The Exorcist or Why I Paid to See Soup Bile

In continuing with classic horror movie night...The Exorcist. What a horror movie! I almost didn't go see this one on the big screen recently out of fear of being grossed out by the post-dinnertime time slot/the pea soup vomit combo but, I am so glad me & my stomach braved the bile! First off...in terms of horror sub-genres this film pretty much covers all the bases, however loose the plot: mythic relics, dream sequences, dead mom guilt, monster/devil, mental hospitals, murder, occult/religion, medical trauma, distrust of authority/social norms (religious, scientific), sacrifice, a boxer-psychiatrist-New York Italian-priest, possession- it has it all! As I watched The Exorcist though- seeing a bed shake up and down, lots of bright red painter-ly thinned blood, the aforementioned soup vomit- I couldn't help but ponder the low(er)-budget nature of a lot of this stuff? And a lot of horror movies in general...

Horror movies are historically the cheapest type of film to make allowing for this genre to rake in the profits against their miniscule budgets! We all know that Paranormal Activity cost, supposedly, $15,000 to make. This film, which was just ok on the horror scale in my opinion, raked in an estimated $195 million! Seriously? That is just crazy! The site Horror-Movies.CA (a pretty nice horror film website if I do say so myself!) has a run down of other break out horror profits too, Friday the 13th? $500,000 to make, made $60 million. Halloween? Made for $325,000, made $70million. As this CNN Money article points out, horror films have a lot going for them in terms of being money makers, often being able to be produced cheaply and also lending themselves to a more interesting/creative ad campaign that can reach a wide audience in a way that easily leads to box office numbers (the new horror film V/H/S for example had an ad campaign at Sundance 2012 consisting of VHS tapes duct taped to posterboard, a cheap & memorable way to spread the word...also, I just realized, Halloween masks alone are a constant horror film ad when it comes down to it! Not to mention the stickiness of many a catchphrase:  "Don't go into the light Carolanne!" ). The profitability of horror makes sense but, why the hell do we keep filling the theater seats? Why is it that there seems to be an inexhaustible audience for this genre? Why do people keep paying money to be scared out of their wits?

I found a few answers on the internet of course... A few years back two scientists figured out that our brains can process both negative and positive emotion simultaneously, a thing previously not thought possible...meaning that pleasure and pain in a horror movie experience can exist one in the same: some people just get pleasure out of fear! Along similar lines, many scholars propose that the immediate release of terror brought on by witnessing a horror film is a cathartic act, releasing tension  upon the film's end resulting in a euphoric calm! In yet another discussion, outlined in the book Why We Watch: The Attractions of Violent Entertainment, the following list is provided as to why we are drawn to the spooky screen: adrenaline, voyeurism, distraction and our collective want to shun social normality. Truly I think this is why I like horror movies where, for those brief two hours a tiny microcosm exists in which anything goes allowing for reality to be put on hold for a moment, replacing the real blood with fake, in the most comforting of ways! I mean, I am definitely not thinking about my own mortality as I sit in a movie theater and see the possessed rantings of a possessed, pajama clad little girl with a spinning head as she hurls people to their death out of her window as she is overcome with the pure spirit of the devil. Nor am I thinking about how I am going to pay my rent as her obscenities increase in dirtiness and the score tings along my spine. We pay to see horror movies to forget about the horrors of real life, a thing that many scholars seem to think fades with age as our real lives become more complex. But me? I think I would rather keep buying those movie tickets for those brief hours of thoughtlessness with the occasional start regardless of how closer I get to the actual grave!

Horror Story

Tis the season for Horror movies! And I couldn't be more spooked! Actually, I'm a bit impervious to horror movies for some reason... as I pointed out to a friend who refused to see a recent theater screening of The Shining out of fear, "They're just movies!" Regardless though, sometimes a jump or start can be shocked into my seat from the almighty film screen and when it does I love the feeling of leaving the plush seat and the terror behind to enter a world free of whatever was on the screen before me! I've been saturating my senses with horror films lately, mostly thanks to the local cinema's weekly classic horror series this month, but also thanks to my own hearty appreciation for the horrific genre! So, I decided to give you a little list of some of the recent fear flicks I have seen and to recommend some slightly more contemporary companion pieces to round out the horror-ful! And please folks, remember: they are just movies! But, please feel free to sleep with the lights on if you must!

Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)
Like a lot of classic Hollywood films, Frankenstein is based on a story, a dense monster tale by Mary Shelley about the creation of an outcast embodying nearly every narrative conflict known to literature (man vs man, man vs nature, man vs self etc.). Laying the groundwork for the indelible outsider anti-hero this film holds up today as we watch mob mentality, the fear of the unknown, the innovation & nervousness of science and countless other layers of monsters & man electrified into what we fear most: ourselves. An archetypal film and a narrative classic a must see for all!

The Entire Career of Tim Burton (1971-present)
So…pretty much every Tim Burton film is a take on Frankenstein? Is this true? Kind of yes. Tim Burton has made a career on the tragic beauty in the shunned and misunderstood outcast monster figure. Yet, there is usually a comic sweetness on the edge of Tim Burton that is just the right amount to hold back his films from being strictly monstrous. The pureness in Burton's characters and his distinct style is what has made him a Hollywood gem and his own twisted homages to the genre (Ed Wood! Frankenweenie! Sleepy Hollow! etc.) have added him to the very canon that has inspired his shawdowy filmography.

The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
I saw this a few nights ago on the big screen as my friends- one of which who had never seen this film (gasp!)- sat hunched, cursing, turned away from the screen in absolute outrageous fear... at one point, so disturbed, one of them started humming "Don't get into my mind, don't get into my mind!" at the huge, terrible and absolutely stunning images before her! We all know Kubrick is a filmmaking master but seeing this film in it's full on theater glory- helicopter shots, these zero gravity feeling/free floating cameras lurking over the shoulders of the guests and ghosts of The Overlook, the expertly designed sound, Penderecki & Bartok pushing the tension along, with Stephen King at the chilly, disturbing story's core- incredible! I don't think there is a better piece of art out there and everybody should try to experience this film in a real movie theater!

Room 237 (Rodney Ascher, 2012)
When I was at Sundance this past year I let a person cut in front of me in an early morning wait list line for Room 237 so they could stand next to their friends. That guy got in. I did not. Yes, I still hold this against my niceness as I remember how absolutely freezing it was in the concrete, sub level, outdoor hall at 8am in that Park City Utah wait line…and how badly I want to see this film! A documentary composed of interviews regarding the theories- and from what I hear the insane-neurotic-conspiracy-like theories (The Shining as Kubrick's admittance to personally faking the moon landing footage?) from the minds of intensely serious film buffs/scholars, Room 237 is garnering some weird attention. First it gained momentum by the concern over distribution being that most of the film borrowed footage from the Kubrick's classic (an issue which must have been resolved since I am told distribution will be happening through IFC in the Spring, or is that a rumor?) and then, more recently, this film has begun causing some tension in the film critic's community. Apparently some critics worry that Room 237 trivializes the work of film criticism, favoring a mode of looking at film as a stagnant object to be studied as opposed to the moving instigator it can, and should, be. The film favors discussion over action and art as a puzzle as opposed to an experience and are definitely things that are worrisome in terms of all creative fields...Yet, to me at least, there is something to be said for seeing the multifaceted views of others that I bet Room 237 does. By hearing the ways others have "solved the puzzle" we can learn about the people themselves, and in turn ourselves, when we approach the same puzzle. Conspiracy theories, and theories in general, exist for us to question, engage and try to learn the ways of the world- a thing there are millions of versions of- and sometimes simply hearing a point of view not our own can help complete a much, much bigger picture outside of the realm of mere film criticism...!

Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)
Aronofsky man. I remember seeing Pi late at night as a teen, renting it from the mainstream video store's ghetto of "staff picks," waiting for my parents to sleep since this R rated film might not be to their liking and then, as the film hit my bleary young adult eyes, thinking,  "A movie can be this?" An amazing director who- even when his plots aren't the most compelling- can create a tension unlike any other through nerve wracking sound design, quick cuts, and a creepiness who, in the case of Black Swan, also has the modern sex appeal of so many lead horror actresses flailing across the screen before (helpless, hot female victim is not a thing I condone but, it is a trope that continues through the ages of cinema and was kind of comforting to see a new take on). I really do wish Aronofsky would stick to the horrific though since he tends towards atmospheres that are emotionally effecting already and that, when mixed with a some bloody terror & brain damage, produce masterful eerie wonders akin to Hitchcock! The slowly unhinging ballerina of Black Swan makes for a psychological thriller whose beautiful grotesqueness makes you wonder if our desires are worth the terror they can induce, quite possibly the question at the heart of every director working in the genre!

Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977)
Why the hell are they remaking Suspiria? No need! NO NEED! For shame! The classic coven/dance conservatory horror film by the master of Italian horror Dario Argento is such a strangely interesting piece of work that you must see the original before being tainted by whatever the new version has in store... Suspiria is like a spooky dream filled with confusion and wickedness bathed in a red light that looks like a washy neon portrait of fear as a dancer unveils the dark secrets hidden in the halls of her new home. See this movie and join me in the confusion of the need to remake it!

Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Various, 1955-1962)
Dear lord I can't believe my dad let me watch the reruns of this show when I was a small child! I am going to just recap one episode that will probably never, ever leave my brain and has created one of the few downright irrational fear I have of being buried alive: A woman obsessed with death wants to experience what it is like to be buried. She persuades a gravedigger to bury her for a short time along with a recent corpse (so as not to garner suspicion) and then dig her up. After going through with the plan she begins to get antsy as a little too much time passes in her dark, airless, six foot underground situation. She lights a match to reveal that the gravedigger is the corspse she will be sharing eternity with. Seriously. Chilling. Like every other short film Hitchcock presented in this series this story is a primer on fright and psychologically effecting narrative, rounding out with an irony and setting that is far too close to reality to be forgotten and dismissed as purely a fantastical idea- watch them if you dare!

V/H/S (Adam Wingard, David Bruckner, Glenn McQuaid, Joe Swanberg, Radio Silence, Ti West, 2012)
Another film I narrowly missed at Sundance...V/H/S comes complete with the "someone passed out at the premier" narrative that is all to important to the mythic creation of a cult classic! A loose plot about a group of people on a mission to retrive a specific videotape from a location filled with videotapes, the film is actually composed of a series of short films by varying contemporary horror directors- each supposedly more gross, creepy or awful than the one before! This framework of filmmaking, a series of shorts under a specific umbrella plot, can sometimes be a little offputting or patchwork but I think that the horror film genre is perfect for it! Being fictionally shocked and awed in a completely different way within minutes is like a quick punch to the gut that keeps you on edge, fearful of what could possibly be the next thing lurking behind the next filmic corner, unable to think for too long about how it is just a film before the next onslaught of dread (a pacing that I have a feeling is going to scare even me!)....  I can't wait to see this film next week when it comes to my local theater! And I will be sure to bring my smelling salts for the faint of heart!

Of course these are only a few suggestions of how to get into the holiday season, I left out some of the my favorites for sure (Rosemary's Baby, 28 Days Later, Santa Sangre, The Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors annual awesomeness, Cape Fear, Rebecca) but I guess what I was actually trying to do with this post was make a sort of comparative observation about the nature of horror...there are so many ways to be scared in a movie theater- from monster movie, to psychological thriller, from documentary/mockumentary/shockumentary, to CGI ghosts- and the ways just keep expanding with technology's ability to scare us into another world! Even though this is the case, the simplicity of so much older horror, the tension and power in the narratives alone (narratives usually based on classic novels or gothic stories, myths and legends) is an important element to all filmmaking that should be regarded just as highly as all of the fake blood in the world! Horror movies are scary but as films/cultural artifacts they continue a tradition of storytelling (often of parables, lessons, and conflicts) that should continue to be cherished, shared, and screamed at forever as they inspire a rich history that, like a good fable, teach us a lot about our own morality and existence! Happy Halloween dear readers! And remember: don't be afraid of the dark!

This Is Your Brain On Wes Anderson

I finally saw Moonrise Kingdom! Hitting the discount matinee at my local cinema I decided that, hell, even though I wasn't keen on watching a movie revolving around kids prancing around like little French New Wave adults (did this creep out anyone else?) I still think Wes Anderson is an interesting storyteller and I should give his film the respect is deserves by seeing it in a theater. So me and three other (old) people huddled together in a huge, chilly theater auditorium on a weird weathered day full of alternating wind and rain and sun and leaves sparkling in their autumn hues watching the summercamp tale of a stormy child love unfold before us! Wes Anderson, as the old man sitting in front of me declared after being previously unaware of the filmmaker, "knows how to make a movie!" And he really does. His patterns in editing, his symmetrical photographic shot composition, his music and sound design, his ability to be sharply off handed in hilarity- it's all there in a neat little J.D. Salinger/Truffaut package wrapped up for your viewing pleasure. Despite the fact that his style might be bordering on predictable seeing this film with fresh audience eyes made me respect what Anderson is doing so much more. And also made me interested in the idea of the creation of the auteur in general....Which is how I discovered the vast array of a branch of film studies called neurocinematics!

Apparently, there is a whole area of neuroscience that has been gaining momentum called neurocinematics that centers around how cinema effects the viewer on a deeper level, how our brains take in, process and act in the presence of a film...I like to think it is a movement from the 60s/70s focus of psychoanalysis of the mind to a focus on what creates that mind: the brain. Resources such as Projections: The Journal for the Movie and the Mind (and their parent Forum for Movies and the Mind) and The Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image seek to use our modern scientific capabilities to get deeper into movies, the emerging patterns of cinema and it's effects on the brain's of audiences, and vice versa. As Projections states in it's mission statement:

"[Projections] explores the way in which the mind experiences, understands, and interprets the audio-semantic and narrative structures of cinema and other visual media. Recognizing cinema as an art form, the journal aims to integrate established traditions of analyzing media aesthetics with current research into perception, cognition and emotion, according to frameworks supplied by psychology, psychoanalysis, and the cognitive and neurosciences."

The way I happened upon this discovery had to do with experiencing the patterns of Wes Anderson's films. In every one of his films he relies on a slow motion scene usually at a point of important character identification, his cuts are quick, sharp and deliberate, his shot composition is extremely composed with action in the middle and objects on the periphery with an impeccable mise-en-scene drawing you into the center of the frame with the actors, often a narrator leads you on your journey seeming to speak personally to you in the theater- all tropes that Moonrise Kingdom included and made me feel as if I was being lulled into Anderson's own little universe of narrative identification, a universe that my fellow audiences members were also immediately captivated by on this breezy Autumn day! Anderson's style, one he continues to improve & hone, is so distinct that each person I watched this film with laughed at the exact same moments, gasped at the same time, grumbled in the face of the villian in sync...so I hit the internet looking for information on patterns of audience reactions which is how I found an article titled Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film.

In this article (which you can get a pdf of if you search the title!) a bunch of folks- including scientists and film scholars- monitored the brain activity of film watchers, wondering if films control the way we as film viewers think, react and engage in similar ways. What they discovered was that filmmakers whose craft is incredibly detailed, whose manipulation of the viewer's senses through editing, sound, storytelling and general guidance, can cause the brain activity of people to react in nearly the exact same way! For example, those conducting the study screened Hitchcock to their subjects and, with the help of an fMRI (that actively scans and presents an imaging of the brain, detecting areas of activity from corresponding bloodflow) each person was drawn to the same areas of the screen at certain points, each person's brain triggered an emotional response at the same moment, each person recognized the faces of the characters at similar times. This calculated response was in direct contrast to a screening of Curb Your Enthusiasm, whose possible cinema vérité style and meandering action caused the test subject's minds to sort of wander as if watching an everyday scene, bumbling around along with the morose Larry...This is incredible! Especially when taking these findings a step further and applying this concept of, basically, the ability of film to "mind control" in the areas of advertising and propaganda: just how strong are our wills when confronted with the almighty filmic image? How susceptible is the collective sub-conscious to the director's cut? Are we being manipulated more than we know? (looks over shoulder!)

Paranoia aside, Wes Anderson is one of those directors whose characteristic style is so evident that one could probably see a still and identify his hand in it. His storylines (even if they are only speaking to a limited audience) are always consistent as we watch his hardworking-yet-privledged underdog making a heroic leap towards emotional happiness (another subject of interest in neurocinematics as displayed here, pondering the question if we root for the underdog as a means of soothing our own personal struggles?) through his specific, patterned artistic lens; a base of a distinct soundtrack feeling, an emotional slow motion portrait, quick witted/tongue biting/unexpectedly harsh humor, a thoughtful muted color palette, highly detailed & organized shots (favoring certain camera techniques too- like the overhead, 1st person in this montage! a shot that, once again, makes you see through the eyes of the characters, identifying with those on screen, forcing our brains to become one with the protagonist), the inclusion of a shot of a character underwater, oftentimes a narrator telling us a story (and which Anderson plays on in Moonrise through the campfire readings of the film's heroine), quick cuts to supplementary imagery (Anderson loves to showcase a good book cover or hand written letter!), the use of a play within the film to point out craft and distinguish a feeling of reality & unreality within the film etc. Anderson has found a set of patterns that I hope he continues to grow and explore as he becomes more and more well known and seeks to entertain a wider audience- and I stress entertain because it is an element of art that is often looked down upon nowadays for some reason (why can't more people enjoy the craft of someone considered an artist?)...


Anderson might one day join the ranks of his fellow mind-controlling Hollywood crossover auteurs (Scorsese, Kubrick & the like! Also, Coppola, a connection that Anderson already has in some sense.) as he molds the brains of audiences into his stories of bittersweet, scrappy heroes to the tunes of fitting lullabies, punk anthems, and country western croons creating a new American indie-school play aesthetic that he is most definitely the pioneer of. Wes Anderson might not be saying too much with the content of his films but there is a beauty, artistry and love in them- and the triumph of the outcast, however trite or first world problem centered- that the world does need... a sweet dream of winning against the odds and creating something outside of oneself for others to experience within themselves! The auteur as artistic hypnotist? Yes, as long as the intentions are as pure & pink-tinted as Wes Anderson's!

Art Films for a Sick Day

I do apologize for the lack of posting this week! I don't want to whine by any means but I have a head cold that is making me cloudy at best...trying to edit and think about film and read and type is proving difficult as my eyes swell closer and closer to shut! So, since I can't really provide you with anything of my own to ponder I thought the least I could do is share with you some of the more memorable video/film art I've seen lately so....enjoy! (sneezes) Hope to be back in blogging action soon complete with my new discovery of neurocinematic studies!! O, and also, my October horror movie binge!

Idyllwild, Chris Doyle, (video of installation) 2012
This piece by the artist Chris Doyle won't leave my mind and I ache to seek it in person! I remember him describing it to me before it had been made, I pictured planes of light moving throughout a space, questioning our sensibilities of the natural, disorienting and poetic- like a living Calvino novel preoccupied with a fluent time and space that we far to often take as a concrete thing.

 

Squeeze, Mika Rottenberg, (exerpt from 20 minute video) 2010
I only recently learned of Rottenberg's work and there is something feminine and sinister on it's edges that I really seem to like. It being art, it's hard to find her full videos to watch but this (bootlegged?) clip of women in some sort of elaborate, mechanized, sub-sea level existence grooming the hands of female laborers as they shove them through the dirt is a beautiful musing on beauty, ritual and the roles society casts women in...hope to see more...!

 

Hotel Monterey, Chantal Ackerman, (hour long film!) 1972
Ackerman, of Jeanne Dielman fame of course, is the type of filmmaker who picks up a camera and, with no care or worry or thought about those who have held a camera before, creates her progressive, deliberate, moving visions of people and places. This film, an early feature, follows the interiors of a hotel, dreamily and eeriely floating through its spaces revealing the life of a place. It makes me feel like the ultimate voyeur, a space on display for my observation only, a space that seems like it wants to communicate...and that is exactly what Ackerman is doing! Tough yet stunning!

Printing Presses and Autumn Sweaters

Printmaking is an artform that never ceases to fascinate me. Maybe it's because my brain is incapable of thinking like a printmaker; layers and negatives, etchings and reliefs, blocks of color. I have a hard time understanding how one can visualize multiple colors and shapes to overlay and press into one continuous idea...and maybe this is a big part of why Maya Malachowski Bajak's show at The Flying Object in Hadley Massachusettes was so appealing...or maybe it had something to do with how phenomenal the work itself is?

The Flying Object is a volunteer nonprofit printing press, gallery, bookstore, classroom, performance venue- everything one could want in terms of an alternative/independent artistic nexus. They even have a hands on workshop to teach one how to use a letterpress, this is some sort of heaven to me?! The work in Maya's show, titled Liminal Spaces, displays a range of contrast that  I never knew existed, more shades of varying blacks and greys than one can possibly imagine, inviting in the depths of their somehow cheery, hopeful darkness. Even though the prints feel completely flat- the shapes feeling as very defined shapes- there is somehow a sculptural feel to them as well, like they were cubic forms rolled into dense, flat blocks- does that make any sense? Kind of like how I feel about seeing Blinky Palermo pieces in person- his color fields so placid, so thick, yet hedging in on the present human hand to the point that you get this sense of something deep skimming just below the surface, a framed still pond with lives hidden underneath...or something.

The inky images Maya chooses to depict are just as intriguing as her craft: a ship brimming with city buildings, a cross section of an earth's crusted layers with land & structures sitting atop, her images often suspended in a void of time. The tiny (most of the work was measurable in inches, the largest a piece of near prehistoric looking birds in flight along a shoreline, a few inches high yet a narrow panoramic stretching across a whole gallery wall- beautiful!) cutaways of chunky scenery felt part like scientific observations (like a specimen to be investigated), part like a desolate geologic past/present/future (like the photographic landscapes of Joel Sternfeld), and part like the anxiousness of architecture/the confused artifice of modern man/the tension in a suspension bridge (like the best of a poem by D.C. Berman). This was one show where content and craft really combined to make for something of awe and perfection- I loved it! So, if you happen to find yourself in the small printing press area of a slowly orange-ing, downright Autumnal New England, definitely stop in to see the work of someone who is seriously worth noting in the contemporary print-making scene!