Week Ending 25th November, 2001 Page 3 2 1
Inside Teradome : An Illustrated History of Freak Film posted 21 Nov 2001
In this very thorough and thoughtful tome, Jack Hunter takes us through a history of the cultural revulsion/fascination with human anomalies - from Ancient Egyptian deification and Roman circuses through to the films of Todd Browning and Alejandro Jodorowsky... If you think this is all just fringe stuff for depraved voyeurs, think again... The history of early cinema is indelibly marked by the aesthetic of the freakshow - with much early output consisting of (often grotesque) spectacles like Edison's Electrocuting An Elephant and the very father of fictional cinema, George Melies, hailing from a sideshow background...
Our Sad Obsession With The Private Lives of Stars Continues... posted 20 Nov 2001
The primary focus of this article from Yahoo News was the "shocking" fact that Brad Pitt was once dumped by a girlfriend and it scarred him for life, but what interested me more was the concluding sentence - 'Pitt also admitted to undergoing therapy to deal with his fame'... Initially, I was going to make some cynical comment about whining stars, but then I considered what it would be like to have millions of sad, pathetic people poring through and passing judgment over the sad, pathetic details of your life... No wonder the poor bastard needs therapy!
The Surreal And Frightening World of Pushto Cinema posted 20 Nov 2001
Pushto is the language of the Pushtun, the ethnic group that make up the majority of the population in Northern Pakistan and Southern Afghanistan, and their movies... Well, supposedly they would turn John Waters 'green with envy'!... Or at least that's the opinion of Omar Khan, resident scribe with The Hot Spot Online, Pakistan's premier gonzo film site. The films, which he tracked down in a video store in Islamabad's boho district, featured an endless stream of shouting, guns, blood, revenge, lewdly gyrating 400-lb women and 'rape and attempted rape scenes ad nauseum'. At the end of it all, poor Omar was left a profoundly disturbed man - 'I have to confess to having some sleep disorders having watched a volley of these pushto films. The manner in which women are depicted was beyond nauseating and explains a lot in this land of wife burning and honour killings'...
Greetings, viewers, we hope you are all well ! posted 19 Nov 2001
These were the first words that were heard when Afghan TV began broadcasting for the first time in five years. And the first faces that were seen... women - no longer cowering behind the burkha, but out and visible and doing their jobs presenting the news. Meanwhile, a Kabul cinema was mobbed as it showed the first film since they were banned by the Taliban... Will this newfound freedom last? That remains to be seen - the Northern Alliance, after all, do not have much of a reputation as benign, liberal-minded administrators... In the meantime though, it deserves to be celebrated!
Taliban, BBC, The Times & CNN Sucked In By Vintage Geek Humour posted 19 Nov 2001
After finding himself in a former Taliban HQ in Kabul, BBC & Times correspondent John Simpson made a chilling and widely-reported discovery - the plans for a thermonuclear device... After looking closely at excerpts that were published in his news dispatches, however, dailyrotten.com discovered that they actually came from a scientific parody article published in the boffins-only on-line humour newsletter "The Journal of Irreproducible Results" in 1979... Apparently, if Mr Simpson (or the Taliban) had bothered to scan down to a by-line at the end of this article, they would have read "PREVIOUS MONTHS' COLUMNS... Let's Make an Anti-Gravity Machine!"
The British Film Industry : Is It A Sad Joke? posted 19 Nov 2001
It seems that there is one area where the Brits have it all over us - they actually have film critics who are prepared to criticise domestic mediocrity... And over at the Guardian, they can do it with almost unseemly vehemence! In a recent article, John Patterson notes that all of the best and most popular British-style films of recent times have been made by foreigners. British film-makers meanwhile have largely been producing 'drivel'. This, he believes, is because Britain has become 'parochial, inward-looking, culturally arrogant and myopic'. (Hmm, I wonder if there's a lesson in that for us?...) Fellow critics Peter Bradshaw and Andy Beckett aren't quite so scathing, but still paint a less than rosy picture of the UK film industry.
If You Think Watching A Lynch Film Is Weird, Try Acting In One... posted 19 Nov 2001
And I remembered thinking, "David where is this going?" And he's like, "I don't know. It will go in somewhere"... Justin Theroux, who stars in Lynch's latest bizarro-noir outing, Mulholland Drive, provides us with an insight into the "challenges" faced by an actor in a David Lynch film. Apparently, your character's inner life is relatively unimportant but the type of golf club your father had is something to agonise over...
Steamy Harry Potter Slash Fiction posted 19 Nov 2001
Slash fiction is a genre of online writing, primarily produced and consumed by young women, that centres around fantasised homosexual couplings of male film/TV characters such as Starsky and Hutch or Captain Kirk and Spock. The latest star of this bawdy prose is none other than Harry Potter, with over 70 sites devoted to stories that feature Harry getting it on with characters like his arch-enemy, Draco Malfoy... If you want a taste of the writing style, which is more overheated bodice-ripper than hard-core porn, check out the Magical Intrigue site. It was set up by a twenty-something straight woman from Singapore and comes complete with manga style illustrations.
The Latest Threat To Family Values Is... Mickey Mouse! posted 19 Nov 2001
Or at least that's what they believe at our favourite Fundamental Christian culture criticism site, ChildCare Action Project... According to a recently released fact sheet, the evil Disney corporation has been actively promoting homosexuality, producing films that criticise Christian values, hiring child molesters as film directors, sneaking phone sex and phalluses into family movies, and - shock! horror! - staging "Tropical Santa" Christmas pageants... Which is all too much for CAP's president, Thomas A Carder, whose now in a state of ongoing anxiety about 'whether Mickey will kiss Donald on the mouth or do other things associated with gender perversity and distortion'.
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