Peeyow! Zeus here, sitting on my cloud with my big white beard, and bringing you this fortnight's quiz! Basically it's the Hell round again but this time it's Heaven, or Limbo, or anyway not Hell. It was going to be about fictional museums - that would have been great - but they proved a lot harder to find images of, so here instead are ten visions of The Afterlife to be matched to the following ten actors: Gael García Bernal, David Niven, Warren Beatty, Burt Reynolds, Matt Stone and/or Mike Judge, Keanu Reeves, Buster Keaton, Robin Williams, Saoirse Ronan, and pretty much everyone from Monty Python. Who got sent where? Answers as ever will be posted in the comments.
I love Buster Keaton, you've probably heard. And comedy relies on timing, you've probably heard as well. So I feel a bit of an idiot having admired Keaton's comic timing all this while without taking into account one of the most obvious features of Silent Comedy - a feature even people who know nothing else about Silent Comedy could probably tell you about Silent Comedy - which is that it's sped up! I only realised this last week because of an excellent video by Ben Model, posted in the comments section of David Cairns' Shadowplay - always one of my favourite places on the internet - in which gags from "Cops" are run in real time as recorded, rather than as projected. They're still extraordinary stunts but it's a very different performance from Buster, more like his later television work, which I'd always assumed just seemed slower because he was getting older, like an idiot... It's not a "performance" here though, is it, it's an ingredient. He knew exactly what he was doing as the video shows, even running different gags at different speeds. So the cranked up version is the actual "performance" and, as with the animated performances of Bugs or Daffy, the technology was a vital part of it.
I still don't like all that sped up stuff in Green Wing though.
"We're not beginning to... to... to mean something?"
Samuel Beckett, Endgame
Am I wrong, or have Marvel movies changed what film stars are, changed them back to what they were? These charming, witty,
principled but troubled and surprisingly middle-aged heroes of Marvel
Phases 1, 2 and 3 aren't the kind of blockbuster surefire things I or
even my Dad grew up with. They're Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, and like those
stars - and unlike the singular Schwarzenegger or Connery - they're
legion. If Disney really is buying all the cinemas and Netflix all the telly then the Studio System might be returning, and I
don't know what to feel about that because I've always loved old movies... That was one thought I had after "Avengers: Everyone". The other's a SPOILER, so anyone who doesn't
mind those, meet me under the table, and everyone else, BYE x
She lets him die. "We're gonna be okay... You can rest..." The more I think about it the
more gutted I am. I've never recorded on this blog before how oddly important Downey's "piping hot mess" has been to me. Iron Man wasn't a comic I knew anything about and I'd always found RD Jr a bit too get-out-of-my-way in previous films, but from "Iron Man 2" onwards Futurism was suddenly a thing again, and curiosity and hope, all served with newly smart grasp of the USA's unique relationship with fantasy, and this excited me. And I loved Tony Stark. So to see him finally diagnosed with a death wish, and to see that wish granted by the person who cared for him most was devastating. There were other reasons he had to die of course narratively speaking: as an idealisation of post-War America, Stark's mini-Hiroshima
with the finger-click couldn't go without a reckoning (just as
the earlier murder of Thanos had to turn Thor blurry). But I'd hoped for a happy ending with "Endgame", and feel something has been let go, and that it being let go is final proof it was untenable. And I don't want to
type the words
"Rest In Peace" again either I don't think. At least the alternative "Fare Forward" avoids the idea life's a chore. Ideally I'd just like to say from now on "Sorry you've gone"... Good film though.
He's standing in the wrong place!
Speaking of obvious Mirrorboy influences, seeing this image from The General recently, made me realise how much of Buster Keaton's comedy (and influence) can be derived from that one statement: he's in the wrong place. It's character comedy of a sort, but a classical figure in a non-classical landscape that's modern and breaking down and falling apart and moving differently to what you've
braced yourself for is also pleasing just visually. You could say it predicted surrealism if Keaton didn't normally like people so much.
"The Frozen North" is an exception...
A complete
break in character: here the Great Stone Face snarls, robs, murders the innocent, and incorporates a giant comedy beard into a rape scene in a way that had me genuinely gasping with laughter. It's alright though because it all turns out to be a dream or a film, or a dream in front of a film. I first watched it with the sound down, bewitched. It was only watching it the second time with the piano accompaniment up that I recoiled: this isn't a story that benefits from being buoyed up by ragtime, it needs music from the abyss, something that could sell a burning rose. Looking for a better accompaniment I went to
Ralfe Bande's (the Ralfe Bande's?) fab absurdist-friendly score for Paul King's film "Bunny and the Bull", but reviewing the resultant mash-up I think it turned out a little joyless. Then I saw the
photograph below, and went to Bowie. "Station to Station" is nice and long (if not long enough), but it's also fierce and I think it fits. See what you think. I'm going to pretend that this is Keaton's Bowie tribute.
On the subject of thin white dukes, David Cairns' blog introduced me to the film and explains here how the whole thing was actually a satire on a peculiarly gaunt
contemporary - the unfortunately named William S.
Hart - a star of the silent western who'd kicked Buster's friend and mentor Fatty Arbuckle when he was down. So much surrealism, it turns out, is just spoofs of things I haven't seen. (By the way the other name above the title - Eddie Cline - went on to direct most of W.C, Fields' features. His last, "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break", features Fields chasing a bottle of whiskey off the observation deck of an airplane only to land in a screwball interpretation of The Tempest, a mountain nest occupied by Margaret Dumont, her virgin daughter, and a gorilla. Recommended obvs.)
Remember how I occasionally went on about that film I wanted to make of "The Secret Agent"? Well this isn't it, but it has a tang. Presenting: Mirrorboy –
Embiggen.
Gerard suggested making a video for this song after he saw it performed at the fundraiser where my friend Katy broke her fist punching a fish which is why we have rehearsals. He also suggested the locations, mixed the track, and kept the camera rolling as I attempted to restage some happy accidents. So we had a hoot, met some Father Christmasses, and fourteen months later, here's the finished article. Enjoy responsibly.
(And if you liked that, or even if you thought "seven bloody minutes???" there's more of Gerard's magic here, featuring a robot, Nick "Colonel Dalby" Lucas, and a proper song from possibly London's Last Londoner.)
Meaning "the physical and psychological distress suffered by
one who is unable to cope with the rapidity of social and technological
changes," the term was coined by Alvin Toffler in 1970. I've just found that out. I thought it was coined by Judge Dredd in 2000AD: the sufferers were called "futsies" and scooted around malls at knee-height in mink stoles with saucepans on their heads, swinging machetes. But how - I wondered back then in 1988 - did they know they were living in the Future? Why did they call it Future Shock? When I'm in the future, will I know? Will it feel like the Future? I liked the idea that I might - that I wouldn't take the Future for granted. And I've always had a taste since then for depictions of the present that focus on the jolt, which is what's posted below... Buster Keaton and The Twilight Zone - two of my favourite things! I found this last night. Apparently Richard Matheson's script originally consisted of nothing but a big chase, which would have been terrific. That's not how it ended
up, and not all the episode is as good as this bit. But then, what is?
And parenthetically - this being the year 2013 - has anyone else noticed how many posters recently have completely done away with imagery? Just big phrases. It's grim. The year is 2013. And what the hell is a "Festival of Neighbourhood"?
