file under: only in october

Video: Inside the LEGO factory.

One of the benefits of having David move in is better access to his obsessive movie collection. One of the downsides of this is some of what’s in his obsessive movie collection. (Which he put on the shelf in alphabetical order.) (Before you think I am ragging too much, I would like to point out that I have enough of my own OCD that I had to rearrange his DVD collection because he put it on the bookshelf wrong. I don’t care if it’s alphabetical, though I’ll smirk a bit and wave my hands around and mock him as any good girl should, but, no matter what order, They Should Be Stacked, it saves space. Argh, bargle, why oh why do I even care? Etcetera. Yes, it’s silly, but you’re not the one living with me, so whatever. Keep reading.)

Anyway. To begin our dirty exploration into his amazing collection of occasionally questionable cinema, we sat down last night and watched Neil Marshall’s Werewolf movie, Dog Soldiers with Remi, Karen’s very nice secondary, who’s been staying with us the last little while, and let me tell you now, it was Not Good. Initial Sex Scene Where Everyone Is Eaten! Gratuitous Dog Killing To Prove Bad-Assery! (Equilibrium, anyone?) Completely Obvious Betrayals Hinged Upon Even More Obvious Plot Twists!

It was, however, completely and utterly everything you might want out of a Werewolves VS. Soldier-boys movie. Neil Marshall brings a fan-boy’s love of the genre in a similar, though not quite as amazing, way his Doomsday did for Mad Max.* (I’m still not going to watch Descent anytime soon, though). The monsters were not CG, the improbable foreshadowing remained improbable, (there was no explanatory SCIENCE!!), everyone bonds through bantering which Does Not Suck, and there was satisfactory slavering, a fun death by tree-branch, lots of splattering blood, and an incredible moment of Cow From Above. There were moments where it dragged, mostly near the end where they ran out of people to slaughter, (but remember it’s spelled with laughter), and the remaining characters had to get all sensitive yet manly, but even so, it seemed pretty perfect for Hallowe’en. A solid four cheesy pumpkins out of five.

*if you haven’t seen Doomsday, you sincerely need to get right on that.

artpost: people I will always appreciate

via karen meisner of strange horizons:

Tilda Swinton, from her second State of Cinema address, San Francisco, 2006:

Can I be alone in my longing for inarticulacy – for a cinema that refuses to join all the dots? For an a-rhythm in gesture, for a dissonance in shape? For the context of a cinematic frame, a frame that – in the end – only cinema can provide. For the full view, the long shot, the space between… the gaps… the pause… the lull… the grace of living…

The figurative cinema’s awkward and rather unsavoury relationship with its fruity old aunt, the theatre, to her vanities, her nous, her beautifully constructed and perennially eloquent speechifying, her cast iron – corset-like – structures, her melo-dramatic texture and her histrionic rhythms. How tiresome it is, it always has been. How studied. The idea of absolute articulacy, perfect timing, a vapid elegance of gesture, an unblinking, unthinking face. What a blessed waste of a good clear screen, a dark room and the possibility of an unwatched profile, a tree, a hill, a donkey…

How I long for documentary, in resistance – for unpowdered faces and unmeasured tread – for the emotionally undemonstrative family scene – for a struggle for unreachable words, for the open or even unhappy ending? The occasionally dropped shoe off the heel, the jiggle to readjust; the occasionally cracked egg; the mess of milk spilt. The concept of a loss for words. For a State of Cinema – as the state of grace that it affords us – in which nothing much happens but all things are possible, even inarticulacy, even failure, even mess…


tilda swinton painted by (her partner) john byrne