant organ in the back, filled with pneumatic tubes and machinery behind the green art-deco facade. He had it play us a few songs, and he showed us the Mills novelty Co. Violano-Virtuoso, which is a self-playing violin with piano accompaniment. So awesome. I might be 5 years old, but I love watching the keys on the piano move by themselves. And as a true appreciator of genuine weirdos, I have to say that this is one of my favorite types: the crazy collector in backwoods Louisiana whose hobby is worth WAY more than his house, and is totally awesome. If anyone else ever finds one, tell me and maybe I'll make a movie about it. Oh yeah! He also had a piano that could record and play back those rolls, how cool is that?

Still horrified

2007-04-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

Two things I wish I had never overheard:

"Let's see... Maryland... Maryland... I just can't remember what state that's in "
- a Comcast employee, talking to a customer who was apparently calling from Maryland

"I'm really bummed they locked that gate"- my neighbour
"Why?" -his girlfriend

That last one isn't quite as awful out of context, but the gate to the back of my building has been locked and we now have to walk around a block of apartment buildings in order to get to the back, besides which the only reasonable answer to that question is "because I can no longer use the gate" in almost any context. I wonder what she's like in bed. Not very intuitive, I would imagine.

I swear to Jesus on the cross I'll watch some movies soon, and then write unbelievably interesting things about them.

People are so weird

2007-03-31T00:18:00.000-07:00

I may be drunk, but I am rarely as horrified as I am right now, about this .

Die Walkure

2007-03-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

It's not a movie, but Imna review it anyway.

Last night I saw the Washington National Opera's current production of Die Walkure, with 66 year old Placido Domingo singing the role of Siegmund. Unfortunately for me, he had a cold and was singing well but not at full volume and in full force. Whatever, now I can check "see one of the world's best tenors in one of history's greatest operas" off my list of things to do. The much in vogue Anja Kampe failed to impress me as Siegelinde, perhaps because her awkward body language and less polished stage presence must necessarily be compared to Domingo's performance, as the two characters play off each other constantly. Her singing was superb, but it was Domingo and the otherwise negligible Gidon Saks, as Hunding, who carried the burden of establishing her role as the downtrodden wife, barefoot and in the kitchen. No, seriously, they totally had Siegelinde barefoot and in the kitchen. I wonder if this is what director Francesca Zambello meant when she said she was making "an American Ring."

Linda Watson as Brunhilde and Elena Zaremba as Fricka were both outstanding, and haven't gotten the good press that they deserve. Bottom line, these folks can sing and most of them can act.

But now for the confusing part. Zambella made some head-scratch worthy decisions, and there was a lack of unity in the direction of the opera as a whole, not in terms of narrative and drama but in terms of sub-texts and allegorical interpretations. I was first caused to scratch my head when Hunding appeared, in boots, suspenders and a brown shirt. Huh, I thought to myself. Nazis. OK, we can bring Nazi's into this, I guess. Although why Hunding? Isn't that sort of an odd, re-appropriation and reinterpretation of post-Wagner conceptions of this work's significance, specifically in terms of political revolution and German nationalism? And if so, isn't it a bit of an over simplification? We get it, Hunding is evil. The Nazi's were evil. Is anything interesting being communicated? Or was it non-intentional? How could you unintentionally dress a character in Der Ring like a skinhead?

THEN: the ride of the Valkyries. The third act began with imagery that appeared to be lifted straight out of Apocalypse Now, a screen was lowered and images of helicopters and fighter planes were projected as the Valkyries entered the stage by parachute. Which seems to me to be a pretty strange way to go with that. THEN I noticed that the Valkyries were also dressed as skinheads. No suspenders this time, but that's sure what it looked like to me. So either it was a huge oversight on the part of the costume designer, or perhaps everyone who would get in the way of Siegmunde's victory over Hunding is a Nazi. Except Wotan, who was an evil capitalist, for some reason. So you can understand my confusion. I'm pretty unclear on what the director intended to communicate through these particular decisions, making it pretty clear to me that the direction lacked focus and theoretical continuity. And originality. I feel like the helicopter/parachuting ride of the Valkyries was in fact just lifted from Apocalypse Now, and I'm uncomfortable with the kind of reverse pop-culture reference being made. Also, the Wotan as evil capitalist angle was lifted straight from the '76 Bayreuth production, but isn't put into context at all. It is almost as if the director felt that precedent was enough context, and that this kind of superficiality is acceptable.

To top it off, all of these decisions inject war into the piece, and by her own admission Zambella was intending to make "an American Ring," and god knows that revolution and upheaval, the institution of a new regime, are the most overwhelming themes in the cycle. So where was our war? This was an amazing opportunity to do something really interesting with this piece, and they did nothing.

Don't get me wrong, it was spectacular, and as a music drama everything carried and resonated. But the art direction, set and costume design, not to mention certain thematic decisions, lay a strange and opaque film of confused allegory over an otherwise solid production of a wonderful piece.

The Black Lizard (1968)

2007-03-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

The Black Lizard (Kurotokage) Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, screen
adaptation by Yukio Mishima

The Black Lizard is a noir-ish detective story based on the novel of the same name by Rampo Edogawa. The film centers around the interactions of two strong characters; The Black Lizard, played by transvestite actor Akihiro Maruyama, an elegant gender-ambiguous criminal mastermind; and Akechi, Japan's best detective. When Akechi is hired by a wealthy jeweler who has been alerted to a plot to kidnap his daughter, a battle of wits between Black Lizard and Akechi begins. Over the course of the film both parties develop a mutual appreciation and respect for the other. In the interims between the almost erotic mental battles these two engage in there is plenty of time for treachery, crime, plot twists, false identities, lavish set design, and flowery language.

This movie is similar to other Japanese crime films of it's time in that it is unabashedly stylish and saturated with bravado(Tokyo Drifter, Lady Snowblood, etc..) but the subject matter and it's treatment are unique. The gender-ambiguous title character is only the icing on the cake; the really interesting moments in this film draw their power from the sexualized battle of wits, to the death, enacted by our protagonist and the title character. Although predatory, their relationship develops into something overwhelming intimate and undeniably sexual.

The Black Lizard, although the villain, comes through as the most developed character in the film despite being the most reprehensible. Her acts are almost unconscionable, and the extent of her evil gradually unfolds throughout the film, building up until the viewer finally reaches her headquarters, decorated with stolen jewels and the taxidermied corpses of her beautiful victims, posed at the Black Lizard's whim for eternity (um, sorry Gunther von Hagens, but that does seem pretty evil. I know, I know... it was for science.) But we identify with her. We feel her loneliness, sense her intense attraction to beauty and danger,to intellect, and her keen desire to be bested by Akechi. The love that went into crafting her character; her appearance, her cruelty, and her desire to be dominated; must trace back to Mishima's script. This is the character that he identifies most with, and the power of his fantasy makes this callous, shallow, criminal highly empathetic.

I watched this film because I find Mishima intensely interesting, and got even more than I bargained for. Sets, lighting, costumes and acting are all spot-on. Subject matter is overblown (in the best possible sense of that word)outrageous and fantastic (in the original sense of that word). I'd be interested to read the novel and see how and where Mishima's influence really shaped the telling of this story; the dialogue is clearly representative of his tendency towards imagery, and the plot and characters themselves reek of his particular ability to sexualize death. It would be interesting to see where inspiration left off and deeply personal ideas and aesthetics took over.

Recommended viewing

Available for download from cinema obscura, previously secret cinema (http://www.cinema-obscura.com/)

The Fountain

2007-03-22T16:13:00.000-07:00

OK. Here I go. So about Darren Aronofsky's "The Fountain": To the filthy hippies who brainwashed the maker of pi; shame on you! The Fountain sucked so hard it created a vacuum. What happened to the Aronofsky with potential? The Aronofsky whose movies interested me as a teenager, who used images and content in a really neat symbiotic way where some of the images were the content, who could shock and surprise me and make me feel stuff? I mean, sure, as a film maker he had a lot of flaws, but he had some pretty good, er, OK, some ideas. But the fountain is so empty of meaning and infused with obnoxious new-age self indulgent self important shit it makes me want to punch the next hippy I see in the face. It's so empty of meaning that even the mechanics of the film are empty gestures; sure, you made all that stuff happen on film without using a computer, but I couldn't tell. My buddy who watched the movie with me couldn't tell. Basically, you blew god knows how much money in some kind of new age film-snob revolt against digital animation techniques for no good reason. There are a million instances where there is a good reason NOT to use CGI, for example, if you are representing fire. Fire cannot be CGI. I don't care how good you think you are at it, you're not, just don't do it. But that hippy shit in the fountain? I thought it was CGI until I read otherwise. So, good job of not disrupting the flow and feel of the movie by not using CGI, it really made a difference. Idiot.

Also, a whole movie and all that overblown drama about some chick who dies of cancer? (Yeah, she dies, now you know the end so you don't have to see it.) Big deal. Something sadder happened to me on my walk to the bus this morning and you don't see me making a movie about it, especially not one in which I become some kind of ascetic who makes out with trees in the sky for eternity because of it. Also, brain surgery? In a drug trial? With results that are worth something in days? Whoever did the research for that aspect of the story deserves to be shot in the knees, because my kid sister could tell you that drugs enter the brain through the blood-brain barrier and drug trials last no less than 5 years. If you're developing a drug that requires direct access to the brain you're probably in Nazi Germany, and it's probably not a drug. My kid sister is pre-med, but my point still stands.

In conclusion: Return Darren Aronofsky to us, you filthy filthy hippies, and I will give each one of you a brand new filthy sleeping bag and some used dread wax. Seems fair to me.

Available: doesn't matter, don't see it.

The Host

2007-03-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

1) Go see Bong Joon-Ho's "The Host" immediately.

2) Actually, there is no 2 but I'll have more to say about this later.

ANGRY

2007-03-15T14:49:00.000-07:00

OK, so I just got chastised for my apparel at work, by a doctor I work closely with, after someone else in the department (Dr. Palatucci) mentioned something to him. It began with the qualifier "I know this is something I've mentioned before...."

1) If you mentioned it before, it wasn't to me.

2) I'm wearing a button down collared shirt and dress slacks.

So I asked, "what exactly about the way I dress is it?"

Apparently, I need to cover more skin. Because I work with 8-12 year old mentally handicapped boys, blah blah blah.... I look down, to see what offending bit of skin I could have missed. Well, I can see... my hands... and.... my neck from the collar bone up, and then my face. That's it. So, a burqa? And some gloves? Or what? It's obvious that by "showing too much skin" he meant "I find you attractive" because I wasn't showing ANY skin and if a collared shirt and black slacks are inappropriate work attire then I have been severely misinformed about many, many things. So suck my fat dick, Dr. Palatucci, if you think it's inappropriate for attractive young women to work with young boys with developmental disabilities then maybe you should start hiring some ugly chicks, or MAYBE EVEN A DUDE. I know it's no coincidence that the majority of my co-workers are leggy 20-something female psych students with pretty faces, I just didn't want to hate you for it.

I don't mean to imply that I find myself attractive, only that the only implication the statement "showing too much skin" could have, under the circumstances, is that my sex appeal is inappropriate for the workplace.

Imagine what would happen if I started wearing make-up.

Notes on culture and perspective in film:

2007-03-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

In my study of the human mind and human social cognition specifically (which is what I do when I'm not watching movies) I have become very familiar with a set of theories that I am beginning to think are relevant to my recent discussion of black cinema; specifically my post on Melvin van Peebles and the inaccessibility of his work to white audiences. This is also relevant to my more recent rant about how Sofia Coppola is an inane whiny bitch. Theory of Mind is the study of how people make inferences about the contents of other people's minds: for example, when a stranger opens a door at the train station and hesitates for just an instant, you have to infer from contextual cues whether this person is holding the door open for you, for another person they are with, or for themselves; and your behavior should appropriately reflect an understanding of their intention. If there is a failure to make the correct inference, you may end up bumping into this person or cutting off their aging mother... at any rate, you get the idea. The simulation theory of mind, which I am a proponent of, suggests that we are capable of making such inferences by simulating the mental state of the person holding the door open: in other words, we put ourselves in their shoes and infer what they will do based on an understanding of what we would do, given their perspective. This is a super-simplified summation (alliteration!) of the theory, but hopefully a useful one. In theory, from infancy we learn about our selves by imitating members of our species; everything from how to move our arms to language, and that we learn about inaccessible internal states of others by simulating their situation within our selves. This is, in theory, how empathy works. You feel the pain or joy of another human being because having access to the internal states of other people helps you infer what they are likely to do, and to behave appropriately given their mental state. OK, one final item, and then I'll get to my point: humans don't, and can't invent things. Yes, it's true that most people consider our ability to make and use tools one of the things that truly makes us human, and yes, we have devised a plethora of novel and useful STUFF, so how, you ask, can I make a statement like that as I sit here typing on a freaking computer for god's sake. The answer is that we are inventive, but the human mind is not capable of creating something out of nothing. It IS capable of abstracting information about objects and inventing new ways to combine, tear apart, or use objects, concepts, and thoughts that exist in this world. But it can't make something from nothing. Even monsters, creations of pure fantasy, are frequently composites of things that exist given a novel arrangement and context. (The griffin?) So what does this have to do with Melvin van Peebles and Sofia Coppola, you ask? Well I, for one, have a hard time identifying with the characters and scenarios in their films. It could be argued that I don't have access to the world's of these films because I don't have access to the minds of the film makers, because our cultures are so disparate. Not just because I've never been a blond millionaire or a black soldier serving overseas, but because these people belong to completely different cultures than I do; cultures in which elements present in these films are familiar, even if placed in a novel context. In the case of Sofia Coppola,I have no problem not identifying with her because I find her despicable; and I place the burden of responsibility on her to make a movie about the human condition, and not about the Sofia Coppola condition, which is apparently blond and spoiled. To some degree, I believe that all artists are responsible for communicating something to their audience. It should be something new, something that pushes us to see and experience new thoughts or perspectives, but if it's entirely inaccessible to an audience, then how can it change them? I probably shouldn't bring this up, because it's a bit of a scary topic to bring up in a public forum, but Wagner's infamous article "Judaism in Music" recently made me think about what I wrote about van Peebles (Oh god, I'm in trouble now). I will not touch upon whether or not I read the article as anti-Semitic, which I did, but will instead focus on one point that he makes. He seems to express that he feels Jewish composers of his era were unsuccessful in composing Opera in the western tradition because it had not been a part of their culture up until that point. This reminded me a lot of what I said about van Peebles work, that it was essentially outsider art that exhibits a lack of fluency in the art form, a form which up until the making of that movie had not been a part of van Peebles' cultural heritage. However, unlike Sofia Coppola, van Peebles does communicate with his audience: just not with all audiences. And at that time, it was very important to start to establish a black cinema, something for and about the experiences of that specific community. But it is also important for that kind of work to be accessible to culturally distinct communities: isn't the spreading of information what it's all about, in the end? In conclusion, I guess I don't really have a point. The issues that I (hope) I've brought up are these: what role does cinema have in culture, and what is the responsibility of the film-maker to communicate and inform audiences? How precious is the idea of a culturally distinct black cinema, a new form that serves specifically to express identities and ideas within a community? I don't have any answers, and I barely had any real questions, but this intersection of the anatomy of the real world (or in this instance, American culture) and our minds' abilities and limitations regarding empathy and understanding of minds separate from our own, really interests me. If that makes any sense.

Marie Antoinette

2007-03-07T09:29:00.000-08:00

I never thought it would come to this, but yesterday I actually watched Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. To clarify something for those of you who don't know any better or have been confused by positive media reactions to Sofia Coppola's films, THEY ARE NOT GOOD. Even Lost in Translation; not good. In fact, really, really bad. If you think you liked the movie, I hate to tell you this but it was actually just the soundtrack that you liked, and possibly some vague sense that Tokyo, Scarlett Johanssen, and Bill Murray are things that you should think are cool and that therefor the combination of those things, set to the chill sounds of My Bloody Valentine = a good movie. Such is not the case. In fact, that proclaimed "love letter to Japan" was just another weak, theoretically incoherent, inane movie about an attractive privileged white girl and how hard it is to be one, and in fact is insulting to the Japanese and completely marginalizes important issues like misogyny in Japan, among other things. But I digress. Marie Antoinette was, (surprise!) a weak, theoretically incoherent, inane movie about an attractive privileged white chick and how hard it is to be one. Sofia Coppola's main flaw as a film maker, besides a lack of talent, is a lack of perspective. Like many spoiled people, she only has one perspective, and it happens to be her own. All of her characters are representations of herself, and in making Marie Antoinette, she makes a pretty clear statement. She thinks she's royalty, and deserves our pity. Aside from my attack on the character of the director, which is directly related to the lack of value in her films, she's barely even trying in this one. The births and deaths of the children of the title character are represented by a 20 second montage of taking down and putting up family portraits; while at least an hour of the film is dedicated to shots of Kirsten Dunst's snaggle-toothed cackle as she gambles and, for some reason, runs a lot. Good to know what Sofia Coppola's priorities are. The dialogue is poorly written, with inconsistencies in style from scene to scene and between characters. Austrian characters speak English with a British accent(?) except for Kirsten Dunst, and her daughter is inexplicably the only character who speaks French. The only real attempt at making this a period piece and not a piece of card-board with the words "I am Sofia Coppola I have good taste in music and I want to be the queen of France I am so misunderstood identify with me!" written on it are the costumes and set design, which I will admit were kind of nice. But used to no good end. In conclusion, Sofia Coppola: shut the hell up.

Available from wherever total crap is distributed.

EEEEEEK!

2007-02-27T13:50:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to the liquidation auction for Baltimore's Dime Museum, basically to check out a free freak show (auction items and those attending) and maybe pick up a little something something if it just happened that I happened to...... CHECK OUT THE AWESOME STUFF I GOT!

Hell with it

2007-02-27T08:54:00.000-08:00

I've been very negligent of this blog recently, especially lame since I have a project this month that I think is pretty cool; to write about blaxploitation and some related genre films. But I have been seriously unmotivated, no idea what that's about. The only movie that got me really excited recently was not blaxploitation related, and all I was really inspired to say about it was
GO WATCH BLUE UNDERGROUND'S RELEASE OF SALON KITTY RIGHT NOW.

I'm not kidding at all, and I can't give any spoilers because that would detract from the immense cognitive effect of this film on the viewer.

I've been wanting to write about Blacula, because I love it and there's some interesting stuff going on there, but have been totally uninspired. What can I really say about Blacula? It's awesome, William Marshall's performance carries the piece and is astoundingly strong and dignified, traditional themes of sexuality and the complicity of the female victim are given a little nudge here; with Blacula's first victims being homosexual males and Tina's willing decision to join Blacula. Blacula himself becomes a tragic hero instead of a monster, he is not lured to his death by the female victim, she willingly joins him and he voluntarily walks into the sun and kills himself when he loses her. In any number of ways this movie turns the traditional themes of vampire films on their heads and emerges as a strong, interesting take on those themes and the way they translate given a different cultural context. So there, I guess I wrote about Blacula. Great movie, check it out if you haven't, available pretty much anywhere.

8 easy steps to becoming peniless and angry

2007-02-26T08:37:00.000-08:00

1) kitten dies ($300) (animal hospital bills)

2) extravagant trip to amsterdam, because at the time you had the cash ($1,600)

3) new kitty to ease the pain, disease free this time ($350)

4) external hard drive death, replacement and data recovery ($1,000)

5) car accident in car w/ no collision insurance because of paperwork mix-up ($6,109)

6) new insurance policy downpayment ($1,900)

7) check fraud and identity theft ($1,500) (stolen from me)

8) Help out a friend in trouble ($1,500) (again, hen I had the cash)

and now, here I am, completely broke. thanks life. thanks a lot.

Abar: The First Black Superman (1977) Frank Packard

2007-02-18T13:36:00.000-08:00

Abar may not be the greatest blaxploitation flick ever made, in fact it has been largely forgotten and is pretty tough to get your hands on at this point. But it is a novelty, and in a way, it's simplicity lays bare the issues at the center of black cinema and the blaxploitation movement. It's novelty is that it is, purportedly, the first black sci-fi movie. The premise is that an upper class, educated black family moves into a white neighborhood, and zany antics ensue! Dr. Kinkaide, the successful black scientist, and his family, are not welcomed into their new neighborhood. There is not a single sympathetic white character in the world of this film, and the good doctor's home is vandalized and the family threatened with violence. Abar, a youthful idealist who aims to end povery and racial discrimination, is hired as the Kinkaide's bodyguard. Meanwhile, Dr. Kinkaide has been whipping up a super-secret elixir in his basement laboratory that allows bunny rabbits to survive gunshot wounds. When the racial tension gets really bad, Dr. Kinkaide convinces Abar to down the potion, giving him supernatural honky-bashing powers. Production values are very low, the acting is even worse, and the premise and it's presentation are nothing less than absurd, but it's good camp fun with a positive message. Abar's speeches about making efforts towards social change by non-violent means and the unity displayed by the black community are heartfelt, if over-simplified, attempts to forward a positive political agenda. I also found it interesting that the (poor) black community stood up for the Kinkaides, because in many movies in this and related genres black characters who leave the community to live a more posh lifestyle are frequently denigrated and perceived as turning their back on their roots. There isn't a whole lot of action until the very end, when Abar gains an assortment of superpowers and there results a great big supernatural showdown between the racist honkies and the activist turned magical militant. All in all, a good bit of fun with some novel elements and an appealing camp aesthetic.

Available for sale at pimpadelicwonderland.com, and possibly for download at thepiratebay.org if anyone's still seeding

For the record

2007-02-17T17:59:00.000-08:00

I spent the 14th watching 'let me die a woman' with my boy and the cat, who especially liked the operation scenes. Best Valentines Day Ever.

Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971) Jacopetti and Prosperi

2007-02-15T11:18:00.001-08:00

"They have finally done it: Made the most disgusting, contemptuous insult to decency ever to masquerade as a documentary" -Roger Ebert on Goodbye Uncle Tom

I know I said I would write about blaxploitation exclusively this month, but it looks like the scope of the project is going to be a little broader, although still essentially the same. Goodbye Uncle Tom is not a blaxploitation flick, but it certainly is about black people being exploited and I have been thinking more and more about how this kind of exploitation movie (mondo, etc..) is really important to a discussion of exploitation in film and in this particular instance, black issues.
Jacopetti and Prosperi were a team of Italian film makers who began making "documentary" films in the early 60's, generally composed of shocking and bizarre images of non-western cultures, customs, and events. The genre of films that emerged from this are now called "shockumentaries" or more classically, mondo cinema. Their first foray into this dangerous and controversial genre was Mondo Cane, one of the best known and most visually and emotionally striking of their films. One of the characteristics of their films is that they are presented to the viewer as images of truth, as documentary footage, and this, I believe, is the most dangerous and intriguing element of this type of film.
Goodbye Uncle Tom departs from the structure of Mondo Cane, which was essentially a collage of unrelated clips from different exotic locales. Uncle Tom maintains the context of being a documentary, and the film makers and camera men are frequently in the shot, interacting with the players. However, the film these on-screen film makers are making is a documentary about slavery in the pre-civil war American South. I love this whimsical decision of the film makers; it establishes a very specific point of entry for the viewer: as it is a documentary, we are asked to believe that the events in the movie are true and to respect their power as images of real life atrocities, but we are constantly reminded of the impossibility that the footage we are shown is real. This decision may have been influenced in part by the public's reaction to Afrika Addio, which was presented as pure documentary and resulted in murder charges for the film makers. It also allows the film makers to include some very powerful directorial scenes and images that would not work in the context of a film that was presented as unstaged documentary: for example, one beautiful shot of a little white girl and a young black boy frolicking together in a sunny field filled with flowers, only as they draw nearer to the camera, the viewer is stunned by the realization that the black child is on a leash.
I will be the first to admit that this film is genuinely shocking, and not for the weak of heart (or mind, or stomach); but I also think it's an important and intensely interesting movie. Based on the track records of the film makers, it is not surprising that this film is loaded with intensely disturbing, violent, and controversial(some would call it offensive) imagery. Many consider the film to be overtly racist, and I can honestly say I understand that. But I feel that it is important, and appropriate, to make a film about the atrocities committed against African slaves that leaves us shocked, angry, and chilled to the bone. Holocaust films perform a similar function in educating and pushing forward a discussion about how such events can happen and how they affect us. The difference between many disturbing holocaust films and films like Uncle Tom is the shock factor, and the elements of horror and raw exploitation used by Jacoppetti and Prosperi. One of their most effective techniques is the use of sometimes breathtaking cinematography and Riz Ortolani's downright immorally good score, which, juxtaposed against the horror of the subject matter, creates quite the cognitive effect on the viewer. I love this movie because it moved and disturbed me, and because of the texture and richness of the visual and mental world I was unwillingly thrust into. A very powerful and disturbing movie, highly recommended to those who can take it.

Also, ONLY watch the blue underground release, which is the only available copy of the directors cut, has 13 minutes of extra footage, is better edited and is from a much better quality print than other versions available in America http://www.blue-underground.com/

Bones (2001) Ernest R. Dickerson

2007-02-09T07:53:00.001-08:00

Bones is one of the most under appreciated horror movies in recent history. Not only does it star Snoop Dogg and Pam Grier (together at last!), but it actually adresses supernatural horror themes in some really interesting and innovative ways. The premise of the film is that a supposedly haunted house is purchased by a group of young aspiring musicians, who hope to turn it into a nightclub and rejuvenate their father's old neighborhood, which has become a slum. Slowly the story of how the neighborhood went downhill unfolds, including their father's involvement in the murder of Jimmy Bones(Snoop), who was trying to stop the introduction of crack into the neighborhood. This allows for some truly awesome flashback/background establishing scenes set in the 70's, with Snoop and Pam Grier in excellent 70's getup. The 70's scenes are shot with yellow filters, evoking the aesthetic of 70's film stock and the look of old blaxploitation flicks. From here, the structure of the story is reminiscent of rape/revenge movies of that era, except that it takes the form of murder/revenge from beyond the grave. This allows us to feel sympathy for the killer, and even admiration for his bad-assness (which is plentiful). While this movie certainly borrowed a lot from classic 70's genre cinema, it also contains the kind of snappy dialogue and catch phrases employed in later American horror films such as Nightmare on Elm Street. Influences from Italian horror can also be spotted, most notably in the gratuitous use of maggots, a staple of 80's Italian horror. The film makers really did their research, and the casting is superb. The chemistry between Pam Grier and Snoop is surprisingly good,and the story of Jimmy's betrayal by members of his own community, as well as the anti-drug message, is yet another example of a call for greater unity and brotherhood in the black community. The supernatural killing scenes are inventive and over the top, and invite the viewer to have some fun with this movie. It's funny, it's cool looking, there's maggots, Snoop and Pam Grier get it on, really, what more could you ask for?

I'm definitely a fan.

Available for rental through netflix, for sale on amazon

neat-o

2007-02-09T06:49:00.000-08:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6342659.stm

Spider Baby revision

2007-02-08T07:25:00.000-08:00

It has come to my attention that Spider Baby, which I previously claimed was made in 1968, was made at the latest in 1964, and was only released in '68 due to some legal troubles. This makes my point about the gender dynamic in the film all the more striking. I will be more thorough in my research in the future.

Darktown Strutters (1975) William Witney

2007-02-08T07:04:00.000-08:00

Darktown strutters is a favorite of mine due to its outlandish premise, riotous energy, and camp aesthetic. A badass all black all female biker gang, sporting threads Liberace would have creamed his pants over, take on an evil Colonel Sanders doppelganger who plans on cloning prominent black community leaders and programming them to be loyal consumers of his product. He kidnaps Cinderella, the mother of the gang's leader, and a slew of whacky adventures ensue, not least of all a chase scene with some motorcyle riding Klan members. And did I mention it's a musical? Although not neccesarily skillfully made or even really very good, this flick is definitely worth checking out and will most certainly leave you with a smile on your lips.

available to buy from www.superhappyfun.com/forsale.cfm?whereme=1605

Political scandal

2007-02-06T08:07:00.000-08:00

Apparently Gavin Newsom, Mayor of my home town, has recently admitted to having an affair with the amazingly named Ruby Rippey-Tourk and is now seeking counseling for alcohol abuse. The press is widely praising him for acknowledging that he has a problem and setting a good example by seeking treatment. Remember the good old days when 'setting a good example' meant not abusing drugs and alcohol in the first place? Neither do I, but I am getting sick of people blaming alcohol for all their poor decisions. I'm also sick of the media and people generally for accepting a world in which it's clear that alcohol causes people to make poor decisions, and that the treatment of alcohol addiction will also treat all your other problems. I don't accept this because there is one enormous confounding variable that makes this assumption inherently unprovable: abusing alcohol is an example of a poor decision. So is it that people make bad decisions because they abuse alcohol, or do they abuse alcohol because they make bad decisions. Honestly, it's probably a little bit of both, in which case treatment for alcohol addiction is only a superficial short term cure that fails to address real long-term issues. The reason that people are willing to accept this meretricious causal story is because of the attitude towards alcoholism hammered into our heads from middle school onward, that it's a disease. This purely semantic distinction allows us to believe that it is out of our control, something which is absolutely untrue. In fact, it is only through self-control that we can overcome our addictions, because to the best of my knowledge they haven't invented a drug that cures alcoholism yet, and while treatment programs can do a lot of good, it's still only within ourselves that battles against addiction are fought and won. This is one of the reasons I think AA is so dangerous, besides being, you know, a cult. The language that AA has introduced into our vernacular has facilitated this kind of dangerous misinformation. All I'm saying is, the interesting question isn't 'would Gavin Newsom have had an affair if he wasn't an alcoholic' but 'would Newsom have admitted to an alcohol problem if he hadn't been caught with his pants around his ankles.'

Jack Hill Interview

2007-02-05T10:29:00.001-08:00

Check it out.

http://dvdtalk.com/cineschlock/jackhill/interview.html

Coffy (1973) Jack Hill.

2007-02-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

It's black history month, so I will spend it writing about one of my favorite genres: blaxploitation. Coffy is hands down my favorite blaxploitation movie, and not only because Pam Grier is absolutely luscious in this role. Although that may have a lot to do with it. Jack Hill is one of my favorite B-movie directors, whose work is characterized by thoughtful, interesting interpretations of B-movie themes. Case in point; Coffy is one of the first movies in this genre to have a strong, female character at the center of the film. In the role that launched her into icon status, Pam Grier plays a nurse turned bad-ass vigilante sworn to revenge herself on the people who got her little sister addicted to drugs. She uses her body, and men's assumptions about the abilities of women, not to mention her bad-ass ass-kicking skills, to seriously kick some ass. Blessed with the most beautiful body ever gifted to mankind and a smart, sexy attitude, Pam Grier was born to play this role, and every other role that followed. As a white male, Jack Hill does a pretty excellent job doing justice to a black, female character and African American issues. The overwhelming theme in the film is that of encouraging the black community to stand up for their own, and to fight the external forces which oppress the community; making a life of crime and drug use appealing. And in the end the film is about Coffy's victory over those forces, and about strength and perseverance. It's no wonder that Pam Grier became an icon in black culture. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a favor and check it out.

available for rental through netflix, and for sale on amazon

The Story of a Three-day Pass (1968)

2007-02-02T09:28:00.000-08:00

Last night I got a chance to watch a 35mm print of Melvin van Peebles 'story of a 3 day pass' and damn, was I pleasantly surprised. van Peebles, who is known for his blaxploitation classics 'Sweet sweetback's baadasssss song' and 'watermelon man' has always left me slightly conflicted. The screening last night really brought to my attention those elements of van Peeble's work that I find both problematic and intriguing. van Peebles began making movies in the early 1950's and refers to himself as self-taught. Sweetback is an important but difficult movie, and most of van Peebles work exhibits some lack of technical expertise and fluency in the grammar of cinema. However, sweetback was, essentially, a work of outsider art. But in this case, the outsiders were a huge demographic of American film viewers that hollywood had seriously underestimated, and this indie film's world left white viewers outside. The political atmosphere of Hollywood at the time created a double split; on the one hand, van Peebles is excluded from the world of Hollywood because of his culture, allowing him little access to traditional Hollywood techniques and resources. On the other hand, this makes it so that the viewer is excluded from the world of the film unless they are a part of that culture. In this way representation of black identity and by default the identity of the film maker(who was also the star) become the most powerful elements in the film. The story is disjointed, the pacing drags painfully, moments of false bravado and posing make us wince a little, but we all know that this movie is something special. Before making sweetback, van Peebles lived and worked in Europe, where he experienced less discrimination and was given a grant by the French government to turn a novel he had written into a film. With that grant he made 'The story of a three-day pass,' which he then screened in San Francisco as a foreign film, gaining entry into Hollywood. The film exhibits the same clumsy pacing and naive use of images and editing present in sweetback, and also betrays van Peebles tendency to write from his own experience. This film is of particular interest to me because it explores quite articulately a deep rooted fantasy of the writer/director: to sleep with a white woman. This is a recurring theme in van Peebles work and at first it didn't interest me, perhaps because it was something so far from my own experience that I had no access to it. This film makes the issue tangible and touching, and the end result is a warm, human piece. A black american soldier gets promoted and is granted a three day pass, and goes to Paris to celebrate. He meets a young french woman at a bar, and the rest of the film is a short, sweet love story. The real strengths of the film come from stylized, theatrical performances that stretch and strengthen crucial moments in the film, and fantasy sequences that reveal the true mindsets and intentions of the characters. Particularly fantastic moments include an overhead shot, in which the white girl and the black soldier act out an awkward dance around the bed, before finally kissing. This was followed by the sex scene, which was interrupted by the fantasies of both parties: his, of riding up to a castle in tights and feathered hat to meet a princess, and hers a quasi-rape fantasy about being captured and carried off by African tribesmen in elaborate dress. I like to interpret this fantasy as an innocent one, in which the girl betrays her excitement about sleeping with someone so exotic, much like his; it is portrayed warmly and not in a negative light. While touching on such weighty subject matter, the film remains light-hearted and playful, and much more elegantly conceived and executed than some of his later works.

Availability: actually, available for rental through netflix, although I don't know how similar the DVD version is to the print I saw.

Memories of Murder(2003)Joon-Ho Bong

2007-01-30T07:47:00.000-08:00

Based on the story of Korea's first serial killer, memories of murder follows the police investigation of a series of brutal rape-murders in rural Korea. Joon-Ho Bong quietly paints a rich picture of the horror of murder, rural life, and the political atmosphere of Korea in 1986. The police's actions, and their frustrations, are as much a part of the atmosphere of fear and uncertainty as the actions of the criminal. This multi-dimensional take on the crime film genre is refreshing and engaging, coherent, cohesive, and skillfully orchestrated. The meticulous cinematography, clinical attention to detail, and quiet editing style bring the creeping terror of the story to the forefront, and contrast strikingly with the mental states of the cops, whose story this really is.

I liked it.

available for rental through netflix, and for sale on amazon

Lovedolls superstar (1986)

2007-01-28T11:07:00.001-08:00

This slightly-less-low-budget sequel to the low budget "Desperate Teenage Lovedolls" is a prime example of cult awesomeness, shot on super-8 and featuring the likes of Jello Biafra(as the president), Kim Pilkington, and Victoria Peterson of the Bangles. Killer soundtrack featuring Redd Kross, Sonic Youth, Meat Puppets, and the Dead Kennedys. The movie satirizes everything from the music industry to Charles Manson, Patricia Hearst, the Jonestown massacre, hippies, and Bruce Springsteen (and the De Palma 'dancing in the dark' video). What it lacks in sophistication (read: technical competence) it makes up for in inventiveness and energy. So, if you're looking for a good time, and a sledge-hammer to the face of 80's pop culture, check it out.

p.s.- How ironic that Jello Biafra turned out to be a filthy, stinking hippy after all that. Dharma punks my ass.

Little muffin!

2007-01-26T17:43:00.000-08:00

Very distracted.

New kitten

2007-01-26T17:29:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of film reviews, I've been distracted.

Spider Baby , Jack Hill, 1968

2007-01-24T08:34:00.000-08:00

I love this movie for a million reasons, and they are damned good reasons. It is an early directing attempt of Jack Hill (Switchblade Sisters, The Big Birdcage, Foxy Brown, Coffy!!!) featuring Lon Cheney Jr. and Sid Haig among a cast of relative nobodies. It's shot in beautiful black and white, and with a great premise and perfect horror setting. Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr.) has vowed to look after the progeny of his deceased master, and to keep their terrible family secret, which is that years of inbreeding have resulted in a unique mental handicap passed from generation to generation. Bruno has resolved to care for the last three members of the family in the isolated family mansion, and it seems that these four will live out their days in peace until greedy distant relatives show up to try to lay claim to the property.
With this film Jack Hill displays a deep understanding of genre cinema, and references his roots by casting an aging Lon Chaney Jr., whose performance is inspired, and has him discuss his appreciation for the wolfman and the mummy in a dinner scene with the whole, less than wholesome family. His treatment of women is, as always, very interesting. In fact, although Bruno and the Uncle Peter character play large roles in the narrative, the source of dramatic tension in this movie comes from three female characters, the two sisters protected by Bruno, and evil Aunt Emily, who is trying to get her hands on the property and the supposed family fortune. All three of these characters are menacing, powerful, and genuinely feminine. It is very rare in any horror movie, much less a horror movie from '68, to create a world with this kind of gender dynamic. Sid Haig's portrayal of a mentally handicapped youth is amazing, and his interactions with Aunt Emily make the film for me. Strong characters, skeletons in the closet, a creepy old mansion, dead-on performances from the whole cast, some good old fashioned genre-cinema fun, and real, multi-dimensional female characters make this a very strong early film. Overall, a solid, kick-ass horror flick that can't be missed.

available from netflix and for sale on amazon, although you could probably find it cheaper somewhere else.

Film still #2

2007-01-23T16:16:00.000-08:00

Day of 1,000 posts

2007-01-22T11:27:00.000-08:00

But seriously, this has to be said.

I called my bank today to ask if there had been any checking activity on my account, because I ordered checks several weeks ago and never received them. I had a nightmare last night in which the missing checks had been stolen, and decided to quiet my paranoid fantasies by checking with my bank. Turns out 3 checks, for a total of $1,200, had been cashed into the bank of America account of one Antoine Hopewell. I changed my account number, cancelled the checks, and called the police, handed over my copies of the forged checks, complete with the criminal mastermind's name and account number, and that's that. So I will have my money back in 20 days, and this genius will be a convicted felon in hopefully not many more. So here's to intelligence, larceny, and 3 counts of fraud.

misinformation

2007-01-22T08:46:00.000-08:00

Misinformation:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6278907.stm

Clarification:
http://helios.hampshire.edu/~jwcCS/PrisonersDilemma.pdf
see page 23: Evolutionary Theories

In Brief: Things I advocate

2007-01-22T06:01:00.000-08:00

1) Rebel Night at Otto's Shrunken Head. They have a myspace page, check it out.

2) Man Man

3)The film Naked Blood (more later)

4) The World Famous Bob

5) John Waters, for serious.

6) Lost Girls, by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie

Porn or not porn, that is the question

2007-01-19T07:21:00.000-08:00

Some people are confused and alarmed by movies that contain a lot of sex but also have a plot. I'm not talking about something like Original Sin (2001) which we all just watched to get a glimpse of Angelina Jolie's and (if you're into that kind of thing) Antonio Banderas' bare asses. That, we are comfortable with. We're even comfortable with Russ Meyer, because it's supposed to be about sex, and it's playful. I'm talking specifically about Masaru Konuma's flick, 'Beautiful Hunter,' which I will use as a prototypical example of the kind of movie I'm talking about. There is a plot,albeit a relatively simple one (professional assasin falls for her mark, is torn between duty and love, gets hunted down by the mob, you know the drill) And it's a relatively long movie, with a running time of 85 minutes. Some of the shots are even pretty beautiful, and I really felt for the protagonist when she cried beside the pool of her lover's blood. But it's a softcore. And some of the sex was pretty hot. So how do we react to this? Most folks I know (and some I don't, who posted on IMDB) would deem it mindless drivel. But if it was only softcore, or only a b-movie about a hot female assassin, these same viewers might have seen the same things I did: a decent B-flick with some action, some romance, some skin, and competent editing and cinematography. So what is it about this ambiguous space, somewhere between narrative and softcore, that freaks us out? Are we uncomfortable when a narrative film is too sexy, or when the characters in a softcore are too developed, too close to us? Are we just ashamed of enjoying porn, and want to keep that experience separate and solitary, distinct from our experience of enjoying cinema? I don't have the answers to these questions, but it's food for thought.

p.s-In a real review of this movie there are a few criticisms that I would bring up, but I'm just using it as an example here.

Film still #1

2007-01-17T20:24:00.000-08:00

Terrifying Girls School

2007-01-17T07:35:00.002-08:00

Terrifying Girl's school: Lynch law classroom (1973) Norifumi Suzuki

To begin with, can I just say that Miki Sugimoto (Noriko in the film) is such a piece of ass. Oh right... the plot... The premise of the film is that three juvenile delinquents are sent to a girls reform school, and have to battle it out with the corrupt teachers and the horrifying student 'discipline committee'. The three newbies, led by Noriko, or 'the boss with the cross' band together with some other unhappy students and wreak havoc with the corrupt system; with plenty of torture, girlfights, and blackmail along the way. Towards the end Reiko Ike appears as Maki, Noriko's rival hellbent on revenge. Any movie that has both Miki Sugimoto and Reiko Ike in it is OK by me, but this film is particularly delicious. The innovative methods of torture, both physical and mental, are a testament to director Norifumi Suzuki's (perhaps very personal) understanding of sado-masochistic erotica. Rich color, tight framing, slick costumes, and close-up shots of the terrified eyes of the victims characterize the torture scenes. The clear sense of fashion and bad girl posturing by characters such as Noriko are charming, and invite the viewer into the fantasy space of the film. Suzuki also shows us that he is aware of this tone in the film by introducing the character Emi Jô, a James Dean wanna-be, who despite his dark glasses and too cool for school attitude, doesn't quite measure up to his image. My favorite scene with this character is one in which he calmly lights a cigarette from the flames of his burning car, then turns around to walk away, cool as can be, only to slip and fall flat on his ass.

This movie came to my attention because it is featured heavily in a situationist film (by Guy Debord) in which the scenes are placed in a context that accuses them of being anti-feminist. I couldn't sit through the whole thing, because it was inane and poorly made, but I believe the main issue that concerned them was that of sexualizing women. I include this information in this post because I think that it is interesting that this little gem of a B-movie was considered, by this group of academics, to be the most representatative of all the sexploitation films that they were protesting against. It is also interesting to consider that time itself has changed what this film means, maybe in the 70's the Debord film was important, or at least not ridiculous.

At any rate, if you want to see Miki Sugimoto jump over a bunch of oil drums on a motorcycle, and believe me, you do, then I suggest you watch this movie.

available to rent through netflix, as part of the pinky violence collection, or for sale at amazon.com

Jesus.

2007-01-15T17:38:00.000-08:00

So, I just watched 'The Bad Lieutenant' because I thought it was one of those movies that I should probably watch. All I have to say is: Nuns are totally hot.

Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

2007-01-15T08:36:00.000-08:00

Eiichi Yamamoto's Belladonna of Sadness (1973) from Osamu Tezuka's Mushi Pro studio.

Super rare and breathtaking animation loosely based on the story of Joan of Arc. Junno, a young woman, sells her soul to the devil, is violently and repeatedly raped by the king and satan, obtains the power to save her village from the black death, whips the villagers into an orgy, and is finally burned at the stake. The animation displays all of the trademarks of anime, many of which were developed by Tezuka (still images over which the camera pans, floating figures, and stylized, fluid, motion animation) however, it remains completely unique and revolutionary. The illustration style is somewhere between Klimt, the Triplettes of Belleville, and Junko Mizuno, and is at times devastating. Due to the limited availability of the film, the subtitling is sub-par, but it is the illustration and animation of this film that leave a real visceral impact on the viewer. Films that this film has clearly influenced include Disney's Sleeping Beauty, the Triplettes of Belleville, and Mind Game by Masaaki Yuasa. A powerful, beautiful, psychedelic art-house sexploitation masterpiece. Required viewing. Note: At the beginning of the file is a preview for the feature which is not subtitled, do not despair, the film is subtitled, just wait for it.

Available to download at http://www.secret-cinema.com/library.php

More Forbidden Zone

2007-01-12T11:30:00.000-08:00

I just re-watched the forbidden zone and was reminded of my true life goal: to have a human chandeliere hanging over my excessively long dining table, balancing candles from his hands and toes. I also watched the documentary that was one of the features on the DVD, which features a haggard and possibly drunk Susan Tyrell explaining that when she first saw Herve Villechaize, "I knew I wanted to fuck a midget." For more about Herve and his status as a sex god, see

http://www.pimpadelicwonderland.com/herve's.html

Hmmm

2007-01-10T15:52:00.001-08:00

Every once in a while, when you're on your hands and knees chasing your kitten around your apartment, with the theme from Cannibal Holocaust blaring from your stereo , you just have to wonder at what point you became batshit insane.

The Forbidden Zone

2007-01-09T10:29:00.000-08:00

Forbidden Zone (1980) Directed by Richard Elfman and starring Herve Villechaize and The Knights of Oingo Boingo

The forbidden zone is a riotous musical that takes us into the lawless Sixth Dimension by way of a large intestine. The movie follows the adventures of the Hercules family as they become embroiled in kidnapping, playing hooky, adultery, and a battle for the kingdom with satan himself (played by Danny Elfman). The sets looks like a hybrid of the german expressionist style (as in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and the set design of Pee wee's playhouse. Whimsical costumes, curious creatures, and outrageous musical numbers populate this film from start to finish. This is one of the happiest, zaniest cult classics around, whenever I need cheering up I always reach for either 'The Forbidden Zone' or John Waters' 'Cry Baby'.

Posted this because I just got a new kitty, and named him Squeezit after my favorite Forbidden Zone character. If you haven't seen this movie I strongly advise you to do so at your earliest convenience.

available for rental through netflix, and for sale at http://www.forbiddenzonethemovie.com/shop.htm

The history of anime

2007-01-08T16:03:00.000-08:00

This is another long, long, long post. A full article, even. At any rate, if you are a new reader maybe start with something like Have Some Shame!, that seems to be a crowd pleaser. But if you're interested, this is a really interesting topic and the theories and concepts in it are really neat, I mean, I think so. So if you're up for it, here it is:

A history of the animated image and fantasy space in Japan:

Most art historians place the origins of anime at around 1916, during the Taisho period in Japan. But the history of the projected and even the animated image in Japan can be traced back to the late Edo-period, when in about 1800 utushi-e became popular. This was a form of entertainment that involved manipulating images projected through painted glass slides, the movement being produced by an actual movement of the lamp behind the paintings. Film and animation as we know them, however, were introduced by the west. In 1909 the first animated films were imported. Among these first films shown were animations by French filmmaker Emile Cohl. These animations were serial in nature and all of them were called Kid Deko’s new picture book. These short animations were often based on bizarre stream of consciousness type transformations, not very sophisticated in technique. At this time there was a huge movement to develop a Japanese cinema, called the pure film movement. This was a movement away from film versions of traditional Japanese theater, a movement to reject styles associated with Japanese drama and adopt Hollywood and European narrative styles. Central to the movement was a differentiation of the cinematic from the uncinematic, which became a distinction between the Japanese and the Unjapanese.

Okura Kihachiro argued that cinema is characteristically an important national enterprise, and requested that Japanese filmmakers dedicate themselves to producing original Japanese films for export, in order to introduce Japanese landscape and culture to the rest of the world. Animation played a very important part in achieving these goals, both a movement away from the traditions of literature and theater and in moving away from these while creating a distinctly Japanese product.

In 1917, Shimokawa Oten made a film based on a popular cartoon, Imoko Keizo or The Doorboy, thought to be Japan’s first animated film. Not surprisingly, he naively arrived at methods much like those of Emile Cohl. The film was made by drawing pictures with chalk on a blackboard, photographing, and erasing them. Eventually he graduated to photographing a background and using white ink to clear spots where characters would stand. Also in 1917 Kitayama Seitaro began to develop cut-paper animation techniques and make short cartoon comedies. In this technique, drawings are cut out and placed on backgrounds and photographed with a camera fixed horizontally above the table. His first film was Saru kani gassen, or The monkey Crab war, which in 1917 opened at Asukasa Denikan Theater, known for showing foreign films. That it opened at this theater implies that it could be considered equivalent with foreign films, one of the main goals of the Pure Film Movement. This film also made the important leap to including intertitles to explicate plot, another explicit objective of the pure film movement. Japanese cinema at the time still utilized benshi, live performers who supplied narration and were thought to disrupt the filmic experience and to discourage film makers from using the medium to tell the story, so the inclusion of intertitles was a significant step towards the goals of the pure film movement.

Another significant step was taken by the animator Ofuji, who made cut-paper animation using traditional patterned Japanese paper. In this way, he utilized foreign cinematic systems but ensured his product was differentiable in an international market. In 1927 his film Whale was internationally well received in the Soviet Union and France, and when he remade it with cellophane in 1953 it went on to win an award at the Cannes film festival. In this way it was the medium of animation that first allowed Japan to develop a national cinema as an object separate from other traditional Japanese entertainment arts.

The next major event in the development of anime was the effect of the events leading up to, during, and following WWII on animation production and content. Beginning in 1917, the government made a major attempt to standardize and centralize state regulation of moving pictures and to increase the power of censors over films. At about this point there occurred an intersection of the concerns of the artists and the concerns of the state. This has been said to have been a response to the negative influences of a French serial animation called Zigomar, which glorified the exploits of a master criminal. Copycat Zigomar style gangs alerted the government to the power of film's influence. Out of this came a sense that cinema had to be understood as separate from other art forms, but still no real differentiation between live action and animation. From this point Japanese cinema was constructed between two sites, one of knowledge production and one of knowledge regulation. The government began to use films for education and propaganda. The Deposit Bureau of the Ministry of Communications began funding educational and propaganda films, such many a mickle makes a muckle, (1917), Afforestation, (1924), The Journey of A Letter, (1924), and The Spread of Syphillis, (1926)
The advent of war in 1931 saw extreme changes for animation. Animation production came under government control and the previously limited financial situation was drastically changed. Beginning in 1939 the censorship policies of Nazi Germany were adopted, and censorship was applied from the script writing process on. However, freed from financial restraints, animators were able to experiment with new techniques and work in larger studios with teams of animators.

Seo Mitsuyo was the first Japanese animator to work with Disney’s invention , the multi-plane camera, on the movie ari-chan(ants) in 1941. Disney’s productions became a reference point for quality, although for financial reasons most Japanese studios took financial shortcuts such as re-using cels. Many films of this period were made to promote an intense nationalism, which set the stage for many modern debates about the role of Japaneseness in Japanese animation. Many of the Shinto myths and characters that had previously been used to make Japanese animation a distinctly Japanese product were utilized to inspire the country to an intense sense of nationalism. There had already been a tendency in animation to use traditional Shinto stories and characters, as the nature of the medium allowed an exploration of the fantastical and this allowed for the construction of a truly Japanese project while avoiding using traditional theatrical and literary techniques. The government also had a history of using Shinto imagery and mythology to inspire strong nationalist tendencies in the Japanese people. One of the most notable instances of this was the re-writing of the legend of the sun goddess Ameraterasu, which resulted in excesses of neo-shintoism in 30’s and 40’s that led to disturbing racist/nationalist reactions. At this same point, Japanese Miko priestesses were outlawed and both Shintoism and the tradition of female spiritual power were more or less appropriated by militarists. Miko were banned on the grounds that they made Japan look silly and old fashioned, meanwhile Shinto myths were heavily used in propaganda put out by same militarists.

In 1943 the animator Seo made the first feature length Japanese animated film, Momotaro no umiwashi (The peach boy's sea eagle) , which was a 37-minute propaganda film advertising the success of pearl harbor. He also made Momotaro:Umi no shinpei(peach boy, divine soldier of the sea) in1944, in which navy paratroopers are depicted attacking British soldiers who are depicted as ogres. This film was heavily edited by censors because it depicted Japanese soldiers dying.

The Wartime government set up a basis for post-war animation, encouraging technical experimentation, training animators, and creating conditions for teams of animators to work. Technical development, military development, and national mobilization were inseparable in a way reflected in present day anime’s explorations of technology in the post war era, particularly technologies of destruction. The Shinto and technological themes persist in anime today. The US occupying troops in 45 were the first in the history of Japan to breach its defenses, and the psychological effect of this defeat has been explored by Japanese artists and animators since.

Attempting to make a product that would sell as well as Disney, in1956 Toei studios released Okawa Hiroshi Hakujen, The legend of the white serpent. This was a

big budget feature length animation, utilizing many of the techniques used by Disney and the Fleischer brothers, most importantly rotoscoping. The style and format were also very similar to Disney, including a human protagonist accompanied by some cute animals who burst into song from time to time. Domestically, the film was as technologically and financially successful as Disney films. However, one animator working on the film thought that animation should be a distinct object from film, one that relied on exaggeration and omission rather than a reproduction of live footage. He thought that the process of making Hakujen, basically that of making two movies instead of one, was not how animation should be executed. This animator was Dr. Osama Tezuka, credited by many people as one of the originators of anime as the distinct style of animation it has developed into today. Cinema and animation could, up to this point, still be treated as one object. Many people argue that the birth of animation as a distinct and separate form in Japan as well as the birth of anime as a distinct and different style of animation both originate with Tezuka.

As an animator he was clearly influenced by the technologies of Disney, as well as a sense of playfulness and his humanist philosophy. He was also greatly influenced by the Fleischer Brothers. His influences also include French New Wave Cinema, and when his animated television series’ came out in the 60’s they utilized panning shots, extreme close up, time lapse, and flashbacks. These influences are present in Tezuka’s cartooning as well as his animation, and it has been said that he brought film to Japanese film.

Tezuka also took some cues from the traditional theaters of Japan; Noh, Kabuki, Bunraku, and Takarazuka theater. Although originally the aim of Japanese films and animations was to divorce themselves from these theatrical traditions, Tezuka found a way to utilize some of the elements of traditional Japanese theater in a way which utilized the nature of the medium of animation; which contributed to the emergence of a kind of animation unique to Japan. Tezuka made the best use of the limited animation style, using the filmic techniques borrowed from French New Wave cinema and elements taken from Japanese theater, such as sound effects, stylized poses held for an extended period of time, and tableau effects to maximize the impact of moving images without drawing movement. Instead, he moves the drawings, he moves the camera, he moves the spectator to a different point of view, and he moves the spectator’s eye through the image instead of breaking down movement into a series of images, drawn or painted sequentially. In this approach, the animator must act like a movie camera in representing movement.

Recently, artist Takashi Murakami has discussed the aesthetics of anime in terms of a long history of Japanese graphic arts. In his essay “superflat” he identifies a lineage of 2-dimensional spaces in the history of Japanese art, and also discusses the success of many of these images to draw the eye in certain ways, in a manner similar to the way moving drawings in anime move the spectator and change the viewer’s point of view while the scene remains still. In this way, animators took limited animation and a rich art history of movement in two-dimensional spaces, creating a new and unique style out of the necessity to take some financial shortcuts. This style places emphasis on shape shifting, metamorphoses, timing and movement, and typically uses techniques such as holding poses over a number of frames, floating figures, and emphasis on emotionally or visually charged frames and a suppression of intermediate movements which results in jerky movement or sudden, explosive transitions. Camera movements become more pronounced, and it is very common to see panning across the image, tracking up or back, and framing in or out.

Tezuka’s famous series Astro Boy premiered New Years Eve of 1963 and ran until 1966. Astro was neither machine nor human, and began a long tradition of technological futuristic science fiction in Japanese animation. Astro is intrinsically linked to the atom bomb because he is atomically powered, so in short he is an exploration of humans living responsibly next to the destructive technologies that we can create. Many more recent animes that address this theme are less optimistic. The constant battle for robots to be met on equal footing by humans in the series also mirrored the social rights movement in the US that was occurring when the show aired in America, a bold move no US animator would dare to make. Taken out of the context of the civil rights movement, this theme begins the tradition in anime of exploring the line between robot and machine and pushing definitions of what makes us human. The robot as introduced to Japanese culture in Astro Boy is a friend, and by Asimov’s law of robotics cannot do anything to harm humans. Destruction caused in the series is always a result of misused technologies or the human inability to understand the nature of what they have created. More recent films in this genre view technology as a double-edged sword; they depict a snowball effect that humanity has started and must now understand and control. This attitude is reflected in Japanese culture as well. The Japanse are recognized worldwide to be at forefront of robotics, but largely stay away from trends present elsewhere. There is a larger emphasis on application of robotics to social issues such as security and the aging as opposed to the western emphasis on military technologies.

Tezuka also understood very early on the concept of cuteness now rampant in Japanese entertainment culture. Astro Boy was child like in style even when dealing with very adult subject matter, as were all of Tezuka’s works including works such as his graphic novel Adolf, which deals with very dark subject matter. With his trademark style, Tezuka latched onto something that has become an enormous factor in Japanese pop culture today, the issue of kawaii or cuteness. Many argue that this emphasis on the cute has roots in the disillusionment of post war society with many of post-war Japan’s goals. Unlike the west, Japan never developed a conception of animation as being limited to child audiences. Instead, the cute and childlike style developed by Tezuka was meant to create an environment where animators could explore important themes through fantasy and play. The huge role of fantasy, play and escapism in anime has been developed and discussed much since Tezuka’s original contribution.

Current day anime is largely concerned with both the issue of escapism and of pacifism, both of which are seen as results of Japan’s reaction to WWII and the atom bomb. The stresses and pressures of an increasingly competitive society which places more and more emphasis on material values at the expense of an overall sense of community is described by many theorists. All these things and more contribute to the popularity of escapist, fantasy and play sub-cultures, including the rising popularity of manga, cosplay, anime and even cults like Aum Shinrikyo. The phenomenon of kawaii, or cuteness culture, is attributed to a perceived inadequacy of Japan’s post-war economic goals, which led to increasing disenchantment with these values and goals.

Science fiction and robot themes in anime are also a result of a culture of fantasy, play and escapism in post-war Japan. The context of an animated fantasy world provides a space to discuss war and violence safe for those affected by the devastating effects of WWII. This space has been an integral part of Japanese culture for a very long time, and is referred to as Matsuri, or festival. Festival space allows for a controlled chaos, concerned with a temporary leveling of the social order. Matsuri celebrates sex, death, worship, fear, purity and pollution. An example of a more traditional implementation of Matsuri space would be a typical kyoka poetry gathering in Edo period Japan. Kyoka was traditionally the poetry of the lower class, based on wild humor and word play as opposed to the more intellectual and higher-class form, haikai. At these gatherings people would gather and create kyoka together, including people of many classes and women. Anime themes of wild humor, exaggeration, escape, stateless space, and strong images of sex and violence reflect this spirit of a space free from social boundaries. Specifically, the tradition of Matsuri being a leveling of social order is often manifested in the overturning of traditional female submissiveness. Animated space is capable of being context free, and well suited to developing and exploring a stateless, transnational culture. This stateless animated space is a safe setting for much of anime’s exploration of themes of war and destruction.

An issue often discussed but rarely understood in anime is its place in a concept of a Japanese cultural identity. The appeal of anime to the Western audience is often it’s distinct difference from our concept of animation or cinema. However, the ethnically ambiguous character designs and stateless fantasy spaces have historically allowed themselves to be adapted to fit foreign audiences. The success of Japanese animated series in the 60’s was heavily contributed to by the ease with which they could be dubbed, characters names changed and story lines re-written. Many fans find fault with how “Western” anime characters appear, and it is often commented that anime characters are depicted with blond or light brown hair. However, no one seems to notice the equally high frequency with which characters with green or pink hair appear. I would argue that the very same ‘different ness’ that is appealing to westerners is appealing to the Japanese themselves, and that this anime style and space is something other to both cultures.

Also of interest to me is a difference between a western conception of art or the art object comparative to Japan’s. The distinction between the art object and a commercial commodity was more or less introduced by the West, and still does not exist in the same way in Japanese culture. As a response to the discourse on the role of fantasy and play in Japanese culture, Takashi Murakami has encouraged artists to move into the realm of popular culture and entertainment and explore the idea of play as a survival mechanism in modern society. He encourages a conception of the creative process as a communal enterprise reflecting society, and creates commercial objects that utilize the same aesthetic and conceptual issues dealt with in anime, manga, and many other entertainment cultures that can be discussed and theorized in similar ways.

For all of these reasons and more, anime has become hugely popular in Japan and overseas in recent years. In 1988 roughly 40% of studio releases in Japan were animated and by 1999 at least 50% were animated. Although many contemporary anime fans criticize Tezuka’s work for being too cutesy, most modern anime and manga styles could be described as elaborations or evolutions of his original conceptualization of the cute, the childlike and the innocent. Studio Ghibli, originally Tezuka’s production company, has recently released several new films in his style, often based on his manga. As well as being an animator, Tezuka completed over 150,000 pages of cartooning in his career, and his work has been highly influential in many different aspects of the Japanese entertainment cultures which include manga, anime, video games, cosplay and countless other subcultures based around fantasy and play.

It would be impossible to address all of the facets of anime, but I will mention two more major landmarks in the history of anime. In 1974 a TV series re-named for American audiences "Star Blazers" was released, and following the show’s wild popularity a magazine called Animage came out in Japan. Animage discussed in detail every aspect of anime production, allowing fans to learn the techniques of this style of animation from individuals in the industry, and fans began to make amateur 8mm animations, parodies of popular anime, and started hundreds of fanzines to discuss and critique the work. This began an explosion of anime production. The next huge contribution to the sheer volume of anime produced was the introduction of video in the 80’s, and the availability of a straight to video option changed the limits on the kinds of content available and increased the global market because foreigners were no longer limited to the watered down for TV versions of popular Japanese cartoons. I will finish by saying that animation is an important medium for the Japanese to explore issues of national and cultural identity and it’s effectiveness for these purposes is apparent in it’s prevalence as a form of communication and striking given a closer look and deeper consideration.

Bibliography

Drazen, Patrick. Anime Explosion, (2003) Stone Bridge Press Berkley CA

Fleming, Jeff, Lubowsky-Talbott, Susan, Murakami, Takashi Lamarre, Thomas- From animation to anime, drawing movements and moving drawings

Lent, John, Animation in Asia and the Pacific (2001) John Libbey Publishing Indiana University Press Bloomington

Levi, Antonia, Samurai From Outer Space, Understanding Japanese Animation, (1996) Carus Publishing Co. Peru, Illinois

Mathews, James-Anime and the Acceptance of Robotics in Japan: A Symbotic Relationship 2003/2004

Miyao, Daisuke- Before anime- animation and the Pure Film Movement in Pre-War Japan

Napier, Susan. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke (2000) Palgrave NY NY

notes on my 'self' article

2007-01-08T12:13:00.000-08:00

I realize that for a blog post my article on the self in cognitive science is a bit long and dense; if you are a new reader please start with something shorter, perhaps my review of cannibal holocaust or the 'have some shame' post. I stand by this monstrous post because it is a serious subject that is about you, about all of us, and I have tried to be as absolutely thorough and genuine in my treatment of the subject. I hope some people try it on for size, even if it's a bit dense and particularly difficult to absorb in this format. I will try to make future posts of this nature more concise.

The self construct in cognitive science

2007-01-07T12:31:00.000-08:00

The concept of the self remains one of the more enigmatic problems in cognitive science. Many theories of the self and the construction of identity have been explored by psychologists and philosophers throughout history, but a cognitive model of mechanisms that give rise to conceptions of the self has never emerged. It may seem like a daunting task, but recent research has begun to investigate the cognitive construct of the self and things look promising. Interesting data from developmental, pathological, functional imaging, and neuropsychological research has provided some insight regarding the development and disorders of elements that comprise the self. Research in areas such as autobiographical memory, narrative, inference of causality, and mental state representation are intrinsically linked to the study of self in a number of ways. What follows is an overview of historical and recent ideas of note in the investigation of a cognitive scientific model of mechanisms that give rise to different aspects of self; an overview of the developmental course of self; and some exploration of how autobiographical memory, narrative, causal inference, and representations of mental states are significant in pursuing such an investigation.

The self is a complex concept that has been approached from many perspectives throughout history. Many models of 'self' include a variety of sub-selves with separate functions and mechanisms, and variable relationships with mental life and cognition. In 1998, Neisser proposed a model that included five distinct kinds of self knowledge. In this model, a self termed the 'ecological self' was described as the immediate sense of self based on a physical perspective of the environment and self awareness. The 'interpersonal self' mediated behavior when relating and communicating with others. The 'extended self' went beyond the scale of the ecological self to be able to remember the past and intend future actions, and the 'private self' consisted of our ability to engage in a private mental life inaccessible to others. The 'conceptual self' was described as the mental representation of the self, the self that we evaluate, defend, and seek to improve. These multiple and functionally diverse proposed selves are already representative of the obscure nature of the question of self in cognitive science.

Recent philosophical discourses on the self have identified two aspects that must be accounted for in a contemporary discussion of the subject: the immediate sense of the self as an agent, and the self that endures through changes in mental states and over time. The immediate sense of self-awareness and agency roughly approximates Neisser's ecological self, while the coherent and continuous self must contain attributes of Neisser's interpersonal, extended, private, and conceptual self. Many different views have emerged, but this general framework is a useful place to begin when considering this issue.

The self as outlined above can be considered to be composed of the sensations of self-ownership and agency, body centered spatial perspectivity, and perception of a long term unity of beliefs and attitudes(Gallagher 2002). There is some evidence that both of these selves arise from processes in the same neurobiological system, a system loosely distributed in the frontal-lobe and implicated in a wide variety of cognitive tasks. The neuroanatomical data supports a view of the self as a complex phenomenon arising from the interactions of related but distinct cognitive systems.

Philosophy has been instrumental in thinking about the nature of the self, and in cognitive science self is still largely a philosophical issue. Heidegger's work in phenomenology gave rise to a very useful way of thinking about the self that is consistent with some cognitive models. The phenomenologists held that humans perceive a pragmatically structured world of human opportunities and liabilities, in which the self is implicit. This philosophical model is still relevant today, and is basically consistent with many cognitive processes proposed and empirically tried since its conception. This description of the organization of perceptual information as a function of the self is still central to many contemporary accounts of the self. Cognitive scientists have recently postulated models of some of the central mechanisms that give rise to both the immediate and the temporally extended self, as well as their interactions with other concepts and conceptual frameworks.

Research on ownership and agency in both motor action and in cognition has correlated perception of this basic 'self' with mental activity in the prefrontal cortex, SMA, and cerebellum (Fourneret and Jeanerod 1998). Agency is experienced when a person perceives themself as the author of an action; but even during an uninitiated action a sense or perception of ownership over the body in motion arises. Cognitive scientists gained some insight into the mechanisms of experiencing ownership and agency when it appeared that these sensations were selectively deficient in some schizophrenics.

Certain schizophrenic patients experience delusions that their body is under the control of another person or thing, or experience thoughts that they do not perceive as their own in an experience called 'thought insertion'. It is hypothesized that these symptoms are the result in a deficit in the mechanism(s) that give rise to perception of awareness and agency. The self-monitoring mechanisms that underly sensations of self ownership and agency could be the mechanisms deficient in the schizophrenic patients. The researchers hypothesize that a sense of agency arises from anticipatory pre-movement motor commands relating to relevant efferent nerves. An unconscious mechanism compares an efference copy of motor demands with motor intentions and allows for rapid error correction. This mechanism is thought to anticipate the sensory feedback from the motor action and give rise to a sensation of self-agency. If the efference copy is not properly generated, a sense of ownership will persist but the sensation of agency will not occur (Gallagher 2000). Some evidence supports a deficit in schizophrenics' pre-action monitoring, and indicates that their motor-control and ability to perform intended actions remains intact(Frith and Done 1988). Abnormal pre-movement brain potentials have also been observed(Gallagher 2000). This data suggests that the activity of pre-motor areas is critical in experiencing the sense of agency that is the most immediate component of the perceived self.

This model is thought to extend to the phenomena of thought and inner speech, and describes thinking as an action that must be matched to intention in much the same way as motor actions in order to feel self-generated. This would explain thought insertion experiences in schizophrenics, the experience of perceiving thoughts that do not feel self-generated. This self-monitoring and reporting mechanism roughly describes a way in which perception of the self as an agent relative to the immediate environment might arise.

The involvement of pre-motor areas in a cognitive event that is largely perceptual brings to mind recent popular work on the involvement of motor areas in abstract cognitive events, most notably studies on the activation of motor neurons in Chimpanzees. This research describes patterns of activation in motor-areas arising as a result of observing the intentional actions of others. Significantly, these patterns of activation are the same when the animals execute the same or similar actions themselves (Williams et al 2005). This discovery has been applied to the research of the differences in representation of the 'self' and the 'other' in human subjects. This elemental distinction between experience of self relative to other can be considered a part of the immediate awareness of being a distinct entity. A more complex self is implicated in attribution of mental states to others, and the physical implementation of these two kinds of mental representation is an interesting topic with ties to popular theories about motor-neurons.

It has been observed that people are able to infer meaning, predict future actions, and interpret behavior as a result of attributing mental states to others. Two popular views on the subject have emerged, "theory theory" and "simulation theory". "Theory theory" describes the system that attributes mental states as the result of experiential learning that gives rise to a theory of human behavior. "Simulation theory" proposes that people attribute mental states by simulating the experience of the other in order to experience their corresponding mental state (Tirassa et al 2005). The mirror-neuron findings and subsequent functional imaging studies in humans provide support for the simulation theory. So what does this research on representation of the other have to do with the self? The developmental and functional imaging literature indicates that the self/other distinction is central to the concept of self. Through development and into adult life, evaluations of our selves in relation to similarities and differences of others plays a formative role in the construction of self.

Limited self-awareness appears to be an innate mechanism present from birth that develops primarily through interacting with others. A concept of the nature of self begins as immediate spatial and perceptual awareness and a recognition of sameness between self and human others. Infants less than one hour old can imitate conspecific facial gesture in a manner that rules out reflexivity (Meltzoff and Moore 1984). This behavior demonstrates an ability to match gesture that requires the infant to locate and use body parts proprioceptively and recognize the seen face as being of the same kind as it's own; human babies will not imitate non-human actions and gestures (Legerstee 1991). It has been demonstrated that infants can use information from their own action capabilities to understand the actions of others, and throughout development and on into adult life the self continues to be largely a result of interpersonal interaction and self-evaluation in relation to others(Ochsner et al 2005). Functional imaging studies have shown overlapping but distinct regions of neural activity thought to underly representations of self-originating and simulated mental states, and it has been hypothesized that the perception of agency and ownership of self-generated actions and thoughts is essential for distinguishing perceptions of the two. If the same mental events represent a self-generated action and the experience of observing the action of a separate agent, then the qualitative difference between inferring agency and perceiving it internally might be the most salient thing that separates our perception of our own mental states from perceptions of the mental states of others.

The perception of ourselves as the author and subject of our actions may be very important in monitoring our interactions with the physical and social environments we have to navigate. The conceptually complex extended self may also play a self-monitoring role; that of monitoring goal oriented behaviors over time and despite transitions in mental states. This self is extended in time and mediated by narrative, and is postulated to play a role in constructing a continuity between our past and our future. A vague sense of this cohesive mechanism has been postulated since Hume, in 1739, described "a bundle of momentary impressions strung together by imagination." Narrative is thought to aid in the construction of a coherent self-schema, a useful if not perfectly accurate sense of continuous identity. The explicit role of the extended self as outlined above is to represent a continuous self that extends in time, a combination of Neisser's extended and conceived selves.

One of the most commonly investigated components of the temporally extended self is autobiographical memory(AM). AM is a kind of memory not characterized by its mechanisms but by its content; AM contains memories of personally experienced events and abstract personal knowledge such as knowledge of places one has lived and people one has known. AM is thought to be a very central and intricate part of the self that contains information central to constructing the cohesive self. A model of the physical implementation of AM describes the structure of AM and the constructive nature of the interaction between past selves represented in memory and the present, working-self schema.

Memory is thought to represent past experience on multiple levels of specificity, from lifetime periods (e.g. 'when Rover was alive') to general events (e.g. 'my vacation to Florida') to event specific knowledge, or ESK. Recall of ESK preserves something of the phenomenal nature of an experience, such as the warm sensation of Rover in your lap and the sounds of traffic as you drove to Florida. The experience of ESK results in a perceived sense of yourself in the past (Gardiner, Richardson-Klavehn 2000). The intentional recall of an autobiographical memory is put in motion by the intention to remember a specific event. The knowledge structure of memory causes a pattern of activation across levels of informational specificity channeled through the current self's goal structures, resulting in the reconstruction of personal memories consistent with current self-views and goals. Evidence indicates that consciousness has preferential access to memories relevant to personality traits and long term goals (Bakermans-Kranenberg 1993). AM's are typically episodic and reflect singular and important novel experiences, significant emotional experiences, and generalized shemas of frequently occurring events.

Autobiographical memory is thought to be central to identity construction. The coherent narrative of significant personal experiences and self-knowledge represented in AM is an accessible source of the distinctive features and events that comprise the complex representation of the self in time. The self is also thought to play an organizational role in memory, and self-relevant information has been demonstrated to result in more vivid and easily accessible memories. It has also been observed that self-relevant information is preferentially allocated attentional resources and singled out for higher-order processing (Grey et al 2004). Similar attentional and higher-order processing effects have been observed for strongly emotional information, which may be primarily self-relevant. It is hypothesized that self-relevant information is charged with affect in order to organize world and life information relative to goals, obligations, and desires of the coherent self.

This view of AM formation is consistent with reports that vivid autobiographical memories predominantly represent episodes from formative or transitional periods of life, such as moving away to college or choosing a career (Oschner et al 2005). Many representations of the self in AM relate to the self's enduring relationship to specific social groups, for example 'male,' 'Catholic' ect.. Studies indicate that this kind of group affiliation information is sufficiently self-relevant to contribute to the content of AM, and in this way personal and social group histories are aligned. An example of this phenomenon is described in a classic study in which White Americans tended to remember where they were when JFK died and not where they were when MLK died, while the opposite held true for African Americans of the same generation. In this way, AM aids in a construction of the self over time relative to the public history of a significant social group.

AM is central to formation and maintenance of perceptions of self that persist over time, but the self and belief structures shaped by past experiences and AM also shape perception of experiences and memory reconstruction. It is thought that self-schema and self-perception cause memories of past events or attitudes to reflect self consistency rather than veridicality. Neisser's classic study of the reconstructive nature of autobiographical memory is still an excellent example of the overwhelming tendency to consider the past self in terms of the present one. During the Watergate scandal, key witness John Dean's memory of his conversations with the President and role in the scandal were demonstrated to be at odds with evidence collected from audio recordings of the conversations Dean testified about. While his recall of specific episodes was inaccurate, he demonstrated excellent recall of the general meaning of repeated conversations and the chronology of the event. His perception of his past self was determined in large part by his self-image at the time of the trial, and his self reported prediction of the coming disaster was not supported by the content of the tapes. This finding has been frequently replicated, and subjects are often surprised when their memory of past beliefs or attitudes is more positively correlated with their current beliefs and attitudes than to the remembered instance.

Perception of consistency over time is dependent on a number of mechanisms and hypothesized to be a result of the organization of structures that mediate between mind and world. Just as perception of qualia like color and speech is constructed by neural mechanisms that organize external phenomena into useful information, construction of self-percept is guided by lower level mechanisms that help us make sense of the world at the level of actions of intentional agents. Dennett has proposed the idea that narrative is the mechanism through which disorganized sensory information is organized by chronology and causality in the stories we tell ourselves (Dennett 1990). Narrative acts as an organizational tool linked to innate theories of human agency and causality, and we understand our world by telling ourselves causal stories about current and past events.

The left hemisphere is thought to be the primary seat of narrative, and has specifically been implicated as the source of an interpreter of inferred causality. The human tendency to perceive and infer causality is consistent and automatic. An understanding of relations between causes and effects is critical to making sense of our constantly changing physical world, and even greater sensitivity to causal relations is required by the demands of our complex social organization.

Research on mirror neurons in primates has demonstrated that the goal of an intentional action can be inferred from incomplete information. The left hemisphere may be involved in elaborating on available information to generate hypotheses about likely causal explanations for events, including self generated actions. Such causal attributions come naturally and automatically to normal adults, even when they do not appear to contribute to performance. A recent study demonstrated that the left hemisphere in split-brain patients generated a causal explanation for the behavior of the dissociated right hemisphere regardless of the utility of doing so or accessibility to right hemisphere causal mental state information. This finding, and further evidence of the automatic generation of causal explanations by the left hemisphere, is evidence of the inferential nature of causal stories about even self-originating action causation. The left hemisphere of split-brain patients also performed poorly on a visual memory task, and tended to falsely recognize novel objects consistent with common scenes presented for encoding (Gazzaniga 2000). This illustrates the role of narrative in detecting common structures and generalizing. These observations support the constructive nature of causality attribution in personal narrative, and provide evidence that this may be a left-lateralized activity.

The tendency to perceive causality appears to be a foundational principle in the organization of event information, and narrative is the mature form of causal-temporal representation of event information. Narrative comprehension and production rely on the same widely distributed frontal lobe areas that support theory-of-mind and mental state processes generally, as well as working memory and areas thought to be necessary to causal-temporal ordering of information. In addition, AM and most human communication assumes the narrative form in order to represent and communicate a coherent and organized self within experience. Memories of events originally encoded as causal narratives are more easily recalled than individual events outside of a causal context, and the underlying narrative structures of repeated events are stored and then elaborated on in reconstructive memory formation. Construction of a solid causal explanation for events can determine our perception of the significance and tone of personal episodes.

In addition to structuring autobiographical memory, the inclination to attribute events to underlying causes provides the framework for a folk-psychological interpretation of behavior. Folk psychology serves to order a stream of behavioral data by identifying causes such as motive, obligation, sentiment, and personality traits. Both external(situational) and internal(agent-originating) causes are recognized, and trends in behavioral data indicate a systematic difference between self and other causal attribution. People tend to explain their own behavior in terms of external causes acting on the self, and the behavior of others in terms of the personality, and mental states of the agent. The constructive nature of causal inference on narrative allows for this kind of flexibility, and for perceived consistency of self-image (Mar 2004).

Data from the developmental and pathological literature provides evidence that the ability to perceive and attribute causal relations is central to engaging in appropriate social interaction. Behavioral explanations and their flexible interpretations can impact the perception of the self by others and the distribution of responsibility and blame. The ability to detect deceptive or manipulative behaviors is dependent on reliability of inferential strategy. An appropriate perception of internally and externally causal factors could have been highly adaptive in an environment of aggressive social competition. In development, children's causal stories tend to be more situational than those told by adults. Though capable and more than willing to report causation of their actions and experiences by the age of 3, causal stories are typically bereft of self-originating causal mental entities such as needs, goals, and wants until the age of 5. This is attributed to the more complex and temporally extended self that emerges in early AM around the same time, along with the theory-of-mind ability to adopt multiple perspectives (and pass the false-belief task) (Atance and Meltzoff 2005). Conversely, paranoid schizophrenics tend to disproportionately perceive the internal mental states of others as causal, and as a result suffer illusions of persecution(Langdon et al 2005). Somewhere in between is the normal adult behavior of generating causal narratives which allow for natural and rapid interpretations of personal events and interpersonal interactions.

Early development of the self-concept is thought to be strongly related to interpersonal interaction. Infants are extremely sensitive to self/other similarities and differences, and may learn a lot about themselves by understanding their similarity to other human agents. At birth, neonates have an awareness of being relative to physical objects and bodily perception, and an interpersonal self that is shaped through interaction with others, typically adult care-givers. A tendency to imitate and share affect observed on conspecific faces develops quickly and 'social embodiment' information such as postures and facial expression continue to play a central role in social information processing. Within weeks, consciousness of self-originating goals and actions as distinct from the goals and actions of others emerges. At 12 months, there is evidence of a perceived distinction between the emotions of others and the self, and at 18 months infants demonstrate discrimination between their own desires and preferences and those of others, and can ascribe agency. It is very telling that this development is articulated through steps in establishing the self-other boundary.

The developing self is increasingly capable of representing the world relative to personal goals, and interpersonal interaction continues to be a force in self formation and perception. Receptive language skills emerge before language generation, and are related to recall and cohesion. The development of these skills may be a small step in the development of the extended self, and is thought to be related to the development of the ability to interpret the contributions of others in extended discourse, illustrating the natural and automatic capacity for generating cohesive interpretations of incomplete information.

At 4 or 5, children exhibit the ability to represent the self extended in time, and begin to use more qualitative and self-referential language in causal interpretations of events. At the same time the ability to represent mental content develops in complexity to include the possibility of false representations of reality and disparate perspectives of the same event. There is some speculation about the coincident emergence of these two abilities (perception of extended self and mature performance on false belief tasks) being attributable to maturation of the theory-of-mind ability to adopt multiple perspectives. AM emerges around this same time, and a unified sense of self over time and defined by personal narrative begins to develop. Again, the self concept increases in complexity as a function of it's elaborated relationship with the other. The neural pathways that allowed the self to develop through imitating and assimilating to the other now allow an articulated self to simulate internal states and represent their predictive significance relative to the self.

The path to the cognitive scientific self is long and convoluted, and is not made easier by the composite, interactional nature of its component parts. Even the basic distinction of the self from the other turns out to be a vague one. An important step in the functional imaging literature was made by an appropriately indirect and backwards inference about the mechanisms of self-referential thinking. Certain tasks of attribution of intention and mental state reasoning have been correlated with activation patterns closer to baseline than other cognitive tasks. The state of the brain during rest, or the default state of the brain when not faced with a specific task, is used as a baseline in many fMRI and PET studies. The similarity of patterns of activation in mental-state related tasks to patterns of activation in the resting, baseline state caused researchers to speculate as to the content and nature of the resting state and it's relationship to thinking about thinking. It was surmised that some level of self/other/mental state representation or reasoning takes place during the resting state. Further investigation revealed that mental-state reasoning that required more internally directed attention, for example judgments of subjective experience, caused an even lower decrease in activity associated with the resting state. The direction of this correlation indicates that the resting-state is an introspective state, with attention directed towards internal experiences and processes.

Degree of activation appeared to be a function of the relative proportion of internal to externally directed attention to mental-state information, which supports a common neural basis of self/other representation. In fact, self/other relevant cognitive processes generally have been correlated with the same set of neural structures. This set of neural structures has been implicated in face perception, autobiographical memory, self-evaluation, causal-temporal ordering of information, representing the mental states of others, and monitoring, execution and perception of goal oriented actions. Individual observed instances of localized function are as variable as the tasks associated with them, but generally the medio-dorsal frontal cortex, orbito-frontal cortex, and STS bilaterally; the anterior cingulate cortex, temporo parietal junction, pre-motor, and motor cortex of the right hemisphere; and the temporopolar cortex of the left hemisphere are consistently correlated with processing of mental state information. Additionally, the posterior cingulate cortex has been correlated with self-awareness and thinking directed towards the intentions of the self specifically (Harris et al 2005, Decety and Sommerville 2003, Metzinger and Gallese 2003).

Overlapping cognitive architecture, dependent conceptual development, and data from primate research on motor neurons all point to the relationship of motor-pathways and mental state representation as a promising and interesting area for future research. Many intriguing claims have been made about the relationship of motor-pathways to understanding the other, including reports of patients with R hemisphere lesions resulting in denial of hemiplegia that extends to denial of the motor-deficits of other patients(Tirassa 2005 reporting on Ramachandran). The connectedness of the self and the other invites investigators of the self to look to deficits traditionally thought of as social, such as autistic spectrum disorders. Other interesting topics include the assimilation of AM, belief structures, perception and narrative processes into a more comprehensive model of the extended self. Rather than the unwieldy philosophical issue we began with, closer inspection of the nature of the problem of self in cognitive science reveals a difficult but manageable problem in social cognition.

Twitch of the death nerve (Bay of Blood)

2007-01-07T10:18:00.000-08:00

Twitch of the Death Nerve or Bay of Blood (1971) directed by Mario Bava.

The film begins with the murder of an elderly heiress, and a web of intrigue surrounding the fate of her coveted waterfront property emerges. What ensues is an all-out murder spree as relatives and friends attempt to get their grubby hands on her fortune, complicated by a group of young backpackers who innocently decide to crash in her abandoned estate.

Mario Bava is one of the most under-appreciated Italian horror directors. He is widely considered to be a master of his craft, but I still think that is an understatement. Bava began his career as a cinematographer and it shows; his films exhibit masterful knowledge of color theory, composition, and texture. And the lighting! Don't even get me started... One of my favorite elements in all his films is his understanding and application of fashion in his sets, props and costumes; reminiscent of Seijun Suzuki's artful fashion sense in films like Tokyo Drifter, in which fashion and mood almost become characters in the film. Bava's work is clearly influenced both by the stylized aesthetics of German expressionism and the raw violence and sexuality of the Hammer films. If you're not immediately engaged by this movie and wonder why I love it so much, just wait for the octopus. It beats the pants off the octopus in Old Boy by a longshot. All that being said, about it being this amazing masterwork and whatnot, let me make it clear that it is still a 70's horror movie, complete with jiggling titties and absurdly stereotyped characters.

Available to download at thepiratebay.org, for rental through netflix.com, and for sale on amazon.com

Cannibal Porn

2006-12-31T16:44:00.000-08:00

No, really. The following is a review of a novelty item for those with strong stomachs and a healthy appetite for the bizarre.

The Bedroom (Shisenjiyou no Aria) (1992) is an artsy, weird, japanese softcore starring Issei Sagawa as Mr. Takano. For those of you to whom this means nothing, Issei Sagawa is better known for having killed and eaten a woman in France in the early 80's, getting away with it and returning to Japan to become a minor celebrity who is asked to do things like write articles for gourmet cooking magazines and appear in pornos. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issei_Sagawa)

The movie itself is actually a little bit interesting on its own merit, although of course the main appeal is watching a known cannibal fondle porn stars, and in fact certain points of the plot are clearly references to Sagawa's crime. The movie is essentially about voyeurism and control, and the plot centers around a sex club where men have their way with women who have taken the sleeping drug Halcion. Many of the sex scenes involve unresponsive, drugged women, clearly meant to represent the experience of being sexual with a dead body. These encounters are video-taped and photographed, again introducing the theme of voyeurism. In one scene, Sagawa's character photographs himself licking a drugged woman's thigh, which is the first body part that he ate in his real life crime. Another reference to Sagawa's crime are frequent shots taken from inside a refrigerator, and a scene in which a corpse is shoved into a refrigerator. In real life, Sagawa stored various body parts in his refrigerator for several days while he slowly consumed the body.

In terms of style, this movie is very dated and utilizes a lot of cheesy blue and red filters and oddly angeled shots. One interesting element is the use of video artifact and TV snow in certain shots, which comes to represent voyeurism.

I know the above description sounds more appropriate for a horror film than a porno, but I guess that depends on what you're into. I recommend this as a viewing option for anyone who really feels the need to know what people are capable of even conceiving of doing.

available for purchase on amazon.com

and happy new year!

Have some shame!

2006-12-27T15:11:00.000-08:00

I recently took a long plane ride, and was lucky enough to be seated next to a hot Belgian chick. We hit it off, but she said something that really struck a nerve with me and by god I'm going to rant about it. What I am reporting now is about 2 minutes of a 4 hour exchange, but I feel I need to say something. We started out with a casual discussion about the entertainment for the trip, there were several movie channels and one of them was showing 'The Da Vinci Code' and she commented that it was a great movie that would lose something on the small screen. Now, I know I'm a movie nerd and I'm willing to concede that to people who aren't intimately involved in cinema, maybe 'The Da vinci Code' is a great movie. Why not. She goes on to explain to me that she has never read the book, but that her sister had read it so fast blah blah blah... OK, so we're making small talk, so I admit to her that I read it on a plane once and am ashamed to admit that I enjoyed it a little. Her reply was something about how people shouldn't be snobs about things like that.

Well, if being ashamed of enjoying the da vinci code makes me a snob, then I'm a serious snob. And I am PROUD TO BE ASHAMED. So listen up America, and Belgium, HAVE SOME SHAME. Yes, we enjoyed the da vinci code, it was exciting, it was a page turner, we spent a little less time with our TVs for the three days it took us to read it, but that is nothing to be proud of. It is a crap novel. A crappy, mindless detective story masquerading as pseudo-intellectualism. Not even bothering to masquerade as intellectualism, just picking up on popular pseudo-intellectual themes and incorporating that into a crappy, low-brow, detective story. Its sexy, it makes us think we're reading about history and culture, but we're not. And it's crap. Just to begin with, in the beginning the name that they claim is the true title of the Mona Lisa is incorrect. And thats just for starters. So now we have a book, no one had any false pretenses about it having any literary, structural, or theoretical significance, and now it turns out the author didn't even do his art history homework. Besides which, isn't it our shame that made the book so enjoyable? Isn't the dirty pleasure of getting wrapped up in a pointless, fictional intrigue, the escape from real life and serious thought, exactly what we liked about it? So yes, be ashamed, BE VERY ASHAMED.

When people talk about reading being good for you, exercising your mind, ect...that doesn't mean the physical act of reading. It means strenuous mental exercise, in which you consume and process logic structures and theoretical content embedded in language. Reading traffic signs all day long is not going to grow you any new neurons, and the da vinci code is not much better. Note that I am not telling you not to read this kind of crap, I'm just telling you to have some shame when you do. You'll enjoy it more.

Meow

2006-12-19T12:47:00.000-08:00

My kitten just died. She had Leukemia and I had to put her down. I put a fez on a jar of pickles but it didn't cheer me up. Life just sucks sometimes.

My kitten!

2006-12-19T08:04:00.000-08:00

My kitten is in the animal hospital and the vets don't know what is wrong with her. Everybody think happy thoughts about my kitty because she needs them right now! Two days ago she was the happiest kitten in the world, lets hope two days from now she will be bouncing off the walls and chasing my shoe-laces again.

Head (1968)

2006-12-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

HOLY SHIT! In a surprising twist of fate, the Monkees movie turned out to be an amazing psychedelic surrealist freak out written by Jack Nicholson. Apparently, Jack Nicholson and the Monkees locked themselves into a hotel room for two days and got stoned out of their minds and wrote this movie. I don't have any reliable sources on that, but it's a charming story and after watching the movie it does not seem far fetched. I can't believe no one told me about this movie before, and therefor felt compelled to post about it. Totally mind-blowing movie, required viewing.

In other news: I spent all night Saturday dancing with the cutest girl in the world, and all Sunday morning being the most hungover girl in the world. But it was worth it.

Giants and Toys

2006-12-15T07:03:00.000-08:00

Giants and Toys (1958) Yasuzo Masumura

Giants and Toys centers around the advertising campaigns of three rival caramel companies in post-war Japan. The movie uses the same fantasy space as many Japanese post-war technology nightmares to frame a different kind of nightmare: that of post-war Japan's westernized consumer culture.

One of the companies recruits a toothless girl from the slums to be their new spokes model, another promises to provide for one contest winner's needs, "From cradle to wedding," and the third markets exotic silver caramels, with the help of a loin-clothed jungle man. Through it all, a traditional Japanese man battles with his drive towards success and financial stability and his desire to keep his dignity.

The movie was ahead of its time in terms of both style and content; Japanese cinema did not really take off until the late 70's, so I was surprised to see the date 1958 on a movie this sophisticated. This phenomenon came about for a number of reasons, but was essentially because film was a Western invention and it took some time for Japanese film makers to make it their own. When silent film was introduced in Japan in the 1930's, Japanese theaters employed Benshi to narrate the film, in the tradition of the kabuki theater. This live narration of movies was unique to Japan and added an element of performance, or theater, to the experience of watching the film. While this was a uniquely Japanese addition, it was not uniquely filmic, but instead confused the film medium with a method of creating reproducible and easily distributable theater. It was not until the 60's, when French new wave cinema began to develop a grammar and syntax for film as a communicative and expressive medium, that Japanese film makers began to understand cinema as a distinct medium.

That being said, this movie is cool looking, proficiently crafted, distinctly cinematic, and distinctly Japanese. It uses a playful, quasi-fantastic atmosphere and scenario to discuss a deadly serious subject: the effects of the introduction of elements of western culture on traditional Japanese values. If it helps you to understand how serious this really was at the time, imagine a movie about Americans adapting to Islamic cultural values after having one of our major cities nuked. Now imagine that movie being kooky and off-beat. This movie is both interesting on its own merit and as a cultural artifact: definitely recommended.

Availability: For rental through netflix and for sale at Amazon.com

Lars von Trier

2006-12-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

OK, so there's this story about Lars von Trier that I really feel I have to tell, right now. So my friend used to live in L.A and dated this movie critic, who will remain nameless because I don't know his name. At any rate, he was interviewing Lars von Trier and asked him about his views on women, framing the question by explaining that some critics have interpreted works like 'Dancer in the Dark,' in which he basically takes an innocent female character and destroys her in this long, drawn out, painful way, as being on some level misogynist. Lars von Trier commenced to tell this story:

He was out in a boat on a lake, it was a beautiful day and everything was peaceful and generally pleasant. At some point he noticed a swan on the lake. His boat drifted close to the swan, and he was sitting perfectly still observing this beautiful animal when the swan started freaking out and attacking him, making this horrible noise and trying to overturn the boat. He didn't know what to do, was trying to beat it off with a paddle, when all of a sudden the swan stopped attacking him and started preening its feathers as if nothing had ever happened. "And that" he says "is what I think of women."

Apparently this interview was committed to video, I'll try and get some info on its availability. Hope I did it justice. Makes me feel sort of warm and fuzzy inside, and is a good reminder that "good artist" does not mean "good person".

Social Cognition

2006-12-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

An interesting review of the literature relevant to the neuroscience of human social cognition and decision making. Written so that those not familiar with the field can understand, but not dumbed down. Check it out.

http://helios.hampshire.edu/~jwcCS/PrisonersDilemma.pdf

Things I advocate

2006-12-11T08:10:00.000-08:00

For those of you just joining me, which would be all of you because I'm just starting, here is a list of links to things I advocate, so you know where I stand.

http://www.pimpadelicwonderland.com/- Great site about 70's cinema.

http://shockcinemamagazine.com/ - If you don't know what Shock Cinema Magazine is, you're no friend of mine. So find out.

http://www.superhappyfun.com/ - Great source for asian or other DVDs + videos

http://www.blue-underground.com/ Joe Bob Briggs' DVD company. All hail Joe Bob

http://www.joebobbriggs.com/ - The Joe Bob report. See above.

http://www.dantenet.com/ - The Journal of Junk Culture and Fringe Media since 1986

http://www.Blaxploitation.com/ - Pretty much what you think it is

http://www.videoaddicts.com/ - The video addicts hotline

www.vsom.com/ - Video Search of Miami. Great source of hard to find films.

Aiight, there's more but I can't give all my secrets away!

Daisies

2006-12-11T07:47:00.000-08:00

Sedmikrasky (Daisies) (1966) directed by Vera Chytilová

Two teenage girls named Marie decide that since everything in their world is spoiled, they too should become spoiled. The girls embark on a series of destructive pranks in which they consume and destroy the world about them. This movie is basically a surrealist, feminist, 60's, Czech version of 'The Simple Life,' if you can imagine that being pleasant at all. In the context of the time period, this movie can be interpreted as a biting social satire that whimsically and playfully explores the concept of ennui. Loaded with successful use of experimental film techniques, including hand painting on film, animation, and lovely fantasy sequences such as one in which the girls chop each others body parts off while their severed heads float around and giggle, this is definitely recommended viewing.

Availability: available for rental through netflix.com, and for sale on amazon.com

Forgotten cinema

2006-12-11T07:14:00.001-08:00

One of my goals in starting this blog was to write about and hopefully promote interest in more obscure movies, art films and B-features alike. Everyone and their mother can tell you what they think about Mel Gibson's Apocalypto, but what does your friend's mom have to say about....

Blindman (1971) directed by Ferdinando Baldi. English language, Italian production spaghetti western starring Ringo Starr.

Tagline: Blindman, Blindman, what did he do? Stole 50 women that belong to you.

As you can tell from the limited information already presented to you, this movie is a genuine oddity. The plot centers around a blind gunman, who is hired to escort fifty mail order brides to their miner husbands.The women are re-appropriated by Mexican pimp Domingo and his brother Candy(RINGO STARR!!!) and Blindman pursues them into Mexico to attempt a daring rescue. To begin with, let me just say that I'm not talking blind like, 'all my other senses are heightened Zatoichi style blind'; I'm talking blind like seriously handicapped. The movie begins with Blindman's business partner taking advantage of him because he can't see, and while he does from time to time kick some ass, he is definitely handicapped. Also of note is the fact that this movie is set in a world where so many of the men have huge noses and ridiculous mustaches that I was not immediately sure which of the characters was played by Ringo Starr. Adding to my confusion was the decent script and cinematography, which demonstrated a good sense of fun and a developed, if kitschy, sense of aesthetics. Truly bizarre take on this genre, worth checking out, and have I mentioned, RINGO STARR?!? As a Mexican pimp!? Named Candy!!?!

available at: http://www.pimpadelicwonderland.com/

Cannibal Holocaust

2006-12-07T07:08:00.000-08:00

Cannibal Holocaust (1980) directed by Ruggero Deodato

A film crew from New York goes into the jungle to investigate the disappearance of an earlier film crew who set out to make a documentary in the jungle.

Notes:

Deodato and one of the film's producers were arrested and the film seized a week after the premiere due to concerns that this was an actual snuff film. This was, of course, before it came to light that all snuff films were just low budget grindhouse flicks with footage from 'the last house on the left' spliced in. The only footage of human death in cannibal holocaust is footage of apartheid that was originally shot by Jacopetti and Prosperi for Africa Adio, which they had to claim was fake when they were tried for murder upon the release of that film. In Cannibal Holocaust, the apartheid footage is supposedly the work of the film crew that disappears into the jungle, making this film in a way about killing and eating Jacopetti and Prosperi.

The structure of the film, which consists of a film within the film, makes it possible for this brutal exploitative trash-fest to express something intelligent about the nature of film making and exploitation. Ortolani's kick-ass score, (he's also responsible for the scores of Mondo Cane, Goodbye Uncle Tom, and Africa Adio) and the genuine love and craft that went into shooting and editing this film, are possibly the most disturbing features of it.

Beautifully shot, admirably brutal, and impressively cerebral, Cannibal Holocaust deserves all of the notoriety and admiration it has received.

Availability:

OK, so generally there will be an availability section, but my Internet connection is being a little bitch right now so I can't find you those links. This movie is pretty available, so I can point you in the right direction. Download it at thepiratebay.org, or do it oldskool and rent it through netflix or buy it on Amazon. The uncut version is 95 minutes long, make sure you check that you are getting all the gore you signed up for!

I'll start with some bitching

2006-12-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

First post. I think it's fitting that I start this thing with some good old fashioned bitching.

I recently started a new job, and mostly, things are going well. I'm working hard, being challenged, interested in my work... and really, really wishing that people had better things to do than dislike me for no reason. OK, OK, I guess I can't assume that there isn't a reason. But my sharp deductive abilities lead me to believe that after having two weeks worth of limited interactions with a person you aren't going to have a GOOD reason for not liking them.

A host of small incidents have started to make me feel as if one of my co-workers is absolutely out to get me, a terrifying thing to think when you have just moved to a new city to take on a job. I mean, I ONLY know the people I work with, I'd prefer it if they didn't hate me.

It started when my boss pulled me aside to let me know that she had gone to him with some complaints. We research brain development, so we deal with children and parents all the time, and she had gone to my boss to report that I had used the term "rock n' roll" as a colloquial expression meaning "cool beans" (which is the way she says it,) in front of a parent. OK, so maybe it's not as formal as "cool beans," but this is hardly worthy of talking to my boss about. Certainly seems like something she could have said to me.

Then yesterday she came to my office to talk to me. When I started work here, I had asked her if I could observe her performing some of the tests that I will eventually be administering. She has yet to let me know as she goes to administer a test, which I chalked up to us not having any research subjects who needed those tests. Apparently, I'm not being "pro-active" enough about observing. OK, fine. I asked her to let me know by email, or give me access to her calendar, so that I can find out when she will be performing these tasks. Her reply, "oh, well I never really know when I'm going to be doing it." OK great, and the point of chastising me for my lack of ability to read your mind? This little run in was completely unproductive. The only thing accomplished by this meeting was that now I know she doesn't think I'm performing well at my job. For whatever reason.

Finally, the icing on the cake. She asked me if I would take one of her subjects and administer a test she apparently does think I'm competent in, and I agreed to do it. I asked her what time she would need me and she said, "Oh, there are a lot of available times, how about after lunch?" I agreed and told her to knock on my door whenever she needed me, as I would be doing data analysis in my office all day. "After lunch" turned out to mean "during lunch," and she handed the subject off to me just as our office started having a party for one of our staff members who is leaving. Since the office was providing lunch at this party, I had not brought myself a lunch and ended up not eating all day. So I sat in silence in a closet in the back of the lab while the subject did a computerized test while the office was having a party, perhaps one of the only opportunities I would have had to meet my co-workers. Additionally, when I was done I asked if I could observe her administering one of the tests I am not being pro-active about observing, and was informed that she had already done it. I repeat, I was in my office all day waiting for her. I even scheduled a meeting for another day because I needed to be there, waiting for her.

In conclusion, I am not crazy, this girl really hates me. How disappointing to learn that meaningless drama based on nothing can overshadow the experience of doing rewarding and interesting work in an important field that I really care about.

More on neuroscience and cult film later. Possibly more bitching as well.