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bloggerblagger · 5 years

Text

87) Blank space. (And the profound questions deriving therefrom.)

I was there. ______________________________________________________________________

I am looking for a film.

I have hunted high and low and I can’t find it.

I don’t mean a roll of film - who has those these days? Unless you’re living in the dark ages. Or in Hackney or Stokie or Lewisham and have a beard, tatts, nose ring, possibly a lip disc - and that’s just the girls, tee hee. (Sorry, I meant cis gender women.) (And trans women too of course.) (Maybe I shouldn’t have started this.)

Anyway, no, I do not mean that kind of film, I mean a film as in a movie, a flick, a picture, a cinematic experience. I have lost one - no. 45 to be precise - and being a bit anal about these things, I am quite disturbed.

To explain: a few weeks ago we had the London Film Festival. As a one time titan of the airwaves, and now the the author of this estimable blog, I am, in exchange for an ever increasing fee - forty five quid this year - able to blag a press pass.

And very grateful I am. What better way to fill a retiree’s days as the autumn chill begins to bite.

The trouble with joy

Ah! If only simple pleasure were enough for me. I am, as Woody Allenonce described himself, ‘anhedonic’. As I understand it, that means incapable of having a good time for the sake of it.

Something - somewhere inside my amygdala or frontal lobe or wherever such impulses lurk - insists that I must have an aim, a goal of some kind. It’s as though standing before the Eiger, it would not be enough for me to admire its magisterial beauty. I would feel an irresistible compulsion to grab some crampons and leg it up the North face. (Okay, possibly a slight overclaim there but you get the idea.)

And thus it is that, each year, my principal purpose at the festival really has nothing to do with appreciating the glories of world cinema. As with the mountain that must be climbed because it is there, I hear an irresistible call to a completely pointless course of action.

My personal Eiger (it really should be Everest but I’m stuck with the Eiger now) is to pay an average price of less than £1 per screening that I enter.

Rules of the game

And lest you think that’s dead easy - and that all I have to do is walk in, get the person with the BFI badge and the little hand held recording doobery to record my press pass number, and then walk straight out again - you are most seriously mistaken.

Rule 27 subsection b, clearly states that I have to see enough to be able to write some kind of review for each and every film.(See below.) (And further below.) (And much further below.) Furthermore, although I am permitted to walk out if I think the film is really shite, I have to stay for at least half an hour.

It is a feat that I have, for one reason and another - typically, violent vomiting brought about by a surfeit of Gallic pretentiousness or a crippling attack of wobblycamitis - never previously managed to accomplish. And inflation makes it an ever more daunting prospect. It’s like the Eiger growing another couple of thousand feet every year. At the 2018 price, it would mean I had to see at least forty six films.

Reaching for the stars

The one thing that gave me a tiny shred of hope was that this year I would be in London with a more or less empty diary for the entire period of press previews, beginning Sept 24th, and for the actual festival, which ended October 21st. Forty six films in twenty nine days. Obviously tough, but at one and three fifths a day, it did seem just about doable.

In fact, a bit like Mo Farah, who is happy to ease himself into the race and hang about at the back of the field for the first lap, I saw only one film a day for the first week and gradually stepped it up so that by the beginning of the final week I still had twenty three films to see. Yes, as the bell sounded for the last lap, I still had an immense amount of ground to make up.

But I was honed, oiled (a steady diet of oatmilk lattés) and up for the challenge. Saw four films a day Mon to Fri, except Wed when I saw five - my first ever 5 a day! Saw two on the Sat - but, as much as it stuck in my craw, paid - PAID! - for a ticket for one of them (will explain later) so only one counted. And then three more on the final Sunday. Meaning I had seen forty eight films overall with forty seven eligible - forty seven for the price of my forty five pounds press pass. Average cost: 95.744 pence.

NINETY FIVE POINT SEVEN FOUR FOUR PENCE!!!! Cue tumultuous applause, wild cheering, caps being hurled into the air, my modest, slightly sheepish acceptance of bouquets thrown at my feet, headlines in the dailies, in depth analyses in the Sundays, a billion tweets, Facebook breaking down through worldwide overload, invitations to appear on Breakfast TV, The One Show - rejected - Graham Norton - maybe - James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke - okay - and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon - accepted if whole show is devoted to me.

Let the naysayers nay

Of course, I knew there would be doubters. Small minded types consumed with envy - very possibly like yourself - and conspiracy theorists who would insist that, like the landing on the moon, seeing forty eight films (forty seven eligible) in twenty nine days was simply beyond the reach of humankind and that the whole enterprise was some kind of epic confidence trick.

So I knew I would need proof. And so I kept notes. Contemporaneously. Each film I saw, I noted down on the yellow notebook thingy on my i-phone. From one to forty eight (forty seven eligible) they went in and were consecutively numbered. And then, at the end, it was my intention to review them. (Too busy resting in my bivouac - aka the cafe in the PIcturehouse Central - to write them as I saw them.)

That was the plan and the plan was put into effect. All went swimmingly, if several tads slowly - at the time of bloglication it’s already the thick end of a month since the Festival finished - until I reached no 45.

And then - disaster.

YIkes!

44 was clear enough: ‘Ollie and Stan.’ And 46 was there: ‘Girl’’. But beside the number 45, there was nothing. Just blank space. (And though Blank Space could easily have been a film, perhaps based on the song Blank Space by Taylor Swift - ‘I’ve got a blank space baby, And I’ll write your name’ - and there was actually a film called Blank Spaces made in 2010, the blank space in question was just in fact, no more than that, a blank space.)

The reader - if there still is one - will be easily able to imagine how distraught I was. I was - and I remain - convinced that I had seen forty eight movies (forty seven eligible) but I could only identify forty seven ( and therefore only forty six eligible.)

How could this have happened, I wept and beseeched the God in whom I do not believe? As expected, no answer, but retracing my fingers I concluded that in writing the reviews beside the numbers, I had unwittingly deleted the name of the film that had been beside the number 45.

An absence of proof

I grabbed my dog-eared copy of the Festival Programme and cross-checked all the gazillions of titles with those on my list, to see if there was one that I recognised that might have been no.45. But when you are as anal/OCD/idiotic as I am, you have to be punctiliously - obsessively - honest and I have to confess that I couldn’t find anything. I delved into the settings of my i-phone’s yellow notepad thingy several times to see, if I had by any chance, inadvertently made a copy of the original entries before I began the review, but nada.

Eventually I had to accept that, like Shergar, the name of the film that should have been beside no.45, would never be found. My only consolation was that this fascinating tale would be the basis for a fantastic movie, which I shall, one day, star in, write, direct, and produce: ‘And the winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor/Writer/Director/Motion Picture goes to: Richard Phillips, Richard Phillips, Richard Phillips, Blank Space!’)

Other than that, I am left with nothing but a terrible quandary. Do I insist, despite the missing movie, that I saw forty eight films (forty seven eligible) and that the price of 95.744 per film stands? Or do I say, since I cannot name film no.45, that, for the official record, I shall accept, albeit grudgingly and bitterly, that only forty seven films (forty six films eligible) can be counted, which increases the average price to 97.827pence per film. Yes, still inside £1 but unarguably by a substantially narrower squeak.

But that is not proof of absence.

As you will imagine, I have, before sending this blog post off into the e-ther, fought an epic battle with my conscience. I have tossed and turned in the night, spent days in a monastic retreat - well, sitting on the loo, as good as - before deciding that, one missing title notwithstanding, I did indeed see forty eight films (forty seven eligible) and will claim, until the moment I have taken my last breath that the average price per film was 95.744p. Indeed, given the importance this has assumed in my life, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that these will be my actual last words - though hopefully not right now.

However, my rigid insistence on complete honesty demands that I confess that there is another reason for choosing the 95.744 option.

It is this: There is another rule - 39, clause iv - that has to be obeyed. And to explain that properly, I need to go out of order and begin my reviews with no.22

Ignorance is not always bliss.

Rule 39, clause iv, states that I must see every film ‘completely cold’ - by which I mean, knowing as little as conceivably possible about what I am about to see. I make a point/fetish of never reading the Festival programme blurb before I go in. When going to the cinema in the ordinary way, that is to say paying a proper price, I do everything I can to avoid seeing a trailer, usually by timing my entrance so I miss them, but if not, I cover my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears, and I would go ‘la la la la la’ except I would be bombarded by popcorn and soggy nachos.

And I never, ever so much as glance at a review until after I've seen the film, and not just because I think all reviewers - except me - are tossers. I want to make a judgement of my own, uninfluenced by the half baked opinions of others. I want to witness the story unfold exactly as the director intended that it should. Of course my determination to be so pure has its drawbacks occasionally, and never more so than in this case.

Thus:

22 Little Drummer Girl

I went in with high hopes as the director Park Chan Wook, who made the astonishing Korean and Korean-ised version of Sarah Waters’ fantastic (I thought) novel Fingersmith. (His film was called The Handmaiden, not to be confused with The Handmaid's Tale.)

TLDG started intriguingly and then, after about an hour, the end credits rolled, seemingly half way through the film. I sat there thinking, ‘how very odd’, but, given my admiration for this director’s previous film, I decided this must be some uber cool directorial device and carried on watching regardless. Then an hour later the same credits rolled again, this time, as it turned out, at the conclusion of the performance. Even odder, for there seemed to have been no clue - at least none that I’d picked up - as to why the credits had been run the first time.

So whatever uber cool trick the director was trying to bring off, it was clearly way too cool for me. Moreover the story was left completely unresolved. It seemed as though there was a lot more to be said and the audience had been left high and dry. The whole thing was completely baffling. Until, that is, I finally referred to the programme blurb and discovered this wasn’t a film at all but the first two episodes of a new BBC series. (Now showing.)

Why should this be shown at a Film Festival, especially when the TV series is to be broadcast only two weeks later? Answers on a postcard please.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.0* (Not a film.)

So, you can see the problem. This wasn’t strictly a film - as in a movie that you might see in a regular cinema - at all. So should it count? If the Rules Committee (me, myself and I) took a really strict view, they might not allow The Little Drummer Girl through even though I had thought it would be a proper film when I went in.

You can see where I am going with this. If I had not refused to back down on the missing no.45, I could have been in serious trouble. Because If I hadn’t and the Committee put their black caps on in regard to no.22, I would be down to forty six films viewed and only forty five eligible, meaning the average price of entry would be £1 exactly.

Still a formidable achievement but, whichever way you look at it, £1 cannot be simultaneously less than £1. I would my miss target for yet another year.

Agonisingly close but no cigar. And you can’t really plant the flag unless you’ve reached the summit.

Let the record show

As I have said, I am not a believer but sometimes one simply has to invoke the name of the so-called creator because it is the only word that will do. So thank God that after long, and sometimes hotly contested deliberations, the committee voted by a majority of two to one (myself and I for the motion, me dissenting) to take a lenient view and admit no 22. What’s more they didn’t even raise the subject of the missing no.45.

So, all’s well that ends well. Will 95.744p ever beaten? One never knows, but my guess this is a Bob Beamon Plus Plus Plus sort of record.

One final note before I get to the other forty six reviews. I am the reviewer who is absolutely, positively guaranteed never to give the game away. No plot spoilers, no tedious Kermodian descriptions of every tiny thing. In fact, sod all apart from the odd detail such as the title, occasionally who might be in it, its country of origin and the briefest reference to the skeleton of the story.

Reading one of my reviews you will never learn who dunnit. You won’t even know wot they dun.

The rest of the reviews:

1 Asako 1&2 (numbers are part of the title)

Japanese romance with a clever plot twist. Inoffensive, watchable - a slightly different slant (shamefully politically incorrect pun but impossible to resist) on familiar themes. 3*

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

2 Petra

An incoherent Spanish film about a young woman and a small daughter in search of something or other. Complex plot which asked too much of this audience. (By which I mean me.) Tiresome.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1.5*

3 The Guilty

Highly unusual and thought provoking thriller of sorts. Although nothing remotely like it, except in its ‘message’, it reminded me of the celebrated Guardian commercial - celebrated if you lived in the advertising bubble, that is - which showed one scene from different points of view, each one altering your assumptions about what was going on.

A lot of concentration required for ‘The Guilty’ - slightly more than I had. A few irritating plot flaws but worth your time.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

4 Wildlife

Thanks to British Rail’s time honoured uselessness, I was 10 minutes late but I don’t think I missed anything crucial. This was the very first film I saw but I can still just about remember it which says quite a lot for it I suppose. Carey Mulligan who I usually don’t like is very good in this 50s Americanadrama. Ed Oxenbould as the teenage son in the midst of a family crisis is impressive.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

5 Crystal Swan

The lesson to be learned here is that under no circumstances choose Belorussia for your next holiday unless unremitting bleakness turns you on. But the story of a rebellious young woman desperate to get a visa to America is intriguing and persuasive.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

6 Shadow

Another of those Chinese warrior films which involves all sorts of leaping about and balletic sword twirling. Not my cup of Lapsang Souchong but if it’s yours, go for it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

7. Arctic.

Icelandic. Very snowy. A man lost and hungry and not a happy bunny (not that any bunny would be) in the eponymous frozen somewhere. In short, All Is Lost on Ice. (A brilliant line if I say so myself. If you haven’t seen All Is Lost, you should because it’s better and also because you will then appreciate the brilliance of the line which will otherwise be wasted on you )

On the other hand if you don’t see it, Arctic will probably seem more original and interesting than it did to me.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

8 Jinn

Awful, unlikely story about a black Californian teenager who wants to shake her booty and her controlling TV weatherwoman mother who discovers Islam.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

9 Manto

Worthy but tedious biopic about a famous writer caught up in the cross border chaos of Indian/Pakistani independence. I lasted for about 3/4 of it, then decided to get a sandwich instead.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

10 After the Screaming Stops

Where else but at a press screening at the London film Festival would you find yourself watching a documentary about a Bros reunion? Interesting in that it showed what an incredible jerk Matt Goss is. And sometimes funny in the laughing-at as opposed to laughing-with sense.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

11 May the Devil Take You

Walked out. Hated it. Apart from that I can’t remember anything.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.0.5*

12 Mandy

Never got all this cult film bollocks. Never liked Russ Meyer or got George Romero or John Waters and this film which appears to be in this ‘cult’ category was , as far, as I was concerned, simply unbearable. Left after an hour. Yes, I know it’s had fantastic reviews from all and sundry but then remember, fengshui proves that a billion Chinese can be wrong.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating. - (minus) 200*

13 Ash Is Purest White

A Chinese melodrama about low level gangster life centred on the life of the moll. (I mean morr- ha ha ha.) (Is it racist to make pathetically obvious jokes, if you can call them that, about Chinese/ Japanese pronunciation issues? Probably yes, so why do I keep doing it? Discuss.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2.5*

14.Widows

The gushing reviews it seems to have received (judging by the number of stars on the posters on the underground) baffle me. It was nothing more than a highly polished turd. The original television serious was completely implausible and this film is no improvement. In the trailer that I advertently failed to miss, ‘12 Years a Slave’ director and, in another life, Turner prize winner, Steve McQueen - the new one not the dead one - appears himself to claim this is the film he always wanted to make.

Personally I think it might have been about the money.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2*

15 Thunder Road

A curious piece, written and directed and starring the same person, all about the disintegrating life of an American policeman. Tonally it was partly black comedy and partly unalloyed tragedy. A tour de force of sorts creatively, but not quite sure what to make of it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

16 Border

A love story with knobs on - but not necessarily in the usual places - this is a quite brilliant piece of filmmaking which questions the very nature of attraction. ‘Border’ has a very contemporary story but one which is drawn, apparently, from Nordic mythology. One of the two or three best films I saw in the festival. Highly recommended.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

17 Colette

I started by being irritated by Collette. Keira Knightley has had a bit too much onscreen rumps pumpy to be a convincing teenager in plaits skipping through the grass. And there was early dialogue referencing toothpaste and the top line on an optician’s charts. In 1892? Did they have those in 1892? (The answer it turns out is yes - toothpaste invented in the 1850s, Colgate producing it in jars in 1873 and in tubes in the 1890s, and opticians have been around since earlier than that - so one in the eye for me. And one in the mouth.)

But all this became quickly irrelevant anyway. Because I stopped being picky and submitted to the charm of this film, seduced by the bravura performance of Dominic West - who seemed made for his twinkly eyed, moustache twirling part and by the surprisingly nuanced Keira Knightley - never been a fan but I am now. As it turned out, after that first slightly jarring note, she was perfectly cast as the country school girl who goes on to be a revolutionary in the fin de siecle culture war in Paris.. But above all it was the astonishing, and very well told, story of Collette - nothing of which I knew - which fascinated. In short, a damn good night at the cinema.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

18 Beautiful Boy

Film about parental angst over teenage son’s descent into drugs hell. I found it interesting, if for no other reason than it made me realise the blindingly obvious fact that each viewer sees a film through the prism of their own life experience and that must affect their appreciation of it. In this case, as a father I couldn’t help but see things from the father’s point of view but if you you were in the first flush of youth you would, I think see it from the son’s.

The casting of Timothy Hutton as the expert to whom we see Steve Carell talking caught my eye because he was, about 40 years ago, the Timothy Chalomet of his day - remember ‘Ordinary People’?- and then looked a little like him.

And here’s another curious little factoid about Timothy Hutton - perhaps something to thrill the table with if Christmas lunch is flagging. He also appeared in a 1996 film called Beautiful Girls.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

19 Sometimes. Always.Never

Light, low budget British comedy with Bill Nighy; painstakingly made and clearly a labour of love. A little twee at times but very well played and with something semi-profound to say - though at a distance of a few days, having seen so many films since, I can’t remember exactly what it was.

It had a particular appeal for me because the hero had spent a life in the menswear business, as my father did, and the title refers to how one should button a three button jacket, from top button downwards - something I learned at an early age and have never forgotten.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

20. Roma

I would say that Roma was a faultless recreation of 1970s Mexico City except that I wasn’t in Mexico City in the 1970s so how could I know? It did however ring completely true to me - apart from a shower head which looked suspiciously modern - pedantic? moi? - and demonstrated the astonishing versatility of the director, Adolpho Cuaron, who also made ‘Y Mama Tu Tambien’ 'Children of God' and ‘Gravity’ - that’s some CV - films which could not be more different to this. ‘Roma’ is a sort of upstairs downstairs story and has wonderful performances from all the actors but most particularly from the main character, the young servant girl.

If I have one caveat it is that it didn’t quite ‘speak to me’, apart from making me queasily guilty that I have a cleaning lady.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

21 Non Fiction

One of those literary French films purporting to be profoundly intellectual (even if, in this case, also supposed to be ironically amusing.) All about writers and publishers and their existential angst in the digital world. But then aren’t all French films like this about existential angst - whatever it means? This is the sort of thing I viscerally loathe and after about half an hour, je sort, and gave ‘Non Fiction’, the General de Gaulle - ‘Non! Non! Non!’

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.1*

23 Life Itself

Not everybody loves this film; in fact, the reviews have generally had the whiff of a blocked drain, but I claim my right to vigorously demur - up to a point. Directed and written by Dan Fogelman (the guy who does ‘This Is Us’ on Netflix or somewhere) it begins with a story about familiar Noo Yorker angst but approaches it from a surprising angle - at least to me. ‘Life Itself’, comes in four labelled acts, something I don’t like in movies usually but the first three worked for me. The last seemed like a rather - make that very - tired cliché.

My main issue with the film was that, whereas with Roma I couldn’t quite understand what it was trying to say, here the message was triple underlined in upper case bold. Not yet quite at the stage of jibbering senescence where I need to be spoon-fed.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

24 Wild Rose

Have to declare an interest here. The film’s star, Jessie Buckley, is someone I know a little, and whose career I have watched with interest since she was about 18 when she appeared on a TV talent show and after which I interviewed her. I am a massive fan. She is an astonishingly gifted singer and a damn good actor. (Brilliant in her earlier non-singing role in last year’s ‘Beast’, which I thought was an exceptional movie, better than this to be honest, and which may yet prove to be a bit of a sleeper.)

‘Wild Rose’ is about a single mother from the badlands of a Scottish estate who has a yen to be a Nashville diva. (A bit like Lady Gaga in ‘A Star is Born’. C&W seems all the rage at the mo.) ‘Wild Rose’ has a few credulity stretching moments but the feel good peaks make you want to ignore those. It will make the Saturday night popcorn go down with a tear and a cheer. And it is a wonderful showcase for Jesse, who, If there is any justice, is destined for Hollywood mega stardom.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3.5*

25 Sunset

Lazló Némes, who made last year’s wincingly convincing Auschwitz film ‘Son of Saul’, now comes up with a wobbly cam evocation of verge-of-World War One Budapest called ‘Sunset’. By a complete but happy coincidence the person sitting next to me turned out to be an old pal, Saul Metzstein, who is a movie director himself.

I was gratified to learn that he was as mystified by this film as I was. No idea what the point of it was - went straight over my head. (Which, admittedly does not require much intellectual elevation.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2*

26 Dogman

Loved this. One of my Festival top three or four and likely, I read, to be a runner in the Oscar Foreign Film race. It’s a modern tale of the little man in a hostile world and takes place in one of those seedy parts of Italy that you find everywhere if you stray very far from the tourist trail. It is already on release - in fact, by the time I get around to posting this blog, it may already be finished, but try to catch it if you can. (Beware of violence though, if that bothers you.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4.5*

27 The Kindergarten Teacher

Never been much of a Maggie Gyllenhaal fan - always seems a bit cold and distant to me - but she is exceptional in this unusual contemporary New York drama about a thoroughly decent middle aged woman who, for reasons which may or may not be valid, finds herself out of step with those about her. Intriguing and thought provoking and better the more I think about it.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

28 They Shall Not Grow Old

Everyone is raving about Peter Jackson’s colour and 3-D reincarnation of genuine old World War One footage but it left me pretty cold.

It may be - no doubt is - an astonishing technical feat but after so many books and plays and films and so much TV and radio devoted to the subject I am afraid to say that I have a touch of World War One fatigue and this didn’t relieve my symptoms.

Last year’s wonderful remake of RC Sherriff’s ‘Journey’s End’ packed far more emotional punch, for me at least. Yes, the colour pictures of corpses and lice and rats and trenchfoot were ghastly but I wasn’t shocked and I wasn’t surprised. Who doesn’t know that World War I was unspeakably awful? Or rather, who amongst those who might go to see a film like this, doesn’t know? (‘Venom’ fans, I would have thought, are unlikely customers.)

My biggest complaint, though, is about the soundtrack: I found the unrelenting stream of voices irritating and soon switched off and stopped listening to what they had to say. Easily the most powerful piece of sound in the film was, I thought, the accompaniment to the end title, the marching troops singing ‘Mademoiselle from Armentiers’. (Sung of course, as Ah-men-tears’.) Nothing seemed to me to sum up the pathos and suicidal naivety of the cannon fodder as much as this.

Perhaps more music of the same intensity and fewer quotes might have made them more memorable.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.2.5*

29 Rosie

An Irish version of a Ken Loachy sort of film about decent people caught in the poverty trap. Persuasive and faultlessly done. But I am not sure what it told me that I would prefer not to know but unfortunately do.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.3*

30 El Angel

A highly original and sometimes very funny, blood soaked, true story about a teenage boy with decent, law abiding parents and a head of blonde curls which is set in Argentina (where, typically, people are swarthy with black hair) in the 70s, and who determinedly but very merrily sets about pursuing his ambition to become a ruthless murdering gangster. If there seem to be a few contradictions there, that is the joy of this film.

Remember to search for it on Amazon or Netflix in a few months if it doesn’t get a release.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.4*

31 Florianopolis Dream

Was really struggling to remember anything at all about this film and, until I checked, I thought it was more of the seedy Italian seaside and the story of two women battling it out to claim maternal rights over a small child. But now I realise that was another film entirely, which was....

32, Daughter of Mine.

Okay but in the unlikely event of it ever getting a release, I wouldn’t worry about FOMO if you can’t manage to see it.

And, now that I do remember it, likewise Florianopolis Dream, a Brazilian effort about a family’s seaside holiday in a place where it seemed to be perpetually cloudy. (Just to be clear, the cloudiness was nothing to do with the plot, which was largely non-existent, but the obviously very low budget. I am sure the director would have preferred the sun but couldn’t afford to wait.)

BloggerBlagger Star Rating.

Florianopolis Dream 1.5*,

Daughter of Mine 2.5*

33 Capharnaum

A close second, that well might have been first had I not seen the winner afterwards in the race to be my top pick of the festival. Timing is everything.. This is the heartbreaking yet ultimately uplifting story of a boy of about twelve brought up in abject poverty in the slums of what I presume was Beirut.

The performance of the boy is magical and though a two hour journey through the world of the Lebanese dispossessed (or rather, the would’ve been dispossessed if they had ever possessed anything in the first place) may not sound like a fun Saturday night at the pictures, do not be put off. Whilst not so much pricking your conscience as repeatedly firing a Kalashnikov at it, it somehow manages to be a feel-good movie at the same time.

My only quibble was that the editing around the clever device upon which the plot is built, slightly confused me at the end. Oh, and also, what’s with the title? Could they have found anything more obscure? Or maybe there was a clue in the film but, if so, I didn’t pick it up.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4.5*

34 Birds of Passage

Think of this as a pre-prequel to Narcos. Drugs and grisly murders mixed in with a bit of ancient dream interpretation in Colombia in the sixties, when it was the Native Americans (or one of the 87 tribes of Pueblos lndigenas as they call them in Colombia - isn’t Google marvellous?) and not the Sicarios who were cashing in on the medical benefits of the local cash crop.

Judging by the gore in ‘Birds of Passage’, they could have taught Pablo Escobar a thing or two about effective persuasion - blowpipes were out and sub machine guns deffo in. Clear and solid storyline, good pace, convincing acting, and lots of ketchup - what’s not to like? Another probable Oscar Foreign Film contender.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

35 Carmen and Lola

Good late Sunday night on BBC4 type film in which two young gypsy women in modern day Spain confront the fixed ideas of their incurably misogynistic families. One fascinating side effect of seeing this film was noticing in the sub-titles that the Roma in Spain (who are not shown as travellers but living in permanent homes) refer to the wider Spanish community as white people.

To me, the man and woman in the Spanish Street and the Roma all looked pretty much the same - dark haired and sallow skinned, and hard to differentiate from each other. I mentioned this in the Q&A afterwards and Spanish members of the audience - and remember, film festival goers are usually predictably right-on - seemed a bit put out. Perhaps I was being tactless and/or naive. Prejudice runs deeper than you might think.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

36 The Quake

I correctly interpreted the title as heralding a thriller about an earthquake and looked forward to some light relief from the intense social commentaries that are the bread and butter of the festival. I have rarely seen a bad Norwegian film but I did this time. Ludicrous plot, wildly overdone CGI including a slowly toppling, and clearly named Radisson hotel - very odd product placement. Avoid.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 1*

37 Girls of The Sun

A no punches pulled war film from a French woman director about Yazidi girls fighting in the Kurdish army in Iraq. Couldn’t help but be struck by the casting of far and away the prettiest girl as the group leader and main character. A curious - commercial? - decision in such a feminist piece.

A decent enough effort otherwise but I feel that Henry Naylor’s plays which have done so well at Edinburgh and in New York in recent years (Borders, Angel etc, a couple of which are on at the Arcola, Dec 4-22) and which deal with similar themes do so much more effectively. A rare case - for me- of the cinema being inferior to the theatre.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3*

38 The White Crow

Quite nteresting without being competely fascinating, watchable without being riveting, this is a tale of the early days of Nureyev directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also appears, thankfully not as Rudy, but as his teacher, giving a performance which I found somewhat distracting as he strongly reminded me of Paul Whitehouse. Nureyev Is portrayed as an unsympathetic character, driven and selfish, which could well have been true, so ‘The White Crow’ ticked the ‘seems authentic’ box, although his chilliness doesn’t help you love the film.

I would semi-enthusiastically recommend it, but I doubt it will be shown very widely since I can’t see it doing brilliantly at the box office - not sure that the world of ballet is a place the Saturday night popcorn crowd want to visit. And who under 50 will know much - or indeed anything - about Rudolph Nureyev and his place in the sixties zeitgeist? But then who cares? It wasn’t my money.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

39 Burning

There seemed to to be a bit of a buzz about this film amongst the so called press (aka the vast number of liggers who, like me, and with no less right, had managed to blag a press pass) but I have no idea why. It’s a strange story about the homecoming of a rather disorientated young Japanese chap with a father in gaol and another contrastingly self assured young fellow who is doing jolly nicely thankyou. Plus, for some reason, there are burning glasshouses. Utterly mystifying - to me at least - and so slow it made the average glacier seem like Usain Bolt.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2*

40 Yommedine

A road movie about an Egyptian leper and a runaway orphan. (One of the many surprisingly good things about this film is that there it unlikely to be a Hollywood remake.)

An astonishing achievement to have made such a simultaneously upbeat and yet deeply moving film about people one would normally think of as being at the very bottom of the heap if, that is, one gave them any thought to them at all. Brilliant performances that take us beneath the skin that so many are terrified to touch.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

41.Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Stands a pretty good chance of coming to a cinema near you and I don’t you think will begrudge the price of a ticket. Melissa McCarthy gives a masterful - if that’s the right word to use - performance in the true story of surly, lonely, habitually rude 51-year-old biographer and lesbian Lee Israel and her extraordinary and ingenious attempts to make money in 90s New York.

Richard E. Grant plays her camp hoppo with all the Richard E. Grantness that you’d expect and Dolly Wells does a nice little turn as a guileless bookshop owner. (To be frank I might not have mentioned her, but coincidentally her mother was my Airbnb guest on the day I went to see this film, so I thought it was only fair to give her a shout out, and I did think she was pretty good.) Amusing, touching and very watchable.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

42 The Hate U Give

Based on a ‘young adult novel, this is the story of a young black girl living in a rundown, violent, gang ridden district because her father, whilst allowing her to be sent to a private white school doesn’t want to make the move into a middle-class world. (Sounds fairly unlikely but on this occasion, I wasn’t in one of my usual hole picking moods so I went with it.)

A series of regrettable incidents force her to come to terms with the conflicting aspects of her identity. Not quite sure if this film was actually intended for my demographic group, but, despite it’s improbable plot turns, I thought it had something useful to say. And hear.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 4*

42 The Sisters Brothers

Saw this on the day that I actually managed to attend five screenings. A notable achievement but knackering and while I was supposed to be watching this - I think it was my fourth of the day - I have to admit I nodded off more than once. I have a strong feeling it was probably rather good - featured Joaquin Pheonix, Jake Gylenhal, John C.Reilly, so a promising cast - but I’m not really sure. Anyway, it’s cowboy film with a slightly Coen Brothers tone of voice, but isn’t one of theirs.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

43 A Private War

Like Maggie Gyllenhaal - see The Kindergarten Teacher, above - Rosamond Pike has never been a favourite of mine. and for similar reasons. I’ve always found her ice queen manner slightly off putting. Here she is playing legendary war journalist Marie Colvin but I never believed her. Lots of actoring with cigarettes and an eyepatch and her unruly wig flapping about but it just seemed like dressing up to me. I kept wanting to scream at the screen, ‘Put a bloody helmet on!’.

For all that, I can’t deny that ‘A Private War’ held my attention and had the odd moment.The sort of thing that might not seem a complete waste of time when it makes its inevitable appearance on BBC2 late on some future Sunday night. Otherwise not really recommended.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

44 Stan and Ollie

As a child in the er ah ahem um er nineteen whatevers I use to love Laurel and Hardy and here John C. Reilly and the make up artists do a great job of recreating Oliver Hardy on screen and Steve Coogan is more than passable if less impressive as Stan laurel.

A fascinating story of their later years but for me, let down by the stagey, artificial representation of fifties England. Also very odd casting and playing of legendary impresario Bernard Delfont. Was Lew Grade’s brother really like that? No idea but not how I imagined the man who brought us Sunday Night At the London Palladium. Still, all in all, a pretty decent night out at the flicks.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 3.5*

45. (As previously discussed.)

46 GIRL

On the final Saturday I went with some friends to see the announcement of the result and the screening of the film which had won the best first feature award and I had to pay so I could sit with my pals. A little bit of a gamble as there was a chance I had already seen the winning movie,.

The winner turned out to be Girl, a story about a Belgian boy of 15 who wanted to be a ballerina. (Note: Not another Billy Elliott - he wanted to be a real ballerina.) When the announcement of the award was made, the good news was that it was a film I hadn’t already seen but the bad, I glumly thought, was that I had consciously decided not to see it earlier in the week because, to be honest, I have grown a little weary of the entire LGBTQ I XYZ trans-gender, cis gender, gender fluidity, gender whatever, what? WTF!, what-do-THEY-do? thing.

Only it didn’t turn out to be bad news at all. Girl is an absolutely extraordinary film, deeply touching with an astonishing performance by the young boy playing the young boy who wanted to be a girl. Not only was it riveting viewing but it made me completely rethink my attitude to the whole transgender thing. Whereas previously my attitude might have been summed up as ‘all these boys wanting to be boys and girls wanting to be boys - perlease!’ I felt afterwards that I had at least a small but sympathetic understanding of the predicament that Victor/Lara and his family faced. And by extension, others like them. A really good film can do that - open your eyes and mind to a different world.

So, from being a movie that I hadn’t wanted to to see, Girl became my personal pick of the festival and recipient of the Palme d’bloggerblagger

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 5*

46 Blaze

Went to see this because I noticed that Ethan Hawke was the director and I am a bit of a fan of his work both as an actor and as a writer - he once wrote a very good novel, the name of which now escapes me. Unfortunately this film, a story, supposedly true, of a singer and songwriter in the sixties - I think - failed to stop me from making short but frequent visits to the land of nod.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

47 The Fight

The very last film I saw, A low budget British film about a fortyish woman in a racially mixed marriage with a bullied child and a dark secret and a bad relationship with her own mother and who, for some reason that I never quite got to grips with, takes up boxing. I might have appreciated this film more had my hearing been better. I discovered in post movie conversation (with one of the other members of the press/ liggers ) that I had mistaken the spoken number 30 for 13 and that had a significant bearing on my misunderstanding of the story, and consequent confusion and mild dissatisfaction.

BloggerBlagger Star Rating 2.5*

PS Anyone with so much time on their hands that they have waded through this nonsense until the end will have noticed, as I have only just done, that there were, in fact, two no 42s. Which I take to mean that, joy of joys, we have found the missing no 45. (Something obviously went awry with the numbering system in my i-phone’s yellow notebook thingie. Or possibly, though obviously improbably, it was my fault.)

Delighted to have been vindicated in my claim that I did indeed see 48 films (47 eligible.) Or, if there were an appeal against the present ‘Little Drummer Girl’ decision (unlikely but you never know) and it were to be upheld by the Rules Committee (even unlikelier) I would have seen 47 films (46 eligible.) And in even that remote eventuality I would still have officially reached the summit of my personal Eiger (Everest).

But it also means 80% of the first 1500 words of this post are completely redundant.

I could start again, I suppose. And I probably should. And yet….really?

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stretchjournalemerson · 3 years

Text

Contrails

By Anthony Manupelli

Part One: Peace

Had a talk with my old man,

Said help me understand.

He said, turn 68, you’ll renegotiate

Don’t stop this train

- John Mayer

A month before the crash, it all came back to me. I spent hours, upon hours in fear. I hadn’t given it any thought since I was a little kid. Aside from the good memories, such as watching the Curious George movie with my siblings on a warm summer morning in 2007, I remember panicking about it when I was all alone.

The night it changed; I was nine. It was long past my bedtime and I had school the next day. My stomach turned as my brain spiraled out of control. My make-shift room in the basement of my childhood home had been repurposed from a small office to an oversized bedroom that I so thrillingly shared with spiders, the dark, and my overwhelming thoughts. Despite the unnecessary amount of space I had, I felt so trapped. Coming off a hot streak of realizations, including my discovery of the fact that Santa wasn’t real, and that the WWE was staged, I took a deep dive into an abyss of analysis into what was real and what was fake. And then, the mother of all struggles occurred.

I was raised Catholic and didn’t think much of it for most of my early years. We honestly weren’t very committed churchgoers. My siblings and I would fight with our parents pretty often about attending church early on Sunday morning. We kind of all just accepted the fact that our mother wanted us to be Catholic. So, I never really delved deeper into a spiritual awakening, I just did as I was told. But time and time again, I discovered I shouldn’t simply accept the world that is placed in front of me and the fact that I will only find truth in life by constantly questioning my reality, I began to question my mother’s teachings. I froze. As if I was hit on the top of the head, my brain began buzzing, and I fell down a rabbit hole, a psychotic conundrum of thought. The topic of my panic: what happens when we die?

“What happens after this, what happens, what happens, what is happening to me”? I couldn’t stop. For the first time in my life, I was spiraling. My blood curled, I felt it in my face. I rolled into a ball and clenched my stomach to avoid spilling out its contents. I felt my fingers numb and my brain freeze. All of this, as if no other human being had gone through a spiritual crisis or could understand my confusion and panic.

I continuously asked, “what if…”, and it never ended. At nine, I was bargaining with myself to come to terms with something that no human had ever completely understood. My panic stirred so deep into the night, that I was met with my father’s questioning, the next morning, as he prepared for his day.

“What’s wrong Anthony, you’re freaking out. What happened?”

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing, Dad. I’m fine.” I figured if I didn’t say it out loud then it wouldn’t be true.

“No Anthony seriously, this stops right now. What’s wrong?”

I didn’t want to invite my poor father into this personal hell of my over analysis of the spacetime continuum. So, I simplified it to the catalyst of my fear and promptly begged,

“Dad, what really happens when we die?”

He paused. I never knew if he did so to make me feel understood and calm me down or to actually process the question. Regardless, he resolved.

“You’ll understand when you’re older.”

And instantly, I was relieved. I never understood why. But from that moment forward, I never feared death or thought about it again. At least not in the science-fiction, fantastical, terrifying way my brain had me pondering in those moments. Not once, did I waste an ounce of my time fearing death, not until much later.

Part Two: Body Separation

Upside down

Who's to say what's impossible and can't be found

I don't want this feeling to go away

Please don't go away

-Jack Johnson

I remember my dad’s face when I got the car. As I drove out of my driveway, alone, for the first time, he waved goodbye. And it was at that moment, I realized I was grown up. I wasn’t the kid he had calmed down years before. I had a new cast of characters in my life. Friends he didn’t know but they were the people I brought my concerns, dreams, and questions to. I became my own person without even realizing it. And he wasn’t waving goodbye to me. He was waving goodbye to the little kid he had known all the years prior. He was waving goodbye to my childhood.

But time marched on and I became incredibly fond of my car. I drove all the time. I mean all of the time. Every month of the year, everywhere my friends or I went. I was always the one driving and I loved it.

Massachusetts winters are pretty brutal and it's usually hard to find something to do. So my car became not only a vehicle of physical transportation but an escape from the freezing cold and lack of activity. That car brought me together with so many people. The sheer amount of people who had taken a ride in my car had become a running joke. It encapsulated my entire teenage experience; it brought me so far away from home yet together with so many people.

The summer returned and it was time for one of my childhood best friends to go to school. I was the last person to send them off as I dropped them off to their house after spending the entire night out in commemoration of our years together.

I remember returning home, alone, after the sunrise, devastated. It was one of the most painful goodbyes I’ve ever had to do. It was a goodbye, not a see you soon.

So, when my dad found me in my car, he comforted me and asked why I was so upset.

“My childhood’s over dad. I’m not a kid anymore, and I don’t know how and don’t want to be an adult”.

He paused again and gave me time to relax. We both knew I just needed to get some sleep.

“I never grew up. I’ve aged but we’re all still kids at heart” he offered.

Time marched on. And despite my initial doubt of my dad’s input, he was right. I had aged but I was still a little kid at heart. This became clear as I sat in my bed on a windy December night and began to panic again.

“What happens when we die”?

I hadn’t thought about that in nearly a decade. It hadn’t kept me awake, late at night, since I was nine. But here I was all grown up panicking in my top bunk in a new house, in a new room. The location, people, and time changed, but my fear remained the same.

Only this time, the fear sweltered unlike ever before. I found myself at a crossroads once again. However, my dad’s words and my logic would not comfort me. I needed something more.

But, after dwelling for over a month, I received my answer in the most unexpected scenario.

Part Three: Entering Darkness

Once in a while, when it’s good

It’ll feel like it should

And they’re all still around

And you’re still safe and sound

And you don’t miss a thing

‘Til you cry

When you’re driving away in the dark

-Also, John Mayer

The moments leading up to the crash were so normal, completely tranquil. I regret not paying attention to what song was playing; I was so focused on where I was going that I forgot to take-in where I was.

The road we were travelling down was a two-lane highway. Visibility was terrible, there were no streetlights the entire way as we drove through a road carved through the wilderness. The pine trees towered over the car, looming left to right; the moon casting their shadows onto the pavement. A light fog spilled onto the road perpetuating the gloominess of the scene.

I remember looking out the window and noticing a valley of dead trees. I wondered what had happened to them, all the way out there, alone. I had traveled that road before, many times. When I was younger, I never noticed the dead trees. I must have been enamored by the color of the other ones. But my attention no longer resided with what is. What once was seemed to be the solution to all my problems.

If I could just figure out why, then I’d feel safe again.

Why had all of this happened?

Why are we here?

Why me?

I became a full-time philosopher as a compulsion for my obsessive thoughts. To no avail, of course. None of it mattered anyway.

As I continued traveling down the road, I realized how comfortable I had become with it. The low visibility, the spooky trees, the moonlight, the life and death no longer stroking fear as I moved along.

I had traveled this road so many times before that I was as familiar with its features as I was myself.

So, it was in complete shock when I slowed down and took a left turn off the road only to be met with a blinding flash of white, followed by immediate darkness.

Part Four: Seeing the Light

The sun is going down

There's shadows all around

And I feel more than wine

We must do this again sometime

But I can't tell you when

But what a joy it's been

All that we have is now

- Jesse Winchester

…

My dad and I have a term for the situations life throws your way when you are doing one thing and then find yourself completely lost in an unexpected situation. We refer to this special place of confusion/limbo as “Claire’s Living Room”.

To provide an example of this phenomena without going into detail of its origins, I realized I was in Claire’s Living Room as I sat alone in a hospital bed, with an IV in my left arm, listening to the staff count down to the new year in the break room.

2020 was a tumultuous year, but I truly did not expect to be welcomed into 2021 by a man in a cloak in a blindingly bright room. That man, of course, being one of the nicest doctors I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. I just wish it had occurred under different circumstances.

They checked my vitals, all was well. Some slight bruising on my right ribs, but nothing that wouldn’t heal in a matter of days to weeks.

“Do you have any other concerns or questions for me?” He asked at just about two in the morning.

I couldn’t believe I was alive and okay. No one was seriously injured. No one had died. Yet, it felt like a part of me had been permanently altered. The crash was bad; really bad. Fortunately, both cars had done their job and protected every passenger. Everyone was wearing their seat belts and no other cars were there at the time of the accident. The street shut down for a short period of time to assist in the tow and clean up of both cars.

My memory of the aftermath begins with me already out of the car. I must have subconsciously exited the vehicle after getting hit with the airbags. The car was totaled. Immediately. Way gone. I remember watching the first officers and passersby see my car and look in disgust at how twisted it was. I was still out of it, so noticing other people looking shocked to see me standing on my feet brought tears to my eyes.

I wasn’t hurt, at least not physically. I went back into the wreck to find my phone. As more people began arriving at the scene, more strangers, cops, firemen, I began to panic. The situation was easily the most overwhelming experience of my life. And loud. I mean earth shatteringly loud. From the moment of impact, to the ringing in my ears, to the first responders, the sirens, the people.

But I couldn’t find my phone. I needed to call my parents and tell them to come to the scene. I needed them to know I was okay, to hear my voice before a police officer called them to inform them, I had been involved in an accident.

I was petrified that my parents would think I was dead.

After a few minutes of searching, I asked one of my friends to call my dad. My dad would explain to me later that my friend’s phone call sent him into panic. Apparently, he was sitting with my mom when he received the call. My friend was so shaken up that he could barely get the words out.

“Anthony, you need to get here.”

“What’s wrong? Where are you? Is everyone okay?” My dad immediately grabbed his things and waved my mom toward the garage.

“Down North Street, outside the state police barracks. We got into an accident, it’s really bad you just need to get here now”.

For about ten minutes, I had no way of communicating to my parents to let them know I was okay. For ten minutes, my parents feared the chance that I might have died. Something no parent should have to think about or go through. Certainly, something I would never have wished to have forced my parents to think about.

It was easily the most painful and anxiety inducing ten minutes of my life. Ten minutes of pure fear. And the people, more people, constantly more people. I had never seen so many people in one place in my entire life. The lights, the noise, the people.

My heart beat wildly, my brain froze once again, my stomach turned in my panic.

But when my parents arrived at the scene and I hugged them and told them I was okay, all my fear absolved.

I never understood how fast something as simple as seeing your family face to face could be taken away in the blink of an eye.

In a flash.

…

As I sat in that hospital bed, I realized I had the answer to my fears, crisis, and confusion all along.

In the face of death, all that matters is love. The only truth in life is found within. Love is the answer: all there ever was, is, and will be. And through love, life is eternal.

I’m not going to sit here and validate the specific hypothesis on near-death-experiences because I truly don’t know. What I will say is that the stages of life, growth, and change all coincide with the supposed course of a near-death-experience. And I don’t know that I would have found solace in my quest for answers if I hadn’t come that close to losing it all.

When I got a taste for nothing, I returned to find everything.

Part Five: Entering the Light

I've looked at life from both sides now

From win and lose and still somehow

It's life's illusions I recall

I really don't know life at all

-Joni Mitchell

Since I was a little kid, I’ve always loved contrails. People usually miss them and/or have no idea what I’m talking about when I use the term. Contrails are the clouds released by planes in the sky. The next time you’re outside, look up and I’m sure you’ll see one. I remember, during early quarantine, not seeing a single plane in the sky as if time had come to a halt. No contrails. Our inability to be with each other prevented their spirited existence within the sky.

When I was younger, I was amazed by them. I always felt like I was watching an artist paint massive strokes up in the sky. They’re beautiful, truly amazing things.

The next time I saw a plane leaving its mark in the sky, contrails had taken on a new meaning. Instead of the stroke of an artist, they are the mark of a lifetime; mysteriously appearing out of thin air, releasing a beautiful stride for all to see, and gradually fading to the stars.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my family and anyone else that’s ever loved me into being. I love you.

#stretch2021 #memoir

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imissyoulilgucciv · 6 years

Text

So this has become more of a journal/grief thing which is interesting because I’ve also had a blogger but set to private since like 13 so thats intense and I have thousands of compulsive letters to no one, but my head just doesn’t seem to sort itself out, unless I can actually slow down enough, like right here.

Today,

Woke up 2 hours earlier than usual so I could have 1.5 hours more to instal my art, the word art makes me uncomfortable which is funny to me, so I went to install my thing but there was an accident so instead I got there with 30 mins, I got most of it done but not all, didn’t matter it was an inprogress crit and I could enough up to see. I always have so much in my head and I also used text this time which I thought was also funny because when talked about they called it poetry and I just didn’t even look at it like that

I feel like this is the first project I didn’t stress over at all, but also had a lot of time to do it and no pressure from the teacher with harsh deadlines or anything so that was part of it, the other part is being in such a place of discomfort and shock that I have to be slow and I don’t have it in me to add any more chaos to the grief I’m feeling. So for me that is actually one benefit of this, its just saying fuck it to a lot of things, but in good ways.

my teacher cried during my crit which made me feel just great, and then I didn’t get a parking ticket but I should have, so I was excited and left but then went back to remove my shit and photo and then I went to get my car and bring it closer for the camera (long story) but I drove my car back in a slightly different spot and then still got a ticket because the chalk was still on my wheels even though I was gone for at least an hour and a half. but whatever theres like 4 hours worth of “work”, not my biggest worries though.

Then I busted my phone, my thoughts were oh well now I have an excuse for not wanting to respond to this persons text about hanging out.

so i go get my old phone to see if I should still use that one, and ofcorse doing this leads me to 1 years worth of messages with gus. The struggle is real, I can’t even cry because this is so overwhelming, I knew it was always hard, and I was different this time around because I Was pushing back, but like you just see the back and forward nature and gus is like “im done” this is too much for me and then the next day or same day its like hopeful for the future we have and even one that was a super cute photo of like flower people (to me it was super sexual but he didn’tn notice this until I pointed it out then we joked about being watered) but he said he wouldn’t worry any more and that he was sure no matter where we ended up we’d do something good or something like that, something that could make a small difference or whatever and that is heartbreaking, then you know the next day all over again fast and furious and I imagine how exhausting that was for gus, it’s overwhelming and I Feel in my state of greif I can understand BUT from the point of view that I have a reason to feel these ways which is much easier than to have a seemingly perfect life, beautiful face, no visible problems and people think stop whining or whatever and you feel crazy as shit because nothing feels right but nothing is wrong except you. Thats not a good feeling. Thats the invisible wheel chair. I just wish I had done so many different things, and said so many different things, I started joining in on the upset because I Wasn’t going to do that this time, I was being hurt to so lots of fuck you’s and I love yous and its fucking nuts, its all nuts, and this was the last time... I had no idea what I was in for. I could have done better but I was too involved, and also blinded by optimism. you don’t know whats in someones head and I forgot while gus was honest, he also had a way of only discolosing certain info, I thought he didn’t do that with me but in reality I can see now he did, just like he picked and chose what to tell his therapist about me, so that my image was protected. Gus was odd in that way, to protect my image because of how he felt, and its not that he was protecting his image to me, but I know he did want us to work out and he was giving me his best sides, and I loved those sides, and to think I got all the good, and yet still by the day, maybe week, maybe once a month you name it we would have really confusing fights where he would insit on withdrawing and I should have let him, I should have understood it was TOO much like he said I mean I thought I felt it was too much too, but like then it comes down to the I dont want to live without you

and he realizes he can’t live with me

and he doesn’t want to keep hurting me or his mom, and he realizes he could actually really hurt either one of us when he’s not making any sense

and its exhausting back and forth, one week feels like a fucking month, and I think his whole teen/adult life was like that, it was super condensed and super fast. He did travel, he did live in a commune for a period, dual citizenship, went through a good amount of personality growth and interests, and the last being one that I respect a lot, permaculture, and then the things that stayed the same with him like the inside jokes and the laughing, his clenliness and interest in some rap with the perfect lyrics and same taste in music, so loving, so embracing.

I can’t read these and think its over, I still open the door to his room when I get home and I think Hey Gus I’m back!! and I want to tackle him and give him all the hugs and kisses. The thing is we never had that though, I mean I never came home here, this was never my home, always a place I felt welcome but I didn’t live here, and I didn’t come here like every day nor usually when I was done with school, there would be times wher eI’d come but he would greet me at the front door, so this coming into the room and him being there is a fantasy I’ve created, Its the one where I think god like why couldn’t this be how it was, why couldn’t we have been this ideal happy family.. why did you have to leave, and why did I go so hard on you, and I know it wasn’ my choice but I really I’m so stubborn I can’t get over it I can’t forgive myself, I can’t thin it couldn’t have been different because it could have, and it wasn’t and I was part of that circle. I failed in ways I wasn’t aware of but I still feel accountable.

So now to complete my overwhelming day,

to see the medium perform ! Gus I hope you come, Ive been talking outloud to him, it comforts me, I think now Im going to be crazy lady , the one that doesn’t talk to cats but talks to the deceased bf.

Its a disaster. I can’t be the same. I feel so wrong, but also free in all my wrongness because I can say piss off, I’m still working on my piss of people pleasing skills because it just happens, I get nervous, then adrenaline that allows me to perform instead of being myself, or how I Feel. instead I can only use words and when my expression doesn’t match people don’t take me seriously, how can I blame them ?

I just miss you,

I have a bracelet from the women in my group, she said she thought of me, that means so much to me, it says “my story isn’t over yet” super cliche but the intention and the person behind it just makes me cry because we share the worst thing imaginable. Blessed. although I’m not sure how to ever wear it because its a set size metal bangle type which never fit my wrists.

I feel pretty nuts when I write like this, but I’d rather be here than having real friends and feeling like im going to have a melt down. I can’t cry right now even after reading those texts, I don’t know how I feel. I’m confused and upset but its numbing today.

I do think gus was Bipolar which was what he said the first time around, he had actually been diagnosed, but that fell through, which I partically wonder if that was my influence on him and unfortunately I think between me and drug counceling he was oppossed to understanding the benefit of medication/or even necessity, and also the benefits of being diagnosed so proper treatment can at least be attempted, even though, unfortunately, the books just don’t always work. Like the book of parenting, or relationships because I Was all wrong, and I have to think from the side of being with someone mentally ill, while I knwo I can’t be treated like crap, most of the time gus wasn’t treating me poorly other than making me hurt by the break ups and while I knew sometimes it was him being withdrawn and worried about how I felt, or being paranoid and we’d be okay sometimes it wasn’t that easy and my emotions would also take over so I’d believe him entirely and I’d be very hurt because it would always be very sudden. if only wed gotten help sooner, but I think again this time he was actually doing everything by the “book” all at once, he was invested in his interests, he was working out, he had a routine, a loving girlfriend, he was sober, seeking help..

and then he looses his shit with me and we think okay moving therapy up

then he looses his shit with his mom

then he’s gone

it doesn’t feel good when you’re doing all the “right” things, thats why I said he wasn’t patient, you expect results, tired of hurting people and tired of feeling hurt, overwhelmed and the fucking pyshcotic voices convincing you of things that make no sense and go against what is actually true, the ones that tell you we’d be better off without you. the ones that told you I was lying or only using you, or whatever

IT wasn’t fair for you or us, and this is the price for all of it. We’d do anything to have you back. I still would have rather been taken out first, but that isn’t what happened. I need your mom to have something from you, I have my dreams but she is sinking and needs to hear something, what is “real” doesn’t matter because to me, whats there is real, just like your delusions, they were real.

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coloursofaparadox · 7 years

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Okay I gotta talk about shit for a second because it’s been driving me insane to not be discussing this with anyone purely in the way of the whole ‘validation of existence only because we exist to others’ bullshit but w/e here we go

It’s been a couple weeks now and I’m a lot more clearheaded. A lot of things suck and a fairly decent amount of things are much better, which coincidentally happens to be one of the things that sucks. Realizing how shitty it was for a long time came fairly quickly, because that was literally all I could think about at the time? If it was terrible and it was over then that meant a terrible thing was over and that was a good thing. That got me through until the day they packed up and took their shit and moved out back to another fucking province. Few days after that too. But being in self-perpetuated denial does not help me whatsoever in the long run and eventually I had to slowly try to come to terms with what the past 3 and a half years actually was, good and bad altogether.

So I’ve been doing that. For about 2 and a half weeks now. Trying to think about it clearly while finally being in a position where it’s too late for that to have any repercussions. There’s a lot of stuff I knew, and I knew I knew, but didn’t want to think about too hard. I took shit like that into account when I did things like ‘temporarily’ break up weeks before the breaking down a door like a fuckin horror movie thing went down, but what I’m trying to figure out is how much of what I thought I knew has been me tricking myself into not seeing something for the sake of the three of us. It’s fucking sucked. Forcing myself to acknowledge times that were actually legitimately good has been fucking hard when all I do is make myself sad, and realizing I was right about putting in years of onesided effort and emotional energy that I’m never getting back has felt like I’m waking up after sleeping through some very valuable years of my life haggard and grey and I’m never getting them back.

The conclusion I’ve come to so far is. not much honestly. But what I have realized is how fucking stupid I’ve been!! The easiest bit to sort through has never been the abstract. It’s always the comparison, in this case the direct comparison between two very different people, and I am a fucking fool. I cannot believe I never let myself see it when we were all together, but I do not know for the life of me why I was so scared to see how fucking incredible she was. And this isn’t a case of post-mortem romanticization. We fit, SO much better. Looking back there was no comparison. Literally just shit like basic communication, or conversation and clicking. If we actually put the fucking effort in and at some point along the way decided to stop being scared of each other and playing it safe with the easy option (him), then I don’t know what would’ve happened. I wish I could say I knew for sure but I don’t, and there is a WORLD of incredible potential that I’ll now never fucking know. She is far too good for him. It’s been a force of will not to demonize the past 3 odd years I’ve been with him, and I will never say there wasn’t good about him, but it’s good on top of a foundation of insecurity and denial and someone who never grew up and refuses to see how it harms the people around him. He’s going to keep hurting people and dragging his way through life at an infants pace until he wakes up. And she does not deserve to be one of those people.

Realizing I’ve been devoting myself to someone I thought I had finally, after years found a kindred spirit in and being slapped in the face with the reality that I’d deluded myself has been. Not great. To say the least. It feels a lot like betrayal with a stab of burning shame and existential despair lmfao but yknow. I am not someone who makes real friends easily. I’m not praising that about myself though. Sometimes I wish I could not think about all the things that get in the way of liking people uninhibited because p much everyone else fucking doesn’t and they’re doing just fine apparently. But for me to find someone I really enjoy talking to and trust and actually prefer their companionship to loneliness does not happen often, and I am absolute shit at being lonely. I can still count on one hand the number of people I’ve found in my entire 22 years of life, and while obviously they’re not all romantic connections it still fucking hurts to lose even one of those. The very shitty Venn diagram of the general populace, people I like, people I love and trust, and people I love, trust, and somehow am also in love with is comically disproportionate and transphobia and social anxiety are not on my side for adding to the latter more than once in a blue moon. My plans for the future involve a lot of blank nothingness and stubborn refusal not to date anyone until I’m financially stable and CAN comfortably be completely single without a looming sense of dread and desperation to not be achingly lonely, which are probably not in any danger of being called into question by the appearance of a wildcard I swoon over given my fucking chances.

It would’ve been so easy to sink into a spiral of cynicism and turn on the whole world over him and I definitely did for a while, but I’m not as young as I was 5 years ago. As much as it hurts my pride and my limited (now crumbling) experience of romantic love to admit, I fucked up and I picked wrong. It’s by no means my only goal in life but. it would just. be kinda nice to know if it’s actually possible for me to find someone(s) that. are. good? and. are the kind of love that you see sometimes. not the stupid movie shit but just. people that work with each other, in multiple senses of the word. I got a fucking taste of it and now I can’t even tell if it was real or not and it’s killing me thinking about it. I want it so bad. I don’t want it for free, I want to work for it and towards it and find someone I want to work towards it with. This is not me freeloading and romanticizing some perfect ideal relationship, this is me just. wanting. people. I love doing little things for people to make them happy I love helping and giving and seeing people smile because of it and I love. just. being happy. and other people being happy. I love being genuine and I fucking would do anything for the heady experience of knowing someone else and someone else knowing you thoroughly and completely. and just existing, like that, and making eachother happy while you live your lives. There’s probably some fancy obscure word out there to describe all that but I don’t fucking know I just want. To love someone. It’s not a compulsion I won’t make shit choices just to find the wrong person to throw affection at but despite all my bullshit I genuinely. love. people. more abstractly as a whole but intensely as individuals. and i already miss it.

i have no fucking idea where this is going any more I just have a lot of thoughts that don’t have very much ‘a good addition to a conversation’ vibe going on and like mentioned at great fucking length im generally starved for human connection okay i feed on it like a black hole lmfao. im. more myself lately though. I’ve been missing the bit of me that connects to people as a mass i think. I’m not going to say i’m happier but part of something that has always defined me as an entity of fuckin brainwaves is just doing stuff for people. not really for any reason but barring social anxiety getting in the way ive always done stuff like offered to help or go out on a limb and ask if someone’s okay or little shit like get someone the drink they always get bc they weren’t around to ask and i haven’t been more or more in the last 3 years. I’m doing it now though. I’ve missed it. A big unhealthy chunk of that relationship was we were all so immersed in cynicism and sarcasm and ‘ironic’ morbidity that just being genuinely happy and optimistic was not encouraged nearly enough. and now that im free of that i feel a lot more like me and i’m very glad to know that hasn’t gone anywhere n ill be very sure to foster that part of myself a lot more in the future

i need to go to fucking bed. tldr im happier but lonely and i loved the wrong person and im quietly losing faith that real romantic love actually exists for me at all but yknow whatever. gnight.

#im not tagging this so it can get lost in the massive archives of my blog #i dont really care who reads this it's not emotional any more its just going through the facts as best i can so w/e. probably gonna change #my mind on some of this shit at some point but not because of any input from either of them lmao #fucking end me #i miss having real conversations like this.#thats not to say im not acquainted with people who could but its not something ive. done. with many people.#and its hard to tell who's down. anyways. if you ever have fucking weirdass existential dread gimme a shout i miss the feeling.

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ineedrelationshipadvice · 7 years

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I'm a 26-year old guy and Ive noticed the last three times ive had sex with a girl i struggle to sustain an erection. i mostly use porn to get off in between hook ups and indulge usually 1-2x per week, less so recently. i think what my problem is, is that I'm desensitized and/or my brain gets excited mostly when it knows I'm about watch porn. the kicker here is that I'm hanging out with this girl Friday and there's a 99% chance we'll have sex. any advice? i haven't watched porn for over a week

Welp, certainly missed the mark on this one. But if you come back and read this, hopefully you were successful!

That being said, the harsh reality here is that it definitely sounds like you’re experiencing what scientists call porn-induced erectile dysfunction. It may not be the case - there are A LOT of issues that can cause various types of erectile dysfunction. But if YOU feel like there’s a relationship, that’s a good cause for alarm.

Firstly, what is it? Here’s a good review and understanding to get you started. It also be stated straight-out, PORN IS NOT ADDICTIVE. Addictive materials alter the chemistry of your body with the introduction of the addictive substance (alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, etc.). Instead, porn is a COMPULSIVE material, and although it can have real world effects, the compulsive behaviour is not built into the body, but is instead a reaction to experiences people have to the world around them (stress, anxiety, depression, etc. can all create reasons to compulsively use porn, similarly to that forms of escapism).

Essentially, ED caused by porn results from a place of over-stimulation. Using porn all the time conditions the brain to associate the act of preparing and then engaging with the porn as a sexual act, and if you use high volumes of porn (LOTS of different videos of extreme, hardcore porn) it can train your brain to think that this is how porn is, with all that stimulation. And when you don’t get that experience in real life, your expectations for sex aren’t met, and thus you find it difficult to get aroused. More info from Laci Green here.

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So for your particular meeting this weekend, there’s not much that could have been done. Retraining your brain can be a very difficult process depending on how severe the issue is. So much so, that it might even require a sexologist or therapist to help you through the process. Which is something you should keep in mind if this problem persists!

The general advice to “cure” ED from porn use is as follows:

CUT OUT THE PORN. The big issue here is that porn has become as vital to your sexual experience as an erection. Your brain is smart, and it does a lot of automatic processes during sexual arousal, like speeding heart rate and breathing, as well as all the processes that go into making the penis erect. The problem is, if this is a problem you’re suffering from, the porn itself has become part of the process, and if your brain relates porn + automatic function = erection, then if that porn isn’t there, you won’t be aroused.

Now pay attention to what I said here. I didn’t say STOP MASTURBATING. I said stop watching porn when you masturbate. The porn is the problem, and you need to rewrite the algorithm in your brain to retrain it to understand that porn is not a requirement for arousal. You kinda already instinctively figured this out, and cut down on the masturbation time. But now I suggest you begin to try to masturbate without porn.

I know that probably sounds awful. If you can’t get it up with an actual person, how can you do it alone? That’s the goal. You have to retrain your brain that erotic thoughts - and thoughts alone - are enough to make you aroused. By removing porn from the equation, it forces you use your brain and imagination to become aroused. Think of arousing images in your mind, or think of attractive people in your mind, and then try to masturbate. This may not work! You may just by flapping away at a floppy dick. That’s okay. Don’t try to cum, don’t even try to get hard. Just have a fun, nice moment enjoying an erotic thought. Kind of like when you were a kid, and imagined a classmate in their underwear, and maybe impulsively touched yourself. This is the type of space in your mind you want to rediscover for yourself. Leave your computer and phone behind. Turn off all technology, get in bed, maybe light some candles, and imagine some super steamy, hot sexual scenarios, and see if over the period of a month or so, you can get aroused this way.

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MASTURBATE DIFFERENTLY. This may sound kind of dumb, but it’s very important for those suffering from ED. Part of the arousal process is the way we do it. We experience pleasure in specific ways, and if a way that we experience pleasure doesn’t align with the way we are used to experiencing pleasure, our brain sometimes interprets that as “oh, this isn’t pleasurable.”

As an example, you can see this in a huge majority of young women, particularly pre-teens and teens just discovering their sexuality right after puberty. In western culture, men are taught from a young age that it’s okay to be more open about their perviness; however, lots of women are shamed from an early age to reject their perversions and sexual thoughts for a sense of idealized purity. This is obviously bullshit, but it’s the way parenting and education happens to prepubescent children.

The result of this conditioning is that there are LOTS of girls who suddenly hit puberty, start having all these horny feelings, but feel they are deeply strange and shameful. “I would never finger myself, that’s WRONG.” “It hurts to have sex, because I never masturbate.” “I don’t like to masturbate because it doesn’t feel good.” It’s not that any of these people are lying; it’s simple that they have been conditioned to think these various thoughts, through YEARS and even DECADES of negative reinforcement of sexual habits.

How does this relate to you? Well, for those who do masturbate, sometimes we can condition ourselves to appreciate pleasure in only one way. If all you do is drop onto your couch, turn the porn on, and surf until it’s time to cum, you condition your brain into the habit of THIS being the sexual experience. This is what sex looks like for your body 99% of the time, but then you meet with a girl... but you’re not naked on your couch, and there’s no porn on... this isn’t sex, this is some other situation, no arousal.

How to fix? CHANGE IT UP. Similarly to not using porn to find arousal, try to use different methods physically to become aroused. Do you use your right hand every time to masturbate? Try to use your left, or flip your hand upside down while stroking. Want a more “sex-like” experience? Try masturbating with condoms on (or with lube!), since you’re hopefully using those when hooking up anyway! Still not enough? HUMP THINGS! Couches, pillows, old stuffed animals, beds, blankets, and all sort of things can give a full body sensation of sexual pleasure. Usually sit down at your computer to masturbate? Lie down in bed instead, or even stand up while you do it! Still want an extra special something? BUY SOME SEX TOYS! Go to Adam & Eve (not a sponsor, they’re just dope) and buy a toy that suits your needs. Too cheap? Make your own sex toys!

The point is back to that conditioning thing. You want to condition your brain to understand that there are LOTS of different places where it’s okay to be aroused, so when you find yourself in a new situation (aka, with a person, in real life) your body doesn’t feel like this is an inappropriate place to do the deed.

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Another very important thing to say here at the end. You BELIEVE that this is your problem, but it is also entirely possible this ISN’T the problem. It’s possible you are experiencing anxiety in sexual encounters with people. If you feel scared or anxious in the moment, this requires a different method of recovery, and you need to learn to calm your mind and try to remember that the expectations you feel at your performance are fair and valid, but they aren’t expectations, and it’s all in your head.

Also, MEDICINE. Lots of medications can fuck with your ability to get hard. Research your medications and see if one of the downsides is erectile dysfunction. If yes, contact your doctor and tell him you’re experiencing these problems.

Also also, mind altering substances! Alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana just to name a few have all been noted as items that can decrease the ability to feel aroused or get aroused, especially in men. Maybe you struggle to get aroused because you’ve had too much to drink, or there’s too much THC in your system, or nicotine has decreased blood flow to your body. If you use any sort of drug, narcotic, or substance like this, maybe cut that out of your diet for awhile!

The bottom line is that all this shit is way more complicated than we assume at first glance, and you should take the potential that porn is the problem seriously. But make sure you analyze your whole self during the process to figure out what the actual issue is, and don’t be afraid to approach doctors with these concerns.

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swipestream · 5 years

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Sensor Sweep: David Lindsay, Robots, Hollow City, H. Beam Piper, Jonah Hex

Lit-Crit (Jewish Review of Books): It’s a bit surprising to come across Harold Bloom’s confession that the literary work that has been his greatest obsession is not, say, Hamlet or Henry IV, but a relatively little-known 1920 fantasy novel. After all, Bloom is our most famous bardolater. When I took an undergraduate class with him at Yale, he announced his trembling bafflement before Shakespeare’s greatness in almost every lecture. In the course of his career, Bloom has named a handful of other literary eminences who compel from him a similar obeisance—Emerson, Milton, Blake, Kafka, and Freud are members in this select club—but one does not find David Lindsay on this list.

Writing (McSweeneys): I had a whole gaggle of 100-point bucks in my sights, sleeping peacefully on their feet, like cows. The way they were lined up, I could take down the whole clan in a single shot of gun, clean through their magnificent oversized brains. That’d be enough (deer) meat to last Nora and the baby through the harsh Amarillo winter. I shifted my weight in my hidey spot, snapping a twig and pouring more pepper on the fire by muttering, “God dammit all to hell.”

Gaming (Modiphius): Conan the Brigand is the complete guide to the nomadic brigands of the Hyborian Age, providing the gamemaster and player characters with all the resources to run campaigns that embrace the path of the brigand, or are affected by it. Here within these pages are all the resources needed to bring to life this outlaw world!

New material to expand your Conan campaign, with brigand-themed castes, stories, backgrounds, and equipment, allowing you to create your own unique brigands, nomads, and raiders.

Science Fiction (Brian Niemeier): The Unz Review shows how the Right all too often rushes to enshrine earlier Leftist subversion simply because it precedes current Leftist subversion.

This time, the subject of misguided right wing hagiography is John W. Campbell, Jr.

Alec Nevala-Lee, an Asian-American science fiction writer, has here written something remarkable: an intentionally PC multi-biography that nevertheless manages to be well-informed and informative, well-written and compulsively readable.

Science Fiction (Unz.com): Alec Nevala-Lee, an Asian-American science fiction writer,[2] has here written something remarkable: an intentionally PC multi-biography that nevertheless manages to be well-informed and informative, well-written and compulsively readable. It’s the first substantive biography of John W. Campbell, Jr., the man – or, as we’ll see, some would insist on “the white male” – who basically invented modern science fiction; and that last point means that to do so properly, we have to take into account the three men – yes, again, white males – whose writing careers he promoted in order to do it.

Fiction (DMR Books): The Ivory Trail was Talbot Mundy’s fifth novel and his most widely reviewed book up until that time. It was serialized in Adventure magazine in early 1919 under the title On the Trail of Tipoo Tib and then published in book form by Bobbs-Merrill later that year. It received a largely positive reception but was quite different from his previous books in that it was set entirely in East Africa, amid Mundy’s old hunting grounds.

Tolkien (Pages Unbound): I first picked up Tolkien when I was very young (sometime in elementary school). Some fantasy had come into my hands—some book or another, or perhaps the original Final Fantasy game on the NES. My mom said, “You know, if you like that, there is a book you would like . . .” I’m not even sure if my mom has ever read The Hobbit, which is a testament to its cultural cache. I did not immediately acquiesce. I was a pretentious child—before I became a man and put away childish things like the fear of seeming childish—and I initially rebuffed my mom’s efforts. But a book is a book, and I didn’t have so many laying around in those days, so I didn’t wait long before reading it.

Science Fiction (G. Scott Huggins): Robots. I have never really understood why there is an obsession with stories about robots. As with fae, I understand the attraction of having robots exist in a story. What I don’t really get is stories about robots. Robots as the reason for the story. Yet many, many people love stories about robots. Isaac Asimov, arguably, built his career on an obsession with robots. I can’t think of any other piece of future technology — with the possible exception of spaceships — that has inspired such a wealth of stories about them. Can you imagine a whole subgenre of SF devoted to, say, laser guns?

Fiction (Wasteland and Sky): Super powered cop Adam Song has dedicated his life to the law. In the military and the police force, Adam ruthlessly protects the innocent.

But this time he’s killed the wrong bad guy. Now the local drug lord’s son is dead, and the boss is out for Adam’s blood. Even his secret identity won’t keep him safe. The police department hangs him out to dry, his years of exemplary service forgotten. Adam must take justice into his own hands to keep his family safe.

Fiction (Fiction Fan Blog): When a young lady comes to Sherlock Holmes for advice, what at first seems like an intriguing mystery soon turns into a tale of murderous revenge. Mary Morstan’s father disappeared some years ago, just after he had returned from colonial service. He had been in the Andaman Islands, one of the officers charged with guarding the prisoners held there. A few years after his disappearance, Miss Morstan received a large pearl in the mail, and every year for the six years since then, she has received another.

Gaming (Walker’s Retreat): Following the whinefest by Fake Game Journalists over Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Oliver Campbell of the Metro City Boys put together a supercut of how he prevailed over the game. As the saying goes, “The master failed more times than the amateur ever attempts.” That’s what it takes to beat this game: persistence.

Every game of this sort has similar requirements of persistence to succeed. Oliver here goes over how he did that. Skip to 14:10 for the lesson, taken from Rocky Balboa.

Acting (Chris Lansdown): Thanks to frequent commenter Mary, I recently learned about the existence of William Gillette, the first man to play Sherlock Holmes, mostly on the stage but also in a silent film.

Born in 1853, in Connecticut, William Gillette was a stage director, writer, and actor in America. In 1897, his play, Secret Service, was sufficiently successful in America that his producer took it to England.

Gaming (Rampant Games): I played over 70 hours of No Man’s Sky when it was originally released. Unlike others, I wasn’t disappointed. Yeah, it got repetitive and lonely at times. There was a starkness to it that no amount of lush procedural visuals could overcome. It’s changed a lot since then, graphically, in gameplay, and it has true multiplayer. Sadly, I haven’t had the time to devote to it. Yet.

Fiction (Razored Zen): This is a collection of stories selected by Joe Lansdale, and including in introduction by Lansdale. Before I talk about the individual stories, I’ll give my overall viewpoint. I’d generally say I enjoyed most of the tales but the title is very misleading. A better title might have been, “Tales of a New West,” or something along those lines. Most of these tales are nowhere near traditional westerns. Lansdale is clear in the introduction that that was what he was looking for but the title certainly would have led me to expect a different sort of collection.

Writing (Rawle Nyanzi): Larry Correia, the Mountain Who Writes, is a personal hero of mine. His advice to writers is to be prolific: write lots of stuff, then release that stuff, then write some more, release some more, and so on. I am often in awe of how much he writes and publishes, and I wish that I could reach even one-tenth of his yearly output. To him, “writer’s block” simply isn’t a thing — he presses on, no matter what.

Fiction (Adventures Fantastic): Henry Beam Piper was born on this day, March 23, in 1904. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1964.

Piper is not well known today, and that’s a shame. In his lifetime, he was best known for two series, The Paratime Police and the Terro-Human Future History, as well as the stand-alone short story “Omnilingual”. His best known novels include the Little Fuzzy subseries of his future series and Space Viking, which was a major influence on Jerry Pournelle.

Fiction (John C. Wright): Abraham Merrit is one of the foundational authors of speculative fiction, and it is a shame that he is not well remembered. I blame a deliberate effort of John W Cambell Jr and his protegees to undermine the fame of pulp authors in order to glolrify the more nuts-and-bolts fiction following the model of Jules Verne or Buck Rogers.

Now, I like Hard SF or Tech SF as much as the next fan of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Niven, Pournelle, Baxter, &c., but I also like the pulps and their freedom from strict genre restraints, and I hate snobbery in all its forms.

There is no wrong way to have fun.

Fiction (Rich Horton): Today would have been H. Beam Piper’s 115th birthday. His first novels were the two serials discussed below, published in books form as Crisis in 2140 and Uller Uprising. (A version of “Uller Uprising” had actually appeared as part of the Twayne Triplet The Petrified Planet a year earlier.) In addition to those novels, I append a short look at perhaps his most famous story, “Omnilingual”.

Comic Books (Broadswords and Blasters): In 1993, editor Karen Berger at DC Comics forged a new imprint that focused on stories geared at a more mature audience and creator owned works as well. The end result was the creation of Vertigo Comics. Such early titles included, naturally enough, a transfer of already established titles such as Shade the Changing Man, The Sandman,[1] Swamp Thing, Hellblazer,[2] Animal Man and Doom Patrol. Soon after, new titles, both ongoing and limited premiered under this imprint including Neil Gaiman’s Death: the High Cost of Living, the Matt Wagner-helmed Sandman: Mystery Theatre and Peter Milligan’s Enigma.

Sensor Sweep: David Lindsay, Robots, Hollow City, H. Beam Piper, Jonah Hex published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

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