Signs of the inner world exposed in Tianjin port city

leading from

Dream Like confusion Wmm

a) Swimming through a sea of cars
Thousands of cars and vans parked in the car parks were scorched by the blast at the Chinese port of Tianjin port city. I observe these things and find the doors and the frames of the windows merging with my hands and fingers, and I enter the environment and swim through the sea of cars, piercing through a mesh of car doors, and in the warped remains of the car filled floors of the multi-story carparks, I see the ocean waves and the cracked open roofs become the froth.

b) Travelling through a tunnel system that connects through long vehicles
Because of the fact the vehicles were present in the site of the devastation, I imagined driving a small vehicle of the mind that drives through other vehicles, and here through the fire engines, through imaginary shafts that connected one side compartment to another and then through the long dented lorry and into another vehicle somewhere further on.

Fire engines and dented lorry

Fire engines and dented lorry

JG Ballard and the Inner Space

Still being developed

a) The Idea of Inner Space
J G Ballard with his idea of Inner Space, he came up with it as a sort of a slogan, but he thought that Science Fiction should turn itself towards the sort of areas, where its readers were living in their ordinary lives and Inner Space became an area of reality remade by the mind. It is the internal landscape of tomorrow that is a transmuted image of the past, and one of the most fruitful areas for the imaginative writer. It is particularly rich in visual symbols, and he felt that this sort of speculative fantasy played a role very similar to that of the surrealism in the graphic arms

b) Ballard on Surrealism

de Chirico, "Piazza d'Italia

c) The Drowned World scenario
When he came to write the book, The Drowned World . People were accusing him of stealing from Carl Gustave Jung those who didn't accuse him of that were accusing him of stealing from Joseph Conrad.

One of the themes of the book were that the world has regressed in time, because of enormous temperature changes and the environment had become close to that of the Triassic era around 250 to 200 million years ago.

The landscapes began to emerge from the character's dreams, which were landscapes of great reptiles, huge primitive plants and so on and their own psychological needs became of those of sort of pre-human beings.

They realize that the uterine sea around them, as if it were a dark womb of the ocean mother, was as much a graveyard of their own individuality as it was the source of their lives, and perhaps their fears might have reflected his own uneasiness about re-enacting the experiences of his childhood and attempting to explore such dangerous ground

The hero re-mythologises himself in terms of this quest for the sun and in the end of the book, he sets of south looking for greater and greater heat and light and the kind of materials from which basic forms of life had generated.

Illustration of a Late Triassic scene

d) The Past of The Drowned World
The question for him was about how far do the landscapes of one's childhood, as much as its emotional experiences, provide and inescapable background to all one's imaginative writing?  When he wrote his first novel The Drowned World in 1960, he didn't at the time realise it, but a lot of the landscapes in that novel, such as the apartment houses and office blocks of London rising out of a swamp, were very close to the memories he had of the apartment houses of the French Concession in Shanghai, rising out of the flooded paddy fields which he views every day from the prison cam about eight miles south of the city. It was only in hindsight that he begin to see that he was feeding elements of that landscape,

Certainly his own earliest memories were of Shanghai during the annual long summer floods, when the streets of the city were two or three feet in a brown silt-laden water, and where the surrounding countryside, in the centre of the flood-table of the Yangtze, was an almost continuous mirror of drowned paddy fields and irrigation canals stirring sluggishly in the hot sunlight. On reflection, it seemed to him that the image of an immense half-submerged city overgrown by tropical vegetation, which formed the centre piece of The Drowned World, is in some way of fusion of his childhood memories and his last ten years then in London.

Among the characteristic fauna of that age were the crocodiles and alligators, amphibian creatures at home in both the aquatic and terrestrial worlds, who symbolize for the hero of the novel the submerged dangers of his quest. Reflecting on his own past, Ballard could remember an enormous ancient alligator housed in a narrow concrete pit, half filled with cigarette packers and ice cream cartons in the reptile house at the Shanghai Zoo, who seemed to have been jerked forwards reluctantly, as if so many tens of millions of years into mankind's 20th Century.

The French Concession

Another street in the French Concession, early 1920s

e) Fusing dream with reality
In many respects, this fusion of the past and present experiences, and of such disparate elements as the modern office buildings of central London and indeed the alligator in a Chinese zoo, resembled to him the mechanisms by which dreams are constructed, and perhaps the great value of fantasy as a literary form is its ability to bring together apparently unconnected and dissimilar ideas. So, to a large extent, all fantasy served this purpose, and he believed that speculative fantasy, as he preferred to call the more serious fringe of science fiction, was a potent method of using one's imagination to construct a paradoxical universe where dream and reality become fused together, each retaining its own distinctive quality, and yet in some way assuming the role of its opposite, and where by an undeniable logic, black simultaneously became white.

Without in any way suggesting that the act of writing is a form of creative self-analysis, he felt that the writer of fantasy has a marked tendency to select images and ideas which directly reflected the internal landscapes of his mind, and then the ready of the fantasy must interpret them on this level, distinguishing between the manifest content, which may seem obscure, meaningless or nightmarish, and the latent content, the private vocabulary of symbols drawn by the narrative from the writer's mind. The dream worlds, synthetic landscapes and plasticity of visual forms, invented by the writer of fantasy are external equivalents of the inner world of psyche, and because these symbols take their impetus from the most formative and confused periods of a person's life, they are often time-sculptures of terrifying ambiguity.

Source Quotes

1. See: http://www.jgballard.ca/non_fiction/jgb_time_memory_innerspace.html
2. See: http://jgballard.ca/media/1970_oct_friends_magazine.html
3. Dr Christopher Evans: Is this phrase, Inner Space, you coined it, I think, it's talking about er, inward looking rather than outward looking, that's an over simplification
   J G Ballard: Yes, I was interested, I was, partly it was a slogan, I mean it was a sort of, I flew a few,  you know, I was flying a kite, ahm, but I, I meant it seriously. What I meant was, that, I, I thought that these sort of areas, that, that science fiction should turn its attention to, were, was, well, the sort of areas, in which, where its readers, er, were in fact, were, were living in their ordinary lives, that I was, I was talking, I was talking about a world... by Inner Space, I meant a world, um, or, or those areas of reality that have been, as it were, remade by the mind and I mean, you see, a sort of an early precursor if you like of Inner Space, you'd see, um, the novels of Kafka, let's say or various very much the same surrealist, surrealist painters, where there's the landscapes of the soul and so on, um , in films like (Last Year At) Marienbad and er,  Alphaville, in the novels of William Burroughs, um
   Dr Christopher Evans: The first novels, you, you, after you produced three , very clearly marked trilogy. Erm, the first is actually still one of my favourite books in fact, not just one of my favourite science fiction books, that's Drowned World, in which you see the world as being, totally, more or less completely, inundated and it's er, lots of Jungian overtones to it,  seems to me, and er
   J G Ballard: Unconsciously, of course
   Dr Christopher Evans: The unconscious
   J G Ballard: Oh no sorry, none of, none of the overtones were sort of deliberate, and various people accused me at the time of stealing the book from Jung, those who didn't accuse me of stealing the book from Jung accused me of stealing it from Conrad, um.
   Dr Christopher Evans: One of the themes really, that you, as the world almost regressed in time, because of these enormous temperature changes, that, that the environment became close to the environment of millions of years ago
   J G Ballard: Yes, the triassic period, I think, yuh
   Dr Christopher Evans: And, people therefore people began to find themselves being drawn back
   J G Ballard: Right, yuh, they began to dream of, I mean they they, they sort of, they began, landscapes began to emerge from their dreams, which were the landscapes of, of er of the trias, of great reptiles and huge primitive plants and all the rest of it, and the, their own sort of erm, their own sort of biological and psychological needs became those of, of, of a var, of the sort of a pre human beings, so that the sort of, these sort of, the hero in the novel as it were re-mythologises himself in terms of this quest for the sun, so he sets off in the end of the book, he sets off south looking for greater and greater heat, and light and the kind of materials that from which basic forms of life had generated ( The Book Programme Interview, 4th February 1978)
4. J G Ballard: There's no doubt that the surrealist painters have had a far bigger influence on me than any writers have done. I regard Surrealism as really the greatest imaginative adventure of the Twentieth Century. I think that the surrealist movement is very misunderstood. People think it, it's, ah, a movement in painting, inspired by fantasy, but in fact that's not true. Um, the surrealists were all very interested in science, in optics and photography, um, and their main inspiration of course was psychoanalysis, ah, and I think, um, that combination of science and the imagination is very close to my own writing and of course has many affinities with science fiction itself. In many ways I believe that science fiction is the authentic literature of the 20th Century. I think it's unfortunate that that science fiction is boxed off into its own little compartment. (Future Now, Interview with J.G. Ballard by Solveig Nordlund 1986 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS6MWpFX_N0)
5. J G Ballard: Well, ever since I started writing, which was longer ago than I care to remember, nearly 30 years ago, I planned to write a book about, the wartime period in Shanghai, but, for some reason had not go around to it. I think, um, part of the problem I had was, I came to England in '46, and I knew I would never go back to China, um. I had to remake my own entire life here, cope with this very strange country as it certainly was to me in the late forties. Recently in a peculiar way, it started to get strange again, but that may be because my children have grown up and when I had, when i got married and had children, I tried to put roots down, and erm, now that they have grown up, it's possibly why I was able to write, start writing the book about three years ago, because my children had entered adult but for whatever, whatever reason, I had to remake my life here and it seemed a necessarily confusing to to try to recreate this this city at a at a at a wartime period that had vanished forever because almost nothing was known about the war in China, um, very, Shanghai and all the um all the important cities of China vanished in 1949 when the Communists arrived behind, vanished into total obscurity from which, it's only just begun to to reemerge. There seemed no point in in, using my wartime and childhood experiences directly, but I think, what I was doing of course, what, although I was writing, uh, something nominally called Science Fiction, set in the future, I was really in many ways writing about the past and that there are elements in all my novels
   Interviewer: Yes, I think
   
   J G Ballard: In in, of of my, you know, of my China background.
    
   Interviewer:Yes, that's what came through to me, I mean, having read through some of your earlier novels and then reading Empire of the Sun, it was though I had found the hidden springs of some of these Ballard-esque landscapes. There were the airplanes, there were the shattered cities, shattered people, um the life led at extremity. Were you conscious of that when you were previously writing?
   J G Ballard: No, I mean, to tell the truth, when I wrote my first novel the Drowned World, um,  in 1960, uh, it's, it's only with the benefit of... , I , I didn't at the time really realise that, that a lot of the landscapes I described in that novel, um, the sort of apartment houses and office blocks of London rising out of a, out of a swamp, ah, in fact, were very close to the memories I had of the apartment houses of the French Concession in Shanghai, rising out, apparently, of the flooded paddy fields which I viewed every day from our camp, er, about eight miles south of the city. It's only in the benefit of hindsight that I begun to see that I was feeding in elements of, of that landscape, which come out explicitly in this book. (Writers in Conversation- J G Ballard)

Fantastic Four, Five or Six.

leading from
Cinema Wmm








a) I knew thatI was obviously going to enjoy Fantastic Five or Six or whatever the number is supposed to be. All these not so good reviews must make it a must! I actually almost liked Fantastic Four, it had some interesting nightmarish moments but parts of the movie seemed too recently used. The actors were fine in their roles as long as one wasn't too interested in the actual characters that they were based upon or even the comic book series as a whole. It looks as if they tried to squash the resulting Fantastic Four movie into a Big Mac burger bap and that resulted in a rather uneasy entity.  Rubbishy CGI for Ben Grimm/ The Thing, someone should have given him a pair of shorts. The actor who played Doctor Doom was probably almost convincing for his role but really after his roles in Clash of the Titans and its sequel, I am not really too sure what to say. However it was good to hear some Philip Glass through the movie score.


b) Behold, Memories of Fantastic Four movie are starting to disintegrate merge with other movies featuring young inventors and same old doom weapon, merging in with memories of
Big Hero Six with its young inventors, and interdimensional gateway at the end sucking up parts of the Earth, yes we have been along these routes before. Child inventors in Tomorrow Land earlier this year as well, and method of teleporting into another dimension. I can barely distinguish one from the other any more. Everything is merging into a collective pool of thought

Brief note about Bourne Identity

leading from

Paranoiac Critical Wmm

a) On the 8th of August, I have finally watching Bourne Identity, it is a film that I would not bother to recommend to people really but enough people have already watched it over the last dozen plus years, I think it may as well continue to be called Bored Identity.  But for some reason, imagining Bourne and the woman occasionally confusingly fusing together as Siamese Twins in the taxi. As if their knees and elbows and spines start fusing together from time to time and separate, accompanied by the sound of cracking bone. And moments later he tells her " whatever we're doing, we must do it together" as if they had no idea what it was that they're doing and they may never get around to quite putting into words exactly what they were doing.  People all over England may well have been saying "nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more" as they watch the movie through my mind. I thought about their flesh opening up as their interior organs begin to temporarily fuse together as well in the back of the taxi. For brief moments Bourne and the woman would share a heart, spleen, kidneys and liver as well as spinal tissue as their vertebrae connected. and they would joyously scream and howl as they attempted to move their bodies and sort out what exactly had become connected to what.

b) I keep imaging half the characters in the film with barrels of loaded guns implanted into bodyparts asking for Bourne to pull the trigger , and there are those who will do back flips through the window to plunge to their death if Bourne can not kill them correctly, they still want to make it seem as if they died by his hand. There is also the scene where Clive Owen's character gets shot at, perhaps really he is being taken for one of the ones begging to be killed by Jason Bourne and has payed huge amounts of money for this act, but he has bought into this as a part of the gunshots for questions package.

c) It all points to some unconscious weird death and connectivity fetish lurking in the background of the confusion at the centre of the film beneath the surface dying, perhaps even to kill in order to break up the boredom

It Follows: Part 2: The film as a dream

leading from

Dreams That Become Films

and 

It Follows: part 1: The initial dream

Still being collated

a) Starting the film story

David Robert Mitchell had the urge to make a horror movie, and slowly he added pieces to piece of memories from his nightmares , and then he started thinking, "Oh, it'd be fun if it's something that can move between different people" almost like a game of tag to some degree. And then it became clear to him and he then thought "Oh, it should be through sex because it would sort of connect the characters physically and emotionally" and this for him felt like the right thing. And this developed over a number of years in the back of his brain. 

b) No explanation for sexually transmitted monster

So this scenario seemed to reflect the idea of a sexually transmitted distease, but there would be no explanation as to how this would take form. If one thinks back to a dream, there isn't necessarily a reason that you had it, it's simply the reality of your world at the time, and this for him was much stronger that inventing something with a logical beginning because something like this didn't need logic, it just simply existed. There was no intention to turn this into an origins story, but have his characters thrown in to a nightmare, and there is no logical way to escape from it, it can't be solved, nightmares defied a solution. He didn't want a magical thing to make them enter the nightmare or any event leading to this things. It was about something that didn't make sense, it came straight out of a nightmare and it can't be avoided by natural logic. There were people who went to see it that wanted answers but it was not what he was trying to do with this film.

c) Placement out of time

Another goal of the movie was to have production design elements from different eras and include some things that don't quite exist, and this would place the film outside of time in the way that suggested a dream state or play like a nightmare. Perhaps the viewer might wonder where and when the film was taking place and there would be something troubling about that. It definitely leant in the direction of the 70s and 80s whole there were some things from the 50s and 60s.  Perhaps things such as the characters watching a 1950s horror movie didn't make sense or the organist playing the Wurlitzer at the cinema.

d) A Peanuts cartoon dream

Another element of this dream state might come through the fact that there was something not quite right about the parents being outside the world of these teenagers, which was quite isolating for the protagonists because it didn't feel quite real. Some of the characters are on the edge of being young adults, and it seemed to be the right thing for the horror film in the sense that they can in some way navigate some elements of the adult world, but they're also in a limbo to some degree. This all contributed to the suggestion of a dream like world, perhaps in this case, a Peanuts cartoon dream world because they seem to be just floating in space, and an adult teachers from off the screen would be an undefinable 'Wa-Wa-Wa".

e) The shell compact cellphone e-reader

He wanted some modern things in that that were not easily datable, because if there was something such as an iPhone, the viewer would know what year it was set in.  There were a couple of cell phones in the film but the rules and the way that people interacted with them were different than the way they were used in the real world. Another example of mixing temporal differences was the fact that one character has a cell phone e-reader designed using and re-purposing a 'shell' compact from the sixties.

f) A plan to kill the monster

The master plan concocted by Paul to try and rid Jay once and for all of the monster that follows her is an elaborate scheme that involves bringing a bunch of electricl items to a swimming pool, hoping to lure it into the water, and then electrocuting it is an example of a stupid idea that belonged perhaps to a children's movie plan, perhaps something out of a Scooby-Doo cartoon, and this was the point. What would you do if you were confronted by a monster and found yourself trapped in a nightmare?

The answer to this usually would be that one would resort to some way of fighting it that would be accessible to oneself in the physical world and it wasn't going to cut it for the movie. Traditional setup for the creature was avoided, because in the more traditional films, there would be a clue that would lead the characters to figure out how to destroy this monster. Intentionally he avoided placing those. They do their best to accomplish something that they witness its failure and perhaps this was a very non-conventional way of approaching a third act confrontation, but the director and his team thought it was a fun way to deal with it.

Source quotes

1. Sarah Meikle: The  film seems to be set in some sort of temporal vacuum - a kind of retro look mixed with modern tech. The characters watch black-and-white televisions and play card games, or they read e-books on a gadget from the 1960s. Why the mix of different time periods ?
   David Robert Mitchel:The goal was to have production design elements from different eras and some things that don't quite exist. The e-reader is designed from like a sixties' 'shell' compact, re-purposed as an e-reader, and that was to keep the film from being too time-specific. I wanted some modern things in there but I didn't want them to be too easily datable. if it was an iPhone, you'd know what year we made it. So some of that is on the edge of being fantasy; all those different things from different eras places it outside time. That,  in effect, suggests a dream-like world. When you're dreaming, you know that there's something just not quite right about the world you're in.
   (The Dark Side, #166, p42)
2. AVC: The time period of the movie is fascinatingly indeterminate. One of the girls has this mobile device, but otherwise we could be watching a movie set in 1990.
   DRM: There are production design elements from the ’50s on up to modern day. A lot of it is from the ’70s and ’80s. That e-reader cell phone—or “shell phone”—you’re talking about is not a real device. It’s a ’60s shell compact that we turned into a cell phone e-reader. So I wanted modern things, but if you show a specific smartphone now, it dates it. It’s too real for the movie. It would bother me anyway. So we made one up. And all of that is really just to create the effect of a dream—to place it outside of time, and to make people wonder about where they are. Those are things that I think happen to us when we have a dream. (http://www.avclub.com/article/david-robert-mitchell-his-striking-new-horror-film-216215)
3. The film seems to be set in no particular era. Was that deliberate?
   DRM: David Robert Mitchell: That’s intentional. We built the film from a production standpoint as if it were several different eras. A lot of stuff was from the 50s, 60s, 70s and there are some modern things as well. All of it was to put the film a little bit outside of time, so it’s closer to a dream. If you can’t quite place it then it’s intentional. ( http://lovehorror.co.uk/horror-features/interview-with-it-follows-director-david-robert-mitchell/)
4. Whenever the characters are watching TV, there's always an old black-and-white B-movie playing. That makes it pretty clear that you were working with heavy nostalgia.
   It's true, so much of It Follows comes from classic horror. It was about trying to seamlessly mesh what's so great about those older horror films into something that feels contemporary but, at the same time, doesn't seem to exist in a specific time or place. I like the idea of mixing eras and having the film exist slightly outside of time. There's a feeling that It Follows could be happening in the 1980s, but there are a few things that are modern in it. And some of the thing the kids are watching don't really make sense—the last thing you'd expect these kids to watch is a monster movie from the 1950s. It's a little outside of reality and dreamlike. (http://uk.complex.com/pop-culture/2014/09/it-follows-tiff-interview-david-robert-mitchell)
5. Going over to casting, it seems that you like working with a younger age group for you films. Both this one and The Myth of the American Sleepover are sort of coming-of-age-esque.
   DMR: They are both coming-of-age films to some degree. Myth is very specifically a coming-of-age film and it’s also a younger cast. This one is similar and there is a coming-of-age themes connecting with the horror, but they’re a little older. Some of the characters are more on the edge of being young adults. It seemed to be the right thing for the horror film in the sense that they can in some way navigate some bits of the adult world, but they’re also in a limbo to some degree. We tried to exaggerate that with the way they’re isolated and you see very few adults. It’s kind of like a weird Peanuts cartoon dream world. They’re kind of just floating in space.
   http://www.gotchamovies.com/director-david-robert-mitchell-discusses-the-horror-movie-it-follows/
6. You seemed to reference a lot of old school cult movies, there was a bit of an '80s aesthetic...

   In terms of production design it definitely leans in the direction of the ’70s and ’80s but there are a few things that look like the ’50s or ’60s and there are a few modern things. It was sort of an attempt to place it outside of time. Yes there are references to that time but there is also an attempt to create something that is closer to a dream state or a nightmare. Because it doesn’t quite feel like our world. It’s similar, it’s almost our world, but there’s something that isn’t quite right. And there were a lot of choices that were made to suggest that. (http://www.hungertv.com/feature/follows-david-robert-mitchell/)
7. There’s a certain level of ambiguity throughout the film, whether it’s the inconsistent presence of these character’s parents or the specific timeframe in which it takes place. It could be set in the eighties; it could be the present day. What was your rationale for that? DRM: I wanted to maintain this idea of placing the film outside of time, which would suggest a dream state or play like a nightmare. There’s something not quite right about the parents being outside of the world of these teenagers, which is quite isolating for the protagonists because it doesn’t feel quite real. The out of time concept was also explored through the mixed approaches to the production design elements of the film. It makes you wonder where and when this is taking place, and there’s maybe something a little troubling about that. We spent a lot of time mixing different design elements, which made it a very specific conscious choice. (http://www.film3sixtymagazine.com/index.php/2015/02/25/david-robert-mitchell-and-maika-monroe-discuss-the-nightmarish-it-follows-page-2-2/)
8. The film seems to be set in no particular era. Was that deliberate?
   That’s intentional. We built the film from a production standpoint as if it were several different eras. A lot of stuff was from the 50s, 60s, 70s and there are some modern things as well. All of it was to put the film a little bit outside of time, so it’s closer to a dream. If you can’t quite place it then it’s intentional. (http://vulturehound.co.uk/2015/02/david-robert-mitchell-interview/)
9. IT FOLLOWS has a very timeless quality to it – was it hard to keep the technology out of the film?
   We definitely put effort into it in terms of a lot of it our Production Designer spent a lot of energy just selecting the right things from many different decades. It definitely leans in the direction of the 70s and 80s but there are some things from the 50s and 60s there. Some modern things and some things that don’t quite exist. It was definitely carefully planned. It places you outside [of time], like in a dream maybe. There are a couple of cell phones in the film but the rules and the way that people interact with them are different from the way we handle them in our world. It’s maybe not quite our world. (http://www.thehollywoodnews.com/2015/02/26/thn-interview-it-follows-director-david-robert-mitchell/)
10. Paste: Timeless” is a good way of putting it. The film doesn’t feel like it exists in any specific time or place, but in its own universe. Was that done on purpose to give yourself more freedom?
    DRM: Yeah, totally, that was very much part of the plan, to make the film exist outside of time so that in a way it resembles a dream or a nightmare. There are some anachronistic production design elements, things from many different eras. There are some things that don’t quite exist. The fact that you rarely see any of the parents or adults in the film, they’re on the edge of the frame or they’re barely there, all of that is to suggest something that doesn’t feel quite right, that is a little bit outside of reality or the way that we see the world. You can’t quite put your finger on it, or where this is, or when this is specifically, and I think that’s a quality that shares with a dream. (http://www.pastemagazine.com/ March 17th 2015)
11. Do you have the whole mythology mapped out, like how this supernatural disease all started, why it's passed along the way it is?
    DRM: I have an idea of what this really is and what it's about, but ultimately it's just a guess. If you think back to a dream, there isn't necessarily a reason you had it, it's simply the reality of your world. That's much stronger than having something that has a logical beginning. Things like this don't need a logical beginning, they just simply exists. (http://www.joblo.com/horror-movies/news/exclusive-interview-it-follows-director-david-robert-mitchell)
    
12. Filmmaker: Both It Follows and Myth of the American Sleepover have a timeless feel, especially with regards to technology. Is that a part of your style or more specific to these narratives?
    Mitchell: It’s part of my style in the sense that I like not being locked into the rules of our natural world. I like being able to change some of the ground rules in creating a film, and that happens to be what I’ve done in the films. I like altering something just a little bit. It’s about creating something closer to a dream state (or a nightmare), and that’s something I like to do. Whether I’ll do that, maybe or maybe not. They’ll all be different in their own way. But I like the idea of changing things — sometimes simple things, sometimes significant aspects of the world, because that’s what movies can do. They can do that really well, and they don’t have to operate or exist in the world that we know. And nor should they, a lot of the time. (http://filmmakermagazine.com/)
13. Kicking things off, the site inquires about the master plan concocted by Paul to try and rid Jay once and for all of the spectres that are following her. It's an elaborate scheme that involves bringing a bunch of electronics to a swimming pool, hoping to lure it into the water, and then electrocuting it. Does that sound dumb? Well, Mitchell agrees.
    Mitchell : It’s the stupidest plan ever! It's a kid-movie plan, it’s something that Scooby-Doo and the gang might think of, and that was sort of the point. What would you do if you were confronted by a monster and found yourself trapped within a nightmare? Ultimately, you have to resort to some way of fighting it that’s accessible to you in the physical world, and that’s not really going to cut it. We kind of avoid any kind of traditional setup for that sequence, because in more traditional horror films, there might be a clue that would lead them to figure out a way to destroy this monster. I intentionally avoided placing those. Instead, they do their best to accomplish something, and we witness its failure. It’s probably a very non-conventional way of approaching the third-act confrontation, but we thought it was a fun way to deal with it. (http://blogs.indiewire.com/ April 2, 2015)
14. Question: I read that you got this idea from a dream you had as a kid. Can you tell me about going from that to turning it into a STD?
    DAVID ROBERT MITCHELL: Yeah, well that came later. I had the nightmare when I was like nine or ten or something, I always remembered pieces of that nightmare, the feeling from it. I’ve always wanted to make a horror film and so I always kept thinking about that nightmare. So, over the years, I’d just kind of add things to it. In the nightmare it’s about being followed by something that looked like different people, all the things that are in the film, it was very slow, it’s not that hard to get away from it if you’re paying attention, but it’s the fact that it’s always coming for you. I just tried to kind of build on that feeling of dread and then at some point I started thinking, ‘Oh, it’d be fun if it’s something that can move between different people,’ almost like a game of tag to some degree. And then it sort of became clear to me like, ‘Oh, it should be through sex because it would sort of connect the characters physically and emotionally.’ It just felt like the right thing. But that happened over a lot of years just sort of in the back of my brain. (http://collider.com/david-robert-mitchell-it-follows-interview/)
15. Sarah Meikle: There's an obvious lack of parental input throughout the story. Why?DAVID ROBERT MITCHELL: I did that for several reasons. I did a similar thing for my first film but for a different reason; in American Sleepover, the characters are a little bit younger and it was about separating them from the adult world so that the world they would inhabit was almost magical in some way. In this film, I separated them because they are a bit older but it's about isolating them. It's not so much about putting them into this beautiful magical world, it's more of a lonelier, more frightening place.  Again, it's also doing a similar thing with production designs. There's something not quite right about it. Something that feels a little off. You're tripping into this sort of dream-like nightmare quality. And also it's fun to do what the Peanuts cartoons did in some way, like Charlie Brown. You never hear the adults - they're like 'Wa, wa, wa". (The Dark side, #166,  p42)

The Ant Man movie

a) I managed to see the new Antman movie. Probably the most exciting thing during the film was the moment when a false fire alarm erupted in the actual building forcing the audience out until five minutes later it was declared to be a false alarm and then everyone went back to watch the film but they forgot to rewind it, the film had been going still in the machine although not on the screen and they continued playing onwards much to everyone's annoyance until five minutes later people went to complain and they rewound it to about where it was ten minutes before the fire alarm went off.

b) Another trip into the plastic universe of Marvel with all its CGI splendour, they just had to make reference to the Marvel Avengers movie, and involve a character from the Captain America movie. they couldn't keep it as its own thing for one movie. The hero and the villains outfits seem were fine for the movie. There were moments of humour that almost seemed surrealistic with the manifestation of various forms and objects that had been enlarged a size from miniature state.

c) However it appeared that there was a lot of humour in the Mexican person's street slang that a lot of people in the audience were laughing at all the way through although it I really didn't understand and also doubts that anyone else I know locally would have a clue about either. Otherwise it was a very entertaining movie. The actor Corey Stoll who appears in the movie looked noticeably as if he were transforming into a young Telly Savalas, but couldn't quite get the shape of the ears.

d) Well, I admit that found myself amused by the toys trains being chucked around as seen in the trailer clip, and the tank keyring suddenly being revealed as a means of escape . Well as far as I was concerned it's another movie that will melt away from memory in five days time and probably will become fused with old memories from Michael Bentine's Potty Time. I suppose the concept of someone or thing shrinking was just another farfetched thing not to think about for more than five seconds along with the ants and all the problems associated with that, and the other thing I couldn't tolerate was secret door revealing another costume tucked away somewhere. I recall the character from some Marvel Avengers cartoons and it didn't interest me much but the film version interested me a little bit more. Perhaps I need to see The Incredible Shrinking Man again or Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. It was odd to see Michael Douglas de-aged because it looked more as if he had a surgical facelift more than a return to the way he looked decades earlier.

e) Another movie for Wmm to allow to melt away from the brain and possibly never have to watch again in his whole life and not expect anyone else to bother to watch along with many of these other Marvel Superhero movies. 

f) Yes, probably four out of ten 

Ingmar Bergman's Dreams

leading from

Dreams That Become Films

a) Dreams influencing his films
When talking about his movie The Hour of The Wolf, Ingmar joked that he believed in demons, but it was not as much a joke as that for him because when he from when he was a child and going into his forties had been haunted by extremely terrible dreams from is childhood to his forties that made him think about demons enough to joke that he believed in them, he was haunted by terrible dreams, sometimes simply daydreams.  Perhaps the episode with the child, the filming and the drowning in that film had been based on a dream. Perhaps there were many instances where dreams had served him crumbs of ideas which he hasn't talked about.

Somethings things happened to him in very strange, mysterious and dangerous way, and he was very scared, and sometimes his dreams were so real that when he tried to remember something, he didn't know whether it happened in reality or if he had dreamt it, but as he went into his fifties , all this went into the past.

However, he had transferred dreams exactly as he had dreamt them to film twice. One was in the film Wild Strawberries with the coffin scene. He did it without any translation, he just put it in as it was. The other film was The Naked Night, the first sequence with the clown and his wife. Sometimes while he was dreaming, he would think: 'I'll remember this, I'll make a film of it' and to him it was a sort of occupational disease.

Hour of the Wolf (1968)

b) Leaving dreams behind
He has grown up, he was working a lot, and was the director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre from 1963 for three years, starting 8am working until 11pm and off he went home and to sleep, and so there was no place left for demons and dreams. Then he went to his island where he lived for four years, and there reality was such that there was no place for his demons and bad dreams, and instead he would have ridiculous comical ones that cause him to laugh, and these dreams were not ones that he could be bothered to make into films, it didn't interest him by then and his reality became much more concerned with the people around him. He felt that if you have difficulty with your relationships with other people and reality around you, then it was a place for demons, but if you are in contact with yourself and other people and reality, there was no room for dreams.

He found out that somebody studying sleep discovered that if they prevent a person from dreaming, that person would go completely crazy, and it would be completely the same with him. If he could not create his dreams, that is, his films, it would make him crazy. Dreams seemed to be a sort of creative process.

Cries and Whispers (1972)

c) Cries and Whispers
When he came to make Cries And Whispers released in 1972, one morning before he woke up, he had a very strange picture in his mind. There was a red room with three women in old fashioned white robes. The sun or the light was very warm, but the strange thing that came from this vision or picture or dream, came a strange magic and a sort of sorrow and melancholy. He forgot about this vision  and left it for several days, and two or three weeks later, it suddenly was there again, this strange picture or vision of a half-dream red room with the three old fashioned dressed women and a very strange light. What was strange about the light was that it didn't come from the windows. The vision came to him two, three or four times and from that he knew that it would be a new film.

He didn't know anything about those women. Somehow they seemed related to one another but he didn't know anything about their relationships, and then he started to think about them. He asked himself about what they might say to each other in this strange, early magic morning light and why there was this atmosphere of melancholy? Then with his fantasies he started to play with those three women and this was the most wonderful time when working with a picture. It was a secret lustful time and he felt as if he were involved in some sort of grace. Then he went onto the writing everything out in his books, all that the visions told him

Wild Stawberries (1957)

d) The script writing process
When Ingmar would start writing the final script, he would write endless books of notations, what the visions would tell him, and very personal dialogues, discussions, and personal expressions, and situations, memories, things that have nothing directly to do with the picture or with anybody but himself or even what the . It was a very boring process which he hated and afterwards he would throw everything away. But he would boil everything in those books down into the final script and put all those things together as if in a dream, so nothing could be recognised. It would always be thousands of details, and these combinations were emotionally stimulating to his creative mind. From these combinations he would build a selective reality, a mirrored reality. Suddenly it became a newer reality. 

Writing the actual script was the boring part because he was dealing with a reality where the playing of games that he felt would be like moments of a masterpiece of all times was over. It required patience. Still, as with Cries and Whispers, it was still very lustful and he would still work through it with curiosity.

The Naked Night

e) Dreaming being like film making
He found himself to be as a person and a director, extremely curious about human beings and himself. He had to be curious about what was going on with the three women in Cries and Whispers, and the experience was completely irrational, like a dream. However it was something experienced while being fully awake, and he would consider the way his films were made to be of the same material that dreams are made of. All his films to him were to him as dreams and came from the same factory that made dreams. Writing and film making and the creation of pictures were extremely close to dreams and cinematography when it is as its best was very very close to dreaming.The way that it came to him was as if they were dreams in his mind before he wrote and they were made from the same materials, from everything that he ever saw, heard or felt. He used reality in the same way that dreams did. His own dreams seemed very realistic and so did his films, and he found a certain security in that reality, but then something would happen that disturbed him to make him feel insecure.

f) Reality confusion as a child
When he was a child,  he was happy because he lived in his dreams. He was alone and would build puppet theatres and puppets. He would mix up what happened, what was reality and what had been in his dreams, and this would get him into trouble with his mother and father. He seen became a great liar to escape the punishments since caning was the core upbringing in his childhood and he found it horrific.

Source Quotes

1. Ingmar Bergman: No other art-medium—neither painting nor poetry—can communicate the specific quality of the dream as well as the film can. When the lights go down in the cinema and this white shining point opens up for us, our gaze stops flitting hither and thither, settles and becomes quite steady. We just sit there, letting the images flow out over us. Our will ceases to function. We lose our ability to sort things out and fix them in their proper places. We're drawn into a course of events—we're participants in a dream. And manufacturing dreams, that's a juicy business. (Bergman on Bergman (1968))
2. Ingmar Bergman: Sometimes while I'm dreaming I think: 'I'll remember this, I'll make a film of it'—it's a sort of occupational disease. (Bergman on Bergman (1968))
3. John Simon: In an interview, discussing Hour of the Wolf, you said that you believe in demons; but how can you not believe in God, yet believe in demons? Aren't the two things connected? Can one have the one without the other?
   Ingmar Bergman:: Well, if I say I believe in demons, of course, it is just a little joke. You sore of want to name things
   John Simon: Things that bother you
   Ingmar Bergman: Yes, of course. Yes it's not exactly a joke, because when I was younger, not very much young, say, five, six, ten years ago, and back into my childhood, I was haunted by extremely terrible dreams... sometimes daydreams; sometimes things happened to me in a very, very strange, mysterious, and dangerous way, and I was very scared, and sometimes my dreams were so real that when I tried to remember something, I didn't know exactly if it happened in reality or if I had dreamed it. It was very painful; but now it has disappeared - all of those things
   
   John Simon: Why do you think it went away?
   Ingmar Bergman: I grew up. I worked a lot; I was the director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre for three years. I started in the morning at eight o'clock and was there until eleven at night; then I went home and slept. I was at it ten months a year and there was no place left for demons and dreams. The I went to my island; I have lived there for four years. On the island reality is so real, it's no place for demons or bad dreams. Instead of bad dreams, I now have ridiculous ones, comical dreams - I often  laugh
   
   John Simon: Can you use those dreams in your work?
   Ingmar Bergman: Perhaps, I don't know. It doesn't interest me any more. To me reality is very real now, and other human beings
   John Simon: More important than dreams?
   Ingmar Bergman:Yes, exactly, and if you have difficulty with your relationships with other people and reality around you, it is a place for demons, but if you are in contact with yourself and other people and reality, there's no room for dreams. (Ingmar Bergman: Interviews, p84-85)
4. John Simon: For example, in Hour of the Wolf, the episode with the child, the filming and the drowning. What is the relationship of the hero to that boy, is that his son?
   Ingmar Bergman: No, I don't know exactly. I think it was based on a dream I had. (Ingmar Bergman: Interviews, ("Conversation With Bergman", 1971,) p86)
5. Ingmar Bergman: Before I start writing the final script, I write and write and write books and books of notations. They are very personal; dialogues and discussions and personal expressions and situations, memories, things that have nothing directly to do with the picture or with anybody but myself. It is very boring, I hate it. And afterwards I throw everything away.
   
   But I boil all that down into the final script. I put all those things together as in a dream - so you don't recognise anything. It's always thousands of details, and these combinations are emotionally stimulating to my creative mind. From these combinations I build a selective reality, a mirrored reality. Suddenly it's a newer reality. (Ingmar Bergman: Interviews,  ("Conversation With Bergman", 1971,), p86 )
6. Ingmar Bergman: You know, somebody studying sleep discovered that if they prevent you from dreaming, you go crazy. It is completely the same with me. If I could not create my dreams, - my films - that would make me crazy.
   
   Dreams are a sort of creative process, don't you think? My films come from the same factory. They are like dreams in my mind before I write, and they are made from the same materials, from everything I have ever see or heard or felt. I use reality the same way dreams do. (Ingmar Bergman: Interviews, p106)
7. Ingmar Bergman: Dreams seem very realistic - and so do my films - and there is a certain security in that reality. And then something happens that disturbs you that makes you insecure.
   All my films are dreams. When I was very little I was happen because I lived in dreams. I was alone and I built puppet theatres and puppets. Sometimes I used to mix up what had happen - what was reality and what had been my dreams. - and that would give me trouble with my mother and father. After I saw my first motion picture - it was Black Beauty - was so excited I was in bed three days with a fever. (Ingmar Bergman: Interviews, p107)
8. Question: In your films you often fuse reality and dreams. Do you feel that reality and dreams are of equal importance
   Bergman: yes, To me real cinematography is very, very close to the dreaming, as cinematography is when it is at its best. . Think only of the time gap: You can make things as long as you want, exactly as in a dream. You can make things as short as you want exactly as in a dream. As a director, a creator of the picture, you are like a dreamer. (Ingmar Bergman: Interviews, p129)
9. Question: Have you transferred dreams to film exactly as you dreamed them
   
   Bergman: Yes I have done it twice. I have written down a dream and filmed it just as I had dreamt it. One is in Wild Strawberries with the coffin. Without any translation, it's just put in as it was. The other picture is The Naked Night - the first sequence with the clown and his wife. Writing and filmmaking and the creation of pictures are so extremely close to our dreams
10. Right now Bergman knows that the area he covers is not that of the social or the realistically psychological. His work follows, he says, " the natural structure of dreams." This is the type of film he wants to make right now films that are dreams. And since so many have told him that he is pretentious, he plans to do the hardest thing there is: make art of the intentionally pretentious (Ingmar Bergman: Interviews, p9)
11.  Student: Can you tell us something about how you come to a film, how it first begins to grow for you?
    
    Bergman: When I made Cries and Whispers, I saw one morning before I waked up - a very strange picture in my mind.  There was a red room with three women in white robes, old fashioned. The sun - the light - was very warm, but the strange thing was that from this vision or picture or dream - I don't know exactly how to express it - came a strange magic and a sort of sorrow and melancholy; I forgot this vision and went away from it for several days. Two or three weeks later, it suddenly was there again, this very strange picture or vision of half-dream red room, the three old-fashioned dressed women and a very strange light. The light was strange because it didn't come from the windows. Later it came to me two or three or four times and at that moment I knew this would be a new picture. I didn't know anything about those women. In a way they were related to each other, I knew that, but I didn't know anything about their relationships. But then, I started to think about them. What do they say to each other in this very strange, early magic morning light, and why this atmosphere of melancholy? And then slowly, I started to play with those three women, to play with them in my fantasy, and that is the most wonderful time when you are working with a picture. It's a very secret, a very lustful time, and you feel involved in some sort of grace.
    
    Forgive me, talking about those romantic scenes as "grace" and "magic" and so on, but I can't tell it another way. It was just that way.
    
    And then I started. I always have a small book. I have books in which I write and write and write - two books, three books, four books - about what this imagination or this vision tells me, and it will be more and more. Then, one day, I have to sit down and to start the first writing of the first screenplay. And that is very boring because the time of playing games - when you feel this will be the masterpiece of all times, this will be the most wonderful scene ever made - is over. You have to sit and have patience and suddenly to understand that this will not be the masterpiece of all times. But it's still, in a way lustful and you are still very curious.
    
    I. as a director and as a human being, am extremely curious, curious about human beings, curious about myself.  And also, of course curious about what is going on with those three women. So, that is the start. And it's irrational, completely irrational. It's like a dream, I can't say this was a dream, because I know I was absolutely awake. But it is made, I think, of the same material as dreams are made of. (Talking With Ingmar Bergman)
12. Woody Allen, who described Bergman as "a magical filmmaker", said that Bergman would sometimes ring him from his "oddball little island" and confide about his "irrational dreams".  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/8956597/Ingmar-Bergman-told-off-housekeeper-for-buying-boring-cheese.html)
13. Ingmar Bergman offered an insight into his life and working methods in a rare interview with Reuters earlier this week. The venerated film-maker discussed the demons which drive his films and recounted a recent dream about a "large, shimmering green bird" that spoke to him in a field. "I am normally afraid of birds and have never dreamt of any bird in my life," he said. The 85-year-old director implied that the dream was a message from his late wife, Ingrid. (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/dec/12/news.xanbrooks)
14. Bergman also discussed his early influences and the strict upbringing which he says led him to escape into a fantasy world. "Hence my difficulty in separating the dream world from the real one. I became a great liar to escape the punishments. Caning was at the core of upbringing 70 years ago, but it was still horrific."  (http://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/dec/12/news.xanbrooks)
15. Bergman: The demons are innumerable, appear at the most inconvenient times and create panic and terror. But I have learnt that if I can master the negative forces and harness them to my chariot, then they can work to my advantage. (http://uk.reuters.com/article/2007/07/30/uk-sweden-bergman-idUKSAT00437220070730)