YouTube Finds: May 2014...

Every now and then I like to share a few videos that I've rather enjoyed in the previous several weeks, and being that blogging has been a bit light recently, here's some YouTube videos that tickled my fancy of late:

Celebrites Read Mean Tweets:


Does what is says on the tin.

David Lynch: Making "The Big Dream":


I love the man's work, and this is a pretty cool ten minute look at the creative process behind the scenes of Lynch's latest musical effort.

Click "READ MORE" below for other nifty vids...

Flavours of the Month: July 2013...

LOOKS:

The Returned - this 8-part French supernatural series (that's not about zombies, despite what numerous lazy news articles claim - hint: the clue's in the title "Les Revenants") has been a real joy to watch. Beautifully crafted in all regards, it's a mystery that keeps on giving - so many questions, and thankfully numerous answers. There's the big central mystery that will go unanswered until the very end - naturally - but there are innumerable medium-and-mini mysteries throughout, which are either answered, or brought further into focus by small pieces of new information in each episode. There's always a sense of forward momentum, so the mystery never becomes frustrating or stagnant. Bring on series 2!

Click "READ MORE" below for many more flavours of the month...

Flavours of the Month: April 2012...

LOOKS:

Titanic (ITV) - Julian Fellowe's four-part drama was never going to be able to match the spectacle and scale of James Cameron's 1997 monster hit, so instead this televised dramatisation focuses on particular characters from the various classes of passenger aboard the doomed ship. The results are alright, but not memorable - a far more interesting story to tell would have been everything following the sinking of the ship itself. Dramatising the survivors coming to terms with what happened, their losses, and the ensuing legal battles and public fallout - that would have made for far more interesting Titanic-related TV drama.

Beavis & Butt-head Do America - a blast of nostalgia was the order of the day as it swung by on Sky Movies this month. I was flung right back to my teenage years in an instant.

Drive Angry (Blu-Ray)

Bridesmaids (Blu-Ray)

The Guard (Blu-Ray)

Craig Fergusson - as is so often the way when you're surfing around YouTube, you'll come across a clip of interest (e.g. Nerdist man Chris Hardwick appearing on the Craig Fergusson show in America) and you'll then watch a shed load more clips related to it. So I've ended up watching a ton of The Late Late Show With Craig Fergusson clips on YouTube as a result.

All Star Celebrity Bowling - as featured on the new-look Nerdist Channel on YouTube.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo 2011 (Blu-Ray) - another tip-top, extras-heavy presentation for another spiffing David Fincher flick. On second viewing there is indeed not enough pairing of Mikael and Lisbeth on-screen (even though their stories are both strong separately) - they don't meet until minute 76 (of 158 minutes), and from then on it's not like they're inseparable either ... but then again to me it's a nice companion piece to the original Swedish film. Each do things their counterpart doesn't, and vice versa.

Continue reading below for what's been this month's soundtrack, and a lengthy look at some ways in which I'd like to see a possible L.A. Noire 2 go.

Feature - "Re-Entering the Nightmare: Eraserhead 12 Years On"

David Lynch’s 1977 debut – Eraserhead – was my first introduction to the man’s uniquely idiosyncratic work. In the summer of 1999 I was fifteen years old and I was on holiday in Scotland with my family. During those couple of weeks we visited Edinburgh, and being a film-mad teen I was eager to scour the shelves of HMV and Virgin Megastore (back when the latter still existed).

At this point DVD was still a long way from taking over VHS, so the landscape in these stores was dominated by the reassuringly sturdy forms of video cassette boxes. With money to burn (relatively speaking), my eyes grew wide at a special offer – three videotapes for £15 – and I duly selected three titles: Graveyard Shift (Ralph S. Singleton, 1990), Evil Ed (Anders Jacobson, 1995), and Eraserhead.

Featuring screaming faces drowning in rat-infested water, severed heads, a screaming, crimson-coated, lunatic film editor, and bold text proclaiming “BE WARNED: The nightmare has not gone away…”, it’s little wonder I was drawn to the box art of these particular titles. Being fifteen at the time – and each video alluringly brandished with an 18 certificate – it fell to my Dad to purchase the videos. The store clerk knew full-well who the videos were actually for (proclaiming knowingly “I see you’re quite the connoisseur”), but they didn’t care. To me there was a sense of danger and fascination about it; I wasn’t legally of-age to be purchasing these videos, and yet by that point I’d been watching 18-rated movies for six whole years (don’t worry – they weren’t anything wildly inappropriate).

I found Graveyard Shift to be an average, but not all that memorable Stephen King adaptation, and Evil Ed to be an utterly barmy horror comedy that really earned the cover blurb “a rampage of exploding heads and flying limbs make this gorefest truly splatterific!” … however, Eraserhead proved to be an entirely different journey.

It was to take me the best part of the ensuing 12 months to get through every one of the 89 minutes in the running time. The film was so bizarre and unsettling to the early development of my cinephile senses that I could only manage 5 or 10 minutes at a time – with gaps of weeks or even months between these sporadic portions. No doubt this extremely fractured form of viewing didn’t help in achieving any kind of understanding of the narrative, but even if I’d viewed it in one sitting, I simply wouldn’t have ‘got it’ one bit aged fifteen with the typical attention span for my age.

More than a decade later, and with The Horror Channel showing Twin Peaks in-full (which I’d never seen before), I truly discovered the work of David Lynch. Blue Velvet (1986) revealed itself as beautifully dark and consuming, while second-attempts at Lost Highway (1997) and Wild At Heart (1990) proved successful. A transcendent witnessing of Mulholland Drive (2001) was followed by the half-baffled enjoyment of Lynch’s most cryptic work to date – the three-hour-long Inland Empire (2006). Aged fifteen, the latter wouldn’t have even been attempted had it been out at the time, but now things were very different – and as such I realised that I would need to return to Eraserhead, which had spent the last 12 years sitting on a video shelf quietly goading me.

I had realised that Lynch’s actual work, and his reputation, are two very different beasts. The content of his work is far easier to decipher once you understand what information in each scene is key to the plot, and what information is unique, inspired, dream-like, Lynchian window-dressing.

The following blow-by-blow account is laid out by time, during which I will posit my personal understanding of Lynch’s most widely analysed, and argued about, film.

Spoilers ahead.

January 15th 2012

8:02pm – Resembling the Lady in the Radiator, I steel myself with a face full of Jaffa Cakes, and press play.

8:04pm to 8:09pm – Henry, full of apprehension, floats in space, but it seems the planetoid going through his mind is in fact a nightmarish ovum. Is this happening now, or is this a guilt-ridden memory – a memory of Henry’s shame, and perhaps even lust, as engendered by the scarred man who instigates the terrified release of Henry’s sperm. Splash down: conception.

It was at this point, I seem to remember, that I first took a lengthy breather from the film as a freaked-out fifteen year-old.

Industrial landscapes that howl with angry, distant machinery – a typically Lynch obsession is birthed on film. Guilt, corruption, intimidation and paranoia seep from every brick, every stained and broken window, and every blackened steel girder.

8:12pm – Ah, the ever-popular zigzag patterned flooring. As the elevator doors slide shut on Henry, I finish my Jaffa Cakes and prepare to enter the nightmare.

8:13pm – “Are you Henry” – we meet ‘The Beautiful Girl Across the Hall’ – the temptress of apartment twenty-seven.

No wonder Henry’s a bit down in the dumps. His shitty one-bedroom apartment roars with the sound of a hissing radiator and features a window without a view.

8:18pm – Henry and Mary X: their relationship is a fractured one amidst a terrifying industrial hell that roars with a cacophony of man-made noise, smoke, decay, loneliness and no small measure of social awkwardness.

8:22pm – Time for dinner at #2416: The wild feasting of puppies upon an exhausted/indifferent mother canine foreshadows news which will bring Henry’s world – and vacation – crashing down around him.

8:25pm – Puppeteering Grandma to mix a salad. An eyebrow takes a subtle step forward in its ascent up my forehead. This is one of those oddball details, with little-or-no underlying meaning, that you so often see in dreams or nightmares that make little sense, but which provide background texture to a scene.

8:27pm – Henry carves the damn-near foetus-size chickens at the behest of crooked-kneed patriarch Bill … if I remember correctly, my fifteen year-old counterpart took another lengthy breather after the close-up of the viscous ooze that gushes forth from the miniscule chicken as its legs flail about. Considering a scene towards the end of the film, perhaps this is another moment of foreshadowing.

8:30pm – A blown bulb, a mother’s invasive questioning and out-of-the-blue personal-space-invading, and a nose bleed. A moment of handheld, free-roaming camerawork unsettles the glaring balance of the usually static, scrutinising camera.

8:34pm – Feeding the horrific premature result of Henry and Mary X’s premarital lust … and receiving a very small worm-like thing in a very small box in the mail. I sense that my fifteen year-old counterpart has gone AWOL once again.

8:37pm – A stormy night to mirror the post-natal torment of Mary X.

8:44pm – Mary X, the woman caged by her youthful indiscretion, flees leaving Henry alone with the monstrous baby … and the temptress next door.

The nightmare escalates – the baby is unwell … it’s sickly wailing, and its diseased appearance, have decidedly disturbed me. The power of the Jaffa Cakes is called upon.

8:52pm – The ‘Lady in the Radiator’, her swollen cheeks, her cutesy come-hither smile, and her dance upon the stage inside Henry’s radiator. Naturally in 1999 such an image simultaneously flew over my head, and exploded it, but I feel I have a better grasp of the scene’s meaning – or at the very least I have an interpretation to proffer.

This vision of Henry’s creation stomps on his sperm – the result of his lust; the very product that rendered him trapped alone with his ailing, premature, inhuman offspring – and so suggests a sense of innocent bliss, a suggestion of what could have otherwise been, before his pre-marital dalliance with Mary X.

8:56pm – Mary X is back in Henry’s ragged bed, crowding him out, but this seemingly normal scene becomes a ghastly unreality as our electric-haired protagonist exhumes giant, slimy, sperm-like worms from between the sheets (from between Mary’s legs … is this a form of afterbirth, or a rejection of his seed?).

As we return to that miniscule worm in the miniscule box that came in the mail, only to be devoured by it whole, I ponder if this worm is in fact a seed of an idea in Henry’s head, and become quite freaked out … I’m so glad I’m not on drugs right now.

9:00pm – The temptress of #27, locked out of her apartment late one night, comes to resurrect Henry’s lust … but where is Mary X, Henry’s new wife, and is this encounter a dream? Henry silences the gruesome progeny.

9:03pm – Infidelity strikes: The pair are quite literally consumed by their actions and sink into the cloudy pool within his marital bed. Sexual seas split – possibly at the moment of climax – but any ecstasy is usurped when the temptress comes face-to-face with the planet-like egg.

9:05pm – “In heaven, everything is fine” – so sings, quite hypnotically, the Lady in the Radiator. The Lady, and Henry’s infidelity, are juxtaposed … however she vanishes after a moment of happiness with him, only to be replaced before his eyes by the scarred man, his dead sperm, and a gnarled and lifeless tree.

9:09pm - A mixture of guilt and threat creeps in as Henry finds himself on trial for his actions.

Then his head falls off – replaced on his shoulders by that of his terrible offspring – as the dead tree secretes a trickling river of blood into which Henry’s severed head suddenly falls.

The head descends from the sky, the skull cracks open, and a child steals it as a homeless man protests.

9:12pm – Over the last 12 years I had almost convinced myself that the following sequence was just in my head, but no – Henry’s decapitated head really is taken to a pencil-making factory where a sampling of his head (much like you’d take a core sample of cheese) is used to make the eraser part … well that explains the title of the film, I suppose.

The dust of his ‘Eraserhead’ wakes him from his hallucinogenic dreamscape where thoughts of his tryst with the temptress plague him … just as two people feverishly dig (or fight?) in the dirt in the alleyway below.

9:18pm through 9:27pm –Henry’s grotesque child mocks him as the girl next door returns home with another man, much to Henry’s dismay. She sees the head of the baby on Henry’s shoulders.

Full of resentment, Henry hacks open the bandages that encase the screaming premature progeny – and he ruddy well stabs it … the disturbance levels in my mind have taken a big old leap … however quite soon both eyebrows find themselves making friends with my hairline as an oozing volcano of goo and sparking electrical outlets precipitate the baby’s head growing to room-consuming size so it can stalk Henry’s terrified form in the strobing Lynchian light … things have most definitely gone a bit mental.

9:28pm – The planet-like egg breaks open as the scarred man wrestles with his jammed levers – then Henry finds himself with the Lady in the Radiator. Hugging her, he discovers that in heaven everything really is fine.

He killed his hideous offspring – and did it in return kill him? – so he can live free of torment forever after.

9:38pm – I watch an episode of Cougar Town to un-freak my mind.

In summary the meaning of the film is quite clear – it’s all about the fear of an impending birth, the dread of on-coming fatherhood, and the torturous and guilty thoughts of a mind-in-fright seeking escape. To me it’s about responsibility versus temptation, and nightmares born out of a fear of everything going wrong – not only with the imminent birth but also your own life, and your relationship with the mother.

Twelve years apart, these two viewings of Eraserhead could not be more different. With age, experience, and even a film degree, comes understanding of a film that flew right over my head in 1999. Back then I struggled with it completely, whereas now I found it quite concise – and I have to say I rather enjoyed it.

Flavours of the Month: November 2011...

LOOKS:

The Walking Dead (Season 2, Part 1) - the best thing to happen to zombies since Romero's Day of the Dead in 1985, AMC's superb zombie drama (adapted from Robert Kirkman's deliciously dark comics series) continues apace despite the odd spell of behind-the-scenes trouble. The first half of the season has come to an end (the remaining six episodes will begin airing in February 2012), and it's been an excellent run of episodes. One thing though - bloody spoilers - some out there in the world of the interwebs have been annoyingly loose-lipped at times, and for us Brits that's been quite frustrating (we see the episodes five days after they air in America). Indeed one of the biggest shocks of the season was completely spoiled for me. Despite the minefield of spoilers though, many twists and turns were left un-spoiled, and it has been a very satisfying series of episodes. Now the desperate fanboy wait for February begins...

SOUNDS:

David Lynch - he recently released an album titled Crazy Clown Time, and while a number of the tracks weren't to my liking, several were: "Pinky's Dream", "So Glad", "Noah's Ark", "Football Game", "The Night Bell With Lightning", and "These Are My Friends".

Julee Cruise "Nightingale"

God Is An Astronaut "Forever Lost"

Alice Cooper - I've respected his music and dabbled in it for quite a while now, but after seeing his 2011 Halloween concert on Sky Arts, I've been seeking out some of his albums at long, long last.

Blink182 "Neighborhoods" - their new album takes me back to my formative years when "Take Off Your Pants And Jacket" was practically on an endless loop at the Sixth Form.

Daft Punk "Tron Legacy Reconfigured" - a number of the tracks are utter tosh (a lazy, generic, ill-fitting dance beat that occasionally halts to drop a bit of the original track to quality for the compilation), but others are terrific remixes: "Derezzed" by The Glitch Mob, "Fall" by M83 & Big Black Delta, "The Son Of Flynn" by Moby, "Encom Part 2" by Com Truise, "End Of Line" by Photek, and "End Of Line" by Tame Impala are the stand-outs for me.

VIBES & FLAVOURS:

The Walking Dead Vol. 7 & 8 - I'm forever trying to catch up with the comics, and this is as far as I've got so far. No spoilers for those who haven't got to this point, but bloody nora is volume 8 a memorable one!

Illness - this autumn/winter season I've had this bizarre muscular/nervous flu which roams around various parts of the body. Aches, pains, headaches, exhaustion, stiff joints, sharp pains - and all on a constant rotation around my body for at least a couple of weeks. Fortunately it seems to have all gone, but what a weird one.

Homefront - it's not the most polished example of an FPS out there, and the ludicrously short single player campaign (3.5 hours from start-to-ruddy-finish!) has a few stumbles and design faults, but the central conceit of a Unified Korea occupying America in a bleak near-future is still quite interesting. Hopefully Crytek will fully crack it for the apparent sequel that they're working on.

Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky - so far I'm half way through this very dense piece of horror fiction set in the unforgiving Russian subway system in a post-apocalyptic world. At times it's a little too slow paced, and the author's style isn't particularly fond of paragraph breaks, but the world of the Metro is vividly depicted with a complete overview of the socio-political situation down there in the dark, danger-infested tunnels.

Saints Row The Third - while Crib customisation has all-but been removed in favour of new features, this third entry in the once sub-GTA franchise is easily the best of the three. The sloppy coding, gameplay, and balancing of Saints Row 2 are gone (mercifully), and in their place is a very solid and very enjoyable game. I've only encountered a couple of small glitches along the way such as the odd texture issue, no max-speed sound effect for any of the vehicles, or the odd roadblock on the occasional mission - but the latter have easily been remedied by starting again from the most recent checkpoint. I'm about 3/4 of the way through at the moment and it's pretty much a vast improvement across the board - the plot is tighter and actually interesting this time (if not particularly meaningful - but that wouldn't fit in anyway), the gameplay is tight and enjoyable, the in-game cell phone is perfectly formed for handling all your upgrade, mission, map, contact, and monetary needs, and the high level of utter daftness is most welcome. Professor Ghenki's Super Ethical Reality Climax (one of the many activities you can take part in) is a particularly good example of the sort of barmy fun you can have with this game. Well worth your time and money!

Double Bill Mini Musings: A Double Dose of David...

Inland Empire:
As if Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive melded together and birthed a rabbit-headed Polish baby with a penchant for industrialised zones and the murky unknown. Perhaps Lynch's most cryptic outing as a director, Inland Empire is a shot-on-miniDV mixture of old and new ground - similar themes from films past, present themselves along a path that is distinctly non-linear; one that is experimental.

An actress wins a role on a cursed film - one that was already abandoned once before when titled 4-7 - and soon finds her sense of reality breaking down. She inverts on her own life, confuses her past and present, becomes more than one version of herself (and possibly so for the character she is playing in the film), and goes through a protracted and twisted nightmare ... most specifically during the middle-hour of this three-hour journey.

By comparison, Mulholland Drive is a relatively straight-forward tale told in an unusual way ... although I think that could be said of Lynch's work in general - to an extent - in that, perhaps, his work appears to be more weird because of Lynch's particularly unique outlook and approach to his art. The central mystery of Mulholland Drive was the unravelling of a dream ... meanwhile Inland Empire is an altogether different beast. Lynch's experience making the film was one of discovery as he himself has stated - it began as one thing and developed over time into a whole other thing. Disparate scenes and ideas slowly and intricately began to fuse together to form an extremely complex whole.

To understand the whole film would be to miss the point - the mystery is the journey and the journey is the mystery - indeed, quite possibly, Inland Empire might be impossible to understand in its entirety. There is most definitely a plot snaking around the non-linear pacing of the scenes, and each viewer will grasp onto certain themes and images in their own way, and as such this is quite possibly Lynch's most interpretable film to date.

Red lamps, strobe lighting, doorways, nightmares, dreams, alternate/inverted realities, multiple personalities/identities, curious and threatening figures, the dark underbellies of seemingly stable lives and situations ... all are combined throughout this curious, enchanting, haunting, disturbing, unsettling, experimental digital world.


Lynch (one):
Shot during the production of Inland Empire, this documentary follows filmmaker David Lynch around in his life. Pockets of stories are left scattered around the running time like discarded cigarette butts on Lynch's office floor; snippets of behind-the-scenes moments from the making of Lynch's most recent film are diced between photography sessions in abandoned factories, one-sided phone calls, and the bookends of various unidentified moments. For Lynch fans, it's well worth checking out - it's a window into the world of Lynch; simultaneously strange and straight-forward.

Flavours of the Month: October 2011...

LOOKS:

Boardwalk Empire Season 2 - the return of HBO's critically and commercially successful period drama is most welcome.

An Idiot Abroad 2 - Karl Pilkington's jetting off around the world again, this time moaning his way through a bucket list. At times cringe-inducing, at others utterly hilarious.

Family Guy and American Dad on BBC Three - repeats galore, but I've often found myself switching over after eleven to catch back-to-back double bills.

The Big Bang Theory on E4 - now that Friends has moved to Comedy Central, E4 have been pushing new shows, as well as existing ones on their roster. It seems that The Big Bang Theory is their new big name, and I've found myself routinely catching the re-run double bills after midnight. I've been watching the show for a few years now, but this is the first time I'm going back over old episodes of this excellent sitcom.

The Walking Dead Season 2 - months of waiting, filled with fanboy speculation and fevered forum banter, have all led up to this point; the return of AMC's superior undead drama. Friday nights on FXUK - it's all about Rick Grimes leading his not-so-merry band of survivors through the undead apocalypse. Recently renewed for a third season, I'm very glad indeed to have this masterful show back on their air (despite a few behind-the-scenes troubles along the way).

SOUNDS:

Phoenix "Love Like A Sunset Part 1 & 2" - as heard on the soundtrack for Sophia Coppola's sparse film Somewhere.

Rob Zombie - numerous albums and remixes.

Tool - Ænima, Lateralus, and 10,000 Days.

STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl Soundtrack - ideal atmospheric moods for finishing off my latest script.

M83 "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" - the highly anticipated return of the 1980s-inspired nostalgia and love-tinged moods of the French shoegazer.

David Lynch - "Ghost of Love", "Polish Poem" & "Real Love" (with Chrysta Bell), and "Dark Night of the Soul" (with Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse)

Wye Oak "Civilian" - as heard during the trailer for season two of The Walking Dead.

VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Unusually warm weather - the month got off to a somewhat curious start which found me washing my car in bright sunshine and shorts. We're back on track though - the winter socks, long-sleeved shirts, and winter duvet have come out of hiding.

"Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th" by Peter M. Bracke - I finished off this excellent book. If you're a fan of the Friday the 13th franchise, then I highly recommend you treat yourself to this.

Allen Bridge - this month saw me complete my drama/mystery script (as detailed in numerous blog posts over the months), which I'm currently submitting to some companies for consideration. Hopefully this challenging and rewarding creative venture bears fruit.