Some title like Djingle Djangle

Django Unchained

I remember seeing that movie today that might as well be called Djingling Djangling Chain as far as I am concerned,  and realised that the movie was a lot longer than I expected it to be. Despite the fact that I didn't understand what people in the audience found so funny and I got a little bored with the endless bloodshed and violent deaths, but I thought it was a marvelous story and a good number of actors were playing roles with unusual twists to them. There were some scenes that had very brief moments that were beautifully shot in a haunting way such as when the maids were preparing the dinner table and the black slave women were wandering around a garden or sitting on swings in one of the plantations. As a whole I felt that I had watched a very enjoyable good film that almost went off in some curious directions.

So that was the first Tarantino movie that I saw at the cinema since the Kill Bill movies and before that it was the Pulp Fiction movie

It looks as if once every ten years he makes a movie that I want to see in the cinema. The idea of a ritual did come across to me, I haven't seen Gosford Park and I am not quite sure why I was thinking about Peter Greenaway during these ethereal moments because there didn't seem to be a directly obvious connection other than ethereal flamboyance with artistic direction in those seconds.

Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, who remembers the name?

a) I managed to get to see the new Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and found it to be quite splendid action film, although it seemed as if they did their best to ditch corny one liners and actually give Arnie a few scenes where is seemed as if we had at least a minute or two of actual acting from him which might be a worrying thing for some people. So it shouldn't be a surprise if it bombs but it wasn't a big budget movie anyway. Shades of spaghetti western lightly stir friend in a Korean way. The way the blood and violence in it was sometimes bleakly dark which might be something to do with Jee-woon Kim the director. 

b) I liked Jee-Woon Kim's A Tale of Two Sisters very much when it came out almost a decade back

c) I think this movie also had a bit of the gun debate as a subtext if that can be said

So the Gnome King said....

The Gnome King, code name for one of the inhabitants of the Harrow environment, said to Wmm while at a bus stop and aboard a bus and in stream of conscious mode : 

"You know, I walk in the street here, right I sit there, by myself and some bastard had driven into a bus stop, right, he has, some bastard had driven into a bus stop, right, it's true down that road down there, he drove into a bus stop. you know, It's serious, you know"

"They want me to give up smoking, no smoking in my own, my own, er, room , they don't want me to smoke, course I smoke, I'm allowed to smoke. That's not going to kill anybody is it. That's not very good is it. When I smoke, I smoke, you know, if I can't breathe air in and I'm breathing gas of some, some description, right, and if there's some gas leak there, right and it's all over Burnt Oak there. Right, and there's gas everywhere, and there's gas over there, and it was stinking gas, and I put a cigarette in the toilet, I have this idea that erm, that if I put a cigarette in the toilet, it could explode. They've put spirits of salt there, right and supposedly, somebody in my erm, my car there, right and I'm in the kitchen by myself, I phone somebody up there, I said I reported it, right, leave him, right, don't talk to him, right, I put the phone down on them, right, and I'm not talking to him anymore, right, don't talk to them, don't talk to them. He says I can't beat them with a brolly, right…."

"I can't seem to drive, I can't seem to drive, I don't like driving, they drive so fast, right, you know, they drive so fast. I lifted something up there, doing a weight training there. they're all in there, I was on a squash court there, and they all hang around erm, Hanson Road there, I'm driving away in Anselm Road, driving there, I'm driving away, when I'm driving in a car, because what happens when you're driving in a car, right, I'm driving away by myself, and supposedly, I was driving, and i got a parking fine and I got some kind of parking tickets with something there, right and I parked it there, and I ripped it to pieces, I didn't pay for it, I threw it away, right and then supposedly I parked it in the drive there, Kieth thinks that I burgled his house, right, which I didn't, people were smashing it to pieces, they beat the fuck out of him then, right, here in number 9 now, I hear them and they raided number 9, they're in number 5 Hanson Avenue, I'm watching television and they think I'm in number five, right , I'm not, the police are in there and there's a fire in five right, there's a fowl smell in the garden there, and there's a stink there, there's a dog there, there're all these dogs in there, and I'm thinking they've hit this Alsation dog there, right, this poor Alsation dog there and I'm thinking what total and absolute arsehole. They have ordered their dogs in their gear in "Montesors", playing football there, right, they're playing football. I opened my door and supposedly I touched something, I can't open the door, I can't change the lock at all, I got change for no lock, right, I have a door it's okay, I electrocute … there and everybody says that they don't know what it is, right, and supposedly I have a problem touching metal and I think it's made of metal."

"Somebody's erm sending me letters, they don't belong to me, right, and I think to myself, why on earth are they sending me letters if they don't belong to me, and I take it down to the post office by myself, right, and that means I go to the post office, they're changing their mind about everything, right, I go to the post office, I go in there, I buy a load of stamps there, fill out an application form, right, stamp whatever, whatever, whatever it is, I phoned the court up, I phoned the court up, I went to Bishop Stortford or something, I went there, I went to Essex Police Station, Essex Magistrates court, they changed the court there, right, I was driving then, very very fast. I can't see them coming up front or the left, but there's something about tailgating, right, driving behind me, right, there's all this, erm, car crashes, right, I'm driving very fast. I'm on a train, somebody's leaving messages on my answer phone, right, something about football, and I'm thinking , why do they want to phone me , I'm looking at a telegraph pole, somebody's driven into a brick wall and I'm terrified that possibly that…."

Conversation was ended by the fact that Wmm got off the bus and could no longer hear the words of the Gnome King as he remained in his stream of consciousness flow and the doors shut.

Texas Chainsaw whatever

I recall that I went today to see Texas Chainsaw 3D, made as a sort of a direct sequel to the very original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. To some degree it made the character Leatherface seem quite fearful and also a being that one might have sympathy for. However a trail of blood that went on for quite a distance in the film possibly went on too far to fill up one body and certainly too much for the body in the state that it was found. 

There were a few other things that just didn't ring right with the story but it was a brave attempt and the director had the original house rebuilt for the movie rather than something that looked like the remains of the house next door in the original movie. It certainly wasn't a cheesy piece of rubbish, it was much more interesting that the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake even. 

I actually enjoyed the film for what it was, along with the unfolding drama, it didn't leaveme wondering if I could have spent the time doing something else such as stare at the wall or through a window, but a little while later the film seemed more and more meaningless as a memory. It didn't quite have the bite of the original but this seemed to be a serious attempt at a different sort of a movie.

Maybe the sequel to this movie might do away with the events of this Texas Chainsaw 3D completely to look as if it might have a sequel worth watching because the story didn't really set itself up for any sort of an interesting follow up movie, unless I totally missed something.

Leafy Train Tunnel

Various photos from around the internet of a train tunnel made up from the branches of trees in the Ukraine

Sightseers

I thought that the film Sightseers was quite marvelous. I marveled at the banal Englishness of the movie, and how it was a movie that offered a refreshing glimpse into a layer of the English psyche. 

If one had seen the Kill List on DVD with the director and scriptwriters commentary which featured the director and his wife basically giggling all the way through pointing out the humorous side of the scenes in the bleak movie, one might have thought that they would make an excellent black comedy movie together and indeed they did this with Sightseers which was a sort of romantic serial killer road movie with a good sense of black humoured absurdity,

One to avoid if you don't like people having their skulls smashed in.

Jack Reacher

Jack Reacher poster.

The Movie Experience
I remember seeing the Jack Reacher movie today, but when I saw the movie, I was convinced that the film was called Jack Treacher and it wasn't until I got home that I found out the actual title. However I'd label this film as very an enjoyable load of tosh and thought that a some of the scenes involving dialogue with the villains was rather pathetic but that was outweighed by the long sequences without any dialogue that seemed almost quite stunning and daring for a mainstream action movie in the 21st Century.

Immediate After Effect
Afterwards, curiously enough I had the urge to remember my own age, and ask whether I was actually a seventy five year old somewhere thirty plus years in the future as I got out of my chair in the auditorium. I don't know what that was all about but someone thinks that I ought to be able to work that one out.

Delayed After Effect
Over a week later, I talked to a friend about the films I had seen and I tried to tell him about this film, but I could not remember it, I could not remember the title even or the fact it was a Tom Cruise film. It had become a complete blank and my friend wondered if perhaps I was getting old. I was determined to get around that memory block and suddenly I remembered the experience afterwards of feeling like an old man and then I worked my way back from the memory of that experience to remembering the film and what it was all about.

Hypnagogic Words (1st January 2013)

Political perversity
In a way I have instant manna
From the stars
That's indifferent
The way he wept
The stairs of the university
Given the force of habit
Maddening with disinterest
Believe you,
The doorstep of images
The distance that remains
The spineless eyeglasses at the rock
Becoming part of the window frames, 
A formless UFO
You got me thinking about
As I look across the timeless sea
The lense deteriorates anxiety
Burning holes in
The circumference of the circle
My main idea is to see
The timeless Wittgenstein within
The bubbles of smoke halves the intelligence
Decelerating salad memory reproach
Where the half moon shines
Accelerating in air time
A prefecture on the payrole

(I composed this by closing his eyes and putting myself into a state near to sleep and experiencing vague half formed whispered words which I wrote down in a note book, along with the doodle. I did this after reading something about James Joyce's possible methods of creative writing. However the experience of having the words coming through can be more interesting than the actual words written down themselves)