sign in sign up
<<
Home , Antony Starr, A Safe Place, Will Oldham

VITA TRANSPLANTARE

Vol 2 Number 4 Whole Number 13 A journal of opinion, reviews and diatribes as pertaining to the thought process of John Nielsen Hall Produced in November of the plague year of 2020

Our first missive this ish is from Gary Mattingley, Dublin CA.

Hmm, I felt the urge. With respect to, I guess, prior issues and LoCs. I liked WATCHMEN TV series and I liked SNOWPIERCER movie. I must admit not being that taken by WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS TV series but I did like the movie. I wasn't enthralled by series.

I will have a bit more to say about THE BOYS later.

I haven't watched BRAVE NEW WORLD, ROADKILL, COLLATERAL, THE HOURS nor THE UNDOING. I haven't listened to SEEKING THRILLS.HIS DARK MATERIALS TV series returns this coming Monday. I enjoyed the previous season. I also read the books. Well, that was quick.

HIS DARK MATERIALS series 2 is to the same excellent standard as series 1

What I've been watching? STAR TREK: DISCOVERY season 1 and started into season 2. I like it okay although not so much that I'd buy the DVD's or anything like. Watched and greatly enjoyed THE QUEENS GAMBIT.

There has been a great deal of buzz around THE QUEENS GAMBIT, which I haven't seen, probably because it's on Netflix, which I don't have. I will have to see what I can do about that.

Probably after I catch up on ST: DISCOVERY I'll watch season two of THE MANDALORIAN.

Over here at least, THE MANDALORIAN is on Disney Plus, another channel I don't have. And lets face it, MANDALORIAN is quite possibly the only show on that channel I would want to watch.

You're not on Facebook so I can tell you stuff I put there, like the following posts on films, since you seem to have been talking about such things. I won't repost all of my post.

I've been watching a few films from the article, "Asian cinema cherishes female action heroes" on IMDB. I've already seen CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON which I enjoyed. DEAF MUTE HEROINE only seems to be available on YouTube. The print itself is pretty bad and so is the movie. I decided it wasn't worth my time to watch the whole thing. CHOCOLATE directed by Prachya Pinkaew. This is a film from Thailand and featured some amazing fight scenes, The main character is Zen, a young female with autism. I don't know what her age was supposed to be in the film but I'm assuming young teens. The actress, JeeJa Yanin, was fairly amazing and I believe she was in her early 20's while the film was being made. In the film she wipes out huge numbers of adult men and a few women. I thought the movie was pretty amazing actually. It wasn't a great cinematic classic but as an action fight film I thought it was pretty good.

FURIE directed by Le-Van Kiet. This was an entertaining fight film, mother going after kidnapped daughter with lots of fight scenes. Only the mother really has any character development and that is pretty limited, just historical flashbacks more than anything. The scenery is lovely when she's not fighting. So, entertaining but doubtful it will become or be known as a "classic" film except for people who make lists of these types of fight films. Veronica Ngo was the lead actress and I thought she did a relatively good job.

HAPKIDO directed by Feng Huang. It was alright, but it was dubbed which I didn't really like and was not very good as an actual movie. It had lots of fight scenes and those were okay but the sneering and boisterous laughing, etc., was a bit too much for me. It seemed to be a lot of posing and the very bad guys against the very good people. It isn't something that I would ever watch again. Supposedly Jackie Chan was in this movie in a very minor non-speaking part but I'm afraid I didn't notice him. He was in two fight scenes, or so I have read.

Another recent film was STRANGER THAN PARADISE directed by Jim Jarmusch. I liked it. It was odd. Also he divided everything into these little segments. There's a short take, there's a cut, there's a fadeout and blackness and then there's fade in and the next short take. Not much happens. The characters don't do a whole lot. It is in black and white. It is sort of funny in an odd way. Definitely odd and unexpected ending. I like this movie. It is Jarmusch's second feature length film.

I found it more or less incomprehensible, and I didn't laugh once.

A GHOST STORY was directed by David Lowery. It is a rather strange movie. It is mostly sort of sad, with a few comic moments, and a lot of time passing with no dialogue or dialogue that you don't really hear. It certainly is a fun movie if you think about death very much but, of course, has absolutely no answers whatsoever, just some thoughts. I found it entertaining although admittedly a little slow here and there. The story, what there is of it, is, overall, interesting to me with respect to the passing of time, of changes, of abstraction and odd moments in sad ghost to ghost communications. It all seems to relate to the meaningless of existence, sounds like my frequent state of mind. The pointlessness of life. The pointlessness of anything and everything. In a listing of credits "random guy" is , known as "Prognosticator" in the cast listing. Will Oldham - "He has had a major recording career under numerous names: Palace, Palace Music, Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Bonnie Prince Billy, and others. He is also known for strange, detached concert performances." I just thought that was an interesting choice in casting. It was, to me, an interesting movie, enjoyable to a certain extent, thoughtful, sad, sort of an appropriate movie for Halloween in a different way. I enjoyed the music/soundtrack.

I haven't seen that, but you make it sound like I might want to cut my throat if I did. Will Oldham I know all about, and generally I wouldn't stir out of doors to see or hear him. I think the bloke is a profound idiot. One of the collections I recently watched was FROM AMERICA LOST AND FOUND :THE BBS STORY. BBS is BBS Productions formed by Bob Rafelson, , and Steve Blauner.

"Fuelled by money from their invention of the superstar TV pop group , they set off on a film-industry journey that would lead them to form BBS Productions, a company that was also a community. The innovative films produced by this team between 1968 and 1972 are collected in this box set—works that now range from the iconic (, , ) to the acclaimed (THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS) to the obscure (HEAD; DRIVE HE SAID; A SAFE PLACE), all created within the studio system but lifted right out of the countercultural id."

HEAD was directed by Bob Rafelson. The primary writers were Rafelson and . It featured the Monkees and lots of guest appearances. It was okay. I may have seen it once in the past. It was very disjointed, shifting from this scene to that scene and maybe back to some scene and walking into another scene, funny effects, psychedelic effects, lots of young women, footage from documentaries, other movies, commercials, cartoons, etc. I can't say that there was a lot of coherency, any particular story line, etc. I suppose you could say it was sort of like some of the Monkees episodes but not as good as I remember them being. It had some songs. It had some interesting or almost interesting moments. It was all right but certainly not great.

I've never been sure. It could have been a masterpiece, but somehow wasn't. It was certainly of its time.

DRIVE, HE SAID was directed by Jack Nicholson. Vincent Canby of declared, "It is not a great film, but it is an often intelligent one, and it is so much better than all of the rest of the campus junk Hollywood has manufactured that it can be indulged in its sentimental conventions." I would certainly agree with that. No, it is not a great film. I think it is certainly a film of its time and very reflective of those times but also, I guess, of college life, although not really one I personally encountered.

A SAFE PLACE directed by . It starred , Jack Nicholson, and Phil Proctor. It was not, in my opinion, very good. It is a strange movie centering upon one young woman whose mind drifts, as does the film, and not particularly in a good way. It just really doesn't work too well. It is interesting and odd and depressing but it just doesn't work too well. This is also Jaglom's directorial debut. The notes on the reception in the Wikipedia article pretty much sum up my feelings about this movie. "Jaglom's directorial debut was a "critical and box- office disaster". Time magazine called the film "pretentious and confusing", a film that "suggests that the rumors of his expertise were greatly exaggerated, or at least that it does not extend to directing."

FIVE EASY PIECES directed by Bob Rafelson with Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Billy Green Bush, Fannie Flagg, Sally Struthers and others in interesting roles. I enjoyed this film. The ending was sort of bizarre but not unexpected. I was very entertained by Lois Smith as Partita Dupea. She was one of the two women they picked up, the one that talked and talked and talked I was amused. I would not have been amused had I been in that car. I also enjoyed seeing Ralph Waite as Carl Fidelio Dupea. He was definitely different from the things I saw him do much later in his life. Anyway, I liked the movie. It certainly had its odd moments.

It is a classic. One of Nicholson's great pictures. THE LAST PICTURE SHOW directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Chloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn and a lot of other people. I thought it was pretty good. I've watched it several times in the past. The town looked like a lot of small towns I've lived in or driven through. It made me think if I'd stayed in Bronson, Kansas I would have been on the football team too. There weren't that many people in the one building with all 12 grades, two grades per classroom in the elementary grades. Wouldn't have that been something? Or not? Anyway I enjoyed it. I liked the acting, the cinematography, the music, the scenery (although I wouldn't want to live there) and more. Ben Johnson won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Cloris Leachman won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Lots of awards for this movie.

I think it is a very sentimental picture and ( forgive me) sentimental in a very American way that doesn't get the same emotional reaction from me and I suspect, lots of other Brits. My chief reaction was “ Thank Heaven I wasn't born in Kansas!” And Thank Heaven you didn't stay there Gary.

EASY RIDER directed by Dennis Hopper. I've watched this numerous times in the past.

Haven't we all?

The main stars are Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, who together wrote it and Jack Nicholson appears in it also. I like this movie for the most part. I like the music, the scenery, the scenes, lots of the dialogue but I don't like the ending.

We were not meant to like the ending. Also, if I never hear BORN TO BE WILD again, it will be too soon.

I haven't been buying a lot of music of late. The most recent CDs were THE SACRED VEIL by Eric Whitacre and AFTER SILENCE by Voces8, both classical, I guess, quiet but interesting.

As I have said before, I don't go a great deal on choral music. Some, but not much. I have not heard anything by Eric Whitacre that has made any impression on me, very trendy though he seems to be right now.

Obviously I post a lot on Facebook, about films, music, hiking with the dogs and photos on the hike, Cosmo's visit to the vet yesterday where he had his teeth cleaned, three teeth extracted and a benign tumor on his stomach removed (he's not very happy today), planning for a trip to Peru and Bolivia next year, exercising, and a lot about the current political situation. I don't post much, if any, of this on ITB because it usually is ignored or elicits extremely minimal responses or, occasionally quibbles about this tiny thing or that tiny thing from a certain individual.

You will probably have noticed that I cut some small parts of this Gary, but I would like to print more of your thoughts on movies, TV, music etc. any time you want to send them. I don't do quibbles. Jerry Kaufman Seattle WA

We've just started Daylight Savings Time this past weekend, turning our clocks back an hour, which makes sundown come an hour earlier. Few people know that this was also Apostrophe Catastrophe Prevention Week. This is why Ted White is so adamant about correct apostrophe usage. You may not know it, but there are only a limited number available, and misuse is a waste tantamount to a crime. What happens if they all get used and our keyboards will only enter a blank space when you tap them?

Dunno. What will happen? Lots more spaces?

You are right about Clouds Hill having no indoor plumbing. I believe this was not uncommon for houses in rural areas at the time it was built (probably early 19th century) as well as when Lawrence bought it.

Yes, but it's not like he was brought up to no plumbing. Was he just showing off how rough he could take it, do you suppose?

I've read several books by James Cain, but not Mildred Pierce. In fact, I hadn't realized he wrote it, so I should add it to my mental list of books to read (the list however is easily erased).

Regarding LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, you should complain to the HBO publicity department for the lack of Cthulhu and his fellow Elder Gods. He wasn't in the book, either. The only reason for the name is that the opening episode in book and series takes place in Massachusetts (I suspect you know this already, you wag). There are some significant differences between the book and adaptation, especially the ending. Several characters have different genders, the haunting of Winthrop House is handled very differently, Hippolyta's trip through the portal is very different, etc. I reread the book after finishing the series, and enjoyed it much more.

I haven't read the book and only decided to watch the TV series on account of the trailers, which included Cthulhu. It was a con.

We're watching THE UNDOING - two episodes have been shown so far. I find it engrossing and well-acted, but not particularly original. As I like both Hugh Grant and Nicole Kidman, I'm finding it quite watchable. (And I realize as I write that "watchable" is a meaningless compliment.) Is Hugh the murderer or not? If this were an ongoing series, we'd know he's not. But in a thriller like this, we'll just have to remain uncertain.

My working theory is that Donald Sutherland's character is to blame. I'm sure he doesn't care for his son-in-law much. “Watchable” isn't a compliment, meaningless or otherwise, is it? It only indicates that it holds your interest, but it wouldn't bother you much if you didn't see the rest of it. Well, that's how I feel, anyway.

Rob Jackson, West Sussex

Thanks for VT 12.

Just a quick that-reminds-me in response to Nic's tale of a witty comment in Parliament. This may be old news, but I'll retell it anyway.

When Harold Wilson was a junior MP, he was in awe of Winston Churchill even when Churchill was past his best and something of an elder statesman. He told a tale of having gone into the Gents in the Commons, and seeing that Churchill - by then something of an old codger - was leaving with his flies still undone. Wilson tried to think what to say quickly to draw the old boy's attention to this without being overtly rude.

He said: "Sir, the guardroom door is open."

Absolutely instantly, Churchill replied: "Well, was the sentry standing to attention, or lolling about on a couple of sandbags?"

Not many other comments as I still haven't been making time to watch TV sf or drama. Oh well.

Never mind, Rob. You will be really retired soon.

Sandra Bond, believed to be in South London these days

Thanks for VT12. Nothing like a fanzine to brighten the day. And this is nothing like -- no, no. No fibbing just to make a bad joke. Truly appreciated.

I hope Graham reads your response to him.

Does "supposed to be a comedy, I believe" mean you haven't seen WHAT WE DO (not Did) IN THE SHADOWS, or that you didn't think it was funny?

I never saw the film ( because generally I avoid comedies) and one episode of the TV series was enough to convince me I wouldn't find it funny. Don't mind me, I am a miserable old git.

I hope the former. It really is very good, as was the original film. I was quite prepared to dislike the series because of the changed setting and premise, but it snuck up on me and if anything I've enjoyed it more. Pat is evidently, like me, a fan of Colin Robinson,who is pretty much turning into the archetypal break-out character --sort of like a mirror universe version of the Fonz.

I actually watch very little television so I struggle to comment on the topic. I really should try out Lovecraft Country; hotshot young BAME SF writer Stewart Hotston has been writing it up episode by episode and making it sound fascinating, if full of Issues. The only new thing I've really watched this year has been MYTHIC QUEST, which is an office comedy set in a game company running an MMORPG. But it may help if you've actually played some, I guess.

New TV Smith album out imminently, though again I am uncertain whether our tastes would coincide upon him...

Sadly, they would not, Sandra. But if you feel like writing it up when you have heard it so that it can be printed in this “fanzine”, by all means do. And now, The Sage of Falls Church VA himself, TED WHITE

I don't want to end up as a usage-scold, but this thing with apostrophes is not over yet (*sigh*....).

Jerry Kaufman says: "I've noticed the rogue apostrophes in your previous zines but ignored them. I've read zines with far worse errors. Usually, pointing such errors out didn't result in any improvement."

But earlier in his letter he refers to the "1980's." My response is to ask, "the 1980's *what*?" Because the apostrophe makes this a possessive, not just a time period.

Dear Reader, subsequent to VT12 it has been established that your ill educated ( I only went to Secondary Modern!) and only half literate editor was responsible for “1980's”. Mea Maxima Culpa.

But this is a very common error. Many people have problems with rendering dates. Entirely too many people are not truly literate. They can read, but they can't write.

We, of course, being Slans, are superior to that. Which is what makes such unthinking errors all the more obvious.

Actually, I do wonder if “the 1980's” is not actually possessive. Jerry, and the rest of us I expect, would use the term to refer to things that were current or happened in that decade. They were things OF the 1980's, surely. Strictly, we might be better off writing 'nineteen eighties' but that is, of course, way too much trouble. Still, at least I now know why those stories I submitted to AMAZING back in about 1971 were rejected.

Those of you paying attention( not Graham Charnock, obviously)will have noticed the lack of any input this ish from our resident Englishman in Las Vegas. I can only assume that I will have to say, as THE SPECTATOR used to have to do of Jeffrey Barnard: Nic Farey is unwell.

I never liked superheroes. That is, the comic book heroes with apparently supernatural powers, could fly, had biceps the size of hams, x ray vision and were convinced of their own morality and upright standing. I was less censorious of the mega rich non supernatural ones with a cave full of gadgets and a car with a rocket engine. Or maybe had just one good idea about what would be needed in a modern suit of armour. But on the whole, I could do without them.

Not enough people seem to me to make the connection between the era in which Superman first appeared, the 1930's, and one of the fashionable political philosophies of the same era, fascism. THE BOYS TV series, which the Great Sage of Hitchin provided us with an encomium about last ish, has been seen by the critics as a comment on Trump's dis-United States. But it is way, way deeper than that. It is about fascism; the psychology of it, and the effect it has on people and society. It is brilliantly written and acted.

Having said that, I don't think I really knew what the phrase 'gratuitous violence' meant until I saw this show. There is much overuse of the c word, which, (and I never thought I would be moved to say this) I find goes way beyond what I feel is at all reasonable. Two of the leading male actors are from , and Antony Starr . Urban plays Billy Butcher, supposedly British but whose accent wanders between NZ, Aus and Essex. He looks like a younger Nic Farey, skulking about the screen swearing (usually with a c word) vengeance on his nemesis, , and all “supes”. Homelander, played by Antony Starr is the most vile,preening, stuck up, nasty American bastard with superpowers you have ever seen, and I'm failing in my powers of description, I promise. (He really is a c…) I hesitate to go further into the plot as I don't want anybody who wants to watch this or is watching it ( I'm about three quarters of the way through Series 2) to be presented with spoilers. Suffice it to say, that in fact, superpowers are conferred by a dangerous drug, the manufacture of which is the real business of the mega corporation that “owns” all the superheroes. (I've yet to work out if this is some sort of dig at Marvel or DC.) The drug doesn't always, or maybe very seldom,produce stable heroes. Most are frankly barking, and others are so far out they are locked up in a mental hospital that is actually a research facility into how things went so wrong. The titular Boys, are Billy Butcher's gang, if you like. They are the resistance fighters. The rest of the human population are just the sheep, who like to watch superhero movies and lead 'normal' lives.

This is the most amazing, disgusting, enthralling watch available on streaming TV right now. There is almost no chance of it ever appearing on broadcast free-to-air stations. You will need Amazon to watch it in the UK, and probably everywhere else.

In other TV series waffle, ROADKILL, seemed to end with indecent haste, almost as if David Hare got fed up with it. Left me wondering why I bothered, rather like LOVECRAFT COUNTRY, only shorter. But then again, HIS DARK MATERIALS series 2 has started, and if you are not watching this, you are really missing a brilliant BBC series in the best traditions of that venerable institution. The effects are fantastic, better than some American series I have seen, and while it has never stuck to the exact structure of the books, It does full, and more than full, justice to Philip Pullman's original novels.

Well, 'tis the season for me to go off on one of my pet peeves: stupid TV perfume ads. Dior is still showing Sharon Stone, but re-edited so that she is dressed for most of it. Shame! Actually it still has that tiny bit of good music from , so I should not complain. The new ad for Chanel No 5 is beyond stupid: two characters dressed like they are vampires or something appear to be haunting deserted streets and bridges in Prague (I'm almost certain) and then they are dancing on the moon, which is covered in gold glitter and has normal earth gravity except when it doesn't. WTF?

What I want to know is, how does any of this sell perfume? How bloated and disconnected do the directors of these firms have to be to imagine these ads do anything apart from repeatedly putting a brand name on the screen for a few seconds? They couldn't convince the slowest kid in the class to buy anything. It's meaningless. Lancome invested in paying Julia Roberts for a more than usually stupid ad in the same vein once, and have now been showing it for about twenty years to be sure they are getting their money's worth. I cannot believe that is has ever resulted in the extra sale of a single bottle of perfume. Most blokes stagger into Boots or Walgreens or a department store set on buying a bottle for their partner at Xmas time. They know better than to buy one they may have seen an ad for. They either know, or have been told, what is preferred. They buy that one. That is only sensible. Who then is the ad aimed at? Do women change their minds on seeing anything as fatuous as these ads? I refuse to believe it.

And who is that silly cow who goes “And you? What would you do for love?” I think she thinks she can sing. Enough! I might explode. The only halfway decent film I have seen of late is AMUNDSEN. This is a Norwegian film, mostly in Norwegian and subtitled but with significant portions in English. Directed by Espen Sandsberg, it stars Pål Sverre Hagen, Christian Rubeck, and Katherine Waterston. As you might guess, it is a bio- pic of the Norwegian explorer and leader of the first successful expedition to reach the South Pole. The film does not attempt to make him a very sympathetic character. On this evidence he was a nightmare. To a British viewer of a certain age, the South Pole expedition is the part that will be of most interest, since we were indoctrinated at a very young age that our man, Captain Robert Scott, was the real hero, who died with his team, after being beaten to the prize by underhand methods. He wasn't of course. He came second because he ignored every single piece of advice he was given, largely by Scandinavian explorers of the Arctic, about the route he should take, and the methods of transport.

As many will know, he decided on a much slower route which he thought safer, and he would not use dogs. Indeed, the Royal Geographical Society only backed his expedition on the condition that he not use dogs. Amundsen's team used dogs, and ate them when they became surplus to requirements. Scott took tractors and ponies. No tractor made in 1911 was ever going to work for very long in Antarctic temperatures and the ponies, poor things, simply froze to death in short order. So Scott and his men man-hauled his sledges to the pole the long way, found Amundsen had beaten them to it and started back for their base, but were so weak and undernourished that when they were caught in a storm, actually very close to one of their own supply dumps, they suffered the same fate as the ponies.

The film shows Amundsen's side of the race ,only showing brief scenes of Scott including the discovery of his body in 1912. The Royal Geographic Society gave a dinner for Amundsen, shown in the film, at which the members were monumentally rude to him, drinking a toast “ to the real heroes of the successful polar expedition, The Dogs.” Which actually was completely accurate, if very impolite. This can still set people to arguing to this day. Technology has now made dog transport in polar regions unnecessary, and certainly the eating thereof, the very thought of which makes me ill along with most Brits, although Shackleton did it on his doomed expedition in 1914, where, in extremis, they also ate penguins and seals. AMUNDSEN the film covers much much more than the expedition to the South Pole, and it's a very competent film, but it's subject was a fundamentally unpleasant man, who treated others abominably, and in the end, was not a great loss to humanity when he went looking for a crashed airship in the Arctic and disappeared. So , perfectly good as it is, AMUNDSEN is not a film you will want to see more than once.

Well folks, why have I not been been extolling the virtues of my latest reading, you may have wondered? Suppose I was to tell you that I was reading a super crash-bang-wallop space opera featuring aliens bent on the genocide of humanity, travel to worlds apparently inhabited by a fantastically old race of aliens who bear a striking resemblance to elves. All of this, and actual trains! Running in wormholes! Wouldn't you want to drop all that academic literature, crime fiction, thrillers and comic books and ask excitedly what on earth could such a space opera be called and who wrote it?

Well, truth be told, it is not one novel, it is two. PANDORAS PLANET and JUDAS UNCHAINED by Peter F Hamilton, unacknowledged genius of British Science Fiction. I am re reading them. And actually they are even better than the first time. Okay, they will never make the Booker shortlist ( although the way things are going, who knows?). They are not deep, they are , according to some, over written. In physical form both books are huge and by their very size and weight, put off many. But now, in the day of the e-book, you need not worry about the impact on your toes should you drop them. This is proper Science Fiction, I tell you. This is what you have wanted to read ever since you were twelve years old! And why these novels have not made an appearance on TV yet, I cannot think. They would out-gross GAME OF THRONES by a wide margin. They may not have the blood and guts quotient of THRONES, but there is sex and a Senzawunda. There are also space and ground battles, gunfire, massive alien invasion fleets, and full on weirdness.

So that's why I haven't told you about my reading. I rather thought you might have read them when they came out, years ago. Didn't you?

VT will be on it's Xmas hols for the next month. The deadline for the next ish is roughly 21st January 2021. Hopefully, that will be the first ish of The Vaccine Year. Until then, all my dear old friends, have the best Xmas and New Year you can possibly manage in the circumstances, won't you.

Not 'arf, pop pickers.

UNCLE JOHNNY