Enter the Void

The movie pulses with sex longing and exploitation.
It is also an interesting portrayal of the theories of
reincarnation.

The primary longing is that of the soul to be reborn,
coupled with the boys somewhat incestuous overprotective
love for his sister.

It takes place in a seedy pulsing Tokyo ( somewhat out of a
foreigner dream because I felt it had littler resemblence to the
work a day Tokyo I experienced). A brother and a sister, Oscar and
Linda struggle to survive in a seedy messy apartment in Tokyo where
Oscar has slid into a life of dealing drugs and Linda into a life of
exotic dancing, at a club run by her exploititve boyfriend Mario.
At the beginning of the film Oscar is reading the Tibetan book of the dead, and
Linda who hates that her brother is going hanging out with drug dealer
is going to work as a dancer.

After Linda leaves, Oscar tries to overcome the seedy reality of his living
situation by taking mushrooms and the film viewer sees him enter a
trance. He get a call from his friend who want some drugs, at a nearby
bar. At the bar it turns out that in fact it was a set up and Oscar is shot
by the Tokyo police. Oscar dies in a seedy bathroom and that is were the
movie begins as Oscar hovers around Tokyo waiting to be reborn. His primary
concern is for his sister, but it isn't clear if it is out of brotherly love of
something else. The bother and sister lost their parents in a car crash as children.
Oscar wanted to protect to help his sister but he continually fails. First as a child
when she is taken away to foster care and then later when in Tokyo he tries to
take care of her and instead she falls into stripping and he himself
gets killed, and reincarnates as his sisters son with lots of sex and drugs
and memories of the past along the way.

The last film made by Gaspar Noe was Irreversiable which contemplates the uselessness
of revenge, and features highly sexualized violence. In some moments both seem more
tender than movies where neither happen. But maybe both are fever dreams,
in both women become increasingly powerless, because of their own nature.

Rusted Root

I remember Rusted Root being a really popular band back in
Highschool so I was interested in seeing them with my friend
at the Nokia Center a couple of days ago. Many times in Highschool,
I could remember driving around and listening to "Send me on my way".
I ran with more of the goths or the punk ( or myself really
but the music I listened to was pretty mopey) but I still liked it.

I never really got into a lot of the neo hippy bands and successors to
the Grateful Dead because I felt like a lot of the potential of the 1960s
has vanished. If anything the rapes and debacle of the really corporate
Woodstock 2 should indicate that. But getting older I also find that not
being jaded is also a form of bravery. Still trying to access the idealism
and innocence of the sixties is something really just a relevant and
powerful as the late seventies swagger of the Strokes for example. Granola
can be crunchy but if you eat some you life longer and probably happier too.
They might be a little cheesy but they scare me a little less
than Lightening Bolt.

I think a lot of their appeal is the way in which their music takes you
on a journey. They also seem to embody a lot of the innocence and optimism
of the 1990s. Which was so post modern so end of history, the Berlin wall
down, the market strong it seemed totally possible that you could tour
around the country with you crazy dance band,and live the hippy dream forever.

I had a really good time at the concert.... two block from Times Square is
probably as far as you can get from the woods, but still, but still there
was an innocence. Of all the dreams to hold onto, despite the somewhat Bro-sh connotations, it doesn't seem like a bad one.

The Walking Dead on AMC

Around this time last year I wrote a post about vampire movies
and how they scared me because they eroticized evil, and that
zombies are a much better reality to look at. Now it seems
that we are finally in the zombie moment I had hoped for and
I feel like maybe one needs to be careful what they wish for.

Zombies are the other, and as such they are easier to kill than
vampires.In order to not become a zombie you must kill the other.
Granted being a walking cadaver is definitely a bad thing, but
maybe the cadaver doesn't feel that way and maybe the cadaver is
happy with its zombie life. This probably isn't true actually.It
seems like the Zombie forgets who it is and only want to make
other people like itself.Zombies are very metaphysical... what if
anything goes on in their minds.

The Walking Dead has the typical zombie movie premise. A man falls
into a coma( he's a policeman, he gets shot) and on waking up he
finds the world changed, littered by dead bodies and overrun with
zombies (there is the especially compelling half a corpse zombie
woman holding onto a bicycle) Finally the
policeman makes it to a house where a father and son are living
out a hidden existence, with nightly appearances of their ghostly
mother/wife who has turned into a zombie. After leaving the mother
and father the policeman moves through the country, finds a horse,
rides it into the city.The premiere of the series ends with the
horse consumed by zombies (after the policeman assures the horse
that everything will be fine). There is another group of people
living somewhere in the country . The policeman goes into a tank,
and contacts life on the ham radio as the zombies howl outside.

The reason I guess I prefer zombie movies to vampire movies is because they
don't glamorize or sexualize death, but on some thought maybe glamorizing
death( or undeath) makes it more of a relatable human issue. To kill a
vampire is difficult because it might become your lover. To kill a zombie
is easier, as it is already obviously dead.This isn't a profound thought really
but somehow I think whether we watch zombie movies versus vampire movies says
a lot about the character of society in general. I guess it says we are more
blase about seeing the bad guys and also that there are more of them.

The series is based on a popular comic strip and the premise is pseudo scientific.
The people have contracted something known as Walker's disease, which eats away
their flesh and makes them want to eat flesh as well. As the series progresses
you begin to see the derivation from the comic book.