tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-180145622024-03-11T03:23:34.635+00:00Generic MugwumpAaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.comBlogger197125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-17826091424037426232010-08-15T12:31:00.004+01:002010-08-15T12:33:10.896+01:00New project alert<span style="font-family:arial;">Go here:<br /><a href="http://suicidescriptures.blogspot.com/">Suicide Scriptures</a><br /></span>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-35057703332604336702010-02-13T15:51:00.005+00:002010-02-16T06:32:33.906+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 12 – "Narc Force"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8akmKWlLjX4Fisr8-H8P-cyna8GMjucBXkxvWmqtjSNP-hObsol-oqWUnIa18RvBGB5A4jfeAHjgOuU8DPA3WfKiBvlrmpOyJ7Gnu0f3nDYKrFj1WgXfbNmBwwCNr8a1E7ovwSA/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8akmKWlLjX4Fisr8-H8P-cyna8GMjucBXkxvWmqtjSNP-hObsol-oqWUnIa18RvBGB5A4jfeAHjgOuU8DPA3WfKiBvlrmpOyJ7Gnu0f3nDYKrFj1WgXfbNmBwwCNr8a1E7ovwSA/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5437756592974945106" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">The routine is rarely interrupted. <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span> – as seen from a random snapshot – flows easefully through time, a mist of ass-kicking justice wafting onwards, upwards, chasing a premeditated motion across the still televisual air. The narrative unravels in harmony with the clock’s ticking hands. Plot points pass, smacking upon retinas the swelling sites of a law abided. Sudden illustrations of a thwarted danger are served via channels of simplified apprehension, difficulty and equivocation consigned to the bin of bad decisions. The show pursues its mandate without fear of the penetrating cut of interruption; no digressionary deluge spills upon Seagal’s tight knit charge of drug busts and parole violations.<p></p>This is how <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span> unfolds, mostly.<p></p>Sometimes, however, a spectre rises from the shadows. Scenes are suddenly altered: pace falls away, meanings are inverted, lights dim as harpies invade the screen carrying epithets from a distant terrain. A banal patrol through the neighbourhood, Seagal a passenger amongst men, then enter peril: without warning their trajectory is reconfigured, tweaked by the mottled hands of a foreign agent. Rather than righting wrongs undeterred by antithetical forces, they are pressed to halt and confront an enemy.<p></p>A desolate landscape stretches out behind the protagonists, mediocre nod to the imagery of an unavoidable dystopia. Charred tree branches hang loosely and lonely above the highway. Abandoned vehicles, ditched belongings, putrefying carcasses, all such drab signifiers dotted around a scene stolen from everywhere. Seagal stands flanked by his cronies. A prophecy of armed combat swarms around them, their noses atwitch at the deathly fiend nearing them. And then it explodes into sight: a fiery menace sweeping up the narrative and announcing its change, a tornado of renaming and bastard connotation. The nexus is thrown open, a matrix-rotten glitch in the edifice of <span style="font-style: italic;">Lawman</span>. Up into the runtime it lunges, infecting the brainwork with antediluvian spite and resuscitating a past long dead.<p></p>Pulled over gothic misshapen forms – a grotesquery hanging in the air – the spectre shows its face. There floating, afloat time’s vacuity, a reference to Jean Claude Van Damme. Taken aback, Seagal on the ropes, a missile launches from a deputy, but gets deflected by the talk of Van Damme. “Arrest that fucker,” cries Seagal. Thus ignites a war against stardom, type-casting and sticky genre roots.<p></p>Throughout this season of <i>Lawman</i>, Seagal has attempted to create a schism between his police work and his film work. The latter does not exist. Dutiful patrols of the city proceed as though fame was entirely absent. There’s not a reek of <span style="font-style: italic;">Nico </span>while he admonishes hookers; there are zero knife fights during a DWI pullover. The filmic ego is dormant. The celluloid pyrotechnics, captured and enclosed within DVD form, once held the essence of Seagal; now reality discloses a different figure, sharply defined by its contrast to the former.<p></p>Yet, occasionally the genre backdrop becomes visible. Seemingly not even Seagal can fully escape the gravitational pull of the action B movie dynamic. But strangely this tethering is not orchestrated by the remnants of Seagal’s ego, nor his weak willed yes-men. It actually comes from the wicked men and women being arrested by Seagal. With cuffs strangling the hands and a jail sentence on the horizon, could there ever be a better time to draw Seagal back into the genre of his birth?<p></p>Possibly the best example of this is in the mid-season episode, “Medicine Man.” Seagal thinks he’s pulling over a typical drunk driver, a fool fresh out of the pool hall, loaded on whiskey, billiards for eyes. The last thing he expects is an explosion of geek conversation as the door opens. The perp spits his references every direction with not a care in his video-infused mind. Names cling to Seagal’s skin, damnable boils of rival spirits: Van Damme, Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris. The conversation turns to hypothetical battles, what actor would bear the name victor when set against Seagal. Back and forth, the exchange rages on as Seagal retires to the van to meditate, leaving his comrades to pump the justice juice down the man’s maw. But they, feeble minded as they are, fail to escape the confrontation free of infection. In a later episode, “Street Justice”, they bust Seagal’s balls over the Van Damme connection. Only a blank face denial can protect against accusations such as Seagal was battered senseless by Van Damme, or Seagal wept when threatened by Van Damme’s boot. Nonsense requires stoicism for survival purposes.<p></p>This latest episode has a delinquent dealer call Seagal “Mr Stallone.” Amidst laughter and ridicule, Seagal quietly backs into the shadows, a tear hastily wiped away, cursing his forsaken past. The schism malfunctions, damaged by an onslaught of tiresome rhetoric. Worlds collide on the back of a dubious reference. The lesson is that genre status can only be expunged temporarily; Seagal’s place in the order is secure and unshakeable, and no amount of repudiation will change that.</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-64711564744192942042010-01-30T17:37:00.003+00:002010-01-30T17:40:25.534+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 11 – "Street Justice"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbqOC9MHQrqfvvKf_-Riut56ZG_ezfueg8vdMhkAYQ72fdXKXgBE4ftEFsPhGzrv3kBkGdPdF5doifHClrcg9OtDnMdAUSiOKH59Xl4wIVEgH5eBqo5c_HyCR1GUki3Z7KVKdU2Q/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbqOC9MHQrqfvvKf_-Riut56ZG_ezfueg8vdMhkAYQ72fdXKXgBE4ftEFsPhGzrv3kBkGdPdF5doifHClrcg9OtDnMdAUSiOKH59Xl4wIVEgH5eBqo5c_HyCR1GUki3Z7KVKdU2Q/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432588610207979874" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">Not a lot has been missing from season one of <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span>. Each episode has buzzed with a wholesome singularity, the rules of society gloriously upheld, wanton acts fought by an unstoppable force. Dastardly youths have been seized, drug pusher antics curtailed, burglars slammed by the boot of justice. Consistent victims of the onslaught of evil, the neighbourhoods of Jefferson Parish have seen their thoroughfares purged of debasing foes and truculent intruders. Gleeful mammons have had their greed stones battered to mush. The charge led by Seagal, erasing negativity in a callous world.<p></p>Away from bettering society – in a narrative locked safely far from the menace of time – Seagal has visited sick children, trained attack dogs, fed hungry alligators, performed acupuncture and played a gig with his band Thunderbox. Zen wisdom has saturated his every word. Mystical somatic control has typified his every kick. Seagal’s presence is tethered to a disregard, surely arcane in character, to the limitations of reality. A polymathic freedom floats humbly airborne in the wake of his full-throttle nature. His level of certainty, held close to the core of Seagal, can be unhinged by no man.<p></p>Such has been the essence of season one of <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span>.<p></p>Yet one absence has been both glaring and subtle. Its unavoidable obviousness has rendered it invisible, adding equivocation to a set of affairs otherwise clear. By a strange dialectical inversion Seagal has transcended the antithesis stage to conjure a synthesis that blinds the beholder, shielding from sight an acute gap upon the topography of Seagal. The cost is high: a partner lost in the transition from one stage to another. Like Sherlock Holmes without Watson, Han Solo without Chewbacca, Seagal’s integrity is lessened as a result of his partner being absent.<p></p>Amid kinetic displays of roundhouse kicks and vengeful fists, Seagal’s films are marked by one dependable continuity: his ponytail. Thousands of scenes have receded into the past leaving only a scorched outline of ponytail, an indelible fragment of asses kicked and evil destroyed. Seagal’s ponytail – unerring in its capacity to act as more than mere adornment: a pulsating symbol of Seagal’s omniscience – stole easefully through the plot containers of <span style="font-style: italic;">Under Siege</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Out for Justice</span>, incurring neither harm nor insult. It blasted holes in adversaries, advancing to holy zeniths of ninety-minute mountains. The ponytail struck down barricades, tracing an unhindered path onward. Glowing at the heart of Seagal, but resting upon his head, was this object of unreserved victory, a greasy slick of hair captured in ponytail form.<p></p>But <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span> has no ponytail of which to speak. Recent episode “Street Justice” is a case in point. Seagal and his minions raid two crack dens, seeking a mix of substances and abusers. They discover the tiniest of crack rocks, far from anything substantial, and the individuals involved are mostly let go. Now, had Seagal possessed his ponytail, the crew would have stumbled upon a major drug-dealing operation. The motel room would look like a laboratory, all Bunsen burners and pipettes. Mind-fried junkies would writhe on the floor as a dreadlocked devil adjusts the settings on his chemistry set. Giant crack rocks would be found in the bathroom alongside forty snakes and a leper. It would transpire that a series of tunnels underneath the motel leads to Columbia. After three minutes of sprinting, Seagal and his gang emerge in the blistering jungle. Soaked in sweat, they find that a local businessman is pumping drugs into the US via the tunnel. An epic showdown ensues that ends with Seagal battling the businessman (clad in a special mechanical suit) on the top of a volcano.<p></p>The ponytail makes everything better.<p></p>Another example: after the drug bust, Seagal visits a kids’ karate school. He talks to the sensei and imparts some pithy words of wisdom to the youngsters – the usual stuff. But had he possessed his ponytail, Seagal would have noticed something odd about the dojo. Monotone voices and steroid-lit eyes would have alerted him to a wicked scheme, a plan to build an army of ultra-strong pre-teens. The megalomaniacal sensei would use these diminutive warriors to take over a military base under the masquerade of a school trip. Once in charge, he would start selling arms to terrorists. Upon unravelling the details, Seagal would have to fight off all the kids, before ending up in a tense confrontation with the sensei (now wearing a special mechanical suit).<p></p>I repeat: the ponytail makes everything better.</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-90778500115242948482010-01-23T17:16:00.001+00:002010-01-23T17:20:10.031+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 10 – "A Parish Under Siege"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih3fD2b_nNnMgoFnhd35q2tjJINZL3C3nWphxGN0aoQWfd0ArQY7ayrW5hxmyxC2GvIW2mBgKHB4vYA03mtxO8-8onc7jyY6v_M_HoT2LNV4g7juzRXcxIA34Fwaeq7WYYEFqjSQ/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih3fD2b_nNnMgoFnhd35q2tjJINZL3C3nWphxGN0aoQWfd0ArQY7ayrW5hxmyxC2GvIW2mBgKHB4vYA03mtxO8-8onc7jyY6v_M_HoT2LNV4g7juzRXcxIA34Fwaeq7WYYEFqjSQ/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5429985930707887570" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">Steven Seagal is a line graph, an image disseminated not only through the wet dreams of statisticians, but also through the pulse of television. The graph consists of two lines, both ascending, cast against a backdrop of his defeated enemies. Visually represented are the innumerable victories Seagal renders real in a season of <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span>. Halted outbreaks of evil plotted here and there; hints of profanation decimated along the X axis; a beast missing eyes, stomped supine by the boot of justice. All this lathers an otherwise vacuous system of cells with shimmering content and a reason to keep on looking.<p></p>A talent for waging dual wars spins two lines into the web of vertices and dots, two simultaneous campaigns captured by a graphically-intense suction, each line powered by a force labelled Seagal. One signals an ongoing mission, a mandated drive to prevent societal cataclysm; it purges the young and old of vice, eradicating a virus set to kill all that is moral and right. The other signals a need to shoot big rats.<p></p>The skill involved in balancing two such wars is rarely endowed upon a human. Seagal, however, has no difficulty maintaining two distinct fronts of attack. He battles one, he battles the other, united in a single instant of time. Of course we can only experience one of these at a time, hence Seagal’s staggered exhibition, his insistence upon unfolding the acts of each across an episode of <span style="font-style: italic;">Lawman</span>. Seagal is always two lines etched on a line graph. This is only a metaphor, but metaphor is our only recourse, our sole route to comprehending the phenomenon of timelessness in which Seagal flutters.<p></p>One crusade has a band of hardened warriors stripping society of liquor-fuelled ills. A Friday night, damp miasmic dimension of revelry, suffocating in its raw stench of alcohol. Pavements are made slippery by the wash of vomit; quietude is shattered by the screams of grannies. A wasteland yields loutish satyrs, a parading troupe seeking lager highs amidst a cacophony of echoing rap beats. Battered miscreants hide behind half empty whiskey bottles, scattering when hit by the beam of a flashlight. A dirty scene straight out of pulp dystopia.<p></p>Charged with quelling this turpitudinous Friday excess is Seagal and his warriors. They admonish drunk drivers, kick vodka from the hands of the obnoxious, punch sober impoverished bench-kippers. Society’s brutalised alcoholics, slaves to the paroxysm of immoderate alcohol abuse, are dealt a heavy dose of judgemental advice and urged to reduce their beer drinking. Yet Seagal’s righteousness is justified. Whilst in Japan, he learned to relax through meditation, not intoxication. Alcohol clouds the mind and inhibits one’s ability to kick ass. Seagal can administer his wise Zen words of reproof by dint of his alcohol-free head, a cloudless mind that sees danger flood the dry pastures of the parish every Friday night.<p></p>The other crusade sees a separate spread of rodents fought against. This time the rodents are not the figurative nonsense of hitherto, but real rodents. The bothersome bastards are eating away the banks of our rivers and the ground upon which we build our homes. These sinister fiends, these nutria, are wrecking livelihoods and erecting dens all over the city. Someone must tackle the problem and quickly. Enter Seagal. At last we will get a glimpse of how Seagal squeezes the world free of pests like the nutria. But no: exit Seagal. A zany ethical trance usurps Seagal’s good sense and he recedes into the background. Enter the local SWAT team. They and some of Seagal’s colleagues enjoy a mad time shooting rodents and swigging jars of ale. Meanwhile, Seagal sits with the SWAT boss discussing humane alternatives to the mass slaughter going on elsewhere. That no grand plans are devised is quite obvious when we see the episode end with Seagal thrusting a nutria corpse into the jaws of an alligator. Circle of life and all that.</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-82421161489144554672010-01-10T15:06:00.004+00:002010-01-10T19:00:50.578+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 9 – "Crack War"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimDM0_xTArZuvIlzhE1M-IuteTeTZ4x3pGMlL_CnexWr68nz7Qir2SayCsEeLK5p6sCRWxn00GCVClwdr1qZfyn-vhd_a6Q36DMuhL9Wnvb7eRvRMhNUm__IcB5Ta-VPO2LMPlcg/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimDM0_xTArZuvIlzhE1M-IuteTeTZ4x3pGMlL_CnexWr68nz7Qir2SayCsEeLK5p6sCRWxn00GCVClwdr1qZfyn-vhd_a6Q36DMuhL9Wnvb7eRvRMhNUm__IcB5Ta-VPO2LMPlcg/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5425128243924924898" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">The story of Steven Seagal is scarred by the imposition of limits. It’s a recurring phenomenon, manifested across the totality of his output. The world cannot apprehend the amorphous quality of Seagal; so, like a fluid that kicks your ass, Seagal is squeezed into predefined boundaries, packed into finite space, incarcerated within solid walls of formal convention. His natural home lies outside the realm of common understanding, a site of absolute alterity. But certain routines have become necessary, foisting upon the illimitable obligatory barriers of shape and circumscription. Out of sheer compassion, utter pity for our paltry cognitive capacity, Seagal chooses to step into a constructed web of meaning, a matrix through which his majesty becomes comprehendible.<p></p>Seagal’s transmogrification from mysterious immaterial essence to corporeal fixture – an esoteric process too complicated for dissection at present – is itself obviously beyond our grasp. Our only recourse is to infer the nature of this rebirth through its allegorical manifestation, i.e. Seagal’s artworks.<p></p>In <span style="font-style: italic;">Under Siege</span>, Seagal is forced to have a knife fight with Tommy Lee Jones. This involves forty seconds of rapid back and forth knife swiping as grimacing protagonists attack each other, cutting fresh scarlet upon the skin, the stark soundtrack one of clinking steel. Eventually Seagal stabs Lee Jones in the head and thrusts him into a monitor. The balletic interplay of the scene is apparent to us: the speed of the bodies, men tethered to an ill-begotten violence, fury captured in an endless series of cuts. But these are obstructions to Seagal’s true state. Had convention been abandoned, Seagal may have defeated Lee Jones by transforming the latter’s character William Stranix into Samuel Gerard from The Fugitive, in turn averting the impending fisticuffs.<p></p>Seagal is locked into a set of standards, as exemplified in <span style="font-style: italic;">Under Siege</span>. His innate urge for deviation can never assume the character of explicit action. Implicit inscription is our only key to this realm of possibility, interpretation our sole method for reaching Seagal’s metaphysical centre. Stranix represents the rigidity of form to which Seagal submits. Akin to how the ship is the container for all the action, offering definable spatial limits and an identifiable mise-en-scene, Stranix is a walking imposition that annuls Seagal’s greater imagination and turns it into a knife fight. Seagal’s subtle acquiescence must surely be the most selfless act in cinematic history.<p></p>Yet whilst cinema barricades Seagal into a corner of hyperbolic ninja kicks and cartoon gunfire, television eliminates from Seagal something else. Rather than drain his imaginative might, television establishes a new agenda for the ambulations of Seagal, new coercions that drive Seagal to assume the attributes specified by hardened televisual rules. Here the real world is attached to the body of the aikido master. Gone are the mad bullet-ridden battles and copious explosions; these replaced with cups of tea and trips to the toilet. Realism has saturated Seagal, expelling his most maniacal of revenge dreams, leaving him in a world of actual social problems, actual suffering, a place where actions have consequences. Reality imposes its own unique limits on Seagal and eliminates his fictional omnipotence. This is observable weekly in <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span>.<p></p>The latest episode has Seagal and his colleagues tackling drug abuse in Jefferson Parish. They scour the streets looking for crack pipes, bust ne’er-do-wells seeking unearned highs and delineate the ruses concocted to score weed. The cops know the tactics drug fiends use; they recognize the elaborate practices in place that allow the procurement of drugs to go undetected. Accurate intelligence enables the police to stay one step ahead of the dealers and the users. When Seagal visits a crack den, he delves through an endless array of tampons and lighters looking for a crack pipe. He finds nothing – lucky for the hookers that he forces to wait outside – but it’s this level of meticulousness that is required in Seagal’s war on drugs.<p></p>Later the gang drop by a rehabilitation centre. Seagal’s Hollywood experiences have toughened him to the perils of drug abuse, giving him first-hand knowledge of what drugs and alcohol can do to a person. He tells the patients that he’s proud of them and leaves.<p></p>These are the restrictions of real world social problems. In Seagal’s last domain, the filmic, he would have decapitated anyone insolent enough to even touch a crack pipe, cleansing society of illegal substance abuse in a neat ninety minutes. But in this realm the best he can do is organise a fundraiser for the rehab centre – a best legs contest – and nominate one of his colleagues to take part. Limiting the illimitable is a cruel sight to witness. Seagal’s face during the final scene, the burlesque performance in the foreground, is a visage ravaged by melancholy, a connotation of his disappointment at having to stage the fundraiser, sadness at his inability to simply punch the addiction out of the patients. “It’s a little risqué,” he whispers to someone. Yes, indeed, it’s an outright indecency to have Seagal languishing in a world of limits.</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-62996893456547202422010-01-09T22:30:00.004+00:002010-01-10T08:12:00.451+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 8 – "Medicine Man"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0NJ0KmwFBeu1Q4Z3oGWZ34blViKQgITFuTUzO7XO1vpmBPXg3trpRcqonUhGKHOuY_cElHSY9Oe_yeeoU0hiyj6YgNYvH9sle9UMt_FRzkB_pAU0iZU3ttA_Rn2YVC6NnLG5hWw/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0NJ0KmwFBeu1Q4Z3oGWZ34blViKQgITFuTUzO7XO1vpmBPXg3trpRcqonUhGKHOuY_cElHSY9Oe_yeeoU0hiyj6YgNYvH9sle9UMt_FRzkB_pAU0iZU3ttA_Rn2YVC6NnLG5hWw/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5424871256804847234" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">In the depths of night a strange vision occurs. Up flashes a hospital interior, lit neon white. A low electric hum is heard. Injured bodies lie propped against the walls, warbling a diminished sound. Medical instruments are scattered unused on tabletops. A few white coats rush around, taking aimless flight through the chaos. Vomit is splashed upon the floor. A hideous stench can be smelt.<p></p>A gong sounds from afar. A breeze hits the staid air. Anticipation shows on the faces of patients. Across the sterile concourse strides a man robed in black, a ponytail flicking in the slipstream. He reaches the first patient. His hand glides over the aching muscles, screams stifled by amazement, a diagnosis taking rapid form. Dulcet words leave his mouth. An exchange of mutual respect and up stands the man, cured of all his ailments. Forty seconds of rapturous applause. No seen source, just a spontaneous burst of sonic celebration, the sort that only one man can ignite.<p></p>This purveyor of medical miracles – a medicine man powered solely by energy expelled from Buddha’s bell end – is Steven Seagal. He harangues deadbeat doctors, smacks cancer out of an old woman and heals a gunshot wound. He mends broken limbs, donates sperm to an infertile couple and counsels a bereaved child. Hands act as mighty palliative machines, driving out disease and correcting bodily disorder. Words too are for him instruments of medical efficacy – watch as he persuades fungi to leave its host anus. Seagal is Hippocrates reincarnated as a badass. Not only does he soothe ills, but he kicks a man free of tuberculosis. Seagal lives to heal and does so unhindered by lack of qualifications, actual medical training, etc. A true medicine man needs none of these things, for they are the empty nonsense of egotists.<p></p>Such is essentially the plot of the latest </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: arial;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span><span style="font-family: arial;">. Getting somewhat tired of crushing criminals, Seagal decides to explore his medical skills. Cue an opening sequence where Seagal slowly removes his sheriff’s jacket, revealing underneath a glistening doctor’s smock. But this switching of professions isn’t just due to the usual ennui of life on the job. No, as always there’s a pretext. This week one of his colleagues has been experiencing a pain in his knee. A cop’s beat is hazardous, it often consists of sudden chases, unpredictable breakneck sprints through backyards, difficult leaps over fences. All of which are hard to achieve if one has a dodgy knee. Luckily, Seagal the medicine man is here with a solution.<p></p>“A lot of people don’t realise that Steven knows a lot about Asian medicine,” says the colleague. Yes, it’s true. I tried to tell somebody down at the bus stop five minutes ago but they didn’t believe me. They chose to hide behind a veil of scepticism and are foolish for it. Incredulity has no place when it comes to Seagal. But we know the truth: in the sixties Seagal travelled to Asia to study the martial arts, Buddhism, oriental medicine and herbology, and has been studying and practising ever since. This is obviously true.<p></p>Seagal escorts his pal to the Chinese medicine shop, where they discuss alternative medicine and the proprietor suggests acupuncture for the knee problem. Naturally this arouses fear in the inexperienced mind of Seagal’s colleague. So Seagal steps forward, needles in hand, ready for the big finale. He slaps twenty needles into the faulty knee, takes a bow, and strides out of the shop doing a victory dance.</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-46342603927802833102010-01-03T22:46:00.003+00:002010-01-04T06:25:27.881+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 7 – "To Live or Die"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSVyimk1xAkElbagBejouXAlb8lqiWl58jwTZ3S7KrzltuOLbMh9pHtG4oR1jgM1MHemJFo44Hb08IIRsWx7_FVT2q2jDe-dO02tC5T9HFTHxYZ8SLHngAyeV-rpOePYP8apwTnw/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSVyimk1xAkElbagBejouXAlb8lqiWl58jwTZ3S7KrzltuOLbMh9pHtG4oR1jgM1MHemJFo44Hb08IIRsWx7_FVT2q2jDe-dO02tC5T9HFTHxYZ8SLHngAyeV-rpOePYP8apwTnw/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5422649047730373810" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Defining the object should always be the first task of analysis. Narrow your eyes, focus on the object, trace the contours, ready the scalpel held clenched in the hand. It’s simple good practice. But Steven Seagal makes this difficult. His character – as we have witnessed it, a throbbing figure enclosed within the show </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Steven Seagal: Lawman</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> – is in possession of many diverse attributes. Multifaceted Seagal oscillates at a rate of knots, switching hats with nary a thought for continuity. One moment he’s the pinnacle of Zen calm, the next he’s a furious implement of the law. Within minutes he goes from lecturing on the dangers of guns to playing real life </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Time Crisis</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> in a tornado of grinning joviality.<p></p>Episode seven problematises our definition of Seagal even more. For some time Seagal and his comrades have been visiting victims of Hurricane Katrina, the poor people whose homes were wrecked in the storm. We see a couple having to rebuild their house from scratch. They are forced to live in a trailer by the side of the lawn, dedicating every spare minute to laying floorboards and putting in fresh windows. Misfortune has hampered their very existence. Luckily for them Seagal is coming round for tea. Not only does he sup down the tea with the finest Darjeeling swallow I’ve ever seen, but he also deigns to showcase a new skill. Enter Seagal the painter.<p></p>The maestro is seemingly a composition of innumerable tints. Cast across Seagal’s pupils are a thousand stelae, each one of which is inscribed with a long inventory of his skills. Alas we’ll never see them, never read their words, never study their meaning. All we have are the pronouncements given form in </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;" >Lawman</span><span style="font-family:arial;">.<p></p>Seagal, paintbrush in hand, splashes white upon the house walls, warmed by countless loving looks thrust at him by the couple. They appreciate his good deeds. Seagal eases into a Michelangelo trance, colours twenty Adams and seven Noahs, then leaves to join his boys on the street beat. The artist has many drains upon his time.<p></p>Intercut with this dazzling display of aesthetic elegance are scenes of brutal criminality. These two threads are generated to underscore the antithetical relationship between artisanal creation and criminal iniquity. What can be more the obscene opposite of art than the dirty murderers that Seagal and co spend half the episode chasing? Homicide has no place in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. We see the officers don sober faces and bemoan the attack on two men. Seagal, angst-ridden and approaching a stage of despair, takes a moment to quote from <span style="font-style: italic;">Madame Bovary</span> apropos their position: “our duty is to feel what is sublime and cherish what is beautiful.” Clearly the murderers hinder this mission. He goes on to poetically render his feelings further: “that really pisses me off bad.”<p></p>The episode ends with a final turn on the carousel of wildly burgeoning Seagalian talents. Seagal arrives back at the house-building couple. They have successfully rebuilt their home and are having a party to celebrate. Naturally they are jubilant at the arrival of Seagal. Not only has he brought upon them his presence, but he also comes bearing gifts. Enter Seagal the botanist. From the rear of his vehicle, now a makeshift greenhouse, come ferns and daffodils, roses and orchids, thick bushes of wholesomely verdant bamboo. The happy couple accept Seagal’s plants before Seagal rushes off to deliver a sycamore tree to another housewarming.</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-47756713823737092542009-12-20T17:36:00.004+00:002010-01-03T13:35:30.022+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 6 – "The Student Becomes the Master"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL3YyiQCrUscoscrl6hBZfQl_OzB3cWR9rTCHglkhRwRzkp4xzzAW7llUBgGdgVNUCm7cGAk8UJxmCJIoYgWX8QXef2qalV6ixNlXEAEJxF2Adb_ELIro0NBD0Ym22AFIoPeH9ew/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL3YyiQCrUscoscrl6hBZfQl_OzB3cWR9rTCHglkhRwRzkp4xzzAW7llUBgGdgVNUCm7cGAk8UJxmCJIoYgWX8QXef2qalV6ixNlXEAEJxF2Adb_ELIro0NBD0Ym22AFIoPeH9ew/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417373893934644914" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">False modesty is a disease, a damnable scourge afflicting the citizenry with pandemic efficiency. The streets are lined with countless darkened imprints of a vanished modesty. Faces skirt past sidewalks beaming a contrivance – a suit mid-stride offers words to erect a facade of humbleness. The victims constitute a number too large to write. They are the fathers of sighs, the wobbling pens of polemics too obvious to compose. Seventy mouths echo in one monotone scream a line spoken by Tartuffe: “I do far less for you than you deserve.” Vile masticators of kudos, they downplay their actions to engender the praise and respect of others.<p></p>Sailing past this woeful scene is Steven Seagal. He straddles the bow of the ship, trying to avert his gaze, using hands to block out the empty rhetoric that threatens his ears. But the island Earth stimulates his sympathy. He can’t resist its pitiful murmurs. Seagal cries out in a bellowing baritone voice, causing a strong wind, trees to sway, monkeys to run for cover: “Do you not know the damage you are doing? Humanity! Have you not heard my sermons? Do you not heed my teaching? Have you not seen <span style="font-style: italic;">Under Siege</span>?” And with that Seagal shakes his head and sails onward to Hades, a supreme ass-kicking on his mind.<p></p>Lessons only function if listened to. Parables only work when read. Seagal is only efficacious if heeded. When followers decide to ignore his wisdom, Seagal becomes the paragon of blamelessness. The propagators of false modesty have clearly cast from their minds the message of <span style="font-style: italic;">Under Siege</span>. They have through their actions excoriated the fine words of Seagal, words perhaps his finest, a sweep of syllables that exemplify his modesty: “I’m just a cook.”<p></p>During this season of <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span>, Seagal has understated his fame. He’s consistently deflected the spotlight, shoving it away from himself with modest Seagalian gusto. An early episode featured a group of bystanders chucking tributes at him – a challenge to his modesty. But he absorbed those applauds and moved on, giving the limelight a mere minute to gild his person. Another example: a felon gets slightly star-struck in episode five when he’s arrested by Seagal. He requests a handshake, which proves difficult as he’s handcuffed and facedown on the ground. Seagal’s ego feels nothing.<p></p>Episode six sees an explosion of fanfare hit Seagal. On a routine drive through the neighbourhood frantic shouts whack the side of the car. A tense moment of vibrating jowls and the expectation of imminent danger quickly passes as locals are seen waving to Seagal from their lawns. “Hey, that’s Steven Seagal”, they yell. Smiles appear on their faces as hands are pointed towards the icon. A head protruding from a kitchen window exclaims, “Now there’s a sexy man.”<p></p>Seagal accepts all the epithets thrown his way. Yet his modesty never dims. In fact, this outpouring of fanfare helps Seagal and his deputies to forge ties with the community. A close relationship with the people is a crucial aspect of police work and nothing breaks the ice better than, “Hey, look: Steven Seagal.”<p></p>Aside from the community work, this episode also has Seagal reminiscing about his old chief, a manly inspiration to Seagal who died a year ago. The bereaved family has Seagal arrive for a visit, where he nostalgically regales them with tales of the past, before they all go and visit the grave. In sombre tones Seagal speaks about continuing the good work begun by his fallen leader.<p></p>Seagal is a man entrenched in history. Notions of legacy and continuity contribute extensively to his nature and deeds. The present is constructed from the past. The present is a constant, a condition of seeming perpetuity, but the past is a site of expiration, a dwindling nexus of cherished love and life. Our retention of the past – yes, even Seagal’s – is an agonising chain of forgetting. Time is grasped precariously by hands too weak to hold it. History is subject to the whims of random chance and has little connection to the will of the individual. As Walter Benjamin once wrote: “The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognised and is never seen again.”<p></p>Seagal’s history is a sequence of images. Not only are his films a chronicle of a man’s flight through time, but <span style="font-style: italic;">Lawman </span>too reeks of the past. Episode six ends with the swearing-in ceremony of the new police chief. During the ceremony Seagal cries pictures of a younger Seagal posing with his deceased mentor. A skinny fresh-faced Seagal flashes upon the screen, stealing a second of recognition, before vanishing into the vacuum of the past, doubtless never to be seen again (until the rerun). </span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-3773881071034462009-12-19T19:46:00.003+00:002009-12-19T19:52:03.378+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 5 – "Firearms of Fury"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS6IdtDhi6d039AIZjzcd1yWcJYP2vtV7h1Mqa-f9OfnKA8cS_Rpbp95cTD4KtTtrKXFodiha0EFT848Vsc7Dher3yP5w7fVfybq6t3Mfcbg65Lj0zPePfZbiO-O1zZ_t-xLOIWw/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS6IdtDhi6d039AIZjzcd1yWcJYP2vtV7h1Mqa-f9OfnKA8cS_Rpbp95cTD4KtTtrKXFodiha0EFT848Vsc7Dher3yP5w7fVfybq6t3Mfcbg65Lj0zPePfZbiO-O1zZ_t-xLOIWw/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5417036333094663074" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">There’s a gene for masochism. There has to be. How else can we explain why the people of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana persist in breaking the law? Scientists have yet to scale the double helix in the detail necessary to reveal the hidden pores of these masochistic desires. The white coats stand aloof, shrugging shoulders in a gesture of undiscovered knowledge. The answer they murmur is no. Yet we see, week after week, a populace intent upon injuring the status of the law, bringing upon themselves a heavy dose of ironclad justice.<p></p>But that in-itself isn’t overly masochistic. Individuals are sometimes coerced into criminality. Be it an impulse born of poverty or exploitation, a range of determinants foist upon the good and the decent a life formed solely by illegal pursuits.<p></p>Where an unambiguous self-hate becomes manifest is when we consider he who is the harbinger of justice in this equation. Most parishes in Louisiana have sheriffs made of bone and blood – numerous flesh creatures ambulating through time and space. These are men and women whose lives are fraught with imperfection. They are professionals who defecate between patrols, entertain lusty thoughts about co-workers, and cry at forgotten memories just remembered.<p></p>Jefferson Parish, on the other hand, has to contend with a force so utterly perfect as to make us laugh outrageously at the actions of criminals and wrongdoers. At the core of their law troop stands Steven Seagal. Yes, that’s right: Steven Seagal, deputy sheriff.<p></p>To break the law in Jefferson Parish cannot be anything other than a purposeful attempt to satisfy deep psychological neuroses. The kid who steals twenty packs of Doritos from the local convenience store is seeking to damage himself, for he enters a state of guaranteed failure as soon as his act finds reality. It may be the inability to feel genuine emotion in this epoch of rampant simulacra. Or the redundancy of a survival instinct no longer needed in order to live. Either way, little Tommy’s getting busted – and he might get a forceful Seagalian boot in the backside for the trouble.<p></p>Tonight’s masochists are all hoodlums with guns. After several seconds of introductory Seagalian fervour, we catch Seagal and co charging through the city on their way to a gun-related incident. An eight-foot wolf has threatened a greengrocer – a vicious scene happening far from Seagal’s corporeal presence. The report confirms that the wolf yelled nasty words like “I will give you a right shootin’” and “Gimme that turnip” at the frightened grocer. Eventually Seagal’s brigade encounters the wolf trying to make a getaway in his jeep. But the beast is too slow, and to worsen his predicament, Seagal finds a firearm in the backseat. No amount of baying can deactivate Seagal’s furious stare – that is the lesson offered the wolf.<p></p>This episode, the fourth of the series, continues an examination initiated by Seagal in episode one. Then he participated in various games of shooting practice, propelling swarms of bullets at the heads of matches, startling everyone around him with his godly accuracy, while simultaneously propounding assorted Zen-gunfire maxims.<p></p>But this time the ‘guns are fun’ ethos of episode one has morphed into something else. Here we witness a complete inversion. The rich colours of burly blokes slapping ninety bullets into paper cut-outs amid laughter and good cheer is now a dank monochrome pit of pain and loss. Seagal races over tarmac to reach a man shot in the back. The report delineates the happening: on the corner stands a young chap, happily bullet-less, when suddenly up pulls a car driven by Biff Tannen, shotgun protruding through the window, and click – in a split second the chap standing on the corner is transformed into a victim. It’s this sort of brutality that summons profanity to the lips of Seagal. As the medics wrangle with the wound, Seagal shouts down at him, “It’s a dirty motherfucker shoots you in the back, ya hear me?”<p></p>I’m sure he did hear him. Bullet or no bullet, to ignore the words of Steven Seagal is a grave mistake that not even the ruffians of Jefferson Parish would dare commit.</span><br /></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-54817782725860661652009-12-13T16:57:00.005+00:002009-12-13T17:05:54.534+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 4 – "Too Young to Die"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT2tYLBkyL6WbtPykbvX2pDDbQSzxwUj-Gka0TMW9A9ddaK8LwE_Qu5DhecESYhc_UTxEa924PWOpSXrERRy1UjPlUHBsZzM5hBsauPiKlxa-uV4R5RFCj3PNlMbIiEdaPooViEg/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT2tYLBkyL6WbtPykbvX2pDDbQSzxwUj-Gka0TMW9A9ddaK8LwE_Qu5DhecESYhc_UTxEa924PWOpSXrERRy1UjPlUHBsZzM5hBsauPiKlxa-uV4R5RFCj3PNlMbIiEdaPooViEg/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414766153112304322" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">If the contemplation of art is united with a suitably assiduous mental effort, one can see on the canvas fragments of what might have been. Shadows of possibility lie embedded within the image, ghosts of ideas long-dismissed, ideas smote by the very mutability that heralded their original being. The visual assemblage always leaves a gap in its form, a cue for the overactive mind to insert what it deems lacking.<p></p>Consider Francisco Goya’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Saturn Devouring His Son</span>. When we look at it we see a foreground in which the titular god, conceived as a giant deistical beast, feasts upon his offspring with ruthless alacrity. It’s a scene of compelling brutality – a crime that resonates with the deepest human compulsion for procreation. But stare into the darkness behind Saturn’s form for long enough and a new figure appears. Sneaking up behind him is Steven Seagal. Seagal wears a face of steely determination, head shot through with anger, a man about to beat down an infanticidal son-of-a-bitch.<p></p>We do not know why Goya chose to have Seagal as merely implicit in the painting. He could easily have had Seagal kicking Saturn in the side of the head whilst a virtuous nymph picks up the child. Or Seagal could have punched Saturn in the arsehole, causing the latter to release the child. But Goya opted to leave Seagal as a faint phantasm, a threatening bodily fog set as the moral antithesis to Saturn’s crazed power-trip.<p></p>One thing is for certain: Seagal will not tolerate harm being done to children.<p></p>This is also the primary thrust of episode four of <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span>.<p></p>Following a stormy intro sequence of weird shapes and furious cuts, Seagal and co are seen driving through a neighbourhood on patrol. The night has brought about its daily eruption of misdemeanour and iniquity. A man-sized mantis kicks over bins. A winged-demon soars through the air, someone’s pet feline clutched in its talons. Twenty harpies engage in vociferous debate with a politician. Each scene yearns for Seagal’s mighty fist of righteousness, an angelic remedy that only Seagal can distribute. The chupacabra defecating on the sheriff’s lawn needs ninety kilojoules of Seagalian punishment, the citizenry cries out for it.<p></p>But the nocturnal monsters will have to wait, for Seagal is required elsewhere.<p></p>A call comes in: a baby’s been hit by a car. The lights go on. The sirens start to chime. They rocket past other drivers, speeding to their destination, unsure of what to expect. All exit the car when they arrive. A mass of confusion meets them. Questions launch from Seagal’s face; a quiz now underway. Turns out the baby’s okay, there’s just a scratch. The nipper ran on to the road, the driver swerved – all is well. Let’s go home, let’s forget about it. But Seagal is not done; the incident has him greatly inspired.<p></p>Next day, Seagal and the lads visit the local children’s hospital. As Seagal says:<p></p>“For about twenty-five years I’ve gone to children’s hospitals all over the world.”<p></p>Yet, amidst poignant shots of Seagal chatting to terminally-ill kids – a commendable enterprise, no doubt – Seagal lets slip a frightening fact:<p></p>“Unfortunately me and my team can’t fight disease.”<p></p>What! There was me thinking I could rely on Seagal to beat my cancer, should that damnable day ever arrive. It’s immensely displeasing, but thankfully the rest of episode four is of such quality as to fully-eradicate the melancholy.<p></p>Enter Seagal the songster.<p></p>Not content with the visit, Seagal decides to organise a gig to raise funds for the hospital. Suddenly there’s an explosion of blues, the screen lashed by a chain of pentatonic scales. Twangy guitars are wielded, piano keys battered – poppin’ bass licks intermingle with smooth gospel humming. A carpeted rehearsal space quickly transforms into a packed bar, looseness giving way to the tight bang of a live ensemble.<p></p>Encouraged by the heady rush of the music, Seagal becomes ruminative, losing himself in a mad mental sojourn. In the end he evokes another great thinker held captive by the sonic dynamic:<p></p>“Nietzsche said…life would be a mistake without music.”<p></p>As Seagal is doubtless aware, that aphorism from <span style="font-style: italic;">Twilight of the Idols</span> ends with the line:<p></p>“The Germans even think of God as singing songs.”<p></p>Clearly, if we take the audience’s reaction to Seagal as an indicator, it’s not only the Germans who deign to worship a tuneful god.</span><br /></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-30750988479562372502009-12-12T19:45:00.004+00:002009-12-12T19:55:16.141+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 3 – "Killer Canines"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKsQSfJqGQKJraVeXfORAnAomxrA4DBhXAG-zCxaS71Yxje_dUM9K9G8-q3dZeQkiAtLAu8zyCaIPdwhgZjRIJgZmAlQRBnIakKIPXZQZbxckCKoaOhkRBt9Ye78ZQs8I3bj_2vA/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKsQSfJqGQKJraVeXfORAnAomxrA4DBhXAG-zCxaS71Yxje_dUM9K9G8-q3dZeQkiAtLAu8zyCaIPdwhgZjRIJgZmAlQRBnIakKIPXZQZbxckCKoaOhkRBt9Ye78ZQs8I3bj_2vA/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414438498770999218" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">Minutes are compressed into seconds. The police car speeds furiously across tarmac and pavement, bolting forward through a gauntlet of haze, the hegemony of <span style="font-style: italic;">colour obscura</span>: the warped cerulean discord of the siren sky, the smoke-ravaged hiss of a sullen red motorway – dream visions of a forgotten chase, a burst of zero meaning, all wobble and urgency, a needless exposition.<p></p>Time spit upon, bullied into supinity, cut into millions by a serrated Seagal, like a razor-wire minute-hand cut from the cloth of Chronos. The mad gallop ahead speaks of necessity, rendering a definite destination, lessening the hectic confusion by permitting a slight glance at the future. Seagal can already be seen stepping from the vehicle, torch hoisted high above his head. He advances on to the lawn to join his colleagues. The time has been shattered, the days and hours mutated beyond comprehension. Several miles traversed in one terrifyingly jagged opening sequence.<p></p>Forty thousand minutes consumed in forty blinks of the eye, gifts to the belly of Seagal, a stretch of time willingly struck down, its suicide the awesome entrance to episode three of <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span>.<p></p>A burglary is underway. Someone’s stealing picket fences from the ‘burbs. The underworld rises to the surface at night, summoned by the sun’s disappearance. A demon throws terrapins at the elderly from a rooftop, several banshees piss in a phone booth. The streets are now scenes of villainy, the peaceful daytime transformed into endless yards of spewed filth, stomata-sprayed scum lines the roads, a heinous gangrene spreading virulently throughout society. Tiny imps punch ballbags at inopportune moments. A snake-jawed thug batters coins out of passersby.<p></p>But Steven Seagal is here to quell the evil.<p></p>The police car decelerates as Seagal jumps from the passenger side. Others rapidly join his side as he runs to the house. Circles of torchlight smack the windows as Seagal tries to ascertain if the burglar is inside. A detailed check from the outside yields nothing but impatient faces. Seagal stands alone on the lawn, legs apart, a right hand clutching his chin, lost in the infinity of thought. Then his eyes widen, two giant spheres moistened by the effort of rumination. It’s time to get the dogs in.<p></p>Canine Branch pulls up. A brawny handler leads the mutt to the house. In through the window he goes. His mission: track down the bad guy. Sadly a conspicuous silence tells Seagal and co that the bad guy has already escaped. Lucky chap. Maybe next time he won’t be so lucky – perhaps he will break into the wrong house, as Seagal says:<p></p>“If this guy had broke into my house my dogs might have killed him.”<p></p>These are serious words uttered by Seagal. They also announce the theme of this week’s episode.<p></p>Often I have wondered what Seagal does when he’s not producing quality cinema and diminishing society’s evils in the form of sheriff duty. Well now I know: he’s training attack dogs.<p></p>Since Seagal’s teenage years he’s been training dogs for protection. Adolescence is a key stage of personal development, vital to the creation of a recognisable subjectivity. It’s a time that sees numerous attempts to distinguish oneself from one’s parentage by experimentation and rebellion. Adolescence is marked by rapid change, both biological and psychological. Fads are adopted and discarded; the line between individuality and conformity carefully trod. Teenagers trundle through many identities and tastes. But rarely does a teenager go through a training attack dogs phase. I guess that’s what makes Seagal such an ubermensch.<p></p>Most of the episode has Seagal attempting to train his new dog, a shaggy beast from Eastern Europe named Frankie. This canine finds it difficult working with Seagal’s current dog Kar, so Seagal gets a special trainer in to forge an alliance between the two. Cue a number of role-plays where a man is attacked by the dogs and Seagal yells “Stop” a lot.<p></p>A busy man like Seagal needs reliable beasts to guard his family whilst he works, hence the reason why this episode focuses on Seagal’s dogs. These are his hairy deputies, feral weapons that guard a Seagal-less household. They are not perfect but will have to do until he can get himself several centaurs for the purpose.</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-9702335518813817482009-12-06T21:01:00.002+00:002009-12-06T21:03:54.747+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 2 – "The Deadly Hand"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Fej5Q97mjZz0DKHX1KWV1C-3kI4POGBJ3wQpSQbUPxmaMU-5oVeUeso4UUBy3KtNt1WqSdynlE6QrSebEF058xiJnX78961fS2VOAbnTVqpqwwv8i2McFQJM_vgwvZI6Q68EJQ/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_Fej5Q97mjZz0DKHX1KWV1C-3kI4POGBJ3wQpSQbUPxmaMU-5oVeUeso4UUBy3KtNt1WqSdynlE6QrSebEF058xiJnX78961fS2VOAbnTVqpqwwv8i2McFQJM_vgwvZI6Q68EJQ/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412231290700347426" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">The silence is shattered by a hoarse jagged scream coming from the corner. An unseen assailant wears nothing but a frozen heroin grin. The damp night darkness dominates everything, casting a net of evil over every trace of light. Iniquity hides in blots of blackened sidewalk, out of sight, out of understanding, a derelict space of inhumanity. In each shadow runs a thousand scenes of law-breaking, every cutlet of skin a night’s toil for a brazen knife – grim nocturnal tyranny foisted on the unsuspecting and the innocent.<p></p>Such is the dank Louisiana cityscape prior to the arrival of Steven Seagal. His very presence erases the bad, the sordid, the lustful nightmare dynamic of pent-up, foil-lipped libidinal excess that’s spewing out over curb-stones and old grannies nightly. Seagal quells the mad rush of Tiamatian lunacy and unbounded eroticism. “The jecks” knew no limits before Seagal arrived to introduce a generous dose of civilisation. The panoptic eye gazes out from a gap in Seagal’s lower thigh.<p></p>Episode two of <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span> documents Seagal’s infinite hunger for justice, his undying determination to rid the streets of negative energy and mediocre “Zen practitioners”. The mission will demand all of Seagal’s powers. He will be forced to summon countless tidbits of wisdom, applying knowledge to situations of dire import.<p></p>Certainty is rarely possessed by the hero. Its fleeting presence eludes the grasp of so many. Yet Seagal clenches certainty in all its plenitude, trapping its divinity in a single fist.<p></p>This certainty provides Seagal with an endless amount of confidence. Years spent studying the martial arts have made him impervious to panic, immune to the onslaught of fear. Invincibility wears a mask stitched by Seagal. No attack exists for which he cannot harness an instant defence. But his fellow officers are not so blessed. They, the fools, have not spent forty years studying the intricacies of aikido. A mix of pity and concern leads Seagal to put on a training session for these helpless souls.<p></p>A sweat-stinking gym is the stage for Seagal’s transmission of wisdom. Craven eyes surround him as he delineates the philosophy of his fighting style. Use the opponent’s momentum, capture the forward thrust, enfeeble the attacker, drive him down, expel no effort, be a winner, make it look easy. Fortune will meet the focused consumer of high Seagalian teaching. He guarantees that frequent practise will turn even the puniest, the most shite, into hardcore warriors, wholesome symbols of meritorious equity, the colossal-hearted figures of a modern day gigantomachia. Seagal is forging an army of epic proportions. His pupils know it: each visage grows more and more admiring with every demonstration, more and more the colouration of love with every choice word of encouragement.<p></p>The episode ends with another training session. Here a team of trainee cops are the recipients. A mass of youthful faces stares star-struck at Seagal as he describes the combat arts. The natural philosopher surprises with his erudition, throwing expectations into a fire of juvenile wrongs. He advises them to forget all the nonsense about Steven Seagal the movie star, discount the unimportant in favour of the crucial message, the one maxim we must all cherish: “Steven Seagal can save my life”.<p></p>Yes he can. </span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-67694217861252079152009-12-05T19:12:00.006+00:002009-12-05T19:22:34.540+00:00Steven Seagal: Lawman – Season 1 Episode 1 – "The Way of the Gun"<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNkCRnlc8_2CRQvfEh23375OIq6NKo8fPHFymKJVwONqu9d74nnrm0A_Fu4imcDZdhs0DJ05-6yJepGwlkMFFcfnSDF9s5OOBadyjaonq5xsOUBLaOk-c97yU4c5Ejv_YiWUUyA/s1600-h/seagallawman.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 304px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNkCRnlc8_2CRQvfEh23375OIq6NKo8fPHFymKJVwONqu9d74nnrm0A_Fu4imcDZdhs0DJ05-6yJepGwlkMFFcfnSDF9s5OOBadyjaonq5xsOUBLaOk-c97yU4c5Ejv_YiWUUyA/s320/seagallawman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411832375987027522" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Here we sit, arms interlocked, happily cohesive, happily idolatrous, happily sharing a rich platter of preconceived ideas. All thoughts point to one thing: Steven Seagal, exemplar of the arts, muse to the masses, bounteous treasure of humankind, is a presence whose force exists on a single plane, a splashing liquid life held inside one container, easily definable, easily spoke of, a friend to a simple understanding. The filmic rivers flow full of Seagal, alluvium of ass-kicking action coating every shingle, a righteous dynamic that constitutes the very integrity of the medium. Seagal is a movie star. His literature consists of pictures and sounds. He embellishes his theorems with car chases. He paints scenes in technicolour fisticuffs. Seagal is cinema and cinema is Seagal.<p></p>Yet our grasp loosens, we begin to cling with less force, our faces turn pale as news arrives to contradict all held dear. Not one but two, a duality, blocking the path, dissolving the singularity, superimposing a new state of multiplicity.<p></p>There are two Steven Seagals.<p></p>One is Steven Seagal, fictional officer of the law, a symbol of justice battering bad guys and keeping the streets clean. The other is Steven Seagal, actual officer of the law, a symbol of justice battering bad guys and keeping the streets clean.<p></p>What’s that? A man known for throwing his foes down elevator shafts is a cop in real life?<p></p>Fiction has truly spilled over into reality. I wonder if two decades’ worth of leg snapping, neck breaking ultraviolence will make the transition. There’s been a breach in the cinematic hull somewhere, make-believe vocations are rapidly escaping, spraying out unhindered. Seagal just punched a giant ontological hole in the fiction-reality divide.<p></p>But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what Seagal says:<p></p>“I make a living in the movies, but for the past twenty years I’ve also been a cop. And along with some of the finest deputies on the force, I serve the people of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana. My name is Steven Seagal. That’s right. Steven Seagal, Deputy Sheriff.”<p></p>So there you go, the hole’s been there all this time and you never even noticed. Shame on you.<p></p>Anyway, Seagal’s sprung from the cop closet for a new reality TV show called <span style="font-style: italic;">Steven Seagal: Lawman</span>. This pseudo-<span style="font-style: italic;">Cops </span>docu-diary series follows Seagal as he plays at police duty, busting hoodlums for possession, patrolling the “jects” and what-have-you. Shaky vomit-inducing cameras capture Seagal as he and his colleagues pile on a carjacker making attempts to avoid "juvie". Blurry collages of blue and red flank the screen as Seagal and co are called off the road to silence a drunken ne’er-do-well. All of this set to a soundtrack of shouty Seagal Zen-words and street-addled ambience.<p></p>To rest our eyes and ears from the gritty reality of quelling injustice, we get short scenes of Seagal showing a younger colleague how to shoot like a master marksman. The demonstrations are punctuated by sagacious words, slim aphoristic wisdom encouraging the neophyte to push the bullet, to guide the bullet, to be one with the bullet, give himself to the action without trying. Like a horrifically-inflated Yoda, Seagal leads by example: not content with successfully shooting the heads of cotton buds from a distance of twenty feet, he tries to light a match by shooting it. Alas this proves hard to achieve and Seagal retires for forty hours’ meditation in the fortress of Seagalitude.<p></p>Well, what did we learn from the first episode?<p></p>Steven Seagal is an ordinary working man, a duty-bound pillar of the community, identical to those he serves. His quotidian everyday-ness is a rebuke to the Hollywood stereotype, for he is a man respected as one with the commons, dishing up banquettes of justice for the poor and the hungry. Sure he wears sunglasses indoors and signs autographs, but regardless, the proletariat knows no better example. </span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-82149887755535105322009-09-26T17:15:00.008+01:002009-09-26T17:31:12.496+01:00The First Power<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTe44PysINBnnnsuF06T2snr5kdoIya8I08sw4sfJlTPwQjJU-tIuG6czmobYXnehk9RuZcpAi_k0PMTk92Kx_021rmDWeC20Fsrx3iWZ1lcHOe7uypSjEpnLVZD7HMkegNxomKA/s1600-h/firstpower.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 230px; height: 280px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTe44PysINBnnnsuF06T2snr5kdoIya8I08sw4sfJlTPwQjJU-tIuG6czmobYXnehk9RuZcpAi_k0PMTk92Kx_021rmDWeC20Fsrx3iWZ1lcHOe7uypSjEpnLVZD7HMkegNxomKA/s320/firstpower.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385811349012764498" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Sixteen minutes, twenty yards. Time-lapse retinas screen the image. In rotation are twisted looks, unblemished contortions, signals of a face in motion, a battle endlessly fought, a soaring fable forging pathways through the gloomy melancholy. Sixteen minutes ago it ended, struck off the video box in a display of sparks, an unfiltered electromania, dazzlingly dangerous, an unforgettable jet stream of neon and static – and at that moment, fear beyond fear: a blackout.<p></p>Four hours, a kebab shop up the road. Loose-hanging limbs smack the face on entry. A few distorted apologies are issued, benign words spoken by earnest fellows unsettled by the malformed crawling shape. Lug this body, lug it good. Tersely mumbled well-wishes descend into theatrics: the prophet finds his temple. Slumped in the corner, debilitated arms and legs – recklessly dirt-covered and smelling of faeces – lying supine as the spoken bullshit rolls forth. “Let me tell you gents a fine tale. Perhaps the finest. There was once a man, a hard working man, a man of the law. His name was Russell Logan, but he mostly went by the name Lou Diamond Phillips.” At this point a turtle-necked ruffian interrupts. “Who?” he asks. Suppressing the primordial urge to beat said fellow senseless with a crowbar and a hammer, I deny all knowledge of his question and continue.<p></p>Thirty minutes, the corner of the avenue. The pavement is shimmering, clotted cracks yielding images. Pentagrams painted in blood. A serial killer stalking the stage. Homicides reported with haste. A spooky mask wears a silhouette holding a knife. What calamity! What nasty denigration of the human being! A cold wind thrusts a crisp packet into the face. The soiled curb again memorialises the events that began two hours ago. There sits Diamond Phillips in his apartment, half-eaten pizza and a cat his only pets. The phone rings. A mad nun on the line. She tips him off, her whispers describing the location of the next murder. Rising, striding, gun clasped in iron hands of Awesome: seven leagues east, a hero throttling through space to prevent an evil force. Give up, bad man, you’ve killed your last – the Sheriff of Fuck is on his way.<p></p>Nine minutes, one yard. A hazy recollection forces open tired eyes. Two rhythms: the first a dynamic Diamond Phillips chasing villain Patrick Channing; the other a body prostrate on the floor. One a sweeping mass of gunfire and barked commands; the other a state of inertia. The explosion that coincided with the end of <i>The First Power</i> must have rendered the body still. The recall is utter excitement, but the physical reality is corporeal shutdown. A tiny image maintains the spirit. Diamond Phillips knocks the bad guy to the ground, pummelling him with fists. Channing, with cheeky disdain, fights back, stabbing our hero three times in the belly. But the assault isn’t enough to disable Diamond Phillips. He returns with kicks and screams, ushering in a Lou Diamond Victory.<p></p>Two hours, the stench of tarmac. A grotty boot swings pendulum-like, causing havoc in the lower sternum, abdominal pains looming large. It’s a copper. He’s trying to disengage me from the road, a bed to which I cling. Hollers of Up, Up, Up ring with each kick. A few seconds of sentience hit me, enough time to yell a bitter rebuke to his life and ideals: “He got the death penalty!” I spit. “But that wasn’t enough. He came back. Back from the dead. Damnable spirit! He’s got the first power: the power of resurrection. How can Diamond Phillips fight a supernatural being? Channing – I understand he’s a minion of Lucifer – can possess any body. He’ll jump into someone; use their hands to enact his dirty deeds. Could be you!” I point a mottled finger at the copper. “I don’t know. We don’t know. Who knows? Diamond Phillips doesn’t know. Eh? His psychic sidekick aids the hunt, but I worry. I can’t remember the ending. I can’t feel my limbs.”<p></p>Ten minutes, one yard. I must escape this confinement. I need to rip asunder these walls. If I’m destined to fall into the empty world below then so be it. I can already see the innocent faces, oblivious, desolate – they lack the mana, the heavenly brew that only Lou Diamond Phillips can supply. The pupating solace, locked in a thousand memories, seeks freedom. It can’t withstand the penitentiary of the head. A breach will occur. I must jolt this shell of a body out of here, away from the epicentre, brave the colossal antagonisms of the outside, sacrifice comfort in the name of <i>The First Power</i>, tug tight the underlings and lick them clean of confusion. Fall to the floor. A shattering interjection, a gloss of resurging images: demon Channing playing games with Diamond Phillips, bounding in and out of bodies, creating chaos, paranoia, grumpy faces; death dealt by the hero has no effect, a swift leap later and Channing resides in another; hobos, alcoholic cops, nuns, bag ladies who imitate slapstick deadites: all are victim to Channing, all are targets of Diamond Phillips – scorn and shotgun await.<p></p>Five hours, a kebab shop up the road. Quaffing down a can of lager the ruffian eyes me dubiously. “Say that again, you worm.” I shoot him an angry glance, irritated. “An old abandoned waterworks,” stressing each syllable. His strained features ease. “What, like in <i>Lethal Tender</i>?” “Yes, kind of, now shut up.” A shake of the head suffices to exhibit annoyance. “As I was saying, big showdown, epic combat, stretched across netherworlds and our own, the triumph of Diamond Phillips, the extinction of Channing. What a time. The full extent of the tension, I can feel it; it’s a feeling that’s replaced every other feeling I’ve ever had. Channing gets thrown into a vat of acid. Then gets blown up. But still he comes back. It takes forty stabbings with the Jesus dagger to finally destroy the beast. Bring us into the light, Diamond Phillips! But no, you’ve got shot. The cops thought you were trying to stab a nun. Their mistake. But too late. You’re in a coma. The missus sits by your side; her psychic ability can't help you now. Bequeath us your powers, Lou Diamond Phillips; we may need them next time Channing returns.” At this point: a few blinks, some minor convulsions. A man decides he’s heard enough and throws a chip at me on his way out. The bastard. </span><br /></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-20005676452433846442009-07-27T22:56:00.009+01:002009-07-27T23:11:24.937+01:00Quaidscape Dream Potlatch<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvCywHMriHh-KIiR_i_DXGtmqPv_klyXtQ1m3FQJMxI2fId98UWn9zbBDr7KwvN42AiJzwAESA6jEN2xQGnkR7HtIFdPYcEu0Q56ClMUVhDOlLEWLJOK8Zg_H4iLWJU1RsEThHsg/s1600-h/Dennis-Quaidscape.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 301px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvCywHMriHh-KIiR_i_DXGtmqPv_klyXtQ1m3FQJMxI2fId98UWn9zbBDr7KwvN42AiJzwAESA6jEN2xQGnkR7HtIFdPYcEu0Q56ClMUVhDOlLEWLJOK8Zg_H4iLWJU1RsEThHsg/s320/Dennis-Quaidscape.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5363262338887932210" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Free daily newspapers swarm across the train carriage. Seven teenagers cower next to the sliding doors, hands held, earphones crisscrossing, the buzzing of faint guitar riffs filling the space between here and the next stop. Gnarled faces look askance at the cohort, gazes shifting at five second intervals, now concern, now indifference. A foul stench of ink and manufactured need diffuses in the staid air. The plague gets ever worse in the land of sun hours, the deep blue glow of months held aloft by titan summer hands, punishing swelter, a chthonic squeezing. A man gets smacked awake by an advertisement for Tunisia. A child screaming has its ululation silenced by a paparazzi fold-out – forty pages of tight angle leg snaps. <p></p>A young fellow stands near the rear, Young Gottlieb we’ll call him. His eyes bounce over pages of the most meritorious journalism, eyes buoyant in their absorption of relevant information, all that pulsating knowledge, true knowledge, the innumerable vital words that ceaselessly escort wisdom to inviting minds. His tail, were he to be so endowed, would right now be oscillating furiously at the excitement induced by this product of the press. Headlines and blurbs, reportage, cropped images of celebrities checking their email. Tireless hands fold one page into another, vestigial punctuation blurring into grimacing promotions coated in cyan.<p></p>A moth shoots past, now clinging to the window, a stain soon apparent. <p></p>Our young hero skips three pages, his enlarged neocortex pushing him forward, a bodily flow through the river of content. There it is, the TV listing open before him, casting rays onto his face, a rich yellow colouring anew his skin. His now-bulging forehead dips as he moves his eyes closer to the page. A few seconds pass as daylight’s programming is consumed, chewed up and discarded. Now the turn of night.<p></p>Suddenly the prophet sees his messiah. With a head looking more and more misshapen, Young Gottlieb sports a smile. He knows what is lying on page sixty-two. Never before has he had precognitive powers, but this time is different, this time an antediluvian spark spun from forgotten, dusk-hewn corners of his brain has left him with no doubts: page sixty-two is patched together in strands of Quaid. <p></p>Young Gottlieb – his head now beyond the limits of curvature – stares into the pages. <span style="font-style: italic;">Dreamscape</span> is on tonight. Broadcast during the segue of the days, a bridge to tomorrow, how fitting. Epic nightfall treats are not mere items on the agenda, they are the agenda – and the agenda is written on the grinning face of Dennis Quaid. <span style="font-style: italic;">Dreamscape</span>, thrust into repeated existence by randomness, is a treat in plural, its number not restricted to the inertia of one.<p></p>A jubilatory march erupts somewhere nearby – perhaps someone else knows the news.<p></p>Bubbles rise from Young Gottlieb’s head, spherical nebulae escaping from a fissure in his scalp. In them are contained concrete moments of Proustian glee. First a memory of a child’s viewing of <span style="font-style: italic;">Dreamscape</span>. The precocious sprite sat down opposite the screen, distracted twitches of the head suggesting a preference for other things. Then rupture: images no longer filtered through the cathode ray, now spooled through miles of cranial flesh. The <span style="font-style: italic;">Dreamscape </span>effect has the child delirious – assimilating or being assimilated, it’s hard to tell.<p></p>A second bubble has a spotty teenager being given a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Dreamscape</span>. A scene of festivity surrounds the gift-giving. The bubble floats along the ceiling of the train, before reaching a hairy man engaged in a paperback. Initially he sees his reflection, the vain image forced upon him. A moment passes before the bubble reveals its innards. He seems affected by the scene of generosity. Pop. A splattering of mind pus later and he’s recoiling back into his paperback.<p></p>More bubbles sail through the air. One has Max von Sydow kneeling before a masked figure, seemingly pleading something, an imp prancing around behind him, cutting his Bergman chains, shoving him into exile. Another has Quaid helping a young disabled child cope with his nightmares. Beside a hipster lands a bubble in which Quaid fights a demon beast, Belial or some such, with a fork. A tourist watches a bubble ricochet off a window, the image of shameless Quaid grinning at a blonde swirling at its centre.<p></p>A noise is heard from the rear. It’s Young Gottlieb. His head has stretched to breaking point. Two seniors wrap themselves in newspaper, afraid of the imminent mess. Pop. Sheets of ooze fly over the seniors as a thousand bubbles fill the carriage. Some people tilt their heads, some lie supine, some stand with their faces in their hands. Kinetic scenes of bravery and sub-horror almost-Disney tit-fest Quaid-zone madness cascade through the air. Smeared with spit, the tantalising motif of 80s science turned bad becomes clearer as it sheds one gooey exterior. It falls into the lap of a nomad. He peers expectantly at it. Then the bubble shifts form, becoming the grin of Dennis Quaid. Now all the bubbles have become the grin of Dennis Quaid.<p></p>“What sacred gift is this?!” screams a little Bohemian girl.<p></p>The free papers drop abruptly to the floor. Eyes move from startled to amazed. A mighty surge of emotion overcomes the passengers. An idiot stands up and tries to hug one of the Dennis Quaid grins. He fails, then sits down. Fool. By the time we reach the station all the grins have disappeared, breathed in by anxious lungs, now tethered to the body’s interior. Grinning phantasms left to multiple in the hot moist cavern of the body, held in check by nothing, spreading Quaid cancers to everywhere. Organs shut down, masticated upon by chopping yankee gnashers, spelling the end of everything.<p></p>Too many things that begin as a gift, end as a massive inconvenience, like cancer. Thanks Dennis Quaid. </span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-78130000420609797162009-05-11T18:26:00.005+01:002009-05-11T20:03:43.239+01:00Repetition Roulette<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgg0I3OYT4sj2g2xLR3Cu7o41VILxFVgdwo19UZLVIBohJhe13qNidojfkg8TLzI5gVBu1vos0FIykWU456iFxAf_yceD9PTC3PCHzaTcE-TLYspb4PORM1-Tp_yIrbOd93cfB6g/s1600-h/tinyworkersrou.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 277px; height: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgg0I3OYT4sj2g2xLR3Cu7o41VILxFVgdwo19UZLVIBohJhe13qNidojfkg8TLzI5gVBu1vos0FIykWU456iFxAf_yceD9PTC3PCHzaTcE-TLYspb4PORM1-Tp_yIrbOd93cfB6g/s320/tinyworkersrou.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5334619263514232866" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">It started as a memo, just another anonymous sheet of white shuffled haphazardly across the political palms. No one foresaw its catalytic potential. Neither were there fleeting images of turmoil, nor discoloured memories of a dreamt controversy, for precognition lived elsewhere. The social reconfiguration born from its words remained entirely unknown. Eventually ignorance began to fade, unstoppable sentences of import coming to the fore. A new mentality infiltrated the present; now the memo cut gazes in two, spitefully begrudging a past rife with insolence. It was hailed as genius, the work of a visionary mind. In less than a fortnight, it was elevated from valueless office debris to the blueprint for a grand plan, schema for an unavoidable step towards utopia.<p></p>The obstacles were many. Six months passed, during which time vigorous preparatory steps were untaken, sleepless nights were washed away by the headache of practicalities, orders from above lashed tender heads, fragile pates whipped upon with tyrannous demands, speedy implementation the omnipresent priority.<p></p>Yet, dissent remained visible. Some saw an infringement of their rights, an evil divestment of their civic worth orchestrated on a massive scale. Others were puzzled at the government’s lack of justification, merely requesting elaboration. Bellowed remarks could be heard all around London, usually shouted by beards denouncing a dismantling of freedoms, inveighing against what they saw as surrender to the clutches of automatism. Questions wafted skyward from all quarters. Uneasy faces stared inert at their copies of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Metro</span>, eyes becoming more and more indifferent to the ubiquitous silence. The concept of asking assumed new heights of nonsense as the torrent of questions failed to cease. After a while, Whitehall said No more. A gigantic billboard was constructed, erected high on granite arches, piercing the blotched-grey sky, on which were printed the words ‘No Questions’.<p></p>One still saw the querulous faces on the Jubilee Line – frenzied minds figuring out the best words for their queries. Sore disappointment was the sole offering upon their arrival.<p></p>Then the day came. Eager ministers watched as theory morphed into practice, as the epic outcome of six months’ arduous planning and preparation assumed a form. Unmarked vans arrived at the libraries almost in unison, a stuttering of ignitions the signal of their presence. The men, attired in civil service garb, dragged the large discs from the back of the vans, lifting them into the buildings. Inside the libraries they were positioned in central spaces. The discs, about six feet in diameter, were large wheels amounted on steel spindles, able to be rotated with ease. Markings segmented the circles, dividing them into different colours. Straps hung loose on the face of each disc, stuck on at places within the perimeter.<p></p>Queues formed almost immediately, their conformity enforced by the threatened viciousness of the law. The injunction to submit met with little resistance. And so the first person was strapped to the wheel, set in motion, hastily allocated the specifics of their day, and then turned away, the next in line ambling forward – thus heralding the new society of repetition.<p></p>The problem – a conspicuous wound in the fabric of society, the deepest of structural faults – was given great emphasis in the original memo. It diagnosed a world of too much variation; it described an existence replete with too many options. Choice and decision were identified as actions of iniquity. Baleful standards of societal thrust had taken control, giving rise to a multitude of outcomes, an endless revolt against banality, individual ends perpetually diversifying. A menace was hoisted into view, said to be the bane of society, and the government agreed: variety was to be no more.<p></p>Fragments of ideas were embedded in the text – unformed gestures toward a solution. But a feasible answer remained to be devised. Government employees set off on long journeys of meditative struggle, delving into chasms of difficult debate, immersed in frenetic brainstorming orgies and interdepartmental back-and-forth. Chins were worn down in fits of scratching; divorce numbers rose. At last a solution was assembled: men and women would have their day decided by the turn of a giant roulette wheel.<p></p>Naturally making people do only one single thing all the time would be cruel. Variation may indeed be immorality by another name, but to purge the earth of it entirely, that would be futile and stupid. As a consequence, the wheel was built to retain the chance of leisure, the possibility of a time free from the rank of employee. But that time would be closely regulated, and limited, by government decree.<p></p>Buildings of civic importance would be needed to store the wheels. Schools were considered too rowdy; hospitals too busy. Libraries were chosen, their recurring community presence and peaceful ambience supplying all the necessary reasons. One minister also saw a great poetic appropriateness to the choice of libraries. Shelves upon shelves, rows upon rows, books filling every corner – libraries are exemplars of repetition. Pages aligned in series, the same words written, the same conclusions reached, a cycle whose tail never enters the light. Subjects that secrete the same, an endless parade of the already touched upon. Three hundred books about Flaubert, ninety shelves on Antiquity, twelve paperbacks about a scene that was cut from The Shining. On and on, a tunnel of zero finish. Such was the opinion of one uninformed minister.<p></p>Every adult in the country was assigned a local library, a place to report to at the stroke of daybreak. Each morning the queues would start, quickly extending in length, sprawling forth like tentacles composed of tired faces, penetrating car parks and playgrounds alike. Awaiting their turn, those towards the front of the queue would see others spun on the wheel, spun into a proletarian routine. Another man to work, another woman to work, shades of the alternative rarely seen. Spinning would continue, edging ever closer to noontide, each revolution the father of the next.<p></p>It was some minor minister, perhaps he who rambled nonsensically over the state of libraries, who had the smart idea of strapping citizens to the wheel. Make it interactive, make them think they can influence the outcome, give it the ring of destiny, the frivolity of fate – as he argued. But mostly it just made people nauseous. </span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-37218868189694677212009-04-28T21:44:00.007+01:002009-04-29T06:35:40.170+01:00The Seven Lives of Blanka<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3N9edVnmi-daPtR3yy71Fhd24iq8Fle99r9mjBx-NzfLvD7XsDnQt8mXVG82ng_Zj71XhNQmQMTiZRbPfJe-Zrnr6sIssTjdt_gRIUX3ihO_Skdntaaho2F4LCfG5zAn-SNZ33Q/s1600-h/blanka.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 209px; height: 239px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3N9edVnmi-daPtR3yy71Fhd24iq8Fle99r9mjBx-NzfLvD7XsDnQt8mXVG82ng_Zj71XhNQmQMTiZRbPfJe-Zrnr6sIssTjdt_gRIUX3ihO_Skdntaaho2F4LCfG5zAn-SNZ33Q/s320/blanka.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5329846141113005426" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">The street scene décor looks wooden. A few niggling cries of inauthenticity ring out, blackening the air with contrarian glee. Cleanly varnished surfaces reflect the light, a setting fresh at the touch, objects chopped and chiselled at little remove from the present.<p></p>‘But nonetheless!’ chant the chorus.<p></p>And so the street opens up. Cars and pedestrians, shops and eateries, blue-hued skies and matt-finished roads. Homey and homeless gouge the street, earning third-person glances and deferred interest. Careerists zip past the elderly. Mothers living the infant frenzy stomp the pavement, nudging street soldiers – always bolting ahead, always late.<p></p>‘Enough of the general!’ chant the chorus.<p></p>The mid-street café – a colourless fragment of the terrace, anonymous to all non-locals – coolly eases through the day. A quiet hideaway, sufficiently close to the bustle to maintain one’s grasp on the social nexus. Sun shines but the out-front seating, straddling gum-encrusted pavement, stands primarily empty. Only one seat taken – one table in use. A body fills the space, sipping tea and tapping a nervous hand on a newspaper.<p></p>‘Why, it’s he! Our hero!’ chant the chorus.<p></p>The smell of burgers and vomit is perceptible, noise of the bus lane audible. A couple stroll past walking a dog they named Hegel. Motor fumes course through the air. A woman madly bemoans “all that there NASA shit” to a silent telephone interlocutor. A toddler trips, suited men run for the bus, a kebab merchant discards his junk mail.<p></p>Green is reflected off the table steel as Blanka lowers his cup. Fatigue shows upon his eyes – fatigue or age? Frenetic happenings unravel behind him, a patchwork blur of technicolour ebb and flow. Little distracted by the environment, long-accustomed to the droning daytime, Blanka looks piercingly at the table. Someone has scribbled the word ‘Yeltsin’ on it.<p></p>‘<span style="font-style: italic;">Who </span>be damned – <span style="font-style: italic;">where </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">why</span>?’ chant the chorus.<p></p>Jutting out from below the newspaper is the cherished item of Blanka’s rumination: the latest draft of his memoirs – the myriad sheets of white, lathered in words and drenched in history’s reckoning advances, that have preoccupied his life these past months. He sighs, scratching a lump on his arm, dark green ever darkening. The newspaper he pushes to the other side of the table. The papers are revealed, bundled together in a rush. Blanka twists his neck away, yawning in tormented tiredness. Irksome tasks to do and their terrible completion rage behind his eyes.<p></p>‘Pay distraction no heed!’ chant the chorus.<p></p>Throwing no look to a nearby cyclist as she reproaches a van driver, Blanka lifts the pages and begins to sift through them. Every numbing memory of the writing process assails him, from the cutting of cherished passages, ones that took days to assemble, to hours lost through needless meditation on whether the word <i>beatdown</i> ought to be hyphenated. Fingers flick through the stack, eyes catching on headings. A nod intermittently ruptures the stillness of the air. A pen emerges from a shirt pocket, moving in rhythm to a baritone splutter gurgling its way up Blanka’s throat. Cough now free, the critical scribbling commences.<p></p>‘Soundless reading take flight!’ chant the chorus.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Chapter 6: The failed playwright<p></p>…I did not have the sense to start at the bottom. Things would have gone better that way, I am sure of it. A year or two making props, time arranging rehearsals, maybe a tour as Shylock – all would have been good preparation. But by that time my ego was too large. I demanded instant recognition. I could not wait for theatrical fame. And so I called myself Playwright and began to write…<p></p>…Some called <span style="font-style: italic;">Piss Piss, Mother Gods</span> crass. Many reviewers tore it apart, writing at length about the unpleasant feeling it engendered in them. I was appalled. I did not expect such a backlash. I knew it was provocative; I was not naïve. But I believe it was misjudged. What they saw as misogynistic trash, I saw as a challenging metonymic critique of society. The scene in which Hank and Vera’s marriage is on the rocks is a perfect example. They argue over having children: Hank wanting them, Vera not wanting them. Tempers flare and voices are raised. After a minute of furious argument, Hank goes to retreat, but teary eyed Vera continues to harangue him. Hank turns back and shouts, “I will beat off in my hand and slap it in your fanny if you don’t shut up!” One reviewer centred his entire review around this scene, listing everything he saw wrong with it. Sometimes it confuses me. But I just assume they are ignorant…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Recollection of a dream spent talking to an ocelot returns to Blanka. Reading ceases as an intake of breath lightens the mood. Cheap ink stains his fingers, orphan biro lines running over his knuckles. Sputum interrupts his breath, a wad of opalescent gunk in ascension – now dislodged. The dreams involving the ocelot stopped a few months ago. Those twilight terrors ravaged Blanka’s sanity for years, hindering every new career, every new relationship. But now they appear absent, silent and invisible, enabling the byways of harmless slumber to be trod sans agony. Untouched anodyne sleep and myriad mind freedoms were the catalysts for the memoir, encouraging Blanka to finally chronicle his eventful life – now allowing him to do it.<p></p>‘Enter readerly delectation!’ chant the chorus.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Chapter 9: The fallen scholar<p></p>…I never knew him well. My cohorts spoke about him a lot. He was always held in high esteem. I considered it hyperbole. Our casual conversations never implied genius. We would exchange pleasantries on the odd occasion, that is it. He seemed to know much about the weather, but so did I. Then one day he comes up to me with a book. It was <span style="font-style: italic;">Writing and Difference</span> by Jacques Derrida. He insisted I read it, guaranteeing the enrichment of my mind. I said I would take a look. He ended by inviting me to a seminar he was organising. Yes, E. Honda was a Deconstructionist. I could not have guessed it. Appearances are deceptive. Who would see a philosophical mind in a man who hand slaps cars into scrap metal? His flying headbutt was using his head, but a head certifiably Derridean? After the shock subsided a new inspiration took hold…<p></p>…I had been teaching the dynamic of <i>différance</i> for three months. I thought I was doing well. A list of my career goals was pinned to the wall of my shared office. I would not forget them. My energies were focused, perhaps for the first time ever. Yet all was not to be. Complaints started to come in, mainly from angry parents. I had been illustrating the play of signifiers, the core of <i>différance</i>. I did this by throwing students at each another. Accusations of physical abuse grew in number and I was sacked. I thought it was a great way to show how signifiers jostle in a constant movement of deference. I do not understand the controversy. I threw the students with the lowest essay marks first…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Bone joints click as Blanka leans back in his seat. A fly pretending to be a wasp flies by. Lines of disenchanted workers roam across the backlit horizon. More coughing. Breathing only has further obstacles to surmount; it edges closer to the terminal spot. Some identifier will be there: the letter X, a skull, a picture of Guile winking, something to let us know. Blanka plays indifference but even he feels the hollow rush of mortality. A local tobacconist walks past, a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Minima Moralia</span> protruding from his bag of groceries.<p></p>‘The <span style="font-style: italic;">else</span> must have legs!’ chant the chorus.<p></p>Eyes glide over hasty records of a past lived quickly. Excursions into carpentry, yachting, rolling full stops for authors too famous to roll their own – the printed word slices easily through time. Notable understatement of the glories derived from <span style="font-style: italic;">Street Fighter</span>, feelings of guilt at a fame bought cheaply. Hurried passages segue into elaborate exegeses on declined career paths. A sigh hovers over the mishmash of first book problems: lack of cohesion, unevenness, indelicate use of punctuation. But the yawns multiply with firm resolve, unable to be stifled by the calling of late authoring prowess. Blanka is buoyed by a desired success, but a success uncertain. He takes a tapering journey on words chipped away from the lived and the experienced, stolen from a monopoly of the past tense, crammed into paper repositories in the hope of beating Time’s advance. Another cough, this time wet and wholly penultimate. A page is turned, flipped by creaky fingers. There’s no more, only table steel. And the final sheet slides away finished.<p></p>‘The <span style="font-style: italic;">else</span> has no legs...’ chant the chorus.</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-18997326566106395902009-04-05T20:37:00.005+01:002009-04-06T06:13:18.724+01:00Tornado! (Starring Bruce Campbell)<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw2AreEmE9fDZeXH-EBLzzUmQL75M-X7WhT9tW1L59VVgQms9g1vx8FqalGqHuR71KF6_wnPs41zP7zz5vd6UuFxBZ_H6VLXpKBaw9KxJlyPSTqkdhg-ia_RCaLbQr9-NQ49lZ0g/s1600-h/bruciec.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 233px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw2AreEmE9fDZeXH-EBLzzUmQL75M-X7WhT9tW1L59VVgQms9g1vx8FqalGqHuR71KF6_wnPs41zP7zz5vd6UuFxBZ_H6VLXpKBaw9KxJlyPSTqkdhg-ia_RCaLbQr9-NQ49lZ0g/s320/bruciec.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5321295631452800114" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Given the usual incoherence of the morning I’m surprised I heard the banging. It was a sound from outside, it seemed, or maybe not, maybe inside. The origination was not immediately clear. An odd discombobulation of the ears reigned, a jolting rush of confusion threatening to capsize the day. Then a realisation, faint but not indiscernible: the sound, it’s coming from below, down the stairs, at the front door. Quizzically I slid down the stairs, the banging ever present. What wild ruckus is ensuing beyond the door? Should I risk showing my face? Am I to be met with death, is this the inevitable moment of my demise? Is my procrastinating walk only solidifying the nastiest facets of my execution?<p></p>Then the door is in front of me, hand reaching for the handle, pulling back to permit the light.<p></p>A man stands in the doorway, a flurry of sweat and dreadlocks. A large red satchel hangs off his shoulder, full of padded envelopes. The scorn etched on his face seems not likely to fade.<p></p>“Are you Mr Aaron?” he barks.<p></p>“I am.”<p></p>“You’re a hard man to get hold of!” he returns, one hand thrust into his bag.<p></p>A head devoid of words is a poor condition for the music of conversation, even the sweet warble of friendly badinage has trouble springing to life.<p></p>“I, uh, you’ve…what?”<p></p>“I’ve always the packages for you…you’re never in – man, packages for you,” he says lifting a grey box out of his bag.<p></p>“I’m here now, what is it?”<p></p>“A package – for you!” he yells without hesitation. “Take – and sign this.”<p></p>A box in one hand, delivery form in the other, a pen slid under the thumb, I playing the balancer as my signature struggles into motion. The courier’s angry glare causes my skin to freckle.<p></p>Squiggle down, I give back the form. His return to the road is instantaneous, his feet a speedy blur. A soundless insult tears through the air, his gaping mouth the only proof of something said. I stifle my cries and retreat into the fortress. The morning’s annihilation is truly complete, gone is the gentle caress of semi-sentience, gone is the clawing urge to yawn away the day. Day has begun, no ambiguities remain. And what’s more, day now has meaning, for a glistening DVD lies in the palm. The name of that DVD is <span style="font-style: italic;">Tornado!</span> starring Bruce Campbell.<p></p>The promises are infinite, they occupy a bottomless of abyss of wisecracks and hilarious side glances. Potential, too, is well in abundance, stretching far into the horizon. Pre-packaged kudos, <span style="font-style: italic;">Tornado!</span> finds itself cloaked in a great swarm of it. Imminent respect, love and lust are the promises of a Bruce Campbell film. His glorious name bestows on the most obviously dire pieces of cinema the chance of rebirth – cocoons of crud giving way to butterflies of watchability. He provides motivation where there might not be any, engendering reasons to view a film clearly made as a cheap cash-in on a more popular film.<p></p>Bruce Campbell is a beacon of truth. You’ll never carry pretence into one of his films, for he builds coruscating worlds that ostentation cannot assail. Most of his films are perfect examples of ‘it is what it is’ – we know the narrative and the characters, the setting and the outcome. No need to enrich matters with hyperbole or words of misdirection. Laid out naked is a story arc oblivious to experimentation, uninterested in striving for innovation. Bruce Campbell says: ‘you know what this is, I know what this is, but I’ll try and make it as fun as I can.’ He is the antidote to fame’s most nauseating proponents and affiliates, a man of honesty and decency. The proletarian actor par excellence.<p></p><span style="font-style: italic;">Tornado!</span> – also known in a different form as <span style="font-style: italic;">Twister </span>– follows the actions of a hip young crew of meteorologists who live in the Texas area. Their hobbies include chasing tornadoes and barn dances. They dream of one day being able to accurately predict the appearance of tornadoes. Visions of saved lives and hot girls propel their scientific inquiries. Liquor deliria and trips to the zoo help them retain their sanity.<p></p>Bruce Campbell plays Bill Paxton, thrill-seeking leader of this band of maniacs. His chin feeds their lust for domination, tilting upwards when the reek of a tornado hangs in the air. He gives legitimation to their cause through his rugged features and array of checked shirts. Ernie Hudson smiles wistfully at Bruce, unsettled by the throbbing desire he holds for the man, a desire undiminished by years of meteorological comradeship.<p></p>A girl arrives, foretelling another Bruce-related coupling. Shannon Sturges, eyes attractive enough to ensnare Bruce, points forward in time to Chase Masterson, Bruce’s female partner in <span style="font-style: italic;">Terminal Invasion</span>. They are linked across space, time and who knows what else by a common generational beauty and the kind of denim energy that usually dies a death in the graveyard of TV drama.<p></p>A tornado arrives, Derek I think it’s called. It roams across the plain, skirting about the place in an over-hyped dance of destruction. Roofs become airborne, livestock disappear, a housewife falls over. Normality sits crouched and crying. Cut to break.<p></p>Back from break: fire crews trudge through fallen walls, an engine roars an ambience unsettling but appropriate. Bruce Campbell/Bill Paxton shows up, open-top jeep, or not, and casts sympathy over the luckless locals. ‘I will get that fucking tornado, so I will,’ he declares.<p></p>Into the night he runs, jeep and cronies in tow. Helen Hunt or someone answers questions by the side of the road, a ghastly interruption. The tornado is sighted. It swirls menacingly. Bruce runs, the foulest revenge on his mind. A jeep follows slowly behind. The tornado veers to the left and sees him. Now it moves towards him, he towards it. An epic showdown is materialising, reality splintering to accommodate the inevitable disappointment. Clouds gather, Bruce is in the eye, the tornado sways to and fro. Drama plays out in a toneless picture of wind and rain. Combat continues into minutes, time getting more and more bloated. Hospitalisation can be the only result. Bruce takes his dagger and slices the tornado in two. The swirling menace decelerates into nothing. Bruce stands victorious, love is his prize. Ernie Hudson, Helen Hunt and Chase Masterson run to hug him, all united in a sentimental expression of man’s mastery over the weather.</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-50850771994600677652009-03-29T17:00:00.007+01:002009-03-29T18:28:23.508+01:00Unsent Letters to Gary Busey: Letter 2 - Information Overabundance, the Agony of Thought & Ghost Rock<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzU3fc72CF0t6jpyidysPsjFOIMJamdrxF4vg5e5b5qD3P7hxjZhZLJWSY3MEy_vFFmv-lLR7pwFLTl2SrlX1wbqoZcbnPHTg265nWOxKhGtEAsKFkIsCzlRlNX3dmiRBryg4Izg/s1600-h/buseyletters.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 230px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzU3fc72CF0t6jpyidysPsjFOIMJamdrxF4vg5e5b5qD3P7hxjZhZLJWSY3MEy_vFFmv-lLR7pwFLTl2SrlX1wbqoZcbnPHTg265nWOxKhGtEAsKFkIsCzlRlNX3dmiRBryg4Izg/s320/buseyletters.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5318640642011473058" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">Dear Gary Busey,<p></p>I refuse to have any more thoughts. That’s it, I’m done with them. Niggling though they are – and it’s incessant, the thoughts always puncture the most innocent of my pleasures, from a stroll to the shop, to air drumming to Slayer – yet I can’t avoid the necessary and the desirable, for they must be cut adrift from my mind. It’s the only solution I can see. It’s a problem to be destroyed. Thoughts are open sores on the warped flesh of a day’s traversal. Dispel the distractions, melt down the mental pathways through which they move. Block the rising reflux of ideas and opinions, conclusions and propositions. Label them leprous, sully their existence, and charge them with crimes against importance. <p></p>I know your view, Gary Busey. You’ve lived an era free from thoughts. You exorcised the tyranny in one swift movement, and it was the cleanest defecation known to man. Scullion told me about it one day. Any mistakes or omissions are his fault.<p></p>You, Gary Busey, had spent many years chained to your thoughts. They’d come to you from afar, wave upon wave of speculation. Daylight sentience grew them in abundance. Twilight yawns tore rifts in reality, opening doors to the walk of ruminating madness. Senselessness observed night’s fecund flow – what made no sense had night bestow upon it a meaning in the propagation of thoughts.<p></p>Did you have a bad time of it? No doubt. A terrible plague had befallen you, Gary Busey. You were a captive of your own thoughts. You polluted conversations with your declarations and assertions. You even had the effrontery to translate your thoughts into writing. It was a dark time. Sheer reminiscence is almost enough to force tears upon me. But I will be strong, Gary Busey, I know that’s what you’d want. I also know the past is a shadow to you, a spectral quasi-presence that you really couldn’t give a fuck about. But humour me.<p></p>Languishing in the armpit of despair, hostage to the baggage of thought, you needed a cure, or some means of escape. Then it happened, an intervention organised by Keanu Reeves on the set of <span style="font-style: italic;">Point Break</span>. In a show of support, the cast assembled on set, urging you to confront your problems and relinquish your addiction to thinking. Being a former addict himself, Reeves was the perfect man to give advice on how to suppress the need to think. His inspirational example of a life lived thoughtless proved overwhelming to you, Gary Busey. You broke down, the tears ran in heavy jets, the screams rendered all inaudible. Then courage hit. Dismantling all the craven ways of yore, you stood up, wiped the snot from your face, and started to shake your head. The shaking got more and more intense as shouts of support came from Reeves. As the shaking intensified, you started smacking the side of your head with your palm. The banging and self-violence continued a minute longer, then you fell to the ground in a spasm of dust and sticky head-goo. Reeves ran forward, lifting you up, consciousness slowly returning to your being. You looked around. Onlookers stared on, curious to know if the cure had worked. Then you said it: nothing. And the place erupted in raptures, your silence bringing tears to many. Reeves shook your hand and strode off into the horizon. You glared at him, you glared at the audience, you glared at the sky – all were one and the same to you. The treatment was a success, you were no longer shackled to the monster of thought.<p></p>It’s quite a tale, Gary Busey. I hope I was able to capture the magic of it. I dare say not even biblical prose could reach the levels of hyperbole needed to convey the importance of that moment.<p></p>Alas, until Keanu Reeves decides I’m fit to be saved from my thoughts, I will have to continue to live bearing the curse. I may refuse those thoughts, ignore their pleading, shun their heckles, damn the revelations to irrecollection, but plough forward they will. I have no defence. My fractured genes leave predisposed a personality unprotected against the injunction to think. To consider and to write are the promises of the information surplus. The vast infoscapes are multicoloured encouragements to create and contribute. Add to the mass, use what is deemed usable, delve into the relevant and reject the rest. <p></p>Evolution put us in a place where we take in all the information we can. Look about you, hear the audible, smell the odorous, touch all you can. Identify the threats, signal the eatable, take the useful. Hold in the mind’s eye a portion of earth freed from mystery. Enough for the senses to work, to exercise their genetic endowment. Information to be compiled on a limited scale, use of a limited lexicon, dissection of limited resources.<p></p>Now that portion of earth has changed beyond all recognition. Rather than gawk at a few stones, we see an endless stream of information in perpetual motion. Always being modified, always added to – magnifying in direct correlation to our own sense of insignificance. Gaze upon the history of everything, peruse the geographies of the micro and the macro; do it all, for now is the only present on offer.<p></p>The reactionary response is to criticise. It recommends ignorance and stupidity, obliviousness to the benefits of technological progress. The comprehension is nonexistent, the chance for technology to empower and free is disregarded. The right circumstances, the right uses, are both foreign concepts. Nothing’s neutral, but potential shines through the murk of cowardice and disinformation.<p></p>Sure our brains buckle at the thought of the internet’s gift to us – or rather, our gift to us, the gift we give each other, the gift we construct on a daily basis. The brain’s shortcomings are laid out naked in the heat of the internet’s infinite deluge. I know you, Gary Busey, you harbour few woes along these lines. But for the head set to maximum consumption it’s a difficult condition in which to live. Compulsion comes already preprogrammed into late capitalism’s push to buy and be the best consumer possible. The problem sees us lodged in the web of market logic, hearing only the bang bang of buy buy.<p></p>They’re dull considerations to you, Gary Busey, I know that. You’ve got no answers to offer me. I don’t write you in the hope of attaining answers. On the foregoing issues, I can discern all you’ve got to offer me from your performance in <span style="font-style: italic;">Ghost Rock</span>.<p></p>Truly no better example can be found of just getting on with it. Your turn as Jack Pickett solidifies the absence of caring, it stands for action and not thought. Where’s reflection in the act of doing if not dead and buried in the past. There are no wasteful minutes spent asking the same tired questions, praying for something better, clawing for guidance from a spot in the sun that’ll blind you if you look too hard. Conventional hesitation has no place in Jack Pickett, he’s the product of an instant Yes.<p></p>Men built of stone weather in the wind; Gary Busey is the wind.<p></p>The internet is all writers, no readers. Or so it seems. We’ll go with it, Gary Busey, because a little exaggeration goes a long way. All writers, no readers. Whereas <span style="font-style: italic;">Ghost Rock</span>’s all film, no viewers. It has all the facets of a film production: actors, a narrative, horses, Jeff Fahey. But no one to consume it. <span style="font-style: italic;">Ghost Rock</span> is the internet written in film language. It’s a theatrical representation of the blog surplus, a dusty emblem of a guilt that scratches the soul every day.<p></p>How can one feel anything but guilt in adding to the information flood, Gary Busey? To exasperate the situation and give truth to the idea of ‘too much’ is surely a shameful pursuit that deserves outright prohibition. Adding to the already said and the already written, isn’t that the definition of a futile act?<p></p>Some fools insist that there’s nothing left to say, that it’s all already done, in turn ignoring millennia of creative struggle fought by writers and artists. The fools assume an ease that was never there. As if Dickens scribbled a list of titles at the beginning of his career and just wrote them out slowly over time.<p></p>Then again, Gary Busey, did Milton have to check his email whilst writing <span style="font-style: italic;">Paradise Lost</span>? Was Ibsen nipping onto Facebook to update his status every time he wrote a scene? Would Bertrand Russell have written 3,000 words a day if he had Youtube as a distraction?<p></p>There are no excuses, Gary Busey. The world offers as much as it takes away. For every impediment comes a new avenue. Vaults of creative inspiration, whose paths are unobstructed, or becoming so, flash into view on a continual basis. The ongoing project of the world is the birth and death of ideas. Well, that’s the case for us poor tragedians anyway, Gary Busey, those of us tied irrevocably to our thoughts. I know <span style="font-style: italic;">Ghost Rock</span> points in the direction of ‘shut the fuck up and just do it’. I know the example you set, Gary Busey, is aghast at my seeming acquiescence. But we can’t all be <span style="font-style: italic;">Ghost Rock</span>, however enthusiastically we pray for it. Thinking will persist. As will the guilt at adding more and more sand to the desert. All we can hope for is that that sand is worth frolicking about in; after all, no one likes shite sand.<p></p>Sorry about the words, Gary Busey. I hope Betsy and Ethel are well. I hear that preproduction on your Broadway show is going well. The cast sounds highly talented, you’re lucky to be working with such fine actors. I have no doubt that <span style="font-style: italic;">Diabetes the Musical</span> will be a great success.<p></p>Oodles of love and affection,<p></p>Aaron</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-86283853149964873052009-03-26T18:04:00.012+00:002009-03-26T18:25:45.293+00:00Unsent Letters to Gary Busey: Letter 1 - Sprawling Apologies & Silver Bullet<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1fpbSXiPQk2w5wi0OZdkdbOPTpsqeysAwHaDvXpMqhixfFEAmOkMLXxSvQzdWa7GZXIUHa-Xc5E5gU5XDNZngjIslP76h-AyLzPDMozcYcZK0eaIm9evScjIRi2tAUWd4WOyW5g/s1600-h/buseyletters.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 230px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1fpbSXiPQk2w5wi0OZdkdbOPTpsqeysAwHaDvXpMqhixfFEAmOkMLXxSvQzdWa7GZXIUHa-Xc5E5gU5XDNZngjIslP76h-AyLzPDMozcYcZK0eaIm9evScjIRi2tAUWd4WOyW5g/s320/buseyletters.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5317559102597512130" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">Dear Gary Busey,<p></p>Words are not your forte, I know that. The merest fart of a word is outright prolixity to you. Sentences are vulgar extravagance, needless and distracting. I know your pain about the words; your agony has no place to hide. Conceiving expression as a set of inky shapes and phonetic blips, limiting communication to signifiers and signifieds, imprisoning infinity’s charm within walls of grammatical rules, tyrannies propelled through time from a past non-existent to the present – all that reeks of the clearest declaration of shite ever inscribed upon the world.<p></p>I know that, Gary Busey, don’t think I’ve forgotten; your advice resists death like nothing else. And I know your time is precious, not one second is unimportant, not one minute can be abandoned to wastefulness. Your life is time lived radiant, encrusted with forms of expressivity that make language appear crude and antiquated. For some this is unfathomable: they question a man’s recourse to frenetic bodily dance as a way of imparting information, and they assume puzzled expressions when an inferno of blonde hair conveys complex data concerning the ontological integrity of biscuits.<p></p>That’s not me. I harbour no misconceptions about you, Gary Busey. Disdain for words and desire for their extermination – to be sure, hefty missions that go unenvied – they constitute a remit fit only for a Busey. Let no one say Gary Busey was a man who needed ambition.<p></p>Recognition, that’s my point: I recognise your position. Your podium’s faint to me, I can barely see your feet, but I see enough to know all, enough for my senses to be thrilled into recognition.<p></p>Surely it’s predictable, but I ask you to wait. Fight the basest temptation to cast this missive from your hands. Don’t discard the fiend just yet. You may recoil in horror, you might be recoiling in horror right now, the words suffocating every blowhole you own. Naturally I leave myself exposed to severe retribution, but I ask that you not enact revenge upon my person. Or if you have to, at least warn me first, leave some of your teeth scattered round the kitchen floor, or something.<p></p>Your truths are inescapable, Gary Busey. I know I run the risk of a maniacal Hollywood outcast arriving on my doorstep brandishing a machete. I run that risk every day of my life. But if that’s fate’s plan, then so be it, for I must discuss <span style="font-style: italic;">Silver Bullet</span> with you.<p></p>It itches night and day, it’s a disease of a fortnight’s lack of sleep. It scars deep, but the urges drive me forward, compelling this circumlocutory discourse. The urges are a source of propulsion for the tired and the graceless.<p></p>Self-evident truths are clearly a leitmotif of this letter, Gary Busey, sir. Anticipation of your reading organises all its content, shaping like clay all the words so abhorrent to you. Each remark I begin to type is accompanied by its apprehension by you. Each remark is modified into a truism before the sentence has finished. Only cliché and empty verbosity remain. Yawning gaps between the vital and the superfluous open up. By cruel convention the former are always the aspects to be sacrificed first, with turgid spills of banality left behind to consume.<p></p>Let no insults bloody your person, Gary Busey. No condescension is intended. Every utterance comes soaked in self-consciousness. You may not think so, you may see only contrivance. But I assure you it is true. And if you still balk at belief, play the game nonetheless: slide into the role of recipient, of confidant, of the man gestured at by the words Gary Busey. Dive into the performance, block the calls of the real, seek only validity as defined by the present arrangement of words (which you hate).<p></p>Allow me to say it: Gary Busey films are impossible to discuss in a manner cogent and elegant. Sure, there is always the necessity of translation, regardless of what the film is. Narrative form and the flow of images demand conversion into wieldy units, which can subsequently be used to celebrate or dismantle said objects. Film criticism is a translation of film spectatorship, it gives form to the formless act of watching a film.<p></p>However frequently the routine is performed, your films, Gary Busey, represent considerable problems in accomplishing this translation. Other than direct translation carried out by your fine self, I see no guaranteed routes to success. Like Samuel Beckett translating his French prose into English, or Vladimir Nabokov translating his Russian novels into English, only you, Gary Busey, can fit the essence of your films into a different idiom. Although it must be said, you would do so without resorting to the primitive ebb and flow of language.<p></p>Failure is the inevitable outcome, but I persist nevertheless in writing a word or two about <span style="font-style: italic;">Silver Bullet</span>.<p></p>The bounds of realism were never made for Gary Busey. Speaking your name – both silently, encased within the mind, and aloud – leads one to consider the phantasmagorical to be the most appropriate sphere for you. Madcap imaginative horror and wacky science-fiction are genres born to be sutured to the name of Gary Busey. <i>Silver Bullet</i>’s showcase of werewolf shenanigans is perfect fodder for you.<p></p>That’s remark number one. Perhaps I should have numbered these. Alas, there is zero scope for editing in this everlasting present of ours. March on…<p></p>An acquaintance once told me that before the days of Coreys Feldman and Haim, a another delirious era of twosome excellence existed. Never would I have guessed that this miraculous coupling would have been comprised of Corey Haim and Gary Busey. Yet this is a fact as derived from <span style="font-style: italic;">Silver Bullet</span>’s wealth of curiosities. <p></p>I’m slightly hurt that you never once mentioned being a component of this duo to me, Gary Busey. Had I known, I would have been more hesitant in dismissing <span style="font-style: italic;">Silver Bullet</span> as just another awful Stephen King adaptation. You never know, I might have watched the fucker sooner, rather than torment it with twenty-three year’s worth of wait.<p></p>Yes, nephew Corey to uncle Busey. Wheelchairs with rockets attached, grotty nights lain across the poker wastelands, unfunny jokes cloaked in expectorate, and of course a ravenous werewolf to unmask and defeat. Buddy protagonists rarely attain such heights, for Busey-Corey combine to create an almighty opus.<p></p>Sadly – and I must voice criticism here, Gary Busey, there’s no avoiding it – the opus is surrounded by a constant rain of weakness and indecision. One minute we get an unnerving Fulci-esque sequence of stilled faces and sub-Goblins rumble, then we have a polyester wolfman playing the pantomime villain, then finally some sentimental <span style="font-style: italic;">Stand By Me</span> coming-of-age nonsense. Brilliant if the objective is a patchy mosaic of entrails and wistful childhood memories; rather shite otherwise.<p></p>But dear Gary Busey, yes, I hear your reply, I hear your garbled screams. You are too correct, <span style="font-style: italic;">Silver Bullet</span>’s deficiencies are not of your doing. Blame resides elsewhere. I wouldn’t dare tarnish your reputation with words of attack aimed to undermine a young (fictional) boy’s struggle to live with a disability and fight a werewolf. Nothing could be farther from my intention.<p></p>I come to the end of my words. I hope the projects you were telling me about last time have proceeded well. A slew of remakes, wasn’t it? Enhancing dire narratives produced without your presence, that’s correct, isn’t it? <span style="font-style: italic;">The Bigger Heat</span>, was it? <span style="font-style: italic;">Older Boy</span>? Well whatever they were, may success find you well. Do give my best to Betsy and Ethel. Sorry about the words and whatnot.<p></p>Oodles of love and affection,<p></p>Aaron</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-91259194021583967442009-03-21T16:28:00.006+00:002009-03-21T16:46:39.073+00:00Crisis on Bearded Fahey<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUNQCFJ38cRREppCCGB_HZNUvXC0fF_nAtS_azWPu1wllL5PU2-o1fm6kdCXcwFfFqlLLPgnH7NjcQwrCNKxqnpX2Qk_0ugt-xb1mnBGBVi7SdHC1UDLpf9ap1RgH2MLr8nCAq4g/s1600-h/faheybeard.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUNQCFJ38cRREppCCGB_HZNUvXC0fF_nAtS_azWPu1wllL5PU2-o1fm6kdCXcwFfFqlLLPgnH7NjcQwrCNKxqnpX2Qk_0ugt-xb1mnBGBVi7SdHC1UDLpf9ap1RgH2MLr8nCAq4g/s320/faheybeard.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315678805232403426" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">A sanctuary no longer, an inner pit assailed by change, become a sanctum diminished beyond fix, a porcelain paradise loose of its promise, born anew in the miasmic after-burn. Death wills and toxic stench are the only remaining truths left, now found set inside its charred walls. Bathroom lies be damned, henceforth they stand enchained to the maligned gestures of flippancy and misdirection. Cold sterility is the lifeblood, the very pulse of walls and floor alike, surfaces blotted in black clarity.<p></p>The light is off, the room dead in darkness. An arm punctures the stillness, clutching myopically for a touch, a feeling, fumbling in hope of a meeting – mighty bestower of light be here now. A recognisable click later and a persona is imposed upon the arm.<p></p>Eyes lacking the ability to identify the arm of a Fahey have yet to be born, for here clear to all is the wondrous limb foretold by scripture: the thousand-jointed limb of a Fahey, segmented tribute to flexibility and boundless treasury of party tricks.<p></p> - Hearsay that Fahey’s uncle once begot a spider for a son remain to this day unconfirmed. Suffice it to say, Fahey’s insectual ancestors swim forever in the channels of his gene pool.<p></p>With the bathroom now lit, the door is thrust open and in strides Fahey. Shirtless and hairy, blue to the balls, Fahey steps toward the sink. The mirror above returns his gaze. Beautifying utensils lie disarranged on a small shelf. A filthy towel long untouched hangs on a hook. Unoriginal bathroom details drift aimlessly, scattered across a sky of white tiles and spilt mouthwash.<p></p>Fahey’s eyes remain steadfastly locked on the sink. A razor, not too blunted, not too smeared by prior use, attracts his attention. An arm is raised, making a motion to lift the object. Fahey’s eyes flick to the left, toward the bathtub, then back to the razor. Shaking fingers lift the razor as the faint sound of pen on paper becomes audible. Fahey clears his throat, eyes flick left, eyes flick forward. The sink begins to fill with warm water.<p></p>Discomfort drains Fahey’s face of colour as he tries to angle himself in a way that he stands back facing the bathtub. A foreign cough interrupts the aural hegemony of the flowing water. Fahey takes water in his hand and splashes it upon his face. Then he starts to lather shaving foam over every bushy inch of his beard. Sound of bubbles to the rear, a splash this time born not of the sink. Fahey shakes his head, ears closing to distraction. Now the razor is in hand, coming nearer and nearer the face of Fahey.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">…I don’t know when it was. Too long to say, too long for certainty. Sure it was shocking, no one’s going to expect that, I know I didn’t. You just go about your daily business, that’s all, it’s not my place to wonder the intricacies of it. I noticed, yes, but after how long? No way to know. Was I oblivious? Probably. Was he there long before I noticed? It’s possible. Truth’ll never be known, not unless he decides to confess all, which I doubt’ll happen. This is how it started: one day I wandered into the bathroom, I was in dire need of a piss. So there I go, relieving myself, when I turn my head and see him, a man, sitting in my bathtub. Like I say, there was a shock to it. He said nothing, so I say Who the fuck are you? Why the fuck are you in my bathtub? No reply. Then I notice he has a notebook on his lap and a pen in his hand. He’s scribbling the whole time, as I piss, as I look at him, as I speak to him, the pen never ceases. I step over to him, I’m starting to get annoyed now. I look down at him. He’s hairless and wears casual non-descript clothes. I repeat my questions. Still no sound bar the echo of the pen. What can you do? Soon I was exhausted. I could no longer be bothered to repeat my questions. Clearly he wasn’t going to speak. So I left him. He’s been there ever since…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Steam rises, rendering abstract Fahey’s image in the mirror. A fly darts past causing Fahey to twitch suddenly. He lunges for it, anger boiling. Then: palliation by way of reflection, Fahey considers the absurdity of his situation. Normalcy, or the memory thereof, can be sought free from the ties of difficulty, for its shadow traces a line on the horizon. Normalcy’s dance pollutes the surface of Fahey’s distress, its virus set to reinfect a world divested of its inscription. What remains is Fahey’s incumbency, that irksome pressure to action, to transform, to resurrect pastures of the past. Or not, perhaps, subject as it is to individual whim.<p></p>Fahey turns to the bathtub. One note sounds in the air: a scratching, <span style="font-style: italic;">the </span>scratching, the minatory wail ill-fitting Fahey’s very being. Daggers – each and every pen-stroke is a weapon. Cessation of the subtle attack is mere fiction, additional dagger-thrusts act to further damage the integrity of Fahey. Temporal lacerations causing Fahey to bleed time. Spatial lacerations causing Fahey to bleed objects born of his porcelain madness. Ever try and bleed a shower curtain? Unpleasant is one word to describe it. But Fahey’s threshold for pain knows no limits, either that or he jettisoned his limits long ago, perhaps in that film where he fights a dinosaur.<p></p>Fahey stands over the bathtub.<p></p>“You fucker!” yells Fahey.<p></p>Not a hint of deceleration befalls the pen. The man’s head rhythmically stirs, his gaze alternating between Fahey and the page. Whatever diabolical record is being composed continues towards its completion.<p></p>“It’s been fucking weeks, months even, since I’ve had a shave! Look at me for Christ’s sake!”<p></p>The metronomic tilt of the man’s head catches Fahey’s grimaced face, before descending once again to the page.<p></p>“I just want to have a shave in peace. I don’t care if you’re here, just stop writing. Come on. Give me five minutes, OK?”<p></p>No let up.<p></p>“Three minutes. I’ll be quick. I don’t care if I rip half my face off, I’ll rush it if I have to, but I need to have a shave. Give me that won’t you?”<p></p>Scribbling continues.<p></p>“You writerly sonofabitch.”<p></p>Fahey takes a step back.<p></p>“Those notes of yours better be the most profoundest fucking thing ever written…”<p></p>Exasperated, Fahey wipes the foam from his chin and storms out of the bathroom, knocking off the light on the way.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">…I don’t know why I didn’t do anything to get rid of him. He seemed to have as much a right to be there as anyone, despite it being displeasing to me. After a while I learned to avoid the blasted room. My habits evolved to accommodate the man. Occasionally, when I could no longer hold my urine, I’d have to enter the room and piss. Each time he’d be there, sitting in the same position, writing with the same pen in the same notebook. I have no idea what he is writing. One day I stooped to see but it was indecipherable. Clearly words and sentences, arrayed accordingly, but it was impossible to read. Perhaps it was written so quickly, or written at odd angles in the bathtub, I don’t know. I don’t even know if the man could read the stuff, that is, were he inclined to do so. It could be endless pages of mad rantings for all I know. Or a biography of me written from the perspective of my bathroom. I doubt he’ll ever break his silence. I might need to move someplace else. Then again, maybe we can learn to live together, and maybe eventually I can shave free of his distraction…</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-11729729014392664832009-03-15T17:22:00.005+00:002012-08-27T13:10:48.684+01:00The Misattribution of Jean Claude Van Damme<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV0-xWZa6j5cPadTUXwk_hzBFHKUbXrXG-YBcS6yD3F7AZxjH9dF9gM_MPxUrLX_56ZUhXKoQJaUm0ZiKID4zgkI41KGkU0LFbfaR9dBsPjyrM0S8t1AS-YdIiCRsqxg_LlRyCcQ/s1600-h/vandammeflight.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV0-xWZa6j5cPadTUXwk_hzBFHKUbXrXG-YBcS6yD3F7AZxjH9dF9gM_MPxUrLX_56ZUhXKoQJaUm0ZiKID4zgkI41KGkU0LFbfaR9dBsPjyrM0S8t1AS-YdIiCRsqxg_LlRyCcQ/s320/vandammeflight.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5313466268522878210" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">A question and an answer, that’s how it started. An exchange lit by the crisp tingle of a monetary reward. The chime of the ringing phone, the disgruntled vibration of plastic on wood. A man’s death chamber bathroom frolics and the erasure of personal foibles.<p></p>Jean Claude Van Damme stands at a mirror, razor in one hand, phone in the other.<p></p>“A book signing?” he mumbles quizzically.<p></p>A garbled affirmation echoes from the speaker.<p></p>“Did I write a book? Was it those aphorisms from a few years back – is that a book?”<p></p>Distorted faint whisperings give the answer.<p></p>A further moment elapses before Van Damme resumes his enquiry. But at the first syllable cut loose from the chains of silence, the hum of Van Damme’s telephonic interlocutor recommences. Van Damme wears an attentive face. A drop of shaving foam slides from it. The razor drops into the sink. Now a let up in the other’s rhetoric, now a chance for Van Damme for speak.<p></p>“But I didn’t write <span style="font-style: italic;">Crime and Punishment</span>.”<p></p>---<p></p>On a sea of stained carpet sits the eager and the idle. A Sunday afternoon, sun blasting outside, the smell of typeface portraiture and paper tyrannies. Unfolded plastic chairs are arranged in rows as a banner is unfurled in their gaze. Indifferent shoppers pass by, ignoring one corner of activity as a man is brought out to the song of restrained applause.<p></p>Van Damme sits at a wooden bench, his visage under the careful scrutiny of the dozen or so people before him. Some stand, some remain seated. Some hold tattered paperbacks, some fold their arms, expectation their only possession.<p></p>“Welcome and thank you for coming to this event…” begins the spotty bookstore clerk.<p></p>A man walks past, singing a song about an octopus. Books fall from the hands of a toddler as he sights an escalator to play with. Two men carry a smoke-machine, one stands on gum. An announcement explodes on the intercom: code nine at till five. A girl stares unimpressed eyes at a feeble classics section.<p></p>These are distractions of which Van Damme aims to free himself. His mind is swimming in anxiety. Regret that he took the buck, and at what cost? His public image? Already it features great discoloration. Do they know what he knows? Do they know what he doesn’t know? Are they <span style="font-style: italic;">aware</span> in the same way he is <span style="font-style: italic;">aware</span>? Van Damme’s mind ceases for not one second. Am I the only one who sees the ridiculousness of this situation? he thinks.<p></p>“Please give a round of applause to our special guest, the author of <span style="font-style: italic;">Crime and Punishment</span>, Mr Jean Claude Van Damme.”<p></p>One distraction morphs into another as claps puncture the sonic abyss. White appears on black as the chequered senses of Van Damme get lifted, rising up in unison with his legs. Now standing before the baying bookstore minions, heat like a fireball raining upon the fuselage of Van Damme’s body.<p></p>“Thank you for having me. It’s a great honour…”<p></p>Platitudes subside as Van Damme searches his memory for words pre-prepared. The precipice of the void of nothing feels his approach, warming its belly with each and every word not retrieved. Stumbling formality gives way to the stuttered birth pangs of a modest auto-critique.<p></p>“When I started writing this book, I never…I mean, its scope was unknown to me, at the time, that is…I’m as surprised as anyone that I wrote this book.”<p></p>The exegesis continues as sub-school study notes pinned upon Van Damme’s cranium are read aloud. Raskolnikov’s moral distress, Sonia’s tragic piety, the place of Russian mores, St Petersburg as a kind of nightmare milieu. Ranging somewhere between the embittered and the cynical, Van Damme’s faux-English teacher oration progresses bereft of the silence that originally threatened it. Words flow unhindered by memory lapse or the pains of conscience. Words course through a rapid commentary on the novel of ideas. Names get dropped, dangling haphazardly from the lips of the speaker. Tiny spectral dots of Gogol; atomistically revolving spirals of Pushkin. Feigned conviction working to convince the unconvinced. Eyes open and close – an audience awake to the ululating spoken prose of Van Damme.<p></p>His time is up. He thanks his beholders. The reek of questions fomenting fills the room. Nose atwitch, Van Damme sneezes.<p></p>The map of his destruction has another section made visible. Questions erupt like volcanoes of literary puzzlement brimming on egos the size of Wales.<p></p>An easy beginning:<p></p>“Dear Mr Van Damme,” begins one.<p></p>“Monsieur JC,” begins another.<p></p>A tougher middle section:<p></p>“How is interpretative integrity certifiable,” a sweaty forest-dweller begins.<p></p>Life in ballets dressed up as action movies has made Van Damme tough. No one dares dispute that. But perhaps one ninja knuckle brawl too many has made Van Damme <span style="font-style: italic;">too </span>tough. His answers come in showers of invective and deadly menacing word-fists. Jolting rejoinders delve into murky intellectual depths not even Van Damme could have envisioned. Tearing into one accusation at a time, he extends his critical eye over an entire kingdom of fallacy and error, pupils like sunspots burning through each falsehood.<p></p>“Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” he answers.<p></p>This is efficacy as bled from the stone of Van Damme.<p></p>The bookstore clerk rushes in to end the session. Premature but necessary.<p></p>“I’m afraid we’re out of time…”<p></p>At this, Van Damme’s whirlwind of comeuppance starts to slow. The shifting limbs of kinetic literary prowess return to Van Damme, decelerating as they assume former shapes and colours. Now a possessed dictator of authorial malice, now a gaunt frame stepping across a soiled carpet. The present is ointment for the sting of Van Damme’s singular confluence of energies.<p></p>Smoke clears, noise fades, pages float slowly from the ceiling. The feeling of cataclysm hangs in the air. Mental impressions that are cryptic at best hold sway in the pointillist wash of audience heads. Bound to failure, their deficiencies sentence them to a lifetime of wondering, of questioning, of dead night reflection and memorial damnation. Van Damme’s seed is capturable by the human eye, but grasp it you won’t, for its fortifications are impenetrable to all but he.<p></p>---<p></p>Out walks Van Damme. The street traffic a monotone din. Smog floats still on his face as he reaches for his pocket. A phone is produced, the display lit up. He lifts it to his ear.<p></p>“Van Damme,” he says, moving to the edge of the pavement.<p></p>The familiar drone at the other end again echoes.<p></p>“Yeah, it went well. I’ve just finished,” says Van Damme, an answer to an apparent question.<p></p>Once again the drone is heard.<p></p>Confusion enters Van Damme’s face, ears ceaselessly receiving.<p></p>“Another one?” he asks.<p></p>The drone warbles on. Van Damme scratches his head for a moment. A second passes. Now he replies.<p></p>“But I didn’t write <span style="font-style: italic;">Ulysses</span>.”</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-83797955475712727282009-03-11T07:57:00.006+00:002009-03-11T08:07:44.789+00:00Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (and a tale: Twilight of the Care Bear)<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZsoWkxsIBGFnvdQJfD1DRyHLPvGQHnwGgsDpwPQmxAas7dQUT33LAOcrE9nKHIMX5NnfbCXsyeL7c2jPJjkpNi0bJuMQrKwr5mNS6SpxGR__IdNVkf_2wbYrg1_Sxwvj4M5W74w/s1600-h/deathbed.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 252px; height: 260px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZsoWkxsIBGFnvdQJfD1DRyHLPvGQHnwGgsDpwPQmxAas7dQUT33LAOcrE9nKHIMX5NnfbCXsyeL7c2jPJjkpNi0bJuMQrKwr5mNS6SpxGR__IdNVkf_2wbYrg1_Sxwvj4M5W74w/s320/deathbed.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311836526373882226" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">It took place one night last week: an ordeal, a trauma, a hurtful jab in the guts of slumber. Mere recollection sears the memory paths, for this was the sort of nocturnal nasty destined to be forever remembered. Maybe it was the urchins playing foolish games in the black of midnight, or maybe I ate too much cheese, I can’t say. What I can say, however, is that this was wholly unanticipated; not one inkling had I that such an event was to disrupt my sleep that eve.<p></p>So there I was, chasing sheep up and down Elysian fields, smirking at the planets, giving sagacious advice to Plato, when suddenly the façade was torn down and replaced with the foulest of sentience. The unlit abyss of my room faced me, the dark offering nothing but a faint rustling in the distance. Quickly the distance shortened, the rustling seemingly now beside me. Then I sensed movement, a jolting presence, not out there but in here, under the very sheets under which I lay. It was then I threw back the bedding, revealing none other than a Care Bear.<p></p>There it was, stooped on all fours, pink fur ruffled by the sheets, plastic nose poking about the mattress, glass eyes adjusting to the light from the lamp I had just turned on. It looked at me, I looked at it. Was that murder in its eyes? Did I detect the glint of lust? Perhaps it was on its way to the Forest of Feelings and got lost halfway? Should I hug it or bash its brains out with my alarm clock?<p></p>It shuffled towards me and I shouted at it.<p></p>“You Care Bear bastard!”<p></p>It was instinct, reflex, a product of being born in the 80s. I won’t allow risk to enter the equation, I can’t, positions of power must be established immediately. That Care Bear stared its dead eyes at me, unfocused brown still and mysterious. The scene was one of tension, an escalating dread and possible regret that I had somehow offended the beast.<p></p>Truth is, far from mauling me dead then eating my skin, the Care Bear only wanted to know if I was interested in switching to British Gas. I was stunned. A salesman, by god, this furry dream creature was. Before I knew it, a plethora of leaflets were arranged on the mattress. It was then I kicked it to the floor. The pleading sales pitch came like white noise to my ears as I grappled with the light switch. Eventually the Care Bear lost interest, packed up its paraphernalia and used the window as an exit, and I was left to finish my sleep uninterrupted by the dulcet dollar drone of Care Bears Inc.<p></p>Such a tale carries little of the blood and hunger that marks <span style="font-style: italic;">Death Bed</span>. In fact, it’s fairly needless to start a review with such prolixity and sub-juvenilia narrative nonsense, particularly a review of a film like <span style="font-style: italic;">Death Bed</span>, one that quite clearly requires no prologue. But moods must be set, words must be used, regardless of vulgar excess. Further: the title is not the only element lacking in ambiguity. Were one still in possession of questions, the subtitle carries enough force to dispel any and all queries – <span style="font-style: italic;">Death Bed: The Bed That Eats</span>.<p></p>Central to the film is a bed, a grand four-poster number that sits in the cellar of an old house. A wash of black begins the film, during which time we hear a crunching sound, a carnivorous chomping that brings to mind a wild animal. Well, kids, surprise surprise, that sound is emanating from the bed – it’s lunchtime and its having a feast.<p></p>A curse cast long ago means that the bed is alive. Despite having the appearance of inanimation, the bed lusts after meat, after a person or persons to digest in its tank-like stomach. Luckily, even though it resides in a rural manor, the odd flaneur does come by to test its comforts. When this happens, a bubbling starts on the surface of the bed allowing the hapless victim to descend into its interior, a watery yellow soup given the close-up treatment whenever feeding commences.<p></p>Strange?<p></p>Certainly is. A monkey’s paw is one thing; we’ve seen that before. Familiarity kills fear, kills astonishment, curdles the creative juices. Look, it’s hairy, there are talons, it’s a certifiable threat! But listen, and retain your calm: any object is open to an injection of evil; whether it’s a video tape, a lift, a packet of bacon rashers, demoniacal gusto can be found living in anything. Perhaps it’s the guilt over our commodity fetishism that leads to us imbuing our objects with the potential to physically and mentally harm us (as if they don’t already do so!). Of course evil only has meaning in the context of the human; consequently, what we see is that with every increase in evil comes a corresponding anthropomorphization as the heinous object becomes a holder of human spirit and bodily presence. Observe the bed’s soft moans as a nubile undresses near it, or the tantrums it throws when bereft of food to dine upon, leading to the manor walls cracking and ceilings creaking.<p></p><span style="font-style: italic;">Death Bed</span>’s narrative consists of a young couple coming to use the bed for salacious purposes, the bed deciding pre-marital sex is not on the cards, the bed eating them, some digressionary scenes detailing the bed’s background, before finally three young ladies happen on the manor. Thus begins the main body of the story.<p></p>An unsettling voice-over gives the film documentary credence as a male tongue describes the actions of the bed, beseeching it to desist, to turn veggie and repent its homicidal ways. Less <span style="font-style: italic;">Fog of War</span>, more <span style="font-style: italic;">Mondo Cane</span>, the document is stirring. The voice-over has an odd efficacy in that its moral entreaties and observer position aligns it closely with the spectator, who has no one with which to relate. The narrator, a former victim of the bed who’s now imprisoned in a bizarre limbo behind a painting in the cellar room, is our only real figure of interest. Other characters are stock types, fodder for the screen cruelty, far from the glow of our sympathies. The artiste behind the painting, on the other hand, is a man of slightly more substance. He is essentially the sole user of language throughout the film (a few garbled screams is hardly a monologue) and is kind enough to gift us information as to the genesis of the bed.<p></p>His admonishments and whimsical questioning must compete with the influx of buxom ladies in the middle of the film. An eerie and eccentric atmosphere gives way to a Russ Meyer-esque showcase. Burlesque banality erupts as breasts are disrobed and intimate linens are wafted about. Struggles against the bed’s yearning stomach are conducted in wailed sex moans. The bed devours one girl, the other two look for her, then the bed devours one of the them, leaving only one remaining. With the mire of sleaze still present, the brother of one of the girls arrives. I thought for sure this would be the beginning of a fight back, the time for macho ass-kicking. But alas I was wrong. Big brother gets his hands stuck in the bed, it strips them of all their skin and muscle, and he spends the rest of the film sitting about looking at what remains of his hands, now simply bone, and whining about his own ineptitude. Fool.<p></p><span style="font-style: italic;">Death Bed</span> proves an enjoyable excursion into the odd spectrum of 70s comedy-horror cinema. George Barry’s film entered the cult cannon a few years ago, unsurprisingly, for it’s clearly made to be held in such esteem. I just hope we get that sequel, <span style="font-style: italic;">Death Bed 2: Death Bed Takes Manhattan</span>, before too long. I can already visualise a manic Keanu Reeves engaged in a spectacular slow-motion fight with the bed, during which time a jet carrying a nuclear warhead gets nearer and nearer the city. It’ll be 2011’s most exciting blockbuster!</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-60826332598090761732009-02-28T19:03:00.008+00:002009-02-28T19:30:48.873+00:00Surviving the Game<div face="arial" style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ4Y5Fe7_UvSfAMz06f-5vE7Y5zxtfvvibjceIVf8NEkreTSJFvKCv4chyqIirXXF3LyNuzbIF5Jw5-XgnhAq0pAVvILJAG4xWWii9xBphAhJg8oDc0Rkf3twZQEE39gqVHLHsGQ/s1600-h/survivingthegame.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 238px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQ4Y5Fe7_UvSfAMz06f-5vE7Y5zxtfvvibjceIVf8NEkreTSJFvKCv4chyqIirXXF3LyNuzbIF5Jw5-XgnhAq0pAVvILJAG4xWWii9xBphAhJg8oDc0Rkf3twZQEE39gqVHLHsGQ/s320/survivingthegame.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5307926227074138882" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;">The preceding moments were filled with trepidation. The DVD, held solidly in the hand, its contents a fog of ambiguity, returned the gaze I cast upon it. ‘What,’ I asked, ‘is this beast I’m about to watch?’ All this talk of survival, talk of games, words of promised action and forthcoming exhilaration, provided little in the way of answers. The central question, turning my senses wild with speculation, was the following: what game?<p></p><span style="font-style: italic;">Monopoly </span>rarely gives a man cause to fear death. Are we to expect some formula-tweak along the lines of <span style="font-style: italic;">Killer Monopoly</span>? Is that what this is? Persons sit down to play the old property game only to find their rent being paid in blood? In the fashion of the finest Asian spook-fests, the curse of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Killer Monopoly</span>, I presume, would circulate the area, an inner-city suburb, dealing death to a group of teenagers before falling into the hands of a young couple moving into their first home. What better way to break in a new abode than an exciting bout of <span style="font-style: italic;">Monopoly</span>! But oh no, fun and games are not to be. A hotel on that square?! No, don’t do it, you don’t know what evil lurks beneath that red block! Don’t pick up that Community Chest; your husband’s already gone into anaphylactic shock, that’ll finish him!<p></p>Such were my expectations. These were the only answers I could summon forth from the bowels of the unknown. But to my great surprise, and also a painful blow to my skills of prediction, it turned out to be untrue. No menacing minutes spent glued to a board game, no city-sized strolls into <span style="font-style: italic;">Mouse Trap</span>, no <span style="font-style: italic;">Scrabble </span>modified to be playable with human organs. The game spoken by this DVD is a wholly different game.<p></p>Commiserate not, wise reader, for the games on display are of a quality equal to any flights of the imagination. I dare say not even the playful prose of Nabokov could concoct such an intriguing burst of ludic spirits. <span style="font-style: italic;">Surviving the Game</span> is its own world of play – a sphere of gleeful competition peppered by faces both respected and adored.<p></p>All the board games have been retired, yet the logic remains. The screams of chess pieces taken with brutal rapidity echo in the background.<p></p>The words of the title imply a subject: <span style="font-style: italic;">who </span>is doing this surviving? Surely the act of surviving cannot be bereft of a <span style="font-style: italic;">survivor</span>, someone to enact the motions necessary to survive? With impeccable logic we discover cloaked in the drapery of survival a man called Ice T, or as his friends call him, Ice Motherfucking T. (No doubt Jacques Derrida devoted huge swathes of unpublished writing to Ice Motherfucking T, him and the metaphysical violence augured by he who is coerced into surviving, to survive, to be a survivor.)<p></p>Ice T is a hobo living down and out in the city. Downtrodden in the extreme, he can do nothing to prevent his dog being run over, his best friend dying in his sleep, or the memories of his dead wife and daughter returning to haunt him. One day, Rutger Hauer offers him a job. Ice T’s to lend his assistance to one of Hauer’s hunting trips, to act as a kind of rugged huntsman, someone to do the mundane chores Hauer and his buddies have no time for. So off he goes, flown by Rutger Airlines into the wilderness. Little does he know, they’re not about to hunt rabbits or deer – they’re about to hunt him.<p></p>Naturally this is where the film gets interesting. The slow beginning of Ice T’s introduction – the endless bereavements, the establishment of his a-man-with-nothing-to-lose character – fades out as quickly as the twangy guitars that underscore the scene where he’s in the bath. Soon the real meat is on show – the action unequivocally commences.<p></p>The bulk of the film is the following: Ice T gets chased through a forest by Rutger Hauer, F Murray Abraham, John C McGinley and Gary Busey.<p></p>Sounds like gold? That’s because it is!<p></p>Some genius actually thought of this scenario. What majesty of human creativity!<p></p>‘Get this, boys,’ the studio exec says. ‘A bunch of awesome actors from the realm of action fiasco and budgetless cinema run after Ice T…and we’ll throw in Charles S. Dutton, fresh off <span style="font-style: italic;">Alien 3</span>…and we’ll give F Murray Abraham a whinny son to represent the liberal conscience; it’ll be magnificent!’<p></p>And magnificent it is. Straightaway bloodlust becomes mingled with strategy as each of the two parties attempts to outwit the other. Lit cigarettes are stuck in trees to create a false trail; cunningly-placed footprints do similar. Intellect and instinct run in unison. The hunters live in a dark patriarchal world in which the psyche’s most nefarious attributes are exhibited. Characteristics stigmatised by society are free to roam as colours shift hue from modernity to medieval times, the faces of Homo sapiens fade into those of former incarnations.<p></p>Hauer’s feisty leader makes for a joyous villain. He loves the hunt and survival is a sport to him, but his sense of humour remains – he never fails to spit some teasing remarks Ice T’s way. Hauer’s the calm counterpoint to Busey’s frenetic psychologist. Busey explodes on-screen in a tirade of psychobabble, lyrically exposing man’s deepest primal urges. The debris of scattered blonde hair and giant white teeth barely has time to settle before Busey starts once more into another monologue. This time it’s a biographical tale: 8-year-old Busey, still only a child, is forced by his father to fight a bulldog. The mutt prevails for a long time, permanently scarring Busey in the process, before Busey is able to break its neck. For a long time after the story is told, the maniacal glint of Busey’s eyes remains spread across the screen, surviving long into the black of the fade out.<p></p>I have no doubt that Busey was just playing himself in this film.<p></p>To conclude: <span style="font-style: italic;">Surviving the Game</span>’s slight leftist tendencies are a buoy to my enjoyment. A Wall Street man, a bourgeois psychologist, some CIA-affiliated goons, persist in exploiting a poor man who’s been cast out of society. They look down on him, sneer at his poverty and see in him nothing more than fodder for their games, that is to say, games to them, but to him life and death. Such a political reading is a nice adjunct to the film; however, it is surely the dynamic play of images and Busey that makes the film stand out as a highlight of mid-90s action, to be slotted somewhere between <span style="font-style: italic;">Hard Target</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Judgement Night</span>.</div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18014562.post-39873844875369770802009-02-22T00:43:00.003+00:002009-02-22T00:48:05.715+00:00Three Days of the Condor<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHWOpj7b2V040bgj3glXSTE6j763QKYj2bfn7nD1GWfQCVHEEu1RCrjgxDnkSbA80QqK_3KhTS_-aYkEoKUiNgyYc9M_BcGRO10xtp24-z8_H9bHx_fcbIz2WK7ZG9kH-eIF-NdA/s1600-h/Three_Days_of_the_Condor_poster.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 207px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHWOpj7b2V040bgj3glXSTE6j763QKYj2bfn7nD1GWfQCVHEEu1RCrjgxDnkSbA80QqK_3KhTS_-aYkEoKUiNgyYc9M_BcGRO10xtp24-z8_H9bHx_fcbIz2WK7ZG9kH-eIF-NdA/s320/Three_Days_of_the_Condor_poster.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305416106500147906" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family: arial;">Rarely is the hero the one whose actions lie not in the realm of practice but in that of theory. Valour and strength typify the hero; physicality is the emblem of the hero. The champion protagonist is a protagonist of the body, a shifting somatic presence whose persona wrenches forth from the dynamic of the body. Shape and motion are inseparable from the tangible acts that the hero engages in.<p></p>Rarely is the hero the reader, that figure of mind not body. The routine of the reader is antithetical to that of the hero. The devourer of words is seen as passive, a spectator, a slave to the abstract manoeuvres of theory. The reader stands distinct from the kinetic picture of the hero. All of which is unjust, for not only is knowledge power, but words too have a power, a potency; words wield strengths wholly their own. The derisive expletive may be less effective than a kick in the ballbag, but a stream of torturous words does have the potential to be considerably more effecting and destructive than even that. Underestimate the power of the reader at your own peril.<p></p>It’s with this idea that we arrive at <span style="font-style: italic;">Three Days of the Condor</span>, Sydney Pollack’s 1975 thriller starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.<p></p>“I just read books,” confesses Redford’s protagonist Joseph Turner (codename: Condor). “We read everything that’s published in the world.”<p></p>Turner works for a secret subdivision of the CIA. This subdivision employs the clever and the wise to pour over books and magazines, searching out leaks and hidden codes, striving to derive new ideas and schemes. One day, while Turner completes his daily lunch run, a gang of armed men burst into the offices and shoot dead all of Turner’s colleagues. He returns to find the offices empty of all but cadavers and quickly escapes. Thus ensues three days of deception and murder, distrust and paranoia, as Turner slowly comes to see the sinister underside of his employers.<p></p>“That’s a very bright man,” says the gourmet at the local deli, pointing at Turner as he cuts a sandwich.<p></p>Turner is the reader, the theoretician. He lives in a place of observation, formulating analysis, creating theories. When chaos and confusion interrupt his life, he is forced into acting. The thinker becomes the man of action. Theory is thrust into practice, abruptly transitioning like Marxism into Leninism into Stalinism. Hopefully with fewer mistakes, it must be said, with less dire consequences. But that’s the thing about such a segue: it’s unpredictable, it’s its own test, its own experiment; the different ways it can evolve are myriad.<p></p>Turner’s unconventional hero must contend with his situation as best he can. Like Kurt Russell’s bookworm intelligence analyst in <span style="font-style: italic;">Executive Decision</span>, Turner must adapt quickly, for he too is without Steven Seagal to help him.<p></p>The world is one of Kafka-esque bafflement. Layers upon layers of mystique hang over everything. Turner stumbles into a puzzling grid where only a few of the lines are discernable. A CIA boss remarks, “I don’t know, that’s what worries me.’ This is the void of knowledge that fills the film. Solace and comfort expire in the vacancy of information, and menace and danger take their place in the new, threatening reality. Turner is a man who usually does know, a man who usually does possess the facts. But for the first time he is <span style="font-style: italic;">sans </span>knowledge. What he thought he knew is revealed as incomplete – the scope of his theory did not encompass everything. It was porous and failed to be comprehensive. Theory slides into powerlessness, turning insufficient, turning superfluous.<p></p>Faced with the failure of theory (the killing of a character named Heidegger acts as a convenient piece of symbolism here), Turner is left to embrace practice. Fights ensue, men are shot: the act takes centre stage. His eyes may twitch with rumination, but with his decision to take Faye Dunaway hostage (to get off the street, to get some rest, to get some time to think) and his later intimacies with her, he has unequivocally moved into the realm of practice. It’s as if Schopenhauer had suddenly transformed into Rutger Hauer.<p></p>The newly-formed hero has to try and discover the truth behind the murder of his colleagues. He is plunged into a world of clandestine schemes and whispered plans. A place where interlocutors change language mid-conversion if anyone happens to pass by. A place where the only sound heard is the dead echo of the ringing phone not picked up. Turner must contend with this dark, urban space, bleak like Dunaway’s photographs of New York in winter, her images of black and white isolation.<p></p><span style="font-style: italic;">Three Days of the Condor</span> is another sublime entry in the canon of 70s paranoia thrillers. Like Alan Pakula’s loose trilogy, the film speaks of the disillusionment of the time, distrust of the establishment. The events of Vietnam and Watergate float ominously in the background. These are years that saw the death of free love, the death of emotion, expression, release, the utopian ideal – all crushed by Nixon, by war, by dirty political games. The Cold War became not a thing out there, not something occurring elsewhere, but something right here, something right in the heart of democracy and freedom. It dawned, thick and clear: those guys we elected – the guys living our space, breathing our air, one of us, part of us – are no better than those guys over there, the supposed enemy. Turner’s presumption that his superiors can be trusted is ruthlessly destroyed as he sees his friends killed, as he tries to avoid his own death. Friends are foes in this place where distrust becomes ubiquitous.<p></p>All the facets of this paranoid reality come to life in Pollack’s expert direction. The stilled cameras and heavy silences, the increasing tension as the narrative slowly discloses the truth. The sparse soundtrack adds the chilling ambience of isolation, underscoring the evocations of dread and claustrophobia. <span style="font-style: italic;">Three Days of the Condor</span> is a perfect slice of miasmic cinema, murkily captivating.</span></div>Aaron Fleminghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16615883629233021365noreply@blogger.com1