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pcttrailsidereader · 3 years

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To Measure a Mile

By Howard Shapiro

Yet another documentary of a PCT thru hike has come to my attention. This one ‘To Measure a Mile’ describes a 2018 trek by Chris Carter. There are many things to recommend about this film. First there is the photography. The quality is a real stand out. Carter captures images that transported me back to those same places with a renewed sense of wonder and delight. He intersperses his film with what appears to be a carefully curated selection of music. None of it overpowers the images or the particular locations featured.

Carter and his friend Andrew ‘Bugs’ Eichenlaub along with a college friend of Carter’s, get a late start from Campo. The trio begin their journey on May 19th well after a majority of the thru hike crowd has headed north. The temperatures in the desert have warmed considerably and the water caches are not as prevalent. Despite this they set out with strong determination. After a seemingly reasonable break-in period of a couple of weeks of 10 mile days, injuries slow their progress. The three hikers go off the trail and are taken in by several trail angels they meet through the course of their hike.

After a short stay Carter and Eichenlaub decide to press on while their friend Beau continues to recuperate. They know that time is their enemy if they are to reach the northern terminus before the cold winds and deep snow of late fall in the North Cascades stop them from reaching their ultimate goal.

Carter shares his reflections throughout the film and I found them very relatable. Words like ‘pilgrimage’ and ‘dream’ are part of the narrative. He appears honest with his emotions describing the various ups and downs that come with the journey. These guys are pushing themselves, there is no doubt.

Crushing miles at 30-35 mile clips. Personally, I found this both impressive and out of my league. These fellows are younger than I am and as we come to find out very fit so their ambitious pace suits them for the most part. They do experience that their rapid pace has some downsides. Andrew is plagued by blood blisters while Chris suffers from shin splints. They decide to take time off the trail to recuperate a little. A trail angel gets word of their situation and takes them in for a bit of rest and recovery in Palm Springs.

North of Palm Springs the two hikers find that they are dialing in their bodies and minds for the challenges of their thru hike. They loosely join two other hikers for a spell and find their morale rising. Establishing what they refer to as a ‘siesta schedule’ helps them work around the heat of the day by taking advantage of the cooler temperatures of the night. Being later in the season water caches are drying up and they encounter stretches as long as 40 miles between reliable water sources.

They complete the 700 miles of desert in their first month happily arriving at Kennedy Meadows.The joy they experience entering the Sierras is distinct. The access to reliable water is supremely up lifting. Unfortunately injury finds them again near Mount Whitney where Eichenlaub leaves to recover in Lone Pine while Carter presses on with the idea of meeting up again in the Yosemite Valley.

Carter walks alone and speaks of that experience in an open fashion relating the loneliness, doubt, and fear of pushing on. The demise of his partners leave him wondering if their fate will be his. Eventually he hooks up with ‘Griz’ who will accompany him for this and future stretches. This proves to be a valuable trail friendship. Acknowledging the power of relationships really sets this documentary apart from so many others.

When Carter arrives in the Yosemite Valley he re-connects with his partner Eichenlaub to take a few days off trail to do some rock climbing. This interlude is interesting in terms of broadening our understanding of these two young men’s interests and friendship beyond hiking. It also adds to the sense of their personal styles and approaches to thru hiking the PCT. As a viewer I didn’t expect this to be a part of their story.

Carter pushes on without his friend who is still suffering the effects of shin splints. His newer found friend ‘Griz’ continues on with him north. It is at this stage of their trip that the pressure to walk farther and faster really comes to light. The film flies through those sections north of Yosemite and on to the Oregon border. This sets up for the hiker’s attempt at the Oregon Challenge where hikers push themselves to get through the Oregon PCT as quick as they can. Along the way they up the ante with a 24 hour challenge between Mount Jefferson and Timberline Lodge. I was struck by the drive of these guys.

The attention the film maker gives to his surroundings, from the vast expanses to the smallest flowing stream, make this film visually quite stunning. I am sorry he leaves out, what to me are some important parts of the trail. After setting up the story with the hard miles through the desert and capping it with the beauty found north of Kennedy Meadows he literally speeds through Oregon and a great deal of Washington. I know he is trying to beat the weather in the North Cascades but I would have rather seen more of those miles than the time climbing in Yosemite. He does pays homage to both Oregon and Washington in his wonderful verbal descriptions but doesn’t devote a lot of our viewing time to those portions.

Carter keeps pushing further north on his journey. It is not without increased challenge. The seasons have definitely changed and as I watched I wanted to put on another layer as it looked really cold and miserable. By the closing minutes of the film it is early October and snow is flying and temperatures are dropping.

Chris Carter’s film honors the PCT in more ways than it doesn’t. There are a few times when I felt that the hikers in the film baffled me. At one point Carter states, “slowing down is enriching" while in what seems like the next breath he is giving way to the need for speed. These fellows could be deeply reflective, honest, and engaging and then show their boyish sides. I appreciate, boys can be boys. On the other hand, is it me or are their more ways to appear in a close up other than channeling Gene Simmons from Kiss and letting your tongue hang down to your chin? I grew a little weary of this.

These are small criticisms for a really nicely put to together and professionally done PCT documentary. In our CLIF bar rating system, I would give ‘To Measure a Mile’ a solid 8 CLIF bars (out of 10). I encourage you to give it a look and see how it resonates. As Carter says, “There are more ways to measure a mile...” I would strongly agree.

#Thru hiking #Chris Carter #Yosemite Valley #Oregon Challenge #North Cascades

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puroresu-musings · 6 years

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NJPW G1 CLIMAX 28 Day 6 Review (July 21st 2018, Tokyo, Korakuen Hall)

B Block

Kota Ibushi vs. Toru Yano ***1/2

SANADA vs. Zack Sabre Jr. ****

Juice Robinson vs. Tetsuya Naito ****1/2

Kenny Omega vs. Tama Tonga ***1/4

Tomohiro Ishii vs. Hirooki Goto ****3/4

Photos.

The B Block marches on with another excellent show. Block action kicked off with Toru Yano battling Kota Ibushi in a crazy clash of styles, but with one thing in common, in that both love to do wacky stuff. This certainly didn’t disappoint from that standpoint, and I can’t lie, I laughed uproariously a couple of times at the ludicrousness of some of the proceedings. Things opened up with yano using his amateur background to use cradles on Ibushi and score great near falls in the opening minute. Then things got “serious” as both men took down all the turnbuckle pads, and hit each other with them. In the melee, Yano managed to tape Kota’s hands together, which resulted in hilarious spectacle of Ibushi hitting his missed kick/standing moonsault sequence while taped. Yano also hit his Press Powerbomb. After a ref bump Yano hit a chop block, a low blow and scored the win with a School Boy after 8:23 of very fun action. Things changed up again in the next match as ZSJ took on SANADA in a rematch of their excellent battle in the NJC. Once again, this was a completely different match; it was entirely mat based and revolved around some of the most impresive counter sequences you’ll ever see. Both men tried an insane number of cradles in the early going, but neither could get the better of the other. They traded hard European Uppercuts, which Cold Skull got the better of, so The Technical Wizard went back to what he does best: working holds. They then traded more amazing nearfall combos. The finish saw Sabre go for the Michinoku Driver, but SANADA countered it into Skull End. Zack escaped the hold and got in the European Clutch, but SANADA kicked at 2 in another close near fall. They countered again until SANADA got the bridging O'Connor Roll for pinfall at 10:45 of a great match. Zack went crazy afterwards, slapping young boys and throwing chairs, furious he’d been beaten at his own game.

Naito was victorious over U.S. Champion (and still winless) Juice Robinson in a fantastic match. This told a great story in that Naito, like a complete dick, kept attacking Juice’s broken hand, dropkicking and stomping it repeatedly. Naito hit a top rope Frankensteiner, but Juice rolled through into a sunset flip for a near fall, which set up his comeback. Robinson followed up with a Jackhammer and a fall away slam off the second rope, but both times his hand was too damaged to capitalise. Juice with the cannonball in the corner and a powerbomb got a really believable near fall, but Naito battled back with a reverse rana. He went for Destino, but Juice countered into a Pulp Friction attempt, but Naito hit a German suplex to escape. Another Destino attempt was countered into a huge lariat, which had the crowd going crazy at this point, then went for Pulp Friction again, but again Naito turned it into Destino, but Juice kicked at two. Naito then followed up with another Destino to score the win at the 16:43 mark. It was total story development time in the next match, which saw Omega take on new nemesis Tama Tonga. “Fuckery” was the name of the game here. In all fairness, the action here was very good, but as I say, it was more about the bigger picture, as it just descended into run-ins and ref bumps. Tanga Loa and Fale jumped Kenny before the bell and put the boots to him, before Hangman Page and Chase Owens ran in to even things up. Omega took everyone out with the Terminator Con Hilo, then it was a singles match. Briefly. They teased a Dragon Suplex on the apron, but Loa came back out and clipped Kenny’s leg with a chair. He went to powerbomb Omega off the apron, but Kenny turned it into a Frankensteiner, then powerbombed Tonga onto the apron. Back in the ring, Loa slid a chair in to his brother, who tried a Gun Stun on the chair, but Omega blocked it and Tama took a back bump onto it. Tonga then tried to Styles Clash Omega onto the chair, but a fed up Red Shoes kicked the chair out of the ring and yelled at Tonga. A furious Tama then hit the Gun Stun on Red Shoes for the DQ loss. The Firing Squad ran in and they teased hitting Gun Stun on Kenny with his head in a chair, but Ibushi, Page and Chase ran in for the save. I mean it served its purpose well, but as a match, and like all of Tama’s bouts in this so far, it wasn’t much.

Then the main event was your typical Strong Style war between two guys who never have anything less then superb, hard hitting battles against each other. Everyone knows what to expect here, and they certainly didn’t disappoint. They charged at eachother and slammed into each other like two trains repeatedly, traded sickengly hard lariats and forearms, Ishii hit his hard chops, and Goto fought back with his even harder round kicks to the chest. The Muramasa spin kick in the corner from Goto, followed by the Saito suplex scored a near fall for the NEVER champion. Ishii hit hard forearms and a suplex of his own, but Goto locked in the sleeper, but Ishii escaped. They traded really stiff lariats, which resulted in a double down, Goto locked in the sleeper again, but Ishii punched his way free, then put him down with another lariat. A beautiful stalling suplex off the top scored a near fall for Ishii, who then tried the sliding lariat, but Goto caught him in the Ushigoroshi, then followed up with a massive lariat of his own. The Stone Pitbull then turned Aramusha inside out with another mighty lariat, which got a great near fall, but Goto again fought back and hit the Shouten Kai for another near fall. They then traded (relatively safe) headbutts, Ishii hit an enzugiri and got another close near fall with the Sliding D lariat. Ishii then hit the Vertical Drop Brainbuster to end a fantastic contest at 18:15, and potentially set himself up for a NEVER Title match in the Autumn.

NDT

#njpw #g1 climax 28 #review #njg128 #g128 #hirooki goto #tomohiro ishii #tetsuya naito #juice robinson #kenny omega #tama tonga #bullet club #new japan pro wrestling #puroresu #wrestling #wwe

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Labyrinth: the Unsettling Second Character Played by David Bowie

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Not everything we enjoy is good for us. A chocolate-filled doughnut, for instance, can be delicious even while it crams our arteries with trans fat. The simple fact of knowing that something is unhealthy doesn’t stop it from being fun, which is to say that it’s still okay to love Jim Henson’s 1986 cult kids’ film Labyrinth while acknowledging that its sexual subtext is creepier than a drunk uncle on a camping trip.

It’s not as if nobody noticed the vibe between lead characters Sarah and Jareth at the time, or in repeated viewings since. Like Bowie’s codpiece, it stares you in the face all the way through the film. Jareth’s a 300-year-old Goblin King (played by a 38-year-old pop star) who wants to live within 15-year-old Sarah. Jareth spies on Sarah, comes into her bedroom, drugs her, dances with her, and promises to be her slave if she’ll love him, fear him and do as he says. Their dynamic is wrong in every size and colour, and – depending on whether you’ve spotted the other character Bowie plays in the film – could be about to get a little bit more wrong.

Sarah’s scrapbook in Labyrinth (1986)

The events of Labyrinth are a fantasy that takes place in Sarah’s mind. Using the childhood dolls, stories and ornaments spotted around her bedroom in the early scenes (Hoggle and Ludo toys, a Goblin King statue, a wooden labyrinth game, storybooks from Snow White to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland…), Sarah invents a scenario in which she’s a put-upon fairy tale hero who saves her baby brother. It’s a coming-of-age fantasy that teaches Sarah to leave her childhood behind, recognise her inner power and step into the adult world. The film starts with her dressed as a princess and play-acting, and ends with her literally clearing her room of toys and games, and symbolically passing on her beloved teddy bear Lancelot to her little brother Toby.

If Labyrinth were a ‘real’ fairy tale, then Sarah’s absent mother (the girl lives with her father, stepmother and new stepbrother) would be dead. She isn’t, as we can see from recent photos around Sarah’s mirror and the scrapbook of press clippings Sarah keeps about her, decorated with hearts, the word “mom”. Sarah’s mother Linda Williams is a theatre actor who’s famous enough for her love life to be written about in the papers. Several of the newspaper articles in the scrapbook show her mother pictured with another actor, topped by a headline about their on-again-off-again romance. The other actor in those photos is played by David Bowie. That means that when Sarah was dream-casting the much older lead in her personal coming-of-age fantasy, she gave that role to… her mother’s boyfriend. Therapists of the world, start your engines.

A.C.H. Smith’s 1986 novelisation of Labyrinth was written with input from Jim Henson and screenwriter Terry Jones. In this 2018 podcast interview, Smith explains that Henson gave him over 20 pages of feedback about the draft manuscript and invited him to visit the set and watch several days’ filming. Jones also spent an afternoon with Smith and gave him permission to use an abandoned boneyard scene in the novelisation which had been originally written for the film. The novelisation is canon, is the point. It bears the official stamp. And the novelisation gives us more on the characters of Linda Williams and her actor boyfriend Jeremy. Here, it describes Sarah’s bedroom press clippings:

Sarah’s mother and her co-star, Jeremy, were cheek to cheek, their arms around each other, smiling confidently. The photographer had lit the pair beautifully, showing her to be so pretty, he so handsome, with his blond hair and a golden chain around his neck.

Novelisation-Sarah clearly has a thing for Jeremy, who comes over in the book as louche and flirtatious. Smith describes Sarah as being thrilled by Jeremy’s French-speaking sophistication. She’s impressed by his language and mockery of others, and keeps repeating an actorly phrase she’s heard him say about “finding a way into the part.”

Sarah’s bedroom mirror in Labyrinth (1986)

In one scene from the book, Sarah remembers celebrating her 15th birthday with Jeremy and her mother. The novelisation describes them giggling poolside at Jeremy’s members’ club before receiving his gift of “an evening gown in pale blue” (her mother gets her a music box, so the evening gown is a Jeremy-only deal). Sarah wears the dress that night to a musical, after which Jeremy takes them all to a dimly lit restaurant:

Jeremy had danced with Sarah, smiling down at her. He kidded her that a flashbulb meant that they’d be all over the gossip columns next morning, and all the way home he drove fast, to shake off the photographers, he claimed, grinning.

That’s not the only time Sarah dances with Jeremy/Jareth. Film audiences will remember the masked ball part of Sarah’s labyrinth fantasy, a hallucinatory scene that plays out in the feature as romantic yet sinister, but which is made explicitly sexual in the book. In this Sam Downie interview, Smith says of the novelisation’s dance scene, “It gets quite sexy when she is in the bubble and dancing with Jareth and so forth. I made a little more of that in the book because I felt the book needed that, it needed that extra little emotional kick at that point.”

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By Louisa Mellor

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Labyrinth Conceptual Designer Brian Froud Talks David Bowie, Dark Crystal, and Sequels

By Louisa Mellor

The book scene has Sarah being perved at by a stranger who “relished her face, then her white shoulders, her breasts, hips, and legs,” and sidled up to tell her that she was remarkably beautiful. Dancing with Jareth, the 15-year-old is described as feeling like “the loveliest woman at the ball” and finding “the touch of his hands on her body thrilling.”

When he told her that she was beautiful, she felt confused.

“I feel … I feel like … I — don’t know what I feel.”

He was amused. “Don’t you?”

“I feel like … I’m in a dream, but I don’t remember ever dreaming anything like this!”

He pulled back to look at her and laughed, but fondly. “You’ll have to find your way into the part,” he said, and whirled her on around the room.

Jeremy’s catchphrase, there. In the book, fantasy-Jeremy/Jareth then tries to kiss Sarah, when she realises that the whole room is watching them and laughing:

“Jareth seemed to be unperturbed, but she turned her face sharply away from his, horrified. He held her more tightly, and insistently sought her lips with his. Suffused with disgust, she wrenched herself free of him.”

This is supposedly Sarah’s fantasy. She’s the one in whose imagination all this is happening. In 2016, the film’s conceptual designer Brian Froud explained the thinking to Empire. Sarah, says Froud, is approaching the age of sexual awakening, and so has created Jareth as a composite image of the kind of men who turn her on. “We’re not looking at reality, we’re inside this girl’s head.” Jareth’s costumes were designed to reference “a leather boy”, the armour of a German knight, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, and male ballet dancers. “He’s an amalgam of the inner fantasies of this girl. Everyone always talks about Bowie’s perv pants, but there was a reason for it all! It has a surface that’s fairly light, but then every so often you go, ‘Oh, my God! How did we get away with that?!’”

Telling a children’s story about a girl’s veiled sexualised fantasies of her mother’s boyfriend is getting away with a fair bit. There’s more to the film of course, and ultimately, Sarah vanquishes Jareth by rejecting his sinister allure and asserting her own power. Her attraction to him though, especially in the novelisation, is undeniable. What makes this uncomfortable isn’t the fact that Labyrinth is in part a story about adolescent female sexual awakening, but that its vision of that awakening was dreamt up by grown men and shows an underage girl drawn to a man of their age. Thought of that way and it’s less sure that Sarah’s is the fantasy we’re watching.

It was a different time, though, the 1980s. All this stuff was much more mainstream back then. 16-year-old Samantha Fox could be photographed topless for Page Three of national newspaper The Sun. Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones could openly ‘date’ a child. The charts regularly featured songs about adult men heroically wrestling with their sexual attraction to schoolgirls. And the 83-year-old writer of a children’s film novelisation could reminisce about how thrilling it was to have danced with the film’s young star at the wrap party, and laugh at how much more thrilling it might have been if only her mother hadn’t insisted on staying so close to her “very beautiful 14-year-old daughter” all night. A different time. (Except, that last anecdote was recounted in 2018. Perhaps the time isn’t quite as different as it should be.)

Don’t let any of this put you off though. Like a chocolate-filled doughnut, Labyrinth remains a sweet childhood treat… with a slightly sickening centre.

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Labyrinth celebrates its 35th anniversary in the US on June 27th.

The post Labyrinth: the Unsettling Second Character Played by David Bowie appeared first on Den of Geek.

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