Author: colter

Tideland

Terry Gilliam has lost his mind. And made maybe his best film.

You haven’t seen Tideland. Even I was barely aware of its release in 2006. From what I’ve read, it may be the most polarizing film I’ve ever seen. Most reviews are either one star or five. If you’re the type of person who is a moral absolutist, you will hate this film. If you believe that morals and behavior are culturally and socially derived, then you might enjoy it. If you’re fascinated by child psychology and the ability of a child’s imagination to shield themselves from trauma, you just might love it.

It’s almost a horror movie. Without giving too much away, I should mention that it resembles Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre in one respect: it looks into the lives of people who exist off of society’s moral grid. Norman Bates and Leatherface freaked me out not with their violence, but with the norms they fashioned for themselves, particularly their reverence for their dead relatives. The scariest thing about them is the thought that people like them may exist in the darker corners of modern society.

Add into that mix an innocent young girl (Jodelle Ferland, who gives an astounding performance that puts Anna Paquin’s Oscar to shame) growing up in that madness, and you’ve got Tideland. There are a lot of uncomfortable scenes, but they’re only uncomfortable to adults putting themselves into the shoes of the child. What most often makes a film resonate with people is the empathy of experience with the main character. You put yourself into his or her shoes. But if you’re an adult, you can’t quite see through a child’s eyes. You have assumptions and boundaries and preconceived notions about how people should and should not act, but children don’t yet have that. For example, there’s no difference for them between heroin and insulin – they’re both just things that are administered with a needle.

From all that I read about the film before I saw it, I knew that this would test my loyalty to Terry Gilliam – the only director who has never disappointed me, and who has most consistently produced motion pictures that I adore (Billy Wilder, Cameron Crowe and Steven Soderbergh are close runners-up, though). I need never worry again.

One Evolutionary Advantage of a Rudimentary Nervous System

Animals like squirrels and small birds often move in short, rapid twitches. I’ve read that this is because their nervous systems are fairly simple, and don’t allow for much fluidity of motion. The other day I began to wonder if this might be a survival advantage for prey animals. Many predators react to movements rather than color or shape recognition, and so the less time a prey spends moving, the better for them.

Also, if you’ve ever wondered why squirrels are so indecisive when they’re in the middle of a road in front of a fast-approaching car, it’s because their first instinct at the sign of trouble is to freeze up and remain motionless. I’d also wager that a car’s fluidity of motion confuses them – they’re perhaps more accustomed to a predator bounding up and down as it runs toward them. Also, they’re most often oriented perpendicular to the car, so they only see the car with one eye, without depth perception. All they see is an object increasing in size somehow. I wonder if squirrels have depth perception at all, actually.

And in other zoological news, a great lesson I learned from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is that moths and other insects are attracted to lamps and flames because their internal navigation systems are going haywire. Many flying insects use distant light sources like the moon as fixed reference points in their flight. But artificial light sources like street lamps make that impossible. We can keep the moon on our left and travel in a reasonably straight line, but a moth can’t keep a street lamp on its left; it will end up circling it forever. Or at least until daylight when the lamp turns off. Or until it plunges into the bulb and dies.

Last night a massive cicada was buzzing my porch, and I made the mistake of turning off the porch light with the door open. He zoomed into my living room and headed for my lamp, briefly stunning himself while I turned the lamp off and turned the porch light back on. He recovered and zoomed back outside. The poor bastard.

Fun with Photoshop

Here’s a technique that Sara and I played with on Sunday. It’s really easy to do. All you need is a tripod and Photoshop. Just keep a stationary background, take a few pictures with something different going on, and pull them all into Photoshop as layers. From, there, just erase from the top layers the things in the lower layers that you want to reveal. I’ve got some more ideas that we’ll try to delve into this week.



And here are two more ideas we shot at my house in the music room and the dining room.

My Hooverphonic Story

Years ago I worked in a music store in Maumelle. When the store was going out of business, I bought a lot of CDs from them, two of which were “Hot Buttered Soul” by Isaac Hayes and “A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular” by Hooverphonic.

As I took both discs on a road trip to Texas, I discovered that Hooverphonic’s track “2Wicky” samples its groove from Isaac’s “Walk On By.” What a peculiar coincidence that I bought these two discs at the same time.

That was about 2002 or so. Over the weekend I was talking to my friend Chris, who is tour manager for Isaac Hayes (because his life is far, far weirder than mine). I ripped him an mp3 of “2Wicky” and he played it for Isaac, who had NEVER HEARD IT. He liked it, though. Chris tells me that Ike has very little control over his back catalog, so he likely does not receive any notice or compensation when he is sampled. “2Wicky” was a big hit for Hooverphonic back in 1996. It just seems really strange to me that Isaac Hayes’s music gave Hooverphonic a career and he has no idea.

Ike:

Hooverphonic:

Weirdest Director’s Commentary Ever

I recently picked up The Night of the Following Day, starring Marlon Brando, for $5 at Wal-Mart. The film is a slow-burning nail-biter of a kidnapping caper. It has a great overcast French setting, and if you’re like me you can enjoy a film like this just for the distinctive compressed tone and rainy texture. It’s also very 1968. Its twist ending may have been inventive at the time, but would likely not impress modern moviegoers. This may be why I enjoy it.

But there’s more: the director’s commentary by director Hubert Cornfield. Or so we would be led to believe. Rumor has it (via IMDb) that the commentary was actually Brando using some type of voice disguiser. Here are the only two reasons I would believe this:

  1. Cornfield’s voice is almost unlistenable. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to release a DVD with what sounds like a dying man breathing his last gurgling breaths. Perhaps Cornfield truly wanted to record it, despite his apparent ill health (he died three years after the DVD’s release, Brando one year). He certainly reveals a great deal about Brando’s arrogant and erratic behavior on the set. Perhaps he wanted to tell the world finally. Or perhaps Brando wanted to do it as both a prank and an apology.
  2. There is one scene where the commentary reveals that Brando was performing while completely drunk. The narrator hails the scene as a grudging appreciation of Brando’s talents. But the trivia section for the movie at IMDb reveals “Cornfield had to delete the parts in which his drunkenness was apparent.” Brando probably wouldn’t know that. And if Cornfield wanted to get back at Brando, he would not have chosen to praise Brando’s skills if time had to be spent extensively editing him.

I have to admit the mystery surrounding the DVD is more tantalizing than the film’s plot. Still I highly recommend this movie as one of the best $5 DVDs I’ve ever purchased.

Freelancing

Last week marked my debut as a freelance entertainment writer for Arkansas Times. I reviewed a show by the band Giant Bear from Memphis. The online version can be found here, although the author is attributed to “Staff.” I have two more pieces in this week’s issue: a review of the Guru’s Jazzmatazz show at RevRoom, and a CD review of Goon Squad’s debut disc.

Hooray me and my expanded career horizons right before departure. Still no firm ETA, but I’m hoping to land in NYC by October 1. Maybe in New York there’s a job for a swiss army knife writer/musician/internet nerd.

Relationships Circa Age 30

Mark Morford has a great column this week about getting to be a certain age and not being married. He had me until the last few paragraphs, to which I reacted with horror, but now I’m beginning to wonder if he’s not onto something. Regardless, there are a lot of statements made that completely resonated with me:

For every happily married couple I know (and I do know a few), there are three more who are confused and tense and battling all sorts of doubt and crisis and regret. For every wedding announcement, there are two more separations. For every guy I know who’s tremendously happy to be settled, there’s another who wishes he could’ve had “just one more year” of unbridled freedom.

This is one of those truths that so seldom gets acknowledged in our culture. We really have some unfortunately high expectations about marriage and happiness in this country. Probably because we watch too many movies that set us up for unrealistic expectations (see Klosterman, Chuck: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs Page 1 at Google Books).

Vacation Recap

Sorry it’s taking me forever. When I got back from the trip I felt a bit woozy and slept most of the weekend. I did get some house cleaning done on Sunday, though.

A week ago Friday I jetted off to Chicago for an almost week long vacation. Pictures here. Upon reaching my hotel in the downtown area, I found myself in the middle of a square dance. Because my life is not ironic enough. I also saw a wild rabbit in the park.

The main reason for the trip was to catch up with my old friend Heather Cox, who I haven’t seen in about ten years. On Saturday we went to the Art Institute of Chicago and to a Cubs game. After 20 years of keeping up with the Cubs, this was my first game ever. It was as perfect a day as could be had.

Sunday we did some shopping around Wrigleyville, and Heather departed. I went on to attend the last few shows at the Pitchfork Music Festival. Another 20-year devotion was fulfilled when I got to see De La Soul. I spent the night with Nica and Trey and we stayed up watching a scary movie and then the streets below where the transvestite hookers and drug dealers hang out after midnight.

Monday I flew to San Diego to hang out with Meredith for a couple of days. We tooled around, saw some sights and did some shopping. Then we drove up to Los Angeles to catch Isaac Hayes at the Hollywood Bowl. Thanks to Chris‘s job as tour manager, we got to meet the man himself. He has really soft hands. That’s all I can say, really. If I weren’t such a blithering idiot, I could have also met Booker T. Jones of Booker T. and the MG’s and Eddie Floyd, but I was entirely certain that I would say something stupid. Nevertheless we were hanging with living legends after the show.

Then I hung out at LAX on Thursday, flew to Phoenix, ate some really good Chinese food, and flew back to Little Rock. Tired.