It's alive!
During my week off I wandered around London, occasionally popping in to branches of Waterstones to accuse them of destroying my life:
ME: You killed my dreams!
ASSISTANT: That'll be £20.97, sir. Do you have a loyalty card?
ME: (Sheepishly) Yes.
I only saw one film at this year's London Film Festival, Raoul Ruiz's Nucingen Haus. Variety says it is unlikely to get a commercial release. I concur. It's an old school art-movie, late Bunuel on acid. Housemaid serenades and strokes brain of girl recently killed by girl's (dead?) sister. Hero beats (dead?) sister over head with sister's own (skeletal) leg. Sudden cut to black and white film of horse running through field... You had to admire its perversity. Behind me sat the two elderly women who always seem to be at my back at these things. Their faces I've never seen, but I've certainly heard their voices: upper-class drawls commiserating with each other about 'dissident elements' on the committees they run. Of course they shut up during the film. Except for the snoring of one. (The brochure described the film as 'dreamlike'.)
I was back at the BFI on Halloween for Devil Doll, from 1963, that old chestnut about the extraordinarily horrible ventriloquist's dummy, and ridiculous from start to finish. 'The Great Vorelli' is a hypnotist cum ventriloquist who really draws a crowd. It's hard to see why, because when we first see his act, he's hypnotising an audience member into thinking he's about to be executed with a shot to the back of the head. After the poor man has finished whimpering, the call for further volunteers is greeted with an unsurprising lack of enthusiasm. Nevertheless, Bryant Halliday, as Vorelli, delivers a performance of such intensity that it is almost possible to believe that people would turn up just to feel the 'tension' between him and his dummy, Hugo. You see, they don't do jokes. In fact, they don't seem to be getting on very well at all. They barely speak.
The fact is, Vorelli has somehow transmigrated the soul of a former colleague into the dummy. Which begs a big question: why? But then, why does anyone do anything? I found it all strangely plausible: cinema as a form of hypnosis.
What I can't believe is that Mat is going to become a father. He has already described how he is going to supervise the baby's 'training', though not before he has taken arty photos of the grim scene of 'gore and horror' that will be the baby's birth. Congratulations, Matandamanda. The social services have been alerted.
ME: You killed my dreams!
ASSISTANT: That'll be £20.97, sir. Do you have a loyalty card?
ME: (Sheepishly) Yes.
I only saw one film at this year's London Film Festival, Raoul Ruiz's Nucingen Haus. Variety says it is unlikely to get a commercial release. I concur. It's an old school art-movie, late Bunuel on acid. Housemaid serenades and strokes brain of girl recently killed by girl's (dead?) sister. Hero beats (dead?) sister over head with sister's own (skeletal) leg. Sudden cut to black and white film of horse running through field... You had to admire its perversity. Behind me sat the two elderly women who always seem to be at my back at these things. Their faces I've never seen, but I've certainly heard their voices: upper-class drawls commiserating with each other about 'dissident elements' on the committees they run. Of course they shut up during the film. Except for the snoring of one. (The brochure described the film as 'dreamlike'.)
I was back at the BFI on Halloween for Devil Doll, from 1963, that old chestnut about the extraordinarily horrible ventriloquist's dummy, and ridiculous from start to finish. 'The Great Vorelli' is a hypnotist cum ventriloquist who really draws a crowd. It's hard to see why, because when we first see his act, he's hypnotising an audience member into thinking he's about to be executed with a shot to the back of the head. After the poor man has finished whimpering, the call for further volunteers is greeted with an unsurprising lack of enthusiasm. Nevertheless, Bryant Halliday, as Vorelli, delivers a performance of such intensity that it is almost possible to believe that people would turn up just to feel the 'tension' between him and his dummy, Hugo. You see, they don't do jokes. In fact, they don't seem to be getting on very well at all. They barely speak.
The fact is, Vorelli has somehow transmigrated the soul of a former colleague into the dummy. Which begs a big question: why? But then, why does anyone do anything? I found it all strangely plausible: cinema as a form of hypnosis.
What I can't believe is that Mat is going to become a father. He has already described how he is going to supervise the baby's 'training', though not before he has taken arty photos of the grim scene of 'gore and horror' that will be the baby's birth. Congratulations, Matandamanda. The social services have been alerted.
posted by martin at 1:19 PM
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