“Gridlock’d” (1997) is a film most people remember for featuring one of Tupac Shakur’s last starring roles (he was murdered in a shooting just two months after its completion). While Tupac’s performance as Spoon, a level-headed but drug-addicted jazz musician, is impressive and possibly his best, often overlooked are contributions of co-star Tim Roth and actor/writer/first-time director Vondie Curtis Hall. Roth stars as Stretch, Spoon’s impulsive and slightly deranged partner in addiction and music. Both Shakur and Roth inhabit their roles with a sense of authenticity, humanity, and charisma, giving their potentially pathetic characters believable chemistry and a likeable comic edge. The film kicks off when the third member of their jazz combo, Cookie, played by Thandie Newton, has an overdose, compelling the others to go on a quixotic quest seeking treatment for their addiction. Unfortunately for our protagonists the Detroit healthcare system is a bureaucratic maze seemingly designed to thwart their efforts. Odds of their success are decreased further when they’re targeted by cops and gangsters.
Detroit-born Vondie Curtis Hall does an excellent job balancing the script’s gritty realism and dark outlook with comedy and wit. Visually, the film is stylish without looking too glamorous or grim, and he keeps moments of humor and suspense well-paced. Hall is also suitably menacing as gangster D-Reper. Director John Sayles, who previously worked with Hall on the film “Passion Fish”, makes a cameo appearance as one of the cops. Hall hasn’t yet made another film on par with the quality of Gridlock’d, but he continues to do much acting and directing work for television.
As strong as Hall’s directorial debut is, it wouldn’t be as emotionally involving and memorable were it not for Tupac Shakur’s presence. Like his character in Gridlock’d, Tupac was at the time seeking a new beginning; a new creative direction. The fact that his life was tragically cut short can’t help but add a sense of poignancy and dramatic weight to his role and the entire film.
Many of us may have read the Richard Adams book “Watership Down” or have seen the film adaptation, but less known is the film version of his even darker follow-up, “The Plague Dogs” (1982). Like a Disney film, it features anthropomorphized animals and lessons about friendship and courage, but less like Disney, it also has lessons about scientific cruelty, mass media hype, mental illness and mortality. Never in a Disney film would the protagonists be hunted by humans after narrowly escaping vivisection and possibly being exposed to bubonic plague, as happens to Rowf and Snitter, the main characters of The Plague Dogs. It’s an undeniably harrowing and sad story, but it’s also emotionally engaging, intelligent, unsentimental, and an underrated animated masterpiece.
Though The Plague Dogs may be suitable for some kids, it’s also for all film lovers because the artwork is beautiful and the voice acting is subtle yet emotive (especially the voice of John Hurt, who played Winston Smith two years later in a film version of “1984”). It even features a great theme song by Alan Price, former keyboardist for The Animals and best known by cult movie fans as the lead singer of the band featured in Lindsay Anderson’s “O Lucky Man”. Most importantly, The Plague Dog’s message of empathy and arguments for ethical considerations in science are as timely as ever.
If you’re interested in learning more about The Plague Dogs, I recommend this detailed review by the Film Walrus (though it’d be best to read only after watching the film as it reveals spoilers): http://www.filmwalrus.com/2008/08/review-of-plague-dogs.html
In honor of Guy Fawkes Day I’d like to bring attention to a few intriguing statements from Alan Moore (writer of the graphic novel V for Vendetta) on the connections between his fictions and reality from an interview he did shortly after the start of the Occupy Movement.
I suppose I’ve gotten used to the fact that some of my fictions percolate out into the material world.
…I suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: wouldn’t it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world… It’s peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction.
…And when you’ve got a sea of V masks, I suppose it makes the protesters appear to be almost a single organism – this “99%” we hear so much about. That in itself is formidable. I can see why the protesters have taken to it. It turns protests into performances.
The mask is very operatic; it creates a sense of romance and drama. I mean, protesting, protest marches, they can be very demanding, very grueling. They can be quite dismal. They’re things that have to be done, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re tremendously enjoyable – whereas actually, they should be.
I think it’s appropriate that this generation of protesters have made their rebellion into something the public at large can engage with more readily than with half-hearted chants, with that traditional, downtrodden sort of British protest. These people look like they’re having a good time. And that sends out a tremendous message.
The reason V’s fictional crusade against the state is ultimately successful is that the state, in V for Vendetta, relies upon a centralised computer network which he has been able to hack. Not an obvious idea in 1981, but it struck me as the sort of thing that might be down the line. This was just something I made up because I thought it would make an interesting adventure story. Thirty years go by and you find yourself living it.
I have no particular connection or claim to what [the protesters] are doing, nor am I suggesting that these people are fans of mine, or of V for Vendetta…So there’s always… Now I didn’t feel responsible, but…at the moment, the demonstrators seem to me to be making clearly moral moves, protesting against the ridiculous state that our banks and corporations and political leaders have brought us to.
…It would probably be better if the authorities accepted this is a new situation, that this is history happening. History is a thing that happens in waves. Generally it is best to go with these waves, not try to make them turn back – the Canute option. I’m hoping that the world’s leaders will realise this.
…Vox populi, Voice of the people. And I think that if the mask stands for anything, in the current context, that is what it stands for. This is the people. That mysterious entity that is evoked so often – this is the people.
Last July Moore was interviewed by Salon.com to talk about his new Kickstarter project, Jimmy’s End, but he also shared the following relevant observations about emerging NSA revelations, the surveillance state and technology:
There seems to be something going on, even from the briefest appraisal of the news, with the amount of events transpiring. This is such a connected world, it’s useless to isolate any part of it as a discrete phenomenon. You can’t really talk about the problems in Syria, because its problems are global. The waves of discontent and outrage — whether in the Arab countries, or in Brazil, or in America and Europe over the degrees to which its citizens are being monitored — are not separate phenomena. They are phenomena of an emergent world, and the existence of the Internet is one of its major drivers. We have got no idea how it’s going to turn out, because the nature of our society is such that if anything can be invented, then we will invent it. Sooner or later, if it is possible.
So the Internet is changing everything, but I wouldn’t yet want to say for good or ill. I suspect, as ever, that it will be an admixture of both. But we are all along for the ride, even those people like me who do not have Internet connections, mobile phones or even functioning televisions. I’m slowly disconnecting myself. Basically, it’s a feeling that if we are going to subject our entire culture to what is an unpredictable experiment, then I’d like to try to remain outside the petri dish. [Laughs] It’s only sensible to have somebody as a control.
To me, one of the biggest surprises of these recent surveillance revelations is how surprised people are. The level of surveillance we’ve had over here for the past 20 years now is ridiculous — and useless, I would add. Eerily enough, the security cameras on every street corner of Britain was instigated by the incoming Blair government in 1997, which was when I decided, back in 1982 or so, to set the first episode of “V for Vendetta,” which had cameras on every street corner. So yeah, we’ve had those for awhile; they’ve proliferated and multiplied for decades. More recently, there have been troops of police who have said that all these things are useful for is alienating the public. [Laughs] They are not actually useful in the prevention of crimes, or even actually apprehending their suspects.
Here’s the thing: If you’re monitoring every single thing that goes on in a given culture, if you have all the information that is there to be had, then that is the equivalent of having none of it. [Laughs] How are you going to process that amount of information? That’s when you get all these wonderful emerging paradoxes. Recently over here, there was a case where it was suspected that the people who monitor security screens were taking unnecessary toilet breaks and gossiping when they should be watching us. So it was decided that the only sensible thing to do was to put a security camera in the monitor room. [Laughs] This is answering the question that Juvenal asked so succinctly all those years ago: Who watches the watchmen? The answer is more watchmen! And yet more watchmen watch them, and of course it will eventually occur to them to ask: Can those people who are watching the people doing the watching really be trusted? Much better if they were under surveillance.
That’s the level of absurdity these Orwellian solutions bring to our increasingly complex world. George Orwell’s vision was 1947. Yes, the world was more complex than it had been, but nowhere near as complex as it was going to get. We currently have in Northampton — and I think we might be the first to have it — security cameras in some places that actually talk to you. “Pick that cigarette end up! Yes, you!” [Laughs] Which is so much like Patrick McGoohan’s vision for the Village in “The Prisoner,” all those years ago.
…Technology is always a two-edged sword. It will bring in many benefits, but also many disasters. Because of the complexity of our situation, we cannot predict what things will be until they happen. It’s just part of our responsibility as people in the modern world to do our very, very best to deal with them, and think them through, as they occur. While I’m remote from most technology to the point that I’m kind of Amish, I have played a couple of computer games — until I realized I was being bloodied with adrenalin over something that wasn’t real. At the end of a couple of hours of very addictive play, I may have procured the necessary amount of mushrooms to save a princess, but I also wasted hours of my life that I’ll never be able to get back. This is the reason I am not on the Internet. I am aware of its power as a distraction, and I don’t have the time for that.
Despite the constant clamor for attention from the modern world, I do believe we need to procure a psychological space for ourselves. I apparently know some people who try to achieve this by logging off, or going without their Twitter or Facebook for a limited period. Which I suppose is encouraging, although it doesn’t seem that remarkable from my perspective. I think that people need to establish their own psychological territory in face of the encroaching world.
Despite the fact that Moore said he disowned all Hollywood adaptations of his works, in my opinion the quality of his writing can transcend limitations inherent in such attempts, retaining power and resonance even in “watered down” form. Though I was disappointed by the film version of V for Vendetta overall, many who would not have otherwise been exposed to Moore’s work were able to absorb important aspects of his message through it and viral clips such as this:
Director Tsui Hark is truly a visionary pioneer of Hong Kong cinema. He was one of the first in the Hong Kong film industry to use Hollywood-style special effects in “Zu Warriors From the Magic Mountain” (1983) and pushed the envelope again with extensive CGI effects for the sequel “The Legend of Zu” (2001). He helped launch Jet Li’s career with his “Once Upon a Time in China” trilogy and was the producer of one of director John Woo’s earliest blockbusters “A Better Tomorrow” (1986). However, for most of the 90s Tsui Hark’s career was in a slump because of a series of failed attempts to break into the U.S. market and an economic downturn of the Hong Kong film industry. One of the films Hark released during this period was “The Blade” (1995). Though it bombed at the box-office, it’s now widely recognized as one of his greatest achievements (so far).
Like many idiosyncratic cult films, The Blade wasn’t palatable to general audiences and was dismissed as a failure upon release. Such films are usually ahead of their time, needing more time to be discovered by fans or for cultural sensibilities to change. The Blade’s unremittingly grim setting and pessimistic tone may have frightened off film-goers who in the mid 90s were drawn more towards lighthearted fare but it’s a quality that makes it stand out today and gives it an oddly contemporary feel. Feudal China has never seemed so brutal and forbidding (yet exotic and multicultural). It’s a fully realized world full of tribalism, hedonism, feral creatures, small pockets of civilization, crude weapons and an unforgiving social and natural environment, not unlike the post-apocalyptic scenario of The Road Warrior.
Other characteristics that contribute to The Blade’s cult status are its archetypal characters, highly stylized art direction, impressionistic photography reminiscent of Wong Kar Wai films, and unforgettable scenes (including one of cinema’s most frenzied and viscerally powerful showdowns). Though its storyline is pretty standard for a wuxia martial arts film, its subtext contains an abundance of philosophical questions about the nature of morality, violence, religion, sex, commerce, disability, pedagogy and memory among other things. The Blade has never had an official DVD release in the U.S. but fortunately this subtitled version was uploaded to YouTube last year:
Though I don’t regularly feature podcasts delving into horror/sci-fi aspects of pop culture or the world of metaphysics and the paranormal, today seems an appropriate time to share a few in observance of Halloween, All Hallow’s Eve, Samhain, Day of the Dead, etc.
10/30 Tim Binnall and David Acord commemorate the 75th anniversary of Orson Welles’ infamous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast with an analysis of the program, how it came to be, its importance in the context of emerging technology and the field of media literacy, and how it’s connected to conspiracy and UFOlogy: Show link: http://www.binnallofamerica.com/boaa103013.html
Judging from the last few minutes of this trailer for his film “F For Fake”, Welles himself was involved in perpetuating the mystery and speculation surrounding his War of the Worlds broadcast:
10/30 The always educational “Stuff They Don’t Want You to Know” video podcast covers the origins of Halloween traditions:
There was once a time when seeking out cult movies was a challenge, involving a combination of dedicated effort and luck to hear about them and to actually be able to see them. Even learning what exactly is a cult film was not so common. Today, with internet communities that thrive on niche interests and novelty, most of us have an idea of what they are. For those who don’t there’s always wikipedia, but it used to be knowledge gained mostly through word of mouth or books discovered in stores or libraries like Midnight Movies by Stuart Samuels and Cult Movies by Danny Peary. To watch such films one had to be lucky enough to live near video stores or independent theaters managed by the right kinds of people (weirdos) or be able to visit such places on trips. Obscure or pirated videotapes could sometimes be ordered by mail through catalogs and magazines or found at comic conventions. Sometimes college campuses would also have small screenings organized by student film societies. Once in a blue moon, some of these films would even air on late night network or cable television.
To do my small part to carry on the cult movie tradition I will feature old and new examples of such films every Saturday that can be viewed in their entirety on YouTube. The first is “The Holy Mountain”, which is appropriate because the director, Alejandro Jodorowsky also created “El Topo”, one of the early acknowledged cult classics.
Melissa Melton of Truthstream Media recently posted a story about former wrestler and actor Roddy Piper going public about his Libertarian and pro-Second Amendment beliefs via twitter. Quoting from the tweets:
They can’t have my Guns! Nobody! If you try and take my Gun, I’d be all out of Bubble Gum!
[…]I need to clean something up! When I say you take my gun I’m all out of gum….I’M NOT TRYING TO BE FUNNY!! It’s a FREEDOM STATEMENT!
[…]They Live is a documentary!!
For those who haven’t seen the film They Live, this is the famous “bubblegum scene” Piper is referencing:
They Live is a cult classic sci-fi/action buddy film based on the short story Eight O’Clock in the Morning by Ray Faraday Nelson (who happened to be one of Philip K. Dick’s closest friends). Roddy Piper plays Nada, a drifter searching for work during a recession who accidentally stumbles across an alien plot to take over the world by programming the masses to obey and consume using subliminal messages. Widely considered one of director John Carpenter’s best and smartest films, it was also part of a late 80s sub-genre of films containing as a subtext sharp critiques of U.S. government policies and the Reagan administration in particular. Other films include Wes Craven’s “The People Under the Stairs”, Paul Verhoeven’s “Robocop” and Dan O’Bannon’s “Return of the Living Dead”.
Just this past May, John Carpenter did a Q&A for a 25th anniversary screening of They Live as part of The Hero Complex Film Festival in Los Angeles. He had this to say about the film:
By the end of the ’70s there was a backlash against everything in the ’60s, and that’s what the ’80s were, and Ronald Reagan became president, and Reagonomics came in,” Carpenter told the sold-out theater at the Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood. “So a lot of the ideals that I grew up with were under assault, and something called a yuppie came into existence, and they just wanted money. And so by the late ’80s, I’d had enough, and I decided I had to make a statement, as stupid and banal as it is, but I made one, and that’s ‘They Live.’ … I just love that it was giving the finger to Reagan when nobody else would.
Unfortunately, since the release of They Live, the state of the union has regressed to the point where the systemic criminality of the Reagan era seems mild and quaint in comparison. In certain ways, They Live does seem like a documentary because it contains images and ideas straight out of the headlines. Scenes of the protagonists’ tent city being bulldozed look exactly like the destruction of Occupy Movement encampments and forced closures of tent cities for the homeless across the country. Images of the aliens’ secret surveillance drones are prescient as well.
Melton’s Truthstream Media post also included this analysis of subliminal messages eerily reminiscent of They Live embedded in an old video clip used as nightly “sign-offs” for national television networks:
I found a VHS tape of an odd and prescient 1982 Sean Connery film called Wrong is Right at a yard sale shortly after 9/11 and was planning a review drawing parallels between it and different aspects of the war on terror. However, I just discovered E.R. Torres wrote a post similar to what I had in mind last year at his interesting Random Thoughts blog. excerpt:
So, one wonders, might there be another director out there who, upon looking at the events surrounding 9/11 and the second Iraqi war, might not also look at the myriad tragedies involved, from the thousands upon thousands dead, the loss of national treasure, the inept leadership, the media manipulation, and the very questionable motivations for engaging in the conflict in the first place…and decide that this too might be good material in the creation of a black comedy? Thing is, someone already did, and they did it a whopping 20 years before the events of 9/11 and the subsequent Iraqi War. I’m talking about 1982′s Wrong Is Right. As directed by Richard Brooks, the movie features Sean Connery in the role of Patrick Hale, an intrepid, world famous reporter who, in the process of criss-crossing the globe, comes to realize he’s landed himself smack dab in the middle of machinations involving the CIA, an Arabian leader whose land is filled with oil, a weapons dealer, a terrorist intent on getting his hands on two mysterious suitcases, and a U.S. presidential election. The various parties involved actively try to manipulate the story Hale perceives and tells, and ultimately what may appear “true” becomes a matter of convenience. To go into too much debate about the story’s plot would be a disservice. Having said that, this now 30 year old film is incredibly prescient. With some minor modifications, this could easily be a black comedy “take” on the buildup to the Iraqi War. The most eerie element of the whole thing is that the movie’s climax takes place on the roof of the World Trade Center.
After the Crash 