"Death by drill"-- Youtube uploader NateGoldman needs to be put on some kind of watch list...

If you can watch this:

...without feeling sick to your stomach, then there is something wrong with you. The cutting of the hair. The sadism. The humiliation. The production values. The cuts and edits that demonstrate the time it took to put this video together.

Even on a non-sentient piece of circuitry as this, such acts are highly disturbing.

I fear NateGoldman may well be the next Picton or Cleroux. He would probably like that comparison. I should stop, lest he come to my house, shave my head, drive nails through my feet and proceed to torture and burn me.

Anyways, I am so perturbed so as to forego my usual kisses and hug sign off.

Watch your backs,

d-bag.

Melancholia review...

Melancholia is, I suppose, in some very tacit way, a horror movie. As was Lars von Trier’s previous outing, Antrichrist.

As is evident from my previous review on the Skin I Live In, I am not one to struggle against falling into a directorial cult of personality. Evidently, von Trier has such reverent devotees to establish such a thing. 

Arguably though, von Trier’s cult is composed of people who wish to crush their testicles and/or cut off their clitorises. 

And thus, I feel rather reticent to fully immerse myself into such a group of people, valuing my own testicles as I do.

It’s not a spoiler if it refers to a different movie than is being discussed. You should have done your homework. Didn’t you know that, Sidney? 

Anyways, Melancholia is quite well shot. It is opulent, beautiful and visually quite poetic. I would like to lower myself and the film to cliches such as style over substance, but using such easy and maligned dismissals simply wouldn’t do the film justice. 

A lot of the dialogue is riveting, powerful. Spot on. 

But viewed in its entire context, the film is complacent. It is satisfied with what it is and it never tries to be anything more than that. Revealing perhaps is von Trier’s early description of the movie as a beautiful film about the end of the world. It is that and only that. 

It is more an exercise than a movie. von Trier expects a lot out of his audience. You get out of this film what you put in. von Trier wants to write the kinds of films you can dissect, write essays about. And he sure has one here. 

If that’s good or bad is up to you, my friends. 

Sure, there are lots of well played little details that may or not may elucidate something meaningful about the narrative and the story and all of those cinematic undertakings.

But such things could just as easily be dismissed as the self serving meanderings of a bloated diner at an all you can eat sushi place. Let me refine the metaphor: all you can eat sushi hits the tongue delectably at the beginning, but with each subsequent piece the flavours are less pleasurable, your gut gets a little more full. 

That is not to say that Melancholia is heavy handed or has an unpalatable ending, far from it. In fact, the last act is probably the only part in which any legitimate kind of tension is built. 

But by the end, the whole film seems somewhat absurd. Ultimately, its value hangs on that which the viewer goes into with. The concept is good, the execution is good enough and there you have it. Take what you will. 

Consume as many pieces as you want. At an unwieldily running length of over two hours, just be careful you don’t get charged for your leftovers. 

Anyhow, see this once. It’s pretty and well acted. And I would do Alexander Skarsgard and Kiefer Sutherland in any which way.

So, three out of five anemic, melancholic stuck thumbs out of five.

xoxo 

dbag

Raze trailer...

I'm not really sure what this movie is about, but this is definitely the most intense trailer I have seen in a while. I've also been in love with Zoe Bell ever since she was Lucy Lawless' stunt double on Xena. 

This trailer appears to be the only information about the film online at all, though I'm seeing it being described as a cross between Fight Club and Hostel.

Looks interesting!

xoxo

d-bag

The Skin I Live In...

Oh, Pedro. You trot the horror line in a lot of your films. But I guess The Skin I Live In is your most genre outing yet.

I usually do not write about a film with specific reference to it’s director. But you Pedro, or Almodóvar as you seem to like to be called, are an exception. 

The Skin I Live In is not a prima facie horror movie. Apologies, law school terms are creeping into my vocabulary. That is to say at first sight, or first viewing, the film does not exactly adhere to any particular genre standard.

But that is not to say it is not jarring and deeply unsettling. Or horrifying. Because it is, Pedro. You have created something of an anomaly; a film that makes the viewer think they aren’t watching a horror movie, when really they are.

And I applaud you for that. 

There are certain motifs and concepts that seem to interest you, and these pervade your latest outing. Suffice it to say I cannot at all comment on them here without giving away many integral, unsettling parts of your film.

You animate your tale with riveting, lively dialogue. Your words ring true and poetic in my ears, even through the language filter of your mother tongue to mine. 

You illicit such visceral performances out your actors so as to draw me in and make me feel for them.

And you just film things so well. 

I fear horror enthusiasts will be divided on this one. There are certain subtleties in your work that will inarguably evade some viewers. I would wager though that these are the people who would be dissuaded by watching a foreign language film in the first place.  

But indeed, November seems to be a month appropriate for such cinematic outings. With your film and Lars Von Trier’s latest both premiering to the Canadian public.

That is not to equate you with Von Trier at all, good Pedro. All I mean is that this is not August, the cinematic dumping ground. This is November. The world around us is decaying, changing, getting ready for the bitterness of winter.

I doubt you know anything of this, Pedro. I do not think that you have experienced a Canadian, Ottawan winter, but for me your film is drenched in all of the feelings that strike me at this most doleful of times. 

I do fear that some viewers who adhere to critically oriented feminist or queer theory perspectives will take what you have done in way that I do not think you intended. 

And I would go so far as to say that any such reading of your film’s content is a rather closed minded, self serving and ultimately fruitless view of your work.

But then, as we all know, there are those who are never satisfied, who must criticize the expression of subject matter such as this in their own narrow and purposive way. 

You are an artist, Pedro. And your art is prefaced on the human condition, which is sometimes ugly and bleak and uncompromisingly disturbing. 

I would thus offer a very simple answer to those who would criticize your work here; artistic expression is valid and enriching so long as it brings forth its content in good faith. 

Any detractions from what you have done here are mired in the very closed mindedness such critics would purport themselves to struggle against. 


Though I would say that are triggers here which may affect certain people. But that in and of itself, I don't think, is enough of a basis for criticism. 

This is not a love letter, Pedro. Though it may seem as though it is. 

I would beg of you though, my friend Pedro, to please work with Gael Garcia Bernal again. And in doing so, to please direct him to take his clothes of. And to maybe say into the camera that he wants me. 

Please, keep this in mind as you go upon your journey. 

This is indeed one of those films that the less you say about it the better. So, I will not say anymore except that I applaud you. 

Five out five stuck, sewn together and transgenic thumbs. 


xoxo


D-bag