Souls first, shall we?
Cartoonist and my one-time Comics Journal message board running buddy Jesse Hamm emails re: Ravenous:
My big beef with the film is that the intensity diminishes to a simmer in the latter half. After the delicious shock and horror of Colqhoun’s betrayal in the woods, the characters’ (admittedly chilling) stand-off back at the camp just can’t measure up.
True, but now that I think of it, I liked that aspect of the film. Keeping it at the same level of bloody action mayhem that the cave-side massacre saw would have made the film a very different beast–it would have gone from primarily a battle of conscience or character to a far more traditional battle. (Which is not to say that the traditional battles were lacking, just that they illustrated the mental and moral conflict rather than supplanted it.) Jesse also points out that Ravenous actor Robert Carlyle and director Antonia Bird are teaming up once again for another tale of serial murder in the 1800s, The Meat Trade.
On a not-unrelated note, Jesse’s blog features a short but compelling post on several storytelling obstacles he feels are inherent to the horror genre, and the “pat solutions” adopted by horror creators as a way to overcome them. Success in the genre is difficult to achieve, Jesse argues, because “the high intensity panic which horror films aim to cultivate is, in real life instances, only momentary. Sustaining that emotion for the better part of 90 minutes is a herculean task — no wonder filmmakers shy away from it!” Thought-provoking stuff for students of the genre.
Slowly seguing into less horrific territory, the Sicilian mafia’s boss of all bosses, Bernardo Provenzano, has been arrested after 43 years of life on the run as a Bin Laden-like fugitive warlord. Like Bin Laden, his underground existence purportedly benefited from a sympathetic rural populace and a government he could bribe or blackmail into looking the other way. During his captaincy of Sicilian OC, Provenzano morphed the ultraviolent, terroristic organization into a low-key and therefore vastly successful criminal enterprise–much like that run in the good old days by The Godfather‘s mythical mob kingpin Vito Corleone, whose namesake hometown of Corleone, Sicily is the place where real-life don Provenzano hailed from.
And now for something completely different: Former Pitchfork contributor and Village Voice bullshit artist Nick Sylvester has posted a pretty terrific interview with the pretty terrific dance musician known as the Juan Maclean, asking him to comment on various specific songs and letting him run with it from there. The meatiest stuff can be found in discussions of the racial and sexual politics of disco, especially its current avant-garde revival, and in Juan’s thoughts on the songs that he himself created. And the interview comes from late 2005, before Sylvester decided he was badass enough to simply make shit up, so you probably don’t have to feel bad reading it the way you might in picking up the latest Doris Kearns Goodwin book or Ben Domenech, uh, whatever Ben Domenech is doing these days. (Found via Fluxblog.)
Another post by another Pitchfork alum: Chris Ott talks about Jane’s Addiction–how the first Lollapalooza stunk, how Jane’s allowed music execs to feel “in” whereas Nirvana didn’t, how the band’s various reunion projects should be viewed more or less favorably than they have been, and more. If you like the band, you’ll like this post, even when you’re disagreeing with it. (Link courtesy of “http://www.oneloudernyc.com/2006/04/friday-shorts.html”>One Louder.)
Finally, also via One Louder’s Rajeev Muttreja: Beck’s legendarily whacked-out 120 Minutes interview from way back when, conducted by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore. I remember seeing this as it happened and being flabbergasted. Shoe-throwing as question-answering–now that’s our “Loser”!