Deliverance Challenges Our Belief in The System

Now son, WHO'S YO DADDY?

 "S   ir, it's Corporal Hicks sir." 

"What is it, Corporal?" replied the sergeant.

"Found another one—looks to be from the 21st century."

"It's got the signs?" 

"Sir, yes sir. Portable body scan confirms it sir. About thirty years old, cervical vertebrae one through five in a state of hyper-flexion, shortened extensor pollicis longus muscle on both thumbs, both from over-usage of the old telecommunications devices. She appears to be well dressed and her shoes are imprinted with "Jimmy Choo" on the heel, her tags say she was a lawyer of some sort—a definite believer in the System." "Okay, Corporal, I've heard enough, tag her and bag her, over and out."

Unfortunately, this is not an excerpt from the latest James Cameron movie depicting the downfall of man. As human beings and North Americans, we love and believe in the System. We go to school, educate ourselves, get jobs, make money, buy houses, pay taxes, have children and believe that we are protected and entitled to lead good lives because we have paid our dues and can now watch the hockey game with our feet up.

Over the last forty-three years, we have managed to pervert and abuse the system into a fossil-fuel-using, gluttonous, judgmental society that uses cell phones in a manner that begs for the old phrase in reference to masturbation, "Don't do that too much or you'll go blind."

When was the last time we gave a dollar to a toothless beggar when we were stopped at a traffic light? When was the last time we volunteered our time to help someone who did not own a $40,000 car? To say that we—the educated, the hardworking, the plasma-TV and iPhone-6-owning—think we are special is really an understatement.

What if a movie director and a writer were able to take that system that we believe in so much, and wrap it up and reshape it into a policeman's nightstick? What if they then took that nightstick and inserted it into everyone's rectum so far that it made them vomit? Would that change things?

In 1972, director John Boorman and writer James Dickey teamed up to make a movie about progress, the system, and the imminent death of a small town in the middle of the woods riddled with mountain men who know about as much about technology and city life as we know about how not to waste things like water.

When four businessmen set out on a canoe adventure to see a fictional Georgian river before it is engulfed by the construction of a dam, all in the name of progress, each of them quickly learns that judging a book by its cover and following the system may lead to, at the least, various orifices being violated, or at the very worst, death.

When virgin-like Bobby (Ned Beatty) first sees what appears to be an inbred young man holding a banjo, he doesn't think he can play it. Boy, was he wrong. When Ed (Jon Voight) has to do the unthinkable to survive, he quickly learns that his sophisticated negotiation skills are no match for a toothless cracker hell-bent on using Angelina Jolie's father's mouth for something other than target practice.

When Drew (Ronny Cox, the head villain in 1987's Robocop) realizes that city laws do not apply in the woods he quickly falls victim to the theory Darwin referred to as "survival of the fittest."

Even Lewis (Burt Reynolds) who is both macho and cynical and has his doubts about the "system" is quickly put to the test as to what he will do in order to survive.

Forget The Walking Dead, The Terminator, the Mad Max series and just about every other apocalyptic movie you've ever seen. The way we are living, right now in 2015, we will be the cause of the downfall of Man.

It won't be a virus or a radioactive war, it will be because we have raped this planet of ours and turned it into one giant cellphone.

Perhaps we need to be violated to change our ways. We certainly don't listen to environmentalists or politicians or the few savvy youth of our seemingly doomed generation but, I dare anyone who watches this film not to be shocked into submission and a state of change after viewing one of the most unforgettable rape scenes in movie history that makes this film even more of a masterpiece than it was 43 years ago.

What the "True" Really Means in True Detective

This must be Alaska . . . those mosquitoes are fuckin' huge

 W   hat is it that really drives us to get out of bed in the morning? Is it to "do good" or to "make a difference" and somehow improve things in a world that is constantly getting a little worse each day? If so then then why are we so fascinated with stories of murder, escaped convicts and devastation? What is it we are hiding?

Judging by the success of such "entertainment pieces" as Mad Max: Fury Road and season one of Nic Pizzolatto's True Detective (TD), we are a lot darker than our nicely groomed front lawns and our shiny SUV's with bumper stickers depicting representations of happy families, would have the public believe. If the first episode of season two of TD is any indication of things to come, Pizzolatto has somehow discovered what it is that we are truly searching for when our feet hit the ground each day.

What do California Highway Patrol Officer Paul Woodrugh (essentially "Ponch" from the tv series "Chips"),  young and innocent looking female detective played by Rachel McAdams, Detective Ray (Colin Farell) Velcoro, and "criminal" Frank (Vince Vaughn) Seymon have in common? They are all deeply disturbed and self-destructive in fact, Frank is perhaps the straightest arrow of the bunch.

In just one hour of television we are introduced to a suicidal, albeit somewhat ethical, viagra popping, blow-job receiving cop played by Taylor Kitsch (the high-school football hero from Friday Night Lights); a sexy female detective who's got several problems with a) sex, b)her David Koresh-like father c)gambling and d)booze; a detective father of a pudgy son (the product of a rape, no less) who he's supposedly proud of, whose got issues with booze, abuse, and a brass knuckle he's most definitely quite fond of; and last but not least, a clean cut criminal who is married and attends parties looking like no less than a respected politician. 

All are linked together by the murder of so and so in a setting reminiscent of a David Lynch movie that has shades of Blade Runner and Black Rain thrown into it seemingly just for fun.

Why will we tune in for more next week to watch an "entertainment piece"? Because behind the facade we are experts at staging in our daily lives is a dark side we are too afraid to indulge or much less admit to even having. Ironically, the criminal in the show opitimizes what each of us do every day: hide who and what we actually are. 

Simply put, shows like this that show characters like us, both hidden and fully exposed, make us feel less alone and give meaning to the word "True" in True Detective.

Sad is Good!

"If you say What The Fuck one more time, I'm gonna shame you on Fuckbook" 

 I   s a generation of young people ready to feel sad at the movies again as they did in 1982 in parts of E.T.? Can children raised on youtube and the internet concentrate long enough to comprehend the human psyche and its five components of joy, anger, fear, disgust, and sadness? The folks at Pixar appear to believe that the answer to both of these questions is "Yes" and have made a film that is completely unorthodox in a movie climate blatantly overloaded with sequels, CGI dinosaurs and robots.

Inside Out starts off as its trailers indicated: 11-year-old Riley has five voices in her head which all contribute to who she is (unfotunately, she is not schizophrenic . . . sequel?). Naturally, and in typical Hollywood fashion, the leader of the five is "Joy" making Riley a predominantly happy child.

The happy scenes—although necessary—are relatively boring and predictable until her parents whisk her off to San Francisco and her life takes a dramatic change. Her old friendships crumble, she breaks down and cries in class on her first day in a new school and she quits hockey, sending islands in her mind crashing into an abyss of darkness full of lost and or useless memories.

Joy then takes it upon herself to save Riley and ends up getting lost in her mind along with Sadness who really is the star of the film. It seems that Sadness can't keep her hands off of Riley's happy memories (softball-sized marble-textured objects) and tries to change their color from bright yellow/gold to blue, thereby making them sad. Joy tries to keep Sadness away from the memories of an eleven year old and that's when things get interesting.

As Sadness and Joy make their way through Riley's mind, they encounter her dark subconscious that is guarded and locked, her "train of thought" which literally is a train, and her imaginary friend Bing Bong, who probably deserved a better fate.

While the duo continue to try to figure out how to make it back to Riley's "headquarters"—a kind of command and control center—the viewer is subjected to a self-indulgent animated adventure reminiscent of what Tarantino fell victim to in Inglorious Basterds.

It turns out that indeed, sometimes, we need to be sad and judging from Inside Out's wide success so far and its stellar reviews, children can handle its heavy subject matter as easily as they can text "LOL".

Yes, the folks at Pixar can be considered geniuses for taking a chance at making a film where joy is not all it's cracked up to be, but, they know it all too well.

Shameless Plug

Someone I know has a small child to whom something is happening that the little guy doesn't deserve.

Maybe you could donate a couple of bucks -- Dog knows these parents need it.

Wut The Fuck YOU Lookin' AT?

Not the first time a star has regarded a director with such utter disdain.

Filmed in Notre-dame-des-Neiges Cemetery.

 (Please put on HD)

Muzik

Welcome To My World. Like my Joy Stick?

 I   hate to steal Dane's brilliant thunder, and this is definitely "off-topic," but . . . I was ruminating, as I am wont to do (also will to do) and hey, Lookout, World. Durknit Is Ruminating Agin.

And I ruminated about this:

I was over at my pal Dimitri's house yesterday (he's all of 30 years old!) and he regrettably had the radio tuned to some mindless station, which was presumably pumping out the "latest hits."

It had been the first time I was subjected to the assault on my ears of this kind since Giorgio Moroder and disco.

This stuff is INCREDIBLE! And I don't mean that in a good way.

What I find remarkable, other than the immensely boring 4/4 tempo, is the complete lack of chord structure. You thought Punk only had three chords? Try TWO. It's like they took a couple of chords, put them through a shredder and then fed them into a computer and then autotuned the fuck out of it.

"Mindless" gives it too much credit.

If this music had a color, it would be GREY. No, strike that: it would be the color of static on your TV set . . . when there was static, that is. Just random audio pixels assembled by a computer and then extruded, like bland pasta, into a shape: "Lady Gaga Love To Love Me Mixtape 25" . . . "Kanye West Shoot The Cop Mashup/Vangelis Chariots v. 87" . . .

Remember that music that George Lucas imagined would be playing sometime in the far future in the Star Wars bar scene -- you know, the alien horn section -- well, Georgie was WAAAAYYY too optimistic. As I recall, it was a blend between Artie Shaw and Dizzy Gillespie.

Today's hits are a blend between Coke Zero and A McDonut.

Is Music Really "The Universal Language"?

 I   s it possible for someone with no training in music to recognize great musical compositions? What is music anyhow, but a way to make us feel something in an otherwise fairly dull world? We listen to the radio, the internet, go to concerts, and many of us say: I just couldn't live without music.

That being said, can just an ear alone tell the difference between what is considered by "experts" to be great and what is considered by those same "schooled" experts to be garbage?

Having been raised by two professional musicians, I was dragged to concert after concert, watching my father both play and conduct, all the time wondering What the hell are these people so excited about?

When I was eight years old, I used to go with my mother to the university at which she taught piano, at 5 a.m. on weekends (she said she could play better early in the morning), to turn pages for her as she belted out her latest rendition of Beethoven or whoever it was that happened to be taking a beating from her swift but skillful hands that day.

I had no idea what it what I was listening to and could not understand what all the fuss was about at the time, but it obviously made her happy.

Thankfully, my parents both loved movies and all us sons were pretty much raised in front of a big screen. I remember first feeling something―call it excitement, rhythm, an adrenaline rush or a hankering to throw more popcorn in my mouth―in 1978, during the opening to Superman and John Williams' score (now called The Planet Krypton).

As a few years went by and we continued to go to the movies, VCRs became popular and watching videos over and over again became a tradition on our Sanyo Betamax.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was released along with a musical and special effects extravaganza, and even after seeing it in the theater, we watched it again and again, wondering how the effects were accomplished. The beginning of Raiders is truly amazing and once again John Williams got my heart beating for reasons I am still not entirely sure of.

In my teens, movies became more and more interesting, partcularly the ways in which they began, as the beginning credits rolled. The ability of movie directors to instantly capture a viewer's attention, usually by music, was fascinating.

In 1984, The Terminator was released and Brad Fiedel's brilliantly synthesized score riveted movie-goers as they became introduced to a then-young James Cameron's vision of the future.

Arnold Schwarzenegger became a household name and movie lovers flocked to video stores (remember them?) to see some of his older movies, including Conan the Barbarian. When I first saw Conan in 1985 and heard the opening to what many consider one of the best movie scores of all time, Basil Poledouris' drums made me want to see more movies.

In CEGEP, I took a few movie courses and in 1987, Brian De Palma released The Untouchables—the opening of which, with Ennio Morricione's pianos and synthesized drums, inspired me to make a short film using that very same two minutes of music. My film teacher said it was "the work of an avant-garde film-maker" because I understood the music so well—whatever the hell that means.

In film class, we watched movies like Touch of Evil and North by Northwest. The former was called "the quintessential film-noir" and the latter, "a masterfully made suspense film" but I was more moved by Henry Mancini's sinister horns and Bernard Hermann's power-score, respectively.

And then, one night, The Omen was on.

I was sixteen years old and had never heard a movie with such an eerie opening. I remember my father commenting laconically: "That's nothing . . . it's stolen from Lion in Winter" —which indeed it was.

Still, Jerry Goldsmith, who to this day remains as one of my heroes, was responsible for the inspirational Logan's Run, the terrifying Alien, and the unbelievably exciting Capricorn One openings. (Who can forget his groundbreaking Planet of the Apes score? - Durknit)

One Sunday afternoon, Spartacus was on. Alex North's drums perked my interest but it was his strings that made me fall in love with Jean Simmons.

In 1991, Martin Scorsese remade Cape Fear and Bernard Hermann became another hero of mine but above all others, for me, it was James Horner.

I was only twelve years old when I first heard the beginning of 48 Hrs. I was in an electronics store and they had it on full blast on a giant screen with what was considered to be, at that time, "state-of-the-art sound" and I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Such strength, such timing; it reminded me of all the times I'd watch my dad conduct his orchestra in a full-bodied sweat, wondering what all the fuss was about.

Thirty-two years later I saw Gladiator with a live orchestra. Hans Zimmer's masterful  opening brought tears to my eyes and once again reminded me of the power of music, family and love.

Oddly enough, like Jimi Hendrix, jazz drummer Tony Williams, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton and many other real musicians who have done bonafide masterpieces, I cannot read or write music. But, like Anne Murray once said "I trust my ear". 

Judging from what professionals have had to say about the composers of my "Top 15 List of Movie Music Scores"―all have been nominated and have won award after award―I believe that music really is "The Universal Language" and that anyone can be affected by its power.

15) Brad Fiedel : The Terminator

14) Basil Poledouris : Conan the Barbarian

13) Jerry Goldsmith : Logan's Run

12) Alex North : Spartacus

11) John Barry : The Lion in Winter

10) Henry Mancini : Touch of Evil

9) Bernard Hermann : North By Northwest

8) Jerry Goldsmith : Alien

7) Bernard Hermann : Cape Fear

6) Ennio Morricione : The Untouchables

5) Jerry Goldsmith : Capricorn One

4) John Williams : Raiders of the Lost Ark

3) John  Williams : Superman (the Planet Krypton)

2) Hans Zimmer : Gladiator

1) James Horner : 48 Hrs

June 23 update: James Horner decided to fly and died instead.