Clive Barker's Nightbreed Director's cut

I was one of the first thousand to preorder it. I saw the movie back in 1990 and wasn't entirely pleased with it. Warners billed it as something like a slasher at the time, which is not. What Nightbreed was and now is again is the Citizen Kane of monster movies where the tables are turned--or that's what it was supposed to be, an epic tale, a metaphor for discrimination against LGBT people, and much more, a lost classic now found and restored to its former glory before the suits got their hands on it. 

A comparison is in order here: This is like the achievement of a full restoration of the first gay-positive movie ever made, Different from the Others (Anders als die Andern, 1919, starring Conrad Veidt, the somnambulist from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) or The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), it is historic.

I should receive the set by this weekend or early next week. A sprawling review and reflection on the new cut is coming. I'll also be doing a similar essay on Breaking Bad as a cultural and historical phenomenon in time now that the series has concluded and the dust has settled a bit. Expect the unexpected.

Postscript, 10.10.14: It's arrived! This is going to take some time to digest, but I should have my first observations up in about a week. The set is pretty amazing and the new artwork for the 3-BD set is better than the promotional art at the time. David Cronenberg should be pleased, he gets more screen time.

10.11.14: After watching the director's cut last night, I can say that we have a new classic.  What's most surprising is how what Barker intended most is a great, epic love story, a tale of universal love. Nightbreed has finally arrived to the audience it was intended for all along. There are so many things to say about it, and I will shortly. 

Audio and video quality are superb--it looks & sounds vastly better than its theatrical debut which is saying something. Yes, David Cronenberg has more screen time. I won't be printing any spoilers. 

all soul's day

I knew without planning it that the account was going to be finished on this day. That's not just serendipity, it's the architecture of fate. Rather than the dead burying the dead--part of why we have historical amnesia in this country--I, the living, am burying my part of Jeane. Why she picked me to assist her I believe is complicated. For one, I know she didn't want me pissing in the tent and preferred me pissing outwards. You could say she wanted to keep me on ice during the proceedings, most certainly a good possibility there. That means I was definitely onto something, maybe many fundamental somethings about her case. The problem was, not a lot of that was exculpatory. Such is life. Her suffering is over, ours continues until we meet our own endings, like a story. Anything ending tends to choke the best of us up, it's got a sadness to it that's part of the human condition. And so it goes. I'll probably even lay out a meal for her, and all of the people who I and my family have lost--who everyone has lost, because that's what All Soul's Day is about, remembering, honoring, and continuing on.

Postscript 11.03.12--And so it did, so mote it be, the circle is completed.

Mel Gibson to join reunited Norwegian Satanic Metal band Burzum

A burning church, Norway--At precisely 7 a.m. GMT, the recently reunited metal band announced to the international press that Mel Gibson would now be fronting the group. So as not to confuse hipsters, they explained that Gibson "wouldn't be disrespecting us--quite the contrary," but "will be out front singing for us, on vocals. Thank you all, and have a nice day, especially Jews."

In the spirit of tolerance and brotherly love, the band produced a sampling of song lyrics (still in their embryonic stage) Gibson wrote and will be singing from his padded cell in Los Angeles, via satellite.

The song is titled, "Flowers, My Dearest Love":

Stay on this phone and don't hang up on me.
I have plenty of energy to drive over there.
You understand me? (repeat four times)
AND I WILL! (repeat four times)
SO JUST F------ LISTEN TO ME.
LISTEN TO MY F------ RANTING.
LISTEN TO WHAT YOU DO TO ME.

You have no f--king soul.
I left my wife because we had no spiritual common ground.
You and I have none, zero.
You won't even f---king try.
You don't care.
You don't care.
You don't care.

I'll put you in a f---ing rose garden you c--t!
You understand that?
Because I'm capable of it.
You understand that?
You understand that?
You understand that?
AND I WILL! (repeat four times)
SO JUST F------ LISTEN TO ME.
LISTEN TO MY F------ RANTING. LISTEN TO WHAT YOU DO TO ME. (all lyrics by Mel Gibson, 2010)

In an unsurprising turn, Mel's volume of fan mail from disturbed women proposing marriage rose, while the market fell. Most of the new material will return to their black metal roots, eschewing (whatever the fuck that is) their more recent attempts at crust punk (whatever the fuck that is).

$700 Billion bailout plan online!

Washington D.C.--Now quick kids, go get your Dick Tracy decoder-ring, some 3-D glasses, and some very strong hallucinogens, or the plan won't make any sense.

Listen to what the critics are saying about this exciting new motion picture:

"This is the same politics of fear we're hearing from the financial fat cats on Wall Street."
--Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tx.)

"The $700 billion bailout is driven by fear, not fact."
--Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh.)

"We've made great progress."
--House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.)

"These criminals have so much political power they can shut down the normal legislative process."
--Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Oh.)

"I think we're there."
--Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson

"This morning we should be very much alarmed."
--Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.)

"I think the devil is in the details."
--Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.)

That's right, there is no fucking deal on the Wall Street bailout. In just moments, the Asian markets will open with no solid deal in either house of Congress because you have both parties throwing the hot-potato back at each other, back-and-forth. This makes sense when you understand that both parties are to blame for the mess. Meanwhile, the effect on global markets will continue unabated. Belgium's financial giant Fortis is soon to go the way of WaMu, Merrill-Lynch, Wachovia, Ameribank, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and all the others coming soon to a theater near you.

But you have to hand it to the GOP, they pushed for all of this deregulation so that we could all be Socialists sooner, though the wealthy in America were the first on the block with one. And boy, aren't the McProgressive ™ sites becoming shriller and shriller as they sink? Hey, would-be power brokers who wanted to be Henry Kissinger or Ari Emanuel aren't going to have their day.

Sad, I know, but perhaps some of them will finally understand that the internet, the blogs, e-mail are replacing them--it's all a push towards a democratization of information that they all despise and loathe. And why would academics be quiet on this front either?

Now, the public can easily find-out and access most of the same information they had almost exclusively at their fingertips not so long ago. Yes, it's sad to come to the realization that it's not about ourselves--dummy--but the entire human family. Not the career, not the moronically narrow lifestyles, not the greed, not the "stuff," or even how many people you had sex with. No, not even that, tricks are for kids of every age.

But what is all of this...really?

That's right: it's that proverbial "invisible-hand of the marketplace" shoving itself up your conceited asses, free marketers, right where it belongs. It's come home to roost. All hail the Great God Pan.

The High Cost of Deregulation:

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

The Wicker Man (1973/SPOILERS) review

'Oh Christ, oh Jesus Christ!'

Christopher Lee is dismissive of a lot of his screen-work, but this is one of his favorites (along with The Whip and the Body). It's hard to call this a horror film, but I guess you could say it is, depending upon who you root for. There really are no villains in this film, and hardcore religionists who would say the pagans who inhabit the island are evil are just flat-wrong.

Western civilization still has its sacrifices in our American death penalty, and in warfare.

Almost every generation is called-up to give of their numbers to Mars and the bottom-line. So-called conservative economists argue that a minimum-of-poverty is needed to maintain the tyranny of consumerism, the New Fascism.

There are sacrifices-aplenty in our 'modern' world, and the results are hardly-removed from pagan-sacrifices, just physically-removed and indirect from our daily lives (what could be more modern?). Oddly, the film is critical of both the ancient and the modern.

No, this is more a thriller with a 'horror reveal' at its climax, as it was originally conceived by director Robin Hardy. Sadly, the producers of the failing UK studio balked at his cut, and we have been left with cobbled-together theatrical and 'director's-cut' versions of the film with many of the scenes and insert-shots restored, but from shoddy sources like videotapes. The original-negatives of deleted material were hidden in a hole on an English country road according to Christopher Lee and others close to the production.

Why? Why did RKO destroy an hour of Orson Welles's 'The Magnificent Ambersons'? Revenge for Citizen Kane, of course. This is done as retribution by some producers, so that a director can never reinsert the footage. Why? Partly because producers cannot usually create movies like a director does, and some of them resent this fact. It also gives them a chance to legally-assert authorship, and thus solidify their ownership of a 'property' based under international copyright laws.

Due to the butchering of The Wicker Man, Christopher Lee has attempted for decades to do a remake, but it appears that this isn't going to happen with him now, and he refuses to discuss the Cage version.

The Nicholas Cage remake can only suffer from this fact, since it doesn't improve-upon the original. It actually does a poorer job, yet has a budget almost twenty-times the 1973 version. The remake basically says nothing-new, and actually takes a very wrong-headed attitude towards women.

Literally 'stealing the show', Lee plays the enigmatic and charming Lord Summerisle, and he haunts the entirety of the Wicker Man until the brutal ending. The other protagonist of the film is the character of Sergeant Howie, who has been sent by the mainland-Police to investigate the disappearance of young-girl on the island, namesake of the Lee character.

This island is Lord Summerisle's domain, and he has re-instituted various pagan beliefs alongside the island's agricultural-base or fruit orchards in the cold and hostile environment of the Hebrides. Temperate fruits aren't supposed to grow there, but miraculously, they do. The cop is entering a world he (and we, the audience) never knew existed. Unlike the remake, I'd say the Summerisle seems inviting and sensual. It's a place you might want to call home. As a stodgy-Christian, Howie doesn't really get this, and it seals-his-fate, creating a nice touch of irony.

It appears the 'new-beliefs' (really ancient, British-ones) are working, for the crops are abundant and the people of Summerisle seem happy and prosperous. There are numerous references to fertility symbols, and the musical-numbers are both inviting and haunting (if not a little goofy), and they lull Howie and the viewer into a complacency (as pagan rituals do to their sacrifices). Seargeant Howie (a daft-name, chosen so the audience doesn't fully-identify with him) is being tested by the pagans for his purity, and the gorgeous Britt Ekland is the bait, though her acting is a bit 'wooden' (or is it 'Wicker'?).

Still, she and her body double add a great erotic flavor to the film that makes paganism seem pretty inviting. Well, unless you're the sacrifice, though believers would likely have no-problem. This then, is the horror component of the film, a non-believer sacrificed by believers in an irrational-rejection of modernity. This kind of romanticism fueled the rise of Nazism, and the burning of the scapegoat.

There are many-reviewers who have said this is about a battle-between paganism and Orthodox Christianity. This is accurate, but there are some nuances to this, and comments on the surrender to irrationality by the pagans and Sergeant Howie.

Let's face it: the cop isn't likable, and we aren't really supposed to identify with-him until the end of the tale as simply another human-being caught-up in something he never wagered on. But that's where it ends. The current version of the 1973 Wicker Man is definitely flawed.

Like a pagan initiation, the story begins as a mystery, both tempting-and-warm, even human. The initiate penetrates more-and-more layers of the mystery of the cult until...you'll have to watch the movie, it is an ending for-the-ages. There really isn't any gore here, just a little-blood, so gorehounds won't like it, but who cares what they think? This is inverted-horror.