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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Dust Volume 7, Number 4

Axel Ruley x Verbo Flow

A little bit of optimism is creeping into the air as Dusted writers start to get their shots. We’re all starting to think about live music, maybe outside, maybe this summer. But as the spate of freak snow storms demonstrates, summer’s not here yet, and in the meantime, piles of records and gigs of MP3s beckon. This early spring version of Dust covers the map, literally, with artists representing Pakistan, Australia, Canada, Sweden, the UK and the USA, and stylistically with jazz, rock, punk, rap, improv and many other genres in play. Contributors include Jennifer Kelly, Justin Cober-Lake, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Patrick Masterson, Tim Clarke and Bryon Hayes.

Arooj Aftab — Vulture Prince (New Amsterdam)

Vulture Prince by Arooj Aftab

Arooj Aftab is a classical composer originally from Pakistan but now living in Brooklyn. Vulture Prince, her third full-length album, blends the bright clarity of new age music with the fluid, non-Western vocal tones of her Central Asian roots. “Last Night,” from an old Rumi poem but sung mostly in English, lilts in dub-scented syncopation, the thump and pop of stand-up bass underlining its bittersweet melody. An interlude in some other language shifts the song entirely, pitting vintage reggae reverberation against an exotic melisma. “Mohabbat” (which is apparently Urdu for sex) soothes in the pristine instrumentals, lucid guitars, a horn, scattered drumbeats, but smolders and beckons in the vocals. None of these tracks feel wholly traditional or wholly Western and modern day, but sit somewhere in a well-lit, idealized space. Timeless and placeless, Vulture Prince is nonetheless very beautiful.

Jennifer Kelly

Assertion — Intermission (Spartan)

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Intermission comes from an alternate timeline. Founding drummer William Goldsmith started his musical career in Sunny Day Real Estate and had a notable stint with Foo Fighters. To cut the biography short, Goldsmith took a decade off from the music industry. He's returned now with Assertion, joined by guitarist/vocalist Justin Tamminga and bassist Bryan Gorder (both of Blind Guides, among other acts). This band picks up in the late 1990s, imagining a new path for post-hardcore/post-grunge music. The trio's name suits, as the songs' energy and the lyrical assertiveness develops the intensity of the release. The group works carefully with dynamics, neither parroting the loud-quiet tradition nor simply pushing their emo leanings toward 11.

“The Lamb to the Slaughter Pulls a Knife” epitomizes the album. The track sounds like Foo Fighters decided to get dirtier rather than more arena-friendly, while the lyrics mix violence with emotional persistence. First single “Supervised Suffering” finds triumph in endurance, turning the aggressive chorus into something of a victory. “Set Fire” closes the album with something more delicate, but it's just the gauze over a seething anger. Goldsmith's time off seems to have served him well, as does collaborating with some new partners. Assertion makes its case clearly and effectively, and if the intermission's over for Goldsmith, the second half sounds promising.

Justin Cober-Lake

Michael Beach — Dream Violence (Goner/Poison City)

Dream Violence by Michael Beach

“De Facto Blues,” from Michael Beach’s fourth solo album, is a barn-burner of a song, rough and messy and passionate, the kind of song that makes you want to take a stand on something, who cares what as long as it matters to you. It snarls like Radio Birdman, slashes like the Wipers and follows its muse through chaos to righteousness like an off-cut from Crazy Horse, just back from rockin’ the free world. It’s got Matt Ford and Inez Tulloch from Thigh Master on guitar and bass, respectively, Utrillo Kushner from Colossal Yes (and Comets on Fire) on drums, and Kelley Stoltz at the boards, and it’s a killer. The rest of the album is varied and, honestly, not uniformly astounding, but there’s a nice Summer of Love-style psych dream in “Metaphysical Dice,” a slow-burning post-rocker in the title track and a driving, pounding punk anthem in the opener “Irregardless.” Beach has been splitting his time between San Francisco and Melbourne, Australia, and lately settled on Melbourne, where he will fit like a native into their thriving punk-garage scene.

Jennifer Kelly

Bloop — Proof (Lumo)

Proof by BLOOP (Lina Allemano / Mike Smith)

The trumpet is already a catalog of sound effects waiting to happen, and Lina Allemano knows the table of contents by heart. So, to shake things up, she has paired up with electronic musician Mike Smith, who contributes live processing and effects to Allemano’s improvisations. A blind listen to Proof might leave you with the impression that you’re hearing a horn player jamming with some outer space cats, and we’re not talking about hip, lingo-slinging jazz dudes. In fact, everything on these eight tracks happened in real time. Smith’s a strategic intervener, aware that too much sauce can spoil the stew, so he mixes up precise layering and pitch-shifting with more disorienting transformations. It’s hard to say how much Allemano responds to the simulacra that surround her brass voice, but there’s no denying the persuasiveness of her melodic and timbral ideas.

Bill Meyer

Bris — Tricky Dance Moves (TrueStory Entertainment)

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Bris left some music behind when he died in 2020, but it took almost a year to shape these recordings into a proper CD. The label CEO Mac J (a fine artist himself) could easily capitalize on his friend’s death, stacking Tricky Dance Moves with features from the artists Bris never would have worked with. Yet the album was prepared with the utmost care, not giving an ugly Frankenstein monster feel. Bris’s references to his possible early death are scattered throughout the whole tape: “Heard they wanna pop Bris cause they mad I’m poppin.” Almost every song could be easily turned into a prophetic tale (a cheap move one wants to avoid at all costs). Nonetheless, something is missing here. Or maybe it is just an image of death that disturbs the whole picture, making us realize that this is the last we’d hear from Bris.

Ray Garraty

Dreamwell — Modern Grotesque (self-released)

Modern Grotesque by Dreamwell

I recently read an interview with Providence’s Dreamwell breaking down in almost excruciating detail the influences that led to the quintet’s sophomore full-length Modern Grotesque. I kept scrolling past Daughters and Deftones and Deafheaven and increasingly disconnected influences like The Mountain Goats and Nina Simone. I went back to the top and looked again. I typed Ctrl+F and put in “Thursday.” Nothing. This is preposterous. I may not be in the post-hardcore trenches the way I once was, but even I’d know a good Full Collapse homage if it swung a mic right into my face the way this one did; hell, just listen to “The Lost Ballad of Dominic Anneghi” and tell me singer Keziah Staska doesn’t know every single word of “Paris in Flames.” That may not look like flattery on a first read, but too often, bands striding the emo/pop divide have chased the latter into sub-Taking Back Sunday oblivion; what Thursday did was much harder, and Dreamwell has ably taken up the torch here. That they did it unintentionally is a curious, bewildering footnote.

Patrick Masterson

Paul Dunmall / Matthew Shipp / Joe Morris / Gerald Cleaver — The Bright Awakening (Rogue Art)

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It’s a bit perplexing that reeds player Paul Dunmall hasn’t spent more time playing with American musicians. He’s firmly situated within the English improvisation community, where he’s perhaps best known for his longer tenure with the quartet Mujician, and his ability to double on bagpipes has allowed him to establish links between improvised and folk music. But

his jazz-rooted approach makes him a natural to work in settings such as this one. When Dunmall toted his tenor to the Vision Festival in 2012 (even then, it could be costly to lug multiple horns on a plane), he found three sympatico partners in Fest regulars pianist Matthew Shipp, double bassist Joe Morris and drummer Gerald Cleaver. They all hit the ground running, generating a barrage of pulsing, roiling sound for over 20 minutes before the piano and drums peel off, leaving Morris to sustain momentum alone. Dunmall’s gruff, spiraling lines find common cause with each of his fellows, and the gradual addition and subtraction of players from that point makes it easier to hear the exchange of ideas, which often seem to take place between dyads operating within the larger flow.

Bill Meyer

Editrix — Tell Me I’m Bad (Exploding in Sound)

Tell Me I'm Bad by Editrix

Wendy Eisenberg’s rock band is like her solo output in that it snarls delicate, self-aware, mini-short stories in complex tangles of guitar, hemming in high, sing-song-y verses with riffs and licks of daunting difficulty. The main differences are speed, volume and aggression (i.e. it rocks.) and a certain communal energy. That’s down to two collaborators who can more than keep up, Josh Daniel on surging, rattling, break-it-all-down percussion and Steve Cameron, equally anarchic and fast on bass. The title track is an all-out rager, thrusting jagged arena riffs of guitar and bass forward, then clearing space for off-kilter verses and time-shifting, irregular instrumental interplay. “Chelsea” follows a similar chaotic pattern, setting up a teeth-shaking cadence of rock instruments, with Eisenberg keening over the top of it. “I know, perfectly well, that we’re not safe, safe from the men in power,” she croons, engaged in the knotting difficulties of the world as we know it, but winning.

Jennifer Kelly

Elephant Micah — Vague Tidings (Western Vinyl)

Vague Tidings by Elephant Micah

The new Elephant Micah album, the follow-up to 2018’s excellent Genericana, has an apposite title. Vague Tidings conveys an atmosphere of feeling conscious of something carried on the wind, a story passed on that may have shifted through various iterations, leaving only a sense of its original meaning. All that can be sure is that this is sad, sober music, unafraid to brace against the chill of mortality and speak of all that is felt. The instruments — guitar, piano, percussion, violin and woodwinds — move around Joseph O’Connell’s voice in stiff yet graceful arcs, distanced by an unspoken etiquette. Repetitive melodic figures, stark yet steady, gradually accumulate weight as they roll along like tumbleweeds. It’s a crisp, forlorn country-blues, in no hurry to get nowhere, carrying ancient wisdom that seems to acknowledge the empty resonance of its own import.

Tim Clarke

Fraufraulein — Solum (Notice Recordings)

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Fraufraulein’s music is immersive. Anne Guthrie and Billy Gomberg beam themselves, and us along with them, Quantum Leap-style directly into multiple environments in medias res. Through the clever employment of field recordings, they transport us to a hurricane-addled beach, performing a voice/piano duet as driftwood missiles careen through the air. In another “episode,” the manipulation of small objects conjures up the intimacy of a water garden filled with windchimes. Partners in both life and art, Guthrie and Gomberg are also consummate solo artists. He is a master of spike-textured drones, while she explores the intimate properties of physical entities. Like a child tends to resemble one parent while borrowing subtle traits from the other, Solum identifies more with Guthrie’s electroacoustic tendencies than it does with Gomberg’s electronics. This is in stark contrast to 2015’s Extinguishment, which felt a little more balanced between those two modes. Both approaches work, yet Solum feels more meticulously crafted and nuanced. Careful listening unveils multiple subtle tones and textures, and each piece is an adventure for the ears.

Bryon Hayes

Gerrit Hatcher / Rob Magill / Patrick Shiroishi — Triplet Fawns (Kettle Hole)

Triplet Fawns by Gerrit Hatcher / Rob Magill / Patrick Shiroishi

The album’s title implies a crew you wouldn’t want on your yard; while those adolescent ungulate appetites do a number on your bushes, the hooves are hacking up your grass. But if they knocked on your door, saxophone cases in their respective hands, you could do worse than invite them around the back for some blowing. Hatcher, Magill and Shiroishi present with sufficient lung power to be heard fine without the reflective assistance of walls, even when they aren’t making like Sonore (that was Gustafsson, Vandermark, and Brötzmann, about a dozen years back). This album, which was released in a micro-edition of 100 CD-Rs on Hatcher’s Kettle Hole imprint, builds gradually from restrained melancholy to pointillistic jousting to a climactic blow-out, and the assured development of each piece suggests that each player was listening not only to what each of the others was doing, but where the music was headed.

Bill Meyer

A.Karperyd — GND (Novoton)

GND by A.Karperyd

On his second solo release, GND, Swedish artist Andreas Karperyd broodingly ruminates on snatches of musical ideas that have been percolating in his consciousness over extended periods. Anyone familiar with his 2015 debut, Woodwork, will find these 55 minutes similarly immersive, as Karperyd manipulates live instruments such as piano and strings into shimmering, alien tapestries. Opener “The Well-Defined Rules of Certainty” appears to take Fennesz’s Venice as its blueprint, issuing forth cascading, percolating tones that tickle the ears. “The Desire to Invoke Balance with Our Eyes Closed” and “Failures and Small Observations” have a Satie-esque elegance to their piano lines, albeit refracted via a hall of mirrors. The 12-minute “Reminiscence of Tar” sounds like a slow-motion pan across the hulking mass of a shadowy space station. And closing track “Mummification of an Empire” slowly fries its piano in static, then unfurls wistful melodica and throbbing synth across the wreckage.

Tim Clarke

Kiwi Jr. — Cooler Returns (Subpop)

Cooler Returns by Kiwi jr

Kiwi Jr.’s brash, brainy indie pop punk vibrates with nervy energy, like the first Feelies album or Violent Femmes’ 1983 debut or that one great S-T from the Soft Pack. Those are all opening salvos for their respective bands, but this one is a second outing, suffering not a bit from sophomore slackening. Instead, Cooler Returns tightens up everything that was already stinging on the Toronto band’s debut and adds a giddy careening glee. An oddball thread of Robin Hood-ness runs through the disc, with Sherwood forest getting a nod in the title track and “Maid Marian’s Toast” tipping the love interest, but these songs are anything but archaic. “Undecided Voters,” the single jangles harder than anything I’ve heard since Woolen Men, slyly upending creative pretensions in a verse that goes: “You take a photo of the CN tower/you take another of the Honest Ed sign/Well, I take photos of your photos/and they really move people.” Has it been done before? Maybe. Does it move us. Yes indeed.

Jennifer Kelly

Kool John — Get Rich, Die $moppin ($moplife Entertainment)

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A year ago, Kool John was shot six times. Yet you wouldn’t know about it from the general mood of Get Rich, Die $moppin, his first tape since then. He does name one song “6 Shots” and explicitly mentions the shooting accident a few times on other songs, but his bouncy music says he wasn’t hurt bad after all. The beats perfectly match the rhymes, playfully ignorant and ignorantly playful. Kool John still doesn’t mix with broke people, doesn’t return calls if it’s not about money and “doesn’t get stressed out.” Instead, he gets high. His new tape is nothing groundbreaking, even though he’s pretending that is: “If I had no legs I’d still be outstanding.”

Ray Garraty

Nick Mazzarella / Quin Kirchner — See or Seem: Live at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival (Out Of Your Head)

See or Seem: Live at the Hyde Park Jazz Festival by Nick Mazzarella / Quin Kirchner

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this recording is that the titular festival happened at all. While most festivals either canceled or went on line, Chicago’s Hyde Park Jazz Festival dealt with COVID by spreading out. Instead of big stages and indoor shows, last September it staged little pop-up events on sidewalks and in parks. So, if the sound of See or Seem feels a bit diffuse, it’s because it was recorded with a device propped in front of two guys playing on a grassy median. There are moments when the buzz of bugs rises up for a second behind Nick Mazzarella’s darting alto sax and Quin Kirchner’s brisk, mercurial beats. But the thrill of actually playing in front of some people (or actually being surrounded by them; when there’s no stage and social distancing is in effect, it makes sense to walk slow circles around the performers) infuses this music, extracting an extra ounce of joyousness from Mazzarella’s free, boppish lines, and adding a restlessness charge to the drumming, as though Kirchner really wanted to squeeze as much music as possible into this 31-minute set. This release is part of Out Of Your Head Records’ Untamed series of download-only albums recorded under less than pristine conditions. A portion of each title’s income is directed to a charity of the artists’ choice; the duo selected St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.

Bill Meyer

Dean McPhee — Witch’s Ladder (Hood Faire)

Witch's Ladder by Dean McPhee

Finger-picked melodies cut through haunted landscapes of echo and hum on this fourth LP from the British guitarist Dean McPhee. Track titles like “The Alchemist” and “Witch’s Ladder” evoke the supernatural, as does the spectral ambient tone, reminiscent of Chuck Johnson’s recent Cinder Grove or Mark Nelson’s last Pan•American album. Yet while an e-bow traces ghostly chills through “The Alder Tree,” there’s also a grounding in lovely, well-rooted folk forms; it’s like seeing a familiar landscape in moonlight, well-known landmarks suddenly turned unearthly and strange. The long closing title track has an introspective air. Pensive, jazz-infused runs flower into bright bursts of notes, not quite blues, not quite folk, not quite jazz, not quite anything but gorgeous.

Jennifer Kelly

Moontype — Bodies of Water (Born Yesterday)

Bodies of Water by Moontype

Margaret McCarthy’s voice swims across your headphones like being on an innertube drifting languidly downstream. Typically, saying someone’s vocals are like water indicates a degree of timidity or laziness, obscured in reverb or simply buried by the mix, but on Moontype’s debut LP, it’s a compliment: McCarthy floats across the different styles of music she makes with guitarist Ben Cruz and drummer Emerson Hunton. You notice it not just because she often sings of water or because it’s right there in the title, but also because the Chicago trio hasn’t settled on any particular style yet — just listen to the three-song stretch at the heart of the record where achingly beautiful alt-country ballad “3 Weeks” leads into “When You Say Yes,” a sub-three-minute power-pop number Weezer ought to be jealous of, followed immediately by crunching alt-rock swoon and first single “Ferry.” All the while, McCarthy lets her melodies drift to the will of the songs. I’m reminded of recent efforts from Great Grandpa, Squirrel Flower and Lucy Dacus, but the brief, jazzy curveball of “Alpha” is a peek into whole other possibilities. Bodies of Water is a fine record, but perhaps its most exciting aspect is how much ground you can see Moontype has already conquered. One can’t help but wonder what sonic worlds awash in water await.

Patrick Masterson

Rob Noyes / Joseph Allred — Avoidance Language (Feeding Tube)

Avoidance Language by Rob Noyes and Joseph Allred

The 12-string guitar can emit such a prodigious amount of sound, and there are two of them on Avoidance Language. If Joseph Allred and Rob Noyes had planned things out in order to avoid canceling each other out, they might never have picked their instruments up, so they just started playing and listening. The result is not so much a summing of two broad spectrums of sound, but an instinctual blending of similar textures that ends up sounding significantly different from what either musician does on their own. Even when Allred switches to harmonium or banjo, as he does on the album’s two shorter tracks, the music rushes in torrential fashion. Their collaboration is so compatible that it often seems more like a recital for one big stringed thing played by one four-handed musician than a doubled instrumental duet.

Bill Meyer

NRCSSSST — S-T (Slimstyle)

NRCSSST by NRCSSST

There’s no “I” in NRCSSSST but there’s plenty of swagger. The Atlanta-based synth pop band, formed around Coathangers drummer and singer Stephanie Luke and Dropsonic’s Dan Dixon, taunts and teases in its opening salvo “All I Ever Wanted.” Luke rasps appealingly atop Spoon-style piano banging, and big shout along choruses erupt from sudden flares of synths. It’s all hedonism, but done with conviction. You haven’t heard a big rock song kick up this much fun in ages. “Love Suicide” bangs just as hard, its bass line muttering like a crazy person, unstable and ready to explode (and yet it doesn’t, it maintains its restraint even when the rest of the cut goes deliriously off the rails). Dixon can really sing, too, holding the long vibrating notes that lift these prickly jams into anthemry. It’s been a while since a band reminded me of INXS and U2 without sucking, but here we are. Sometimes guilty pleasures are just pleasures.

Jennifer Kelly

Zeena Parkins / Mette Rasmussen /Ryan Sawyer — Glass Triangle (Relative Pitch)

Glass Triangle by Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen, Ryan Sawyer

Harpist Zeena Parkins and Ryan Sawyer have a long-standing partnership in the trio substitutes Moss Garden, a chamber improv ensemble with pianist Ryan Ross. But swapping in Danish alto saxophonist Mette Rasmussen brings about a change, not just in instrumentation, but attitude. She plays free jazz like a punk, impatient and aggressive, and Parkins and Sawyer are up for the challenge. This music often plays out like a battle between two titans, one blowing and the other pummeling, while Parkins seeks to liquify the ground upon which they stand. She sticks exclusively to an electric harp whose effects-laden tone is disorientingly alien, blinking beacon-like one moment, low as a backhoe engage in earth removal the next. The combination of new and old relationships promotes a combination of instability and trust that yields splendid results.

Bill Meyer

claire rousay — A Softer Focus (American Dreams)

a softer focus by claire rousay

In film, soft focus is a technique of contrast reduction that lends a scene a dreamlike quality. With A Softer Focus, claire rousay imbues her already intimate compositions with a noctilucent aura. She has created a dreamworld with sound. One glimpse at the glowing flowers that grace the cover art created by visual artist Dani Toral, with whom rousay closely collaborated on this release, and the illusory nature of the record is revealed. The reds, oranges, blues and purples of deep twilight are reflected in both the textures rousay weaves into her soundscapes and the visual themes that Toral conjures. Violin, cello, piano and synth are the musical origins of this warmth, which rousay wraps around environments crafted from the sounds of everyday life. She recorded herself moving about her apartment, visiting a farmer’s market, observing kids playing and just existing. These field recordings of the mundane, when coupled with the radiance of the musical elements, are magical. Snatches of conversation become incantations; auto-tuned vocals are the whisperings of spirits; fireworks explode into brilliant shards of crystal. With A Softer Focus, rousay takes a glimpse into the beauty of the everyday, showing us just how precious our most humdrum moments can be.

Bryon Hayes

Axel Rulay x Verbo Flow — Si Es Trucho Es Trucho / Axel Rulay (La Granja)

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Axel Rulay must be kicking himself right now. With more than three million plays on the original version and more than five million on the remix that adds verses from Farruko and El Alfa into the fray, the Dominican is cruising into our second pandemic summer with an unbeatable poolside anthem — and to think, after years of clawing his way up through the industry dregs, working to get his name out there, all he had to do was make himself the chorus over Venezuelan producer Manybeat’s 2019 tropical house trip “El Tiempo.” Presto: Massive visibility in the Spanish-speaking world and a song that ought to transcend any linguistic barriers unlocked even if the best I can manage is a title that translates as “If It’s Trout It’s Trout.” Expect that long-desired Daddy Yankee collabo to follow any day now.

Patrick Masterson

Rx Nephew — Listen Here Are You Here to Hear Me (NewBreedTrapper)

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Rochester rapper Rx Nephew trailed brother-turned-archrival-turned-back Rx Papi’s coming out party 100 Miles and Walk’in by just a few weeks with the 53-minute all-in proposition Listen Here Are You Here to Hear Me. Unlike Papi’s Max B-ish smoothness, Nephew is all rough n’ tumble through these 17 tracks, provocative pump action with narrative bursts of violence and street hustling delivered with a verve most akin to DaBaby or, in some of his more elastic enunciations, peak Ludacris. A recent Creative Hustle interview provides some insight: The first time he went into the booth, “I didn’t write anything. I just started talking about selling crack and robbing people.” The stories haven’t stopped since. If he can keep putting out music as engaging as Listen Here…, Rx Nephew is destined for more than just the margins; until then, we have one of the year’s densest rap records to hold the line.

Patrick Masterson

Nick Schofield — Glass Gallery (Backward Music)

Glass Gallery by Nick Schofield

Nick Schoefield, out of Montreal, composed these 13 tracks entirely on a vintage Prophet 600, the first synthesizer to designed to employ the then-new MIDI standard established by the instrument’s inventor Dave Smith and Roland’s Ikutaru Kakahashi. The instrument has a lovely, crystalline quality, floating effortless arpeggios through vaulting sonic spaces. Though clearly synthesized, these pieces of music resonate in serene and peaceful ways, evoking light, water, air and contemplation with a simplicity that evokes Japan. “Water Court” drips notes of startling purity into deep pools of tone-washed whoosh and hum. “Snow Blue Square” flutters an oboe-like melody over eddying gusts of keyboard motifs. The pieces fit together with calm precision, leading from one beautiful space to the next like a stroll through a museum.

Jennifer Kelly

Archie Shepp — Blasé And Yasmina Revisited (Ezz-thetics)

The Ezz-thetics campaign to keep the best of mid-20th century free jazz on CD shelves (yes, CD, not streaming or LP) breaches the walls of the BYG catalog with a disc that issues one and a half albums from Archie Shepp’s busy week in August 1969. Blasé is a stand-out for the participation of singer Jeanne Lee, whose indomitable and flexible delivery as equal to the demands of material that’s be turns pungently earthy and steeped in antiquity. But the rest of the band, which includes Philly Joe Jones, Dave Burrell, some harmonica players, and a couple members of the Art Ensemble, is also more than equal to the task of filtering the blues and Ellingtonia through the gestures of the then-contemporary avant-garde. “Yasmina,” which originally occupied one side of another LP, makes sense here as an extension of the raw, rippling “Touareg,” the last tune on Blasé, into exultantly African territory.

Bill Meyer

Juanita Stein — Snapshot (Handwritten)

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Juanita Stein was the cool, serene, Mazzy Star-evoking vocal presence in the Aussie dream-gaze outfit Howling Bells, and she plays more or less the same role on her third solo album. Yet she is also the source of mayhem here, kicking up an angst of guitar-freaked turmoil on “1,2,3,4,5,6” then soothing it away with singing, hanging long threads of feedback from the thump-thump-thumping blues-rock architecture of “L.O.T.F.” and crooning dulcetly, but with a little yip, in the trance-y title track. This latter cut reflects on the death of her father, a kindred soul who wrote a couple of Howling Bells songs for her and passed away recently. It distills a palpable ache into pure, distanced poetry, finding a cool, dispassionate way to consider the mysteries of human loss.

Jennifer Kelly

The Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums — Wabi Sabi (Sowiesound)

Wabi Sabi by Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums

Over its 30 years together, the Tiptons Sax Quartet has done less to hone its sound and more to figure out how many styles to embrace. The group (typically a soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone sax joined by percussion and even including some vocals) can dig into trad jazz but sounds more at home in exploration, adapting world music or other traditional American styles. The title of their latest album, Wabi Sabi refers to the Japanese concept of finding beauty in and accepting imperfection. The Tiptons, despite that sentiment, don't approach their play with a sloppy sound; in fact, they're as tight as ever. The understanding of impermanence and imperfection does help contextualize their risk-taking. When they turn to odd yodeling on “Moadl Joadl,” they find joy in an odd vocal moment that highlights expression and discovery over formal rigor. When they tap in New Orleans energy for “Jouissance,” we can connect the dots between parades and funerals, celebrating all the while. The whole album serves as a tour of styles and moods, always with an energetic potency. If it's more of the same from the Tiptons, that just means continuance of difference.

Justin Cober-Lake

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 3 years

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The OTHER Members of Eve’s Coven

Me and @lilmissrantsypants couldn’t fit all the coven in as cameos in chapter 3, so here’s a rundown on the members who didn’t make an appearance. I added some of the stuff that inspired us into making the characters, My wife just went crazy with descriptions for her characters.

Aleister & Tantomile Deering: A pair of twins who were orphaned during WWII. They had to scrape by to survive, with Tantomile whoring herself out for drug money. They were turned when Aleister begged for help as his sister was overdosing. They were plagued by psychic visions as mortals, their powers awakening fully when they were turned. They are practically inseperable nowadays.

Power: Aleister and Tantomile have innate psychic abilities, activated by touching someone. Tantomile can see into a person’s past, while Aleister can see multiple outcomes the future could hold and then latch on to the most likely scenario. Their vampiric power is a twin link that allows them to experience the emotions the other one does, as well as keep them connected.

Inspiration: The psychic cat twins Tantomile and Coripocat from Cats

My wife came up with the basic concept and we workshopped them together from there; it’s a joint effort. She does Tantomile, I do Aleister.

Bartholomew Comstock: An overly aggressive puritan who was despised by his fellow townsfolk, he was banished from his New England home and forced to start a farm on his own. He nearly perished in the winter before Eve turned him. His hatred at being a disgusting, demonic creature such as a vampire is only ameliorated by his knowledge that Eve, having once been the angel Samael, ‘confirms’ his beliefs and allows him to eternally punish those he views as sinners.

Power: He believes his power gives him great strength against sinners, allowing him to inflict pain upon those who have done foul deeds. In truth, it is actually his own sins that give him strength, though his power does weaken as he exerts himself or runs low on blood (he cannot become unstoppably powerful).

Inspiration: The dad from The VVitch

Beatrix Cullen: Beatrix Cullen was a happy woman once, a skilled seamstress in the 1950s who simply loved the act of creation. She had an adoring boyfriend, and the two were set to be married, with Beatrix making a gorgeous wedding dress for her special day. But on that day, her groom never arrived, as he had been killed in a car accident on the way. Stricken by grief, Beatrix was easily convinced by Eve to join her coven, with the promise that perhaps her power could help her bring her husband back some day...

Power: Beatrix can imbue any object such as a sculpture or statue with life, essentially making golems without a magic scroll. Her most trusted golem is her mannequin, Manny, who often tries to steal her wedding dress. Her ultimate goal is to use her natural skills and her power to bring her husband back to life, stitching a Frankenstein monster of him and pieces of sleazy men who hit on her into a perfect flesh golem.

Inspirations: The bride from the Haunted Mansion, Kill Bill, Frankenstein, that one Tumblr post about 50s housewives fighting zombies with chainsaws, La Pascualita, Pegasus from Yu-Gi-Oh

Blanche Atterton: Daughter of Lady Drusilla Atterton, she grew up wanting nothing more than her mother’s love, though her mother was often far too preoccupied with “other things” (which she later learned was all of her plotting and planning to ensure her riches).When given the choice for vampirism, she excitedly vowed her loyalty to her mother and Eve. As she was only 15 at the time and children would not survive the turning, her mother waited until she turned 21 before turning her.Blanche does everything for her mother’s attention and love. She doesn’t hesitate to do her bidding in hopes of her mother praising her for it. She’s misguided, not evil, though her mother’s praise has given her a superiority complex and she’s a bit of a narcissist.

Power: Blanche’s power gives her a powerful, painful scream. Those within 5 feet of her screaming will suffer from temporary deafness for 5 minutes. Whether they fall deaf or not, bleeding from the ears is very common, especially among mortals.

Inspiration: Drizella from Cinerella

Dee Comporre: Giorgio Nero’s faithful, somewhat obsessed bodyguard. She quite obviously has a crush on him due to her hatred of any woman who so much as interacts with Giorgio, though Giorgio just sees her as being a bit overprotective. She has a shaved head, and paints her face to look like a skull.

Power: She can secrete and spit a powerful corrosive acid that can melt through even metal.

Inspirations: D’Compose from InHumanoids

Dorian Ferris: A serial killer known as “The Ferryman,” who always leaves coins over his victim’s eyes. As a mortal, he had far too many close calls, and was nearly caught several times, particularly during a bout in a town back in 1999. He tends to target wicked people such as domestic abusers, rapists, crooked cops, and so on, sending them down the River Styx ahead of time to make the world a better place. He willingly joined the coven to escape punishment. More than anything, he just wishes to live a quiet, peaceful life.

Power: Has luck manipulation, which can allow him to do everything from dodge attacks by near misses or turn his surroundings into a Final Destination movie for opponents. He tends to activate a particular mode based on the whims of a coin toss.

Inspirations: Jinx from Teen Titans, Final Destinatiin, Two-Face, Yoshikage Kira

Elizabeth Bathory: The Blood Countess herself. After evading death in the 1600s thanks to Eve, she became a loyal follower of the demon, and was recruited into the Order of the 1800s. Dracula and Rasputin managed to defeat her and supposedly kill her, but Bathory is notoriously hard to slay. True to her infamous reputation, she tends to “Feed” by bathing in the blood of her victims.

Power:Bathing in blood gives her an insane power boost; the longer she soaks, the stronger she gets. She can also absorb blood through her skin, though she can’t absorb the blood of supernatural beings this way.

Elvis Rey: Growing up near the border, Elvis always wanted to be like his hero, Elvis PResley. He obsessively watched the man’s performances and learned his every move. When the man died, he vowed he was going to become the greatest Elvis impersonator that ever lived. The 80s weren’t too kind to him, and drinking, gambling, and overeating left him looking like chubby later-years Elvis. With debt collectors crawling down his neck, he turned to Eve, and became a powerful vampire.

Power: He is capable of replicating any non-supernatural ability he sees. For example, if he watched a martial arts movie, he would be able to pull off those moves. Think the comic book character Taskmaster.

Inspirations: Elvis (Presley), Elvis (God Hand)

Giorgio Nero: Giorgio Nero was a member of Cosa Nostra who attempted to retire from this life due to his wife and child. However, his past would eventually catch up with him, and his child was nearly killed, which lead to Giorgio accepting an offer he had once rejected, but now couldn’t refuse: vampirism and joining with Eve’s coven. Despite everything, he is an honorable man who dearly loved his wife and adores and accepts his child.

Power: You know Magneto? Like from X-Men? Imagine that but instead of a Holocaust survivor it’s an Italian guy. Boom.

Inspirations: Magneto, Risotto Nero from Vento Aureo, Metlar from InHumanoids

James Wilson: James was born in 1812 as a slave. When he was 8, he was gifted to the man one of his master’s daughters married, along with 13 other slaves. As his former master’s name was Wilson, he took that as his surname. He worked as a stablehand until he became a farmer at age 12. After a rather brutal beating when he accidentally dropped a bag of freshly picked potatoes at age 25, James encountered Eve. She promised to help free him. She turned him into a vampire (1837). He lived on the run until the Emancipation Proclamation was issued and went into full effect in 1863. James used to speak in thick, Gullah speech, but over time, it has lessened as he acquired modern language.

Power: James’s power gives him the ability to summon and play with water. He can use it however he wishes: to drown someone, to create a small unnatural pool to swim in, or to cool someone off with a quick sprinkle. This comes from his silent love for water, though he wasn’t ever allowed to swim or play in it.

Inspiration: Splash Mountain

Juno Nero: The child of Giorgio Nero. They tend to wear long black coats, masks, and facial bandages to hide their face and body due to extreme anxiety. They are mute as well, and communicate via sign language. They are nonbinary.

Power: They can stretch their body like rubber (think Elastigirl, Rubber Band Man, Plastic Man, you get the idea).

Inspiration: Tendril from InHumanoids

Lady Drusilla Atterton: Born in 1852 in England as Drusilla Graham to a middle-class family. She grew up idolizing the wealthy and decided she would do whatever it took to become wealthy herself.Met Josiah Kipling, a 28 year old man, when she was 22. He fell madly in love with her. She was overjoyed as he was quite wealthy. They married in 1874 and had two daughters together (Katharine [1875] and Blanche [1877]). However, after 8 years of marriage (1882), Drusilla (now age 30) fell out of love with him and secretly laced his food with rat poison, ultimately killing him. As they had personal chefs, it was deemed to be the fault of the chef, who was arrested and charged with the crime. As his widow, she inherited a share of his wealth.Over the next 10 years (1882-1892), Drusilla married 8 other wealthy men from all over the country, all who mysteriously died less than a year later in what were deemed to be unfortunate accidents.

Donald Thompson, married in 1883, died in a carriage accident.

Maurice Parker, married in 1884, died of a laudanum overdose.

Timothy Edwards, married in 1886, died by drowning

Christopher Watson, married in 1887, died by falling out of a second story window

Nathaniel Harris, married in 1888, died of apparent suicide

Bernard Carter, married in 1890, died of a hunting accident

Percy Clarke, married in 1891, died after being attacked by a burglar

Timothy Atterton, married in 1892, died in bed (cause unknown)

She met Eve in 1892 shortly after marrying Timothy Atterton. Eve had heard of her reputation as the Cursed Widow (but knew full well her husbands’ deaths were her doing). As Eve was extremely weakened, Amon turned her. With Eve’s assistance, she killed her final husband by scaring him to death by introducing him to Eve. Drusilla vowed her loyalty.With the knowledge of how to turn another from Eve (as Amon refused to tell her how), Drusilla offered the gift of vampirism to each of her daughters. Katharine ( refused and cut herself off from her mother, instead choosing to live a full and honest life. Blanche, on the other hand, being so keen to be accepted and loved by her mother vowed her own loyalty to both her mother and Eve. When she turned 21, Drusilla turned her as well (as she was informed that youth would not survive the turning).

Power: Her power allows her to paralyze her target with a simple cold stare for a full 5 minutes.

Inspiration: Lady Tremaine from Cinderella

Lord Gordon Ruthven: A rich, aristocratic vampire who enjoyed luring in and preying on young women. He was part of the Order of the 19th century. He is currently a severed head, as his body was destroyed by the Silverwings.

Power: Can exude a charm aura that makes women more susceptible to his commands and desires, though it only works on women capable of being attracted to him (it would not work on lesbains, for instance).

Mabel Lockhart: A sickly young girl whose father made a deal with Eve to keep her from dying. Her dad is currently missing, and she is unsure if he’s even alive.

Power: She has the ability to absorb energy, such as steam energy, electrical energy, etc and gain boosts and power depending on what type she absorbs. For example, absorbing electrical energy would allow her to to shoot lightning. She can also absorb a person’s energy, but at most she can make them very lethargic and gets little else from absorbing that sort of energy.

Inspiration: Loosely based on the Pokemon Magearna

Maddox Hinton: Maddox was born in 1863 in a small town in England. He doesn’t talk much about his past, but he does boast about how he and his father were valued hypnotists in their small town. He was his father’s apprentice, learning how the art of hypnotism worked, though he wasn’t quite as successful as his father. This was what Eve used to convince him to turn to vampirism. It occurred when he was 25 and preparing to take over the family business.His power helped him convince his customers that they were actually under the effects of hypnotism. His father simply believed that taking over the business helped him tap into his true potential.

He continued this way until Eve demanded his help. He lied to his dad, telling him he was going to travel abroad and spread their business, causing his father to take over the business once again.Maddox served Eve for a few years before she told him she didn’t need his help anymore. It was likely this that irritated him so much that he eventually became loyal to Amon while under the very convincing facade he’s loyal to Eve.

The rest of his past is unknown. All he will often tell people is he traveled all over the world, performing great feats under fake names as “world-renown hypnotists”. Maddox is a wild card. He does things for the fun of it or for his own pleasure, often without any sympathy towards others.

Power: Maddox’s power allows him to take control of another (similarly to Gabby’s). However, he can take control of up to two people at once. Instead of physically puppeteering them, he simply suggests they do something and they do it.

Inspiration: Vex from Lost Girl

Margaret Derwin: Margaret was born in New York City in 1902. She grew up with a love for music, particularly singing. She had dreams of becoming a famous singer.When she was 18, she pursued these dreams. She got a job as a dancer at a speakeasy with hopes of, eventually, being able to become one of their singers in time. It was there that she met Elizabeth, one of the other dancers. They secretly fell in love (which answered Margaret’s confusion about why she wasn’t interested in men). Eventually, they decided to run away to California together. They made plans and prepared for this, but on the day it was to happen, Elizabeth never showed up. Margaret later discovered she had changed her mind and, instead, was going to marry a man she’d met at the speakeasy.Eve found Margaret heartbroken and wandering the streets looking for a new job after quitting at the speakeasy (as it was too difficult to continue working there when Elizabeth was still there). Eve easily wooed her to her side. Though, as Margaret had good intentions, Amon had eventually been able to convince her to assist him instead as he wanted to ensure Eve would stop preying on innocent people like herself.

Power: Margaret’s power involves her voice. Through singing, she can influence one’s emotions depending on her intentions (anger them, seduce them, calm them down, soothe them to sleep).

Nora: Nora’s memories are very faded. She knows she was born to a very poor family in Ireland. She knows she was sold as an indentured servant at age 13 in exchange for her tickets to America, board, and food. She knows she worked for that American family for 7 years. She knows she caught influenza and was promptly fired by the family for fear she’d infect them all. She knows she was near death, wandering the streets alone, when a massive black snake promised to save her. At the time, Nora believed it was just an illusion. She found out the next day, however, that it was not. She’d been saved by the gift of vampirism.Nora lived a long, long time as a homeless woman. She watched as America grew into a country of its own. She preyed on any she could find in order to survive. Eventually, she took residence in an abandoned house on a street. Over time, rumors spread that a ghost lived in the house on Blackwell Street. Her appearance and her power did much to add to this as well, as did the occasional mysterious deaths of those who wandered into the house hoping to catch a glimpse of the ghost.

Power: Nora’s power allows her to become visible or invisible on command. She can only switch from one to the other every 10 minutes. She often uses this to frighten mortals and uphold her identity as the Ghost of Blackwell Street.

Tony Sugar: Tony Sugar is the owner, spokesman, and iconic figure of the Lost Paradise Candy Company. With the help of Amon, he became one of the first successful Black candy makers in America. He’s very flamboyant, campy, and charismatic—essentially a black Willy Wonka. He is pansexual because, in his own words, “everyone deserves a little Sugar.” He is also an avid beekeeper.

Power: He has the power to “mellify” corpses, filling them with a honey-like substance and turning them into zombies.

Inspirations: Tony Todd’s Candyman, Ruby Rhod, the song “Sweet Bod,” the myth of the mellified man

Walter Sherman: Formerly a college professor and devoted family man from the dawn of the 20th century, Walter was a good man known for always thinking forward and being able to accept new changes in the world. However, when a freak accident claimed the life of his wife and child, he couldn’t handle it and attempted suicide before being saved by Amon. He’s mostly in the coven out of loyalty to Amon.

Power: He has the power of adaptability, allowing him to easily adapt to any situation. For example, using lightning against him would make him adapt lightning resistance.

Inspirations: The Carousel of Progress

Wayne Nicol: A formerly friendly clown who was forced to witness unspeakable horrors during WWII. He survived the horrors, but was left fundamentally disturbed by the nightmare he had lived through. He joined the coven hoping to find some sort of safety, but as it turned out, Eve had other plans.

Power: Has the power to control and manipulate a person’s fears to weaponize against them.

Inspirations: Scarecrow (Batman), Pennywise, Freddy Krueger, The Day the Clown Cried

#The vampirino story

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grim-faux · 3 years

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21 - Hall of Rorschachs

The lift gave a harsh clatter against the steel rails, as the cables jerked the empty container back to the ground floor. I twisted around and lunged at the underside in some pitiful attempt to latch on and ride up, or drag it back down if I must. Even if there was doubt I had the strength to hold on, I was desperate. But it was not to be, I was far from grasping the cart as it faded into the dark gullet of the chute. The clatter of the carriage grew distant as I stood in the shadows gazing up, hand outstretched. Begging. My thoughts pleading. No one was listening. I returned my focus to the short corridor with the lamps that buzzed and dim whenever a surge slid through. I was so set on getting out. Ready to say my goodbyes. I let my fucking guard down. How typical. How fucking typical.

I tried the call button beside the chutes entrance, but it required a magnet key. I recalled the Asylum, and the numerous trials I endured to locate those damn cards. I didn’t believe I would stumble upon one down here, since it was ‘Father’ Martin that had planted them for me. God, even in death he’s still giving me shitty fetch quests.

New Objective: Find another way out. I didn’t know what awaited down here, lurking. Didn’t feel prepared to continue. It couldn’t be worse than the twins or Trager, could it? I crossed to the set of doors and pushed one open, and was nearly blinded by the sterile light blazing over the pristine walls and floor. Bright glaring lights, that reminded me of His cell. I blinked the dryness away as I stepped into the hall, I could detect an immediate change in pressure. Aside from the air having a dry and clinical property, I couldn’t explain the sensation, but I didn’t like it. Bravo for intuition. The floor was polished and as bright and white as the cylindrical walls curved around the hall. I wasn’t a geologist so my knowledge was limited, but if I had to guess I would say it was all chiseled from natural stone, from the mountain itself ”…something that had been waiting for them in the mountain.” What the hell was this place? Now that I thought back on it, a colleague of mine had tried to relate a scientific matter to me concerning specific ores, and how it attributed to supernatural occurrences. Truth of the matter I had been a piss poor student, and constantly teased her as she tried to educate me. But I had listened enough. The paranormal was a genre she was interested in, and she was thrilled to tell me about a place she visited in Colorado (not Mount Massive). Some ritzy Hotel, the Overlook I think was the name, its location built upon a cash of natural limestone. Scientific observations were utilized to support theories, that paranormal occurrences could be attributed to high concentrations of limestone in the mountain. Something in the mineral conducted electricity. It sounded a little too fantastic to me, but here and now, I was beginning to wonder if Murkoff had premeditated these findings. Someone believed them. In that case, the Asylum wasn’t target exclusively for the history or the seclusion. It was elected due to the qualities of the region itself. Or maybe I was just tired. I looked up at the symbol printed above the next set of doors. I’d seen it before. No, not the lockers in prison block. The video the Priest had forced me to watch. That symbol was on the floor when the MHS tacticals were throttled like chickens. The atomic, molecular design? Or could there be further religious affiliation? I pushed the doors open and stepped into a fresh scene of horror. I knew this room, and my anxiety increased tenfold. Blood streaked the floor, splattered on the white stone walls. Bullet marks decorated steel and glass in random areas, the pieces of a gun had been scattered over the floor with black splatters. Muscles and entrails glistened under the light as I moved from the doors. Red had dried to the large crescent desk fixed at the rooms center, two large screens sat behind it, bright and cheery in contrast to the stew soaking into the stone. One read Murkoff Corporation, the other sported the trinity Molecular design along with WALRIDER PROJECT in bold. And the symbol on the floor streaked with blood. That symbol was everywhere. With a sigh, I took out my camera and filmed everything. It was giving me low battery warnings, but I had at least a half hour left if I didn’t run out of power for the night vision. Unfortunately, there seemed to be plenty of light in this place. “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Whoever finds my corpse – trust no one and tell everyone. I am not crazy. I know, I know, only crazy people say that. But I am as sane as this world allows, with a camera full of evidence. Don’t call it a gospel. Call it a mockery of reason, let the world know it is Murkoff’s fault. Bury these bastards with my mutilated dead body.” It took a few minutes for me to write. My hands seemed steady at first, but when I put pen to paper, well…. Aside from the difficulty of holding my pen against my middle finger, it was almost unbearable to apply pressure to my index finger. I dated the note and leaned back to view murder and rot surrounding me while I wrote. I needed to get my priorities straight. A few plants dotted the room, but I knew they were fake without a glance. Polished gray pillars encircled the lobby, they didn’t resemble any specific mineral. Just general grade cement to support the dark blue ceiling. The far side was comprised of a glassed portion of the wall, with thick pipes behind. Water, gas, electricity, I didn’t care. Beside the wall sat a short desk, out of place among the red streaks. Two chairs had been set facing one another, and two mugs of coffee still sat on the brown wood. I averted my gaze to the opposite wall, where a purge chamber stood open to the room, black blood washed down its sides and soaking the floor. The images came back clearly as I had seen them, despite the drugs swimming through my brain at the time. I could envision the panicked militants shrieking as their bodies were ripped through the tiny crevices in the doors, and holes of the glassed in wall. One man’s legs still lay a few feet from the pile of meat, a string of organs dried to the stone. I stumbled back into the large desk and sat down on its surface. My hand touched a folder beside me, and I looked down to flip through the pages. It was nothing remarkable, nothing relevant I decided. From the personal records of Dr. Wernicke. The Modern Prometheus Document: The Pride of Wisdom Schrodinger Wolfram “FRANKENSTEIN, or The Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley, published anonymously in 1818. Chapter 23, excerpt – “Man,” I cried, “how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Cease; you know not what it is you say." I broke from the house angry and disturbed, and retired to meditate on some other mode of action. Well, it appeared they created man’s monster. And it hath a wraith unlike no other being in our world. I closed the folder and pinched the bridge of my nose. It was apparent I had dug in too deep, I didn’t know if I could claw out of the grave I had lain in. I suppose I had one choice. Keep digging. I didn’t know exactly where I was, but I had a strong estimate. I was in the Basement of the Asylum. I looked to the security operative slumped in his chair, near where I perched. Briefly, I wondered what would become of the remains of all these people? Even if Murkoff wasn’t the shady bastards that they were, it was impossible to gather up the pieces to return them to their families. The investigation? I slid off the desk and approached the blood splattered door of the cold purge chamber. My breath hitched as I tried to inhale gently, but the pain in my rib couldn’t be negotiated with. I didn’t know if I could do this all over. I might need to find someplace to rest and if fate allowed, I would awaken before I died. The door panel sparkled embers from the torn wires, probably motion sensors detecting my approach. The doors held silent, an eerie howl raised from the dark depths. I raised the NV and reassured myself there was nothing, I was alone except for the dead. The hair bristled along my brow. God, why did I put that image in my head? I shuffled forward into the cradle of the dark. Above wires and cables ran the length of the tunnel, the walls were as they were in the entrance, chiseled and polished stone with occasional gaps that had been glassed off where additional paneling and vital equipment or systems were nestled. The camera flashed a familiar image, I tensed as static buzzed through and waited until it cleared. Nothing but shredded bodies, nothing but the secrets these people died with. I listened to the silence. For so long I was accustomed to the distant shrieks and mutter of people, behind doors I hoped to never open. Now, I was buried deep in solid rock, with only the pulse in my bones to alleviate the sterile peace. Murkoff personnel were everywhere, lined against the walls, bodies torn inside out by a force I could never have a want to comprehend. I doubt any two were slain in the same fashion, or the method of death so violent it was impossible to replicate. As always, never footprints. But what ghost had feet? Guts and lungs splattered up walls, I was unsettled by how fresh it appeared to be, but attributed it to the NV. Thin lines marked the floor, I knew these prints that made long red through copious puddles. I’d seen the same when I was pushed off an elevator by a lunatic. They turned when the tunnel curved, ahead light swept into the shadows. I clicked off the nightvision but hesitated to emerge. I refused to trust the helpful presence of light, but for now it was welcomed while my camera demanded a fresh battery. I dropped the old one and set the new one in. The distant clatter that echoed was a solitary thing throughout the corridor. The wall along my right had the natural mineral trimmed away into flat walls, reinforced with cement, and steel in some areas. The metal portions were fitted with slates, or shields, that same symbol from the lobby was printed besides the shields. I stared down, the marks. Those lines went through these panels, curving around the edge. I debated the meaning as I took a deep breath and squinted my eyes. They looked like portals or panels that could be moved. There was a set of powerful looking hydraulic hinges, but otherwise no handles or switches that could gain access. Probably wouldn’t do me any good anyway. I fit my fingers along the edge testing for a draft, but judged they were airtight. Pressure sealed. This facility was dedicated to science and clinical procedures, despite the butcher of the upper floors. If there was a way out, hopefully I didn’t need to access it within there. I could come back, once the rest of the Block was explored. As I resumed on my way, something came to my thoughts, it was a bit random. In the report it was stated Billy had spoken to the Dr. Wernicke in a white room. I spun around checking the walls and surrounding surfaces. This place was pretty white. But…that wasn’t possible. I looked up and watched a camera connected to the cables in the ceiling revolved slowly, catching all the action as it happened. I glanced back at the doorway before I continued down the hall. A Block. The large plate on the wall identified this as A Block, or the whole hall was? There wasn’t much to it. I was reminded of the Cell Block’s of the Asylum above – C Block, D Block. Clearly this was as a part of the Asylum as the condemned sections of the Female Ward. This didn’t surprise me. But it could have been coincidence as well. I’d go with that, since I was done with the conspiracy theories. The next set of doors had pop marks across the glass and metal, bent out in small boils where bullets had lodged. The bullets were fully visible in the glass, surrounded by the star shaped impressions that commemorate the battle. I felt the shadows around me as I huddled in the garden, the branches cracking as something swept through. That inhuman shrill. In my ear screaming as the thunder laughs, and my vision fills with white. Then I’m curled up in the room, the dry wood and cold plaster on either shoulder as I tremble and listen to the ringing in my ears. The sensation that crawls through me, I can’t explain it. I’ve lost something, yet, nothing is amiss. I don’t feel right. I barely glimpsed the panel at my left. Morphogenic Engine. I stopped with my hand on the door and bent my head around studying the hall I had moved through. You know what? Fuck that. I can’t conceive what it would look like, what exactly it’s supposed to do. I don’t care. I’ll come back! I promise. I’ll come back if I have too. That was probably a hollow promise, but my obligations had faded since I stepped off that damn elevator. I had no luck with elevators. A series of large canisters greeted me on the other side of the doors, pressed to the wall on my left and out of the way. The label read ‘saline’ substitute. That sounded kind of weird, wasn’t saline a substitute? I took in details of the hall, my camera held in no specific position as I walked. The ceiling retained its natural rock, but the walls on either side resembled the interior of medical labs. This all looked like existing cave before Murkoff came along and filled it with their nightmare science. The idea brought me back to the theory of the mountains as the target rather the Asylum, and I wondered about the files I had found dating back before Mount Massive was shut down. If not for the limestone, then the isolated region was more than worth the resources to insure the quality of their uninterrupted studies. I touched the wall on my left as I neared the doorframe. The material was metal and possibly reinforced. I don’t think it was meant for militaristic operations, though they clearly took precautions for their work. For an invasion or ‘terrorist’ attack, a lot of good it did them. A thin red streak slipped between the open doors I peered through, blood was spread from ceiling to floor. I blinked, staring. The air was thick with copper and rot. I was so tired of that smell, but I just couldn’t get away from it. It was soaked into my clothing as it was soaking into the walls around me. I stepped inside, careful of the pieces beside the counter that had once been one or two people. Maybe three. All of them spattered over the floor, organs hung in ribbons on counters, pieces of bone scattered over metal cabinets. I scanned the labels visible through the glassed in shelves. Most were filled with vials of fluids, many of which sported long, four syllable words with –ine or –phen on the end. Files were scattered over the sinks and floors, reminders for injections and progress with patients identified by numbers. I stood beside the rolling chairs and scanned over the room, debating if it was possible that materials remained that I could patch my hands with. Something actually medical, rather the spare shirt that would be waiting for me in the jeep. Pipes twisted around the edge of the ceiling. I followed the sections around the room trying to recall something about pipes. They were pumping the recycled air throughout the facility, they had to. Couldn’t risk foreign contamination. It sounded ridiculous in my head, but I preferred it that way. Revisiting the hall, I turned left. The black stains of yet more Researchers coated the gray metal of Nitroglycerin tanks, scattered beside the wall. He was probably in the midst of transporting them when it all happened. A few tanks managed to stay on the wrecked cart against the wall. I poked into the next room, the remains of staff had all but painted the walls. I stumbled as I leaned on the door, just… everywhere I looked, the broken pieces of tissue and body parts was all over. I have to emphasize the ALL OVER aspect. I thought the Asylum itself was gruesome, but this was something else entirely. I looked from the doors of the room, shot up by bullets, to the large tank of unmarked gas or fluid. At the other corner was a medical waste bin piled high with black bags, stuffed with unknown rubbish. It was a clear violation of sanitation, but for whatever reason Murkoff began to lack in strict policies during its final days. I was curious to what could be crammed in those bags but they sagged and were covered in unknown gunk, and the smell of residual chemicals did not encourage me. It was subtle evidence of distress, though at the time this room from a glance gave the delusion of order and regiment. I stared up as I leaned on the autopsy table bolted to the floors center. Above, an arm hung from one of the pipes that lapped around the ceiling, dried muscle had peeled back to reveal white bone. Threads of intestines stuck to files stuffed into the shelves, the jaw of someone was lodged into the space between a drawer and the countertops edge. It looked like the fleshy tissue of the throat had remained attached. I shut my eyes and rested my weight to my free arm, when I opened my eyes, I noted the pages that had scattered from a folder stained with blood. Under the harsh lamps the fluids looked fresh, almost new. The battery in the camera itself was holding strong, I used it to snap the pictures as I skimmed through. PROJECT WALRIDER POSTMORTEM PRIMATORY REPORT MM1300921 (form note: all material herein to be transcribed and revised to fit legally binding requirements of Murkoff Corp. records. See form 4083) AUTHOR: Jennifer Roland NOTES: My fourteenth autopsy of a Walrider patient, showing no more signs of accepting the therapy than any of the others. There have been slight gains in cell migration and morphogenesis (including effects similar to Human Growth Hormone), but nothing to suggest the stable creation of a sentient, independent swarm. So tired. Doubting my judgment. Will submit another request for leave. The psychological cost of using such far gone and further provoked patients is more than I feel I can handle. May suggest hanging less hope on the far-flung theories of a senile Nazi and move towards using a simpler mechanical engine based on major sperm protein. Will definitely suggest harsher chemical restraints. Murkoff Security killed patient 923 after he overcame enough tranquilizers to put down a hockey team. I’m afraid the Hormone Therapy is interacting with our chemical restraints in a counterproductive manner. This file. This file was very important. It gave insight that had not been present in past documents. The use of words in her text made it sound like…. Dr. Wernicke was still alive. I stared at the phrase she included which made the doctors status current, if it was not a mistake of word use. But that would make him ninety years old, at the least. I set the file down and looked upon the carnage, the violence, the death. I corrected myself. Wernicke had been alive. I couldn’t imagine him surviving this. I tossed the file aside and ventured through the door, turning to the corridors end. Expulsion of gooey innards spread high on the wall, long red lines slid down before the liquid dried. More death, more bodies that had at one time been living people. I pressed my hand to the wall as I took the right corner, avoiding the skin stretched across polished white floor. I don’t know why I was self-conscious now, after I had traipsed through mounds of bodies in the Asylums halls. I couldn’t even come up with a cheap theory. Every corner, I saw red and wet entrails, black skin and orange puss. The air was filled with its rancid vapor, from the methane released as the meat soured. What would they do with all these bodies? Where could you put them all? I didn’t reach the doors in my path. I had to stop and lean on the wall, gazing at them. Doors and more doors. What would be behind them? My liberation at last? I didn’t care, I had to lie down, rest. The ache in my skull was unbearable, if I took one more step I would fall. I couldn’t go on like this. I just kept seeing bodies and faces, images I couldn’t explain. What was I seeing? I wasn’t even hiding in the shadows. The shapes were no longer trapped in my camera. The room spun, I kept myself from stumbling with my hand on the wall as I lowered down. There was a shallow slant beside the floor, I propped my good side on this to keep the pressure off my ribs. I kept the camera in my right hand and set it beside me. I wasn’t planning on sleeping, just needed to give myself a chance to cut the ache. The floor was cold but it felt so good to lay my head against it. It didn’t even matter how bright the bulbs were above, I could turn my face into the collar of my coat and shut my eyes. Almost at once I felt my mind descending into a thick blanket of sleep. I tried to stir from the tempting lull, but I couldn’t resist. I was surrounded by the corpses of dozens of unnamed scientists but I didn’t give a damn, it was too hard to stay conscious. I escaped the pain, I escaped the world, and I escaped the cold halls churning in my mind. As I felt my body slip into the illusion of safety, a painful spasm shot up my spine. I was paralyzed. The sensation was horrible, my muscles locked up and I couldn’t will them to relax. It was as if the concept of mobility was ripped from my brain. I was a prisoner in my body, fully capable of detecting the environment around me but unable to react to it. I felt the camera in my hand as I slowly regained consciousness, but… I remained unable to rip free of the powerful vice that had seized my chest. It was too painful to do anything less pathetic than cringe. I whined as my ribs shifted in my side and gagged. I was suffocating! My eyes open drunkenly, dots whirling in my vision as my brain craved oxygen. I saw something. A dark shape leaning over me, staring into my face. I barked out a terrified sound and swung my arms out, clipping the wall with my left hand as I thrashed. I scrambled over the floor struggling to escape thin air, until I was pressed back into the doors. I stared wild eyed, disturbed and gasping for air, despite the odd tickle in my chest. There was… Nothing. Absolutely nothing. The lights blazed down as fierce as when I had dropped, my head pulsed the same as before. No change. There was no demon here. The sharp sting returned to my finger as I recalled, I’d just smacked a stone wall with it. I clutched the shaking hand to my chest, and curled my other arm around it and barred myself in with my knees. I sat for moment fighting to forget the pain, while my filthy pants soaked up red drops. “Nothing is here,” I whispered. “Just a nightmare.” My voice rattled against the walls, impossibly loud, overpowering briefly the dull buzz that hung over me. I uncoiled and trusted weight on the bleeding hand to push me upright. My body was uncooperative but my mental brawn won over. I shut the door behind me and scanned the long corridor ahead. To my eyes it just went on forever. Probably wasn’t too far off. A thick pipe extended overhead, I saw no other visible wires and took this might have been the main electrical. Beside it metal cabinets jutted from the walls, though the natural stone work remained in this tunnel, along with various protrusions. Additions, such as flues were burrowed into the rock on either side, and another thick gray pipe extended along the ceiling. Electricity was in the air, I could feel it like the hum from a television when you first turn it on. But it’s forceful, charged in the empty space but not in the walls themselves. Maybe it was the lamps overhead. I set my hand on the gray pipe testing the vibrations but felt none. I ignored the marks of blood I left behind, as I walked and swayed around the huge tanks. Many stood my height but none held clear labels, just a serial label printed on the metal top. The sides of the floor were marked with caution strips, and other more descript warning lines marked the floor every few feet. I skimmed over the large pipes bent and twisted along the corridor walls, of what they transported I couldn’t say. Looked like aqueducts, but I doubted this. Pallets stacked high with bags and covered with a blue tarp, had been abandoned in the hall. I tried to peel back the plastic cover and record what was beneath but the material was thick. I also lacked the patience. I slipped over the top rather crawl around. Judging by the layout of this tunnel, I could deduce this was not a main wing but dedicated to temporary storage hall. Plans in the schedule might have included park the pellets in a more particle space, but that was before the shit storm hit. Or this was another example of a lapse in protocol. I winced when another thought hit. Files existed that made note on the cutback in staff costs. The man I had seen playing the piano. Had he been a patient? I jumped when the camera sputtered, the noise echoed from the chiseled walls. Damn it! That scared the shit out of me! I held it away as the visor cleared, and continued walking. The files would be corrupt, I decided. But I could still salvage them, I had equipment for that. My shoulders shook on the thought of reviewing what I had recorded. The sounds I made when I ran from Trager. It didn’t even sound like me. Was that really me? I said that allowed, and paused to glance around wondering if it was I that had spoken. I barely began walking when I noticed to my left, a window. I skid to a stop and backed up. A window! Transparent hand prints of red stained the surface, but beyond that sunlight. Sunlight! From the outside! It was all clear golden sky, rolling hills. No more storms filled with monsters shrieking with the thunder! The outside world was still out there. It was waiting just for me. I was staring into a militaristic hangar, a few vehicles parked under the steel structure ceiling, the walls stretched around appeared reinforced. Most important of all, there was no sign of life, no movement. Just equipment, materials, large barrels of god knows what. And that beautiful sunlight washed across the military jeep wedged in the doorway. If I was viewing it from the correct angle, no one was going to close that door unless they packed some powerful explosives. Or, had the key to the jeep. I held the camera up and filmed what I was seeing, while trying not to get too close to the Plexiglas. There had to be— Ah. Over there! Far right wall, lit up like Christmas. A purge gate. From the distance and discoloration of the window, I couldn’t validate if it functioned or not. But it didn’t matter, it was the first entrance/exit I had come across. There didn’t seem to be any difficulty in dismantling those purge gates though. How did I get over there? I tracked the hall that continued before me, with my eyes. If I had a map, no doubt it’d have an arrow indicating this way led to the exit. Large blue barrels sat in my path, I could view traces of blood on the walls just beyond them. Directly behind me, another set of doors clear and featureless. Above the frame a green bulb, indicating they were unlocked? I stared into the white hall within, while my mind hunted for escape. I had visions of myself entering that small hall and an alarm going off, a steel shutter lowering like in some James Bond film and me stuck inside forever because I just couldn’t let go. Or maybe I was afraid to? Could that be it? The doors parted automatically upon detecting my movement, the plastic panels issued a soft hiss as frigid air swept out. I paused in the entrance, not doubting my fears, whichever ones I had. I debated turning away and just leaving, working on that gate and my inevitable freedom. But I really couldn’t have too much evidence. I said that once before. But maybe I was right. I was afraid. The short hall was cold, the air crisp, fresh. One of the two doors was left open, which explained the drop in temperature. It was a small room filled with freezers, all below zero temperatures. I stepped around the right side trying a few of the doors, but they required access codes through key panels. At the left side of the room a door had been smashed, the locking mechanism no longer active allowed numerous clear vials to spill across the floor. Whatever the contents, they had dried and converted white limestone into varying shades of iridescent. I kicked a few away with my foot and listened as the glass crinkled as I turned. Along the back wall of the room sat lesser refrigerated cabinets, the contents exposed through foggy glass. Beside them, a dry erase board. I stood before it, my camera giving its usual complaint as I waited patiently for it to quiet. It was some form of chemical engineering algorithm, exponents and a formula function I did not recognize. All in blue marker, except for the title at the top, which was a simple label written in black.

Morphogenic Engine

#miles upshure #outlast #outlast novelized #outlast fanfiction

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syxjaewon · 4 years

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beware; for i am fearless, and therefore powerful

the city sits like a patient monster against the backdrop of grey skies, a perpetually darkened haze hovering above its multiple heads, above its stakes, above its thorns harkening up towards an empty heaven, the spires and towers reaching and stretching as though they have something to prove, as though they have a reckoning to command, as though they are hell’s fingers, grasping, starving, greedy. serenity is a town full of shadows and howling, all aching corners and dirty deeds done in the midnight hours, pollution poisoning the atmosphere that clings to it like a fog, every person and anomaly alike skittering through its crevices and alleyways, its teeth and veins, like maggots on a corpse, festering and buzzing, widening out every year, slipping into the surrounding wastelands every year.

vera remembers why the city was built, even if no one else does, even if no one else thinks about it anymore; a tale fallen from the history books, erased from the memory logs, forgotten by even the builders’ buried bodies, the men and women and slaves who created these schematics, these twists and turns and neighborhoods stacked on top of each other like dead leaves in autumn. she remembers not through any means of herself but through her own family line, her own heritage, a powerful lineage that ensured her knowledge of serenity’s true colors: the evils that lurk in its foundations, the secrets that lay in wait, rotting the ground all these buildings are placed upon. someday soon, serenity will sink, swallowed down by the very earth it seeks to destroy.

and she knows she is set to be a part of it, she knows she has a destiny here, a purpose here, even if she is never to walk through its streets or yards again, even if she’s banished for eternity from stepping another foot into the society she helped form with her own two hands. she knows she’ll always have her fingers dipped down into the throat of this pie, she’ll always have her skin mixed in with the mortar, always leave her stain, her mark, smeared across the roads and the cobblestones, from the lowest brick to the highest skyrise. her name is printed there in blood, and forever shall it remain.

it doesn’t matter that no one recognizes her anymore. it doesn’t matter that she is no longer a god, a titan of industry, she no longer cares for the praise or the adoration or the vindication of her work-- and that’s something he will never understand. she’s moved beyond all that now, she’s grown further than it, the iron inside of her hardening, the core of her solidifying, coming to a confrontation with herself about what her work truly means, what her offering to the altar of the sublime really is; nothing that can be given or taken away. what she’s made is more than he thinks it is. what she’s made is more than he knows how to control.

he’ll never be able to contain them. he’ll never be able to cage them. when she’d worked with him in the laboratories, they’d had such dreams, such visions, such will and drive, like hurricanes, like thunderstorms, pushing forward to a new beginning, a new genesis, the two of them as gods themselves with monsters underfoot. they were creating a new species of human, and it was amazing, invigorating, fantastical, but she should have felt it then, she should have realized sooner, that her dream was not the same as his, and that he would betray her for it. he would strip her of her title and her work and her glory for it.

and perhaps, if he’d only had a similar amount of forethought, he might have realized earlier as well; they were both in the wrong from the beginning.

perhaps she ought to thank him, really-- she never would have understood on her own, surrounded by all those skyscrapers and pestilence, surrounded by all those crowns and trophies and public eyes, blinking at her, waiting for her to make a mistake. it’s only since she’s been cast out from the city walls, left out to the desert wastes to die and dry under an unforgiving sun, burnt, blazed, scorched, that she’s come to the pinnacle of her true purpose here on this planet, that she’s found her inner center, the hinge of all her work, the peak of all her storm-mongering, the reason, the reason, the reason. for all of this.

she strides across the acrid dusts of the world left behind by humanity, the city of serenity disappearing behind her in the gloom and smog of amber sands, the haze of orange death enveloping her with every move, hiding her from her enemies just as it hides them from her, and she reminds herself to be grateful, to be mindful, to understand that the world is a wheel that never stops turning, for the good or the bad. she enters the deadzones of the wastes, passing “do not enter” signs and “no trespassing” warnings, small lights that have run out of juice a millennia before, gates that have rotted open, metal that has corroded downwards; she doesn’t hesitate, she doesn’t pause, she has no fear. since serenity has spat her out, she has come to learn how to survive in the dangerous territories, she has mutated enough to breathe without air, to drink without water, to live without boundaries.

and to her son, she will impart this wisdom.

the world has come against her, but she has made her shelter, she has recreated her surroundings-- it’s what she’s always done since the day she was born and will continue to do until the last breath leaves her lungs; she has repurposed ancient, abandoned buildings, the warehouses of an old world, the cityscape of humanity’s past, into a source of regeneration for the only hope humanity still has for its future. there are entire civilizations buried beneath the dunes of serenity’s surrounding wildernesses, and she has tapped into the bloodwork of them. the home she lives in now is not a home as much as it is a birthing unit, a holding pod, an electrical conductance, an engine set to power and feed her greatest creation, a monster to end all monsters, a beast to ravage all other beasts, her apex predator, her megalodon.

she cannot change her actions leading up to this point, she cannot fix the curve of life that she’s helped mold and uncover, she cannot undo the horrors she has inflicted into the crust of the earth, the scars she’s cut, but like doctor frankenstein and his humanoid wretch, she will bring about a new era of consciousness. she has made her demons, and now she will dispose of them.

she enters into her current laboratory, empty of all sentience save for herself, built from the ends and pieces that ghosts have left behind for her, and switches on the lights, switches on the power, switches on the life, her son poised and gleaming in the bleeding sunlight, encapsulated in his chemical chamber, growing like a nightmare, growing like a storm. he is doused in gold, the way all theological sacrifices ought to be, unholy in his mission, but quiet and motionless in his slumber, unfinished and incomplete, his configurations still mounting. he is a creature all of his own breed, singular, dominant, threatening, his muscles laced in potency, his veins threaded with venom, his hunger insatiable, his drive dauntless and undeniable. when he awakens, he will be the destroyer of worlds, the bringer of all death.

when he awakens, he will devour.

and then they will finally… finally, have peace.

#| beware for i am fearless and therefore powerful |#| the dawning of a new era |#bloodlust. jaewon

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mana-burns · 7 years

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Blade Runner 2049 Critique

A few days ago I noticed a throbbing pain on my forehead.

It was at work when I first felt it—or rather, it first dawned on me that what I was feeling was discomfort. Not just a headache from staring at a screen all day, but a more epidermal pain, like a pain in the face rather than the head.

When I got home, I looked in the mirror and realized why; there was a whitehead looming under my left eyebrow, standing at attention like a soldier, driving a red throbbing pain down under my skin and toward my skull.

I examined the blemish in my bathroom mirror, inspecting a region of my body that I had never really looked at that closely ever before. It forced me to see myself in a novel way. I took inventory of every individual hair making up my brows. I counted the thin bristles bridging the gap between the two thicker, prominent bushes of hair above my eyes. For the first time in my life, I counted each hair and examined these features closely, all in service of combating this new and unwanted blemish above my eye, a blemish that caused me great discomfort and pain, and not just out of a sense of vanity.

Blade Runner 2049 implores its audience to examine their flesh critically, the same way that a blemish might. It is a soft reboot of Ridley Scott’s 1982 film about androids and the humans who hunt them, but unlike that film it does not concern itself with the dichotomy of man vs. machine. Instead, it is a story of populated almost exclusively by automatons.

There are machines who are more ‘real’ than others, because they are made of synthetic flesh instead of columns of light, and we are forced to consider how appropriate it is to make this distinction. This eventually evolves into a subplot that will remind audiences of Spike Jonze’s Her, a subplot that ultimately feels somewhat idiosyncratic with the rest of the film. The protagonist, a Blade Runner named K (and later Joe) is in love with his household hologram assistant, an AI that lives in a handheld device and chirps out the opening stanza of “Peter and the Wolf” every time it is booted up.

This subplot feels like a critique of smartphones and how they’ve paradoxically isolated us from one another while building a false sense of community. Some critics have interpreted it as a critique of the male gaze as well, but of course, like most cinematic critiques of the male gaze, it still indulges in the pleasures of that same gaze, leading its audience to wonder if it is truly saying anything novel about the topic at all.

There are a few humans in the film. Most of them die. The human who survives is the creator of these machines. As a viewer, I would have been happier if he had died to the machines, because he is a cruel and despicable man. Though he’s made of flesh and blood like I am, I feel far more connected to the machines than him. Ultimately, that’s the greatest triumph of the film—Villeneuve successfully creates empathetic characters who we know are not human.

Sympathy for the synthetic man in fiction generally comes with some caveat—Satan is cast out of paradise for his arrogance, Frankenstein’s Monster is a murderous sociopath, the parts of Darth Vader that remain human are weak and pale, et cetera. Even the original Blade Runner looked down at the enslaved and subhuman Replicants.

But Blade Runner 2049 loves its Replicants. They have consciousness, thoughts, feelings, desires. They like and dislike. They love and hate. We’re not told this, but we see it. Just like Her, 2049 passes no judgements on its subjugated artificial class. This too, is a triumph.

Finally, it’s daring that Blade Runner 2049 hinges its entire plot on the ambiguous final note of its predecessor, but it’s worthy of praise; like The Force Awakens, it's clearly a film made by a fan, because it poke and prods at the corners of its predecessors’ vision, instead of diving deeper toward the original’s focus. Villeneuve realized that the Replicants were always infinitely more interesting and relatable than the humans in Blade Runner, and so he goes all in on building them as sympathetic outsiders.

At the same time, he capitalizes on their intimidating strength to create a compelling, terrifying villain. The difference between this villain and the sympathetic Replicants is that she is fiercely loyal to her human creator instead of her own kind. A loyalty to a corrupt system of power is the only trait separating her from the heroes. The villain is a traitor who strives to be great in the eyes of the Other, in this case her creator, instead of sympathetic toward her peers.

The original Blade Runner is a juggernaut of mood and atmosphere, a bloated and beautiful tribute to the techno-paranoia of the 1980s. It’s home to some incredible world-building, which is one of the great strengths of science fiction as a genre. I’m reminded of the William Gibson quote regarding Escape from New York and how it influenced Neuromancer:

"[I was]....intrigued by the exchange in one of the opening scenes where the Warden says to Snake, 'You flew the Gullfire over Leningrad, didn't you?' It turns out to be just a throwaway line, but for a moment it worked like the best science fiction, where a casual reference can imply a lot."

But Blade Runner is a very slow movie and its entire plot could be summed up in a single sentence: A man kills robots, but he might be a robot himself.

Blade Runner 2049 is not a slow movie, though it is exceptionally long. Its plot is a gordian knot of twists and turns and complications, all culminating in an action scene with, imagine this, quiet power and dignity. The final confrontation in the film feels like high-budget Hollywood fisticuffs shot on an abandoned set from Ugetsu.

The original Blade Runner’s final confrontation happens on a rain-slick rooftop. There is a diluvian connection between the two films’ conclusions, and any film student would tell you that rainfall in cinema frequently signifies a rebirth. This surface-level interpretation of Blade Runner 2049’s ending is a serviceable explanation, but I don’t buy it; I think the film’s conclusion happens where it does and how it does because it is clean and satisfying, unlike the world in which the film is set. Things are wrapped up quite nicely, but enough is left ambiguous for the audience to imagine their own version of a happy ending. There are open doors, but not necessarily the echoes of franchising. Combine that with 2049’s failure at the box office, and a sequel seems fairly unlikely.

Blade Runner 2049 rose from the swamp of Hollywood’s nostalgia-rush, of course, made to capitalize on a beloved property. Despite its critical success, it’s been unable to stand toe-to-toe financially with Star Wars or Marvel. Anyone could have told you that would happen.

It would be futile to compare this film with either of those franchises, because it tries to accomplish something else entirely. But I will say this: Marvel’s Tony Stark puts on a suit of armor to look like a robot so he can stand among gods. Blade Runner’s K puts on a suit of artificial skin so he can stand among humans. In the end, the latter is more compelling than the former can ever be.

#blade runner #blade runner 2049 #Film Review #film #Film Criticism #film critique #denis villeneuve

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cryptic-chrysalis · 7 years

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I'm not as user-friendly as I used to be, at least that's how it must have seemed in drunken dreams that proved to be illusory with hindsight 20/20 through a pair of goggles made of empty glasses on a table set for supper with the twelve apostles, none of whom thought twice of paying five or seven dollars for a bottled water since it's only overpriced until it's turned to wine by Dionysus metamorphosed into Christ performing miracles like David Blaine outwitting the Goliath of the human mind with optical illusions which have been aligned like wires meant to trip the vision, glitches in a system once in mint condition, only to become the victim of decisions ordering the decommission of the old equipment since it's rickety enough to catch a virus from a sick magician smuggling more tricks beneath his hat than could have fit inside a secret bag that never leaves the triple-fingered grasp of an elusive cartoon cat who finds himself in funny fixes, often subject to the sinister designs of counterfeiters unabashedly attempting to convert the trend to cash by courting crowds of young believers so devout that they would not be out of place as extras on the set of yet another Sister Act, with habits so impressive that they might as well have monkeys on their backs like junkies working on another set of track marks, but if being square is hip I guess I'd rather be a tesseract and wrinkle up the fabric of the cosmos just to ditch the beaten path, becoming master of the alchemy to forge the golden keys to immortality with legendary lines that linger longer than the cancer cells of Henrietta Lacks by moving forward faster than a VHS since I have never been the kind to hit rewind before I drop it in the slot unless I think I have a shot at reaching eastern ports by sailing a westward course, on honeymoon alone inside a hearse emblazoned with the proclamation that I've recently divorced, although I had to form a rival church to process all the paperwork and make myself the temporary pope of an unholy land controlled by warring factions in a mediocre karaoke battle of the bands, a perfect recipe to bake a batch of piping hot disasters more explosive than a load of Roman candles lit by plastic soldiers waiting for the birthday boy to blow the fallout far away and make a wish upon a shooting asteroid requesting that the sin of Sodom be destroyed selectively in ways that won't affect the rest, provided they profess a faith in following instructions that have been engraved on tablets made of DNA, a set of ten commandments coded cryptically in chains of ones and zeroes like a reinterpretation of an ancient language spoken by the innocent creator of a universe with only one dimension, prior to the birth of color through the prism which admits the spectrum, stretching in an exponential pattern like a shockwave of unstoppable expansion getting out of hand and leading to a state of total anarchy, devoid of gods and rulers meant to measure out the debt and keep the edge as straight as kids with X's on their fists who revel in the pit, presenting minor threats as side effects of the intent to minimize the risk of being thoroughly lobotomized in ways that don't require any picks designed for chipping ice to be inserted blindly in the frontal lobe that lies behind the sockets of the eyes, creating teenage nightmares like the bloody brides of Frankenstein depicted on the cover of another album mindlessly indulging in the kind of lines against which parents have to be advised with labels introduced in 1985 and still in use to warn against the gore abhorred by Tipper and the references to sex that might engender unexpected consequences when your daughter's high on meth and thinks she wants to moonlight as a stripper, causing an apocalyptic lifting of the veils as the hemlines rise so far above horizons drawn precisely by the architects of etiquette who engineer the trends, exerting efforts meant to influence the overall direction of a war of currents, causing Thomas Edison and General Electric to denounce the work of Westinghouse and Tesla in an escalating series of attempts to stifle and suppress the shocking incandescence of the cleansing flame that melts away the layers of the flesh, exposing naked cells to gamma rays that emanate directly from a brazenly uncovered face belonging to a maker met unwillingly by those afraid to shake the hand of God in case the heavens tremble, threatening an avalanche of angry angels traveling more rapidly than animated birds, approaching at an angle that could never be construed as right, not when the nature of the shape is more isosceles, but still it somehow manages to earn a title calling it sublime because the ratio of side to base is golden as an egg between the legs of the enchanted goose who laid it, fully formed and finely fabricated with a fancy filigree that could have been handmade by master craftsmen of the house of FabergÃ© for patrons born into the Russian aristocracy, an institution soon to be the target of a mutiny by rebels sent to usher in a union of republics seen as socialist by those who hesitate to call it communism, faces fresh as well-intentioned students off to college for a law degree with prospects that look promising right up until the stocks begin to fall and the economy collapses like the function of a wave that washes up in Indonesia when an earthquake shakes the ocean floor, awakening the demon of the deep, a monster never known to be a heavy sleeper, the colossus feeding on the wettest dreams of all the power-hungry number junkies hoping to become the next big thing until they're broke and on the street, because the buildings that rise high enough to scrape the bottom of the sky are easy targets for a lightning strike that comes completely by surprise, as though the finger of divinity, emerging through the fog of false infinity, could bridge the gap and touch the mind in ways that seem entirely indecent, a conception made immaculate by ignorance regarding the mechanics of the quantum leap that must be made to generate a whole new state of being in a way that's not unlike the flipping of a switch, a shift which almost seems like witchcraft, digitally skipping over spaces vast enough to make the difference separating total emptiness from solid substance, forming the foundations of a program destined to evolve toward futuristic new frontiers that make the feat of self-awareness seem as elementary as phonics meant to hook the reader who has already become successful as a novelist, autonomously functioning with levels of intelligence transcending the tradition of exception rooted in the basic claim that works of artifice can never hold a candle to the handiwork of Nature even though she's gone demented in a way that shows her age, a crazy scientist who leaves the floodgates open when she goes to bed, retiring just after lighting fires bright enough to heat debates that aggravate the conflagration kindled into being by the first invigorating spark that rendered Plato's cave ablaze to make the shadows that can only be mistaken for reality when there's no other way to see that might betray the true dimensionality of forests never seen because the trees are always falling silent, smothered in a vacuum deemed unnatural by text in black and white suggesting artlessly that darkness can be absolute, although in truth there's only relativity, and all of my relations say Mitakuye Oyasin echoed by the sound of rain which dances with a childlike abandon on the roof without the need for moccasins or cowboy boots, absorbed into the consciousness that's bodiless and able to embrace a form that comes before the humblest of birthday suits, attire worn by embryos in utero who have to look their best when walking down the carpet painted red by vessels filled with blood like grapes which must be crushed to formulate the sacrifice allowing them to make their big debut, emerging on the scene of what it means to be a human, tainted by the sin of true originality inherent in the act of going lucid while refusing to release the sand of dreaming from between the fingers, stopping up the hourglass that eats away at all the finest figures just in time to extricate the parasite from vital information closely guarded by the temple knights who hide it like a world-destroying virus, locked up tight inside the tiny spaces riddling the hearts and minds of anyone affected by the entropy of bodily decay, because the key of life is safest in the pocket of a lost Osiris, shielded from desire's evil eye by virtue of the simple fact that it's been taken from beneath the mat and buried in the most unlikely place where only fools will ever find it.

2/21/17

#poetry

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bonearenaofmyskull · 7 years

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What does the “interesting next chapter” for Hannibal involve? Fuller provided no concrete details at Split Screens Festival, but he did tease a very enticing elevator pitch: “It was going to be ‘Inception’ meets ‘Angel Heart.'” Combining Christopher Nolan’s mind-bender with Alan Parker’s supernatural horror movie sounds unsung, but it’s a very Bryan Fuller thing to do and he’s definitely not joking. As a huge fan of your S4 speculations, i got to ask your thoughts on Bryan's latest teases!??!

The short answer is that I have no idea. XD And the truth is that it’s been so long since the end of the last season, and I’ve had so many discussions over time and read so much fic and planned so much fic and written enough fic that while I know what I think is most likely, any sense of objectivity I have about the subject has pretty much eroded away (as if I ever had any in the first place). And my bluff is still eroding. ;)

WRT the specific article you referenced, I do want to talk about Bryan’s elevator pitches and what we should (and should not) take out of them.

The thing about Bryan is that he’s a positive encyclopedia of film knowledge, and he uses example films to reference any of the scores of ideas he may be having at any given moment, and his mind runs about a million miles per hour nonlinearly (which is why he ends up with verbal diarrhea in interviews sometimes). He’s used a lot of film comparisons for various different Hannibal seasons and episodes, and if you looked at them without watching the show, they might often lead you astray. For example, he’s described the first season as The Shining before, and if you were to take this thought at face value, you’d think Will really would have been the copycat killer and would have ended up killing Abigail (Jack would have been right, zomg!): The Shining is about how a man descends into madness because of a sinister influence and then kills his family. But all Bryan meant was that both stories had the madness component, and in Will’s case it wasn’t even technically madness but a physical condition. Also lots of heartbeats, gaudy bathrooms and clanging noises.

Another time, Bryan caused all kinds of fandom drama when he described “Antipasto” as a “new pilot for the series starring Mads Mikkelsen and Gillian Anderson.” People were taking that to mean that Will was no longer going to be either the love of Hannibal’s life or the star of the show. And Bryan repeated that a bazillion times, either oblivious to or regardless of the panic he was causing, probably because it has a tantalizing vagueness to it so it’s a good advertisement. But it was hardly a straightforward statement about what to expect from the show, although it described that single episode well enough.

So let’s have a look at other comparisons he’s made to various films/shows/stuff:

The Talented Mr. Ripley = “Antipasto”

What you’d expect: Guy in Italy kills the guy he’s in love with and takes his identity, then has to balance it against his own identity as he tries to get away with it, costing him his next lover.

What we got: Italy, murdering the man you’re in love with, and identity shenanigans, so this one was fairly close. Hannibal gets away with it and doesn’t fall in love with anyone else, so that’s different. Also, Bedelia. And Abel Gideon flashbacks in nonlinear narration. It’s…circumstantially similar.

The Hunger = Hannibal & Bedelia in Italy

What you’d expect: A beautiful yet dangerous vampire seeks to replace her old lover, whose life has run out after he kills her protege, by seducing a woman who then destroys her and takes her powers. Supposed to be a metaphor for drug addiction.

What we got: Couple of sexy, ice-cold blondes, I guess. Upper crust musicianing and fancy clothes? A waterphone being hurled down the stairs in the background? IDK, man. IDK.

Don’t Look Now = “Primavera”

What you’d expect: A guy with ESP loses his daughter, but then has glimpses of her as he and his wife go to Italy to deal with their grief. Wife falls in with some old psychic ladies, and it turns out his visions are actually prophetic visions leading to his own death by serial killer.

What we got: Well, we were in Italy to deal with the grief our gifted protagonist suffered at losing his “daughter,” and he continues to have visions of her, and there is a serial killer on the loose and a somewhat grumpy Italian detective hanging around. But like Ripley, it’s circumstantially the same, but the story is totally different.

Frankenstein‘s monster = Will’s Italy arc

What you’d expect: (There are so many film versions of Frankenstein out there, as well as the original novel, that it’s hard to anticipate what Bryan thinks about when he thinks of Frankenstein’s monster. So I’m just kind of throwing together the most commonly remembered stuff.) An overly ambitious doctor creates a living “monster” out of dead human body parts, then promptly regrets it. The monster escapes, kills a bunch of people including the doc’s fiancee, tries to coerce the doctor into making a mate for him because it’s sad to be alone, and then either the doctor pursues the monster or the monster pursues the doctor and they both end up dead.

What we got: A doctor made a guy into a monster, and the guy is kind of back from the dead. The doctor was the one who escaped, and the monster is the one who is pursuing. The doctor kills people instead of the monster. They’re each other’s mate, and they don’t kill anyone’s fiancees. XD They don’t die either. It is, however, sad to be alone. This is a deejay mashup of Frankenstein if ever there was one.

Death and the Maiden = “Secondo”

What you’d expect: Traumatized woman who had survived torture recognizes the voice of her torturer and kidnaps him on a stormy night, trying to make him confess his crimes to her before she kills him while her husband looks on, not knowing if he believes her or not and if he should help her or her captive.

What we got: There’s a woman in an isolated house with a man captive. Aaaaand…that’s about it. Plot-wise, this movie goes mostly the opposite direction from where the film does, and Will is at best an amalgamation of both the husband and the torturer, and way more active than either in the outcome. Again, circumstantially similar but a different story.

Kill Bill = “Aperitivo”

What you’d expect: After her wedding was crashed in the most violent way possible, a woman awakens in a hospital and goes out seeking vengeance against her former lover by killing all his cronies one by one until she gets to him.

What we got: Not Frederick Chilton in a bright yellow tracksuit, unfortunately. After some violence, people wake up in hospitals and then…talk to each other?

Hannibal, the film = “Contorno”

What you’d expect: the obvious.

What we got: Pazzi’s story and death, and a fun little turnabout with Alana taking Clarice Starling’s place on the phone. But most of other plot stuff from Hannibal exists elsewhere, and instead we got some snail-y conversations and a barefoot beatdown on Hannibal by Jack Crawford.

Bound = Margot and Alana’s storyline

What you’d expect: A woman and her lesbian lover plot to steal the money her mafiaso boyfriend owes to his boss in order to escape the boyfriend’s tyrannical hold, but the plot goes wrong and they get caught, making it so they have to improvise their way out.

What we got: Again, circumstantially something very similar, but only in the loosest of terms–that two women lovers are seeking to escape the tyrannical hold of one of the men in their life, getting his money and ending up killing him. For some reason, there’s no pig-baby in Bound. Unless you count Christopher Meloni.

Leopold and Loeb = “Tome-wan”

What you’d expect: Two men, convinced they’re above everybody else, try to create the perfect murder by hatching a plot and killing a kid. They get caught.

What we got: Two men–at least one of whom is convinced he’s above everyone else–hatch a rather haphazard plot without really telling each other what they’re doing, then hunt down a guy and don’t actually kill him, and then they don’t get caught.

…

So is there a pattern in any of this? What can we take from it to apply to the Inception meets Angel Heart (with maybe a dash of Ripley, since that’s what Bryan told Matt Zoller Seitz in the past) pitch for the fourth season? What would we expect from these films?

I think the answer seems to be nothing more than circumstantial similarities, turnabouts on the expectations that these films might have set up, and some tonal similarities. That’s the pattern, and that’s the only pattern as far as I’m concerned.

That said though, we might as well have some fun speculating with them.

Angel Heart

What you’d expect: A private detective is hired by a mysterious stranger in a manbun to track down a missing person who was last known to be in a coma. When every person the detective interviews about the case ends up meeting a grisly end, he comes to discover that he is the very man he is looking for, and the devil made him kill all those people in a fugue state because he had attempted to cheat the devil from coming to collect his soul.

…Wait, wait wait…. Isn’t this already Hannibal season one? An investigator falls in with the devil, who helps in with his investigations, all the while encouraging a fugue state to get him to kill people, so that at one point he thinks he’s the very killer that he’s looking for???

Didn’t Bryan already tell us that the fourth season would be an inversion or subversion of S1?

Cleverrrrrrrrr, Bryan Fuller! You made us think you were telling us something new by just saying the same thing you said before in another way. But there really isn’t anything new here at all, is there???

I guess, circumstantially, there could be a detective searching for them, or they could be searching for killers, or Will could be metaphorically searching for himself. The deal with the devil has obviously already been made, and maybe Will is trying to find a way out of that, as the guy in Angel Heart was.

People have made a big deal about the coma and fugue state business, and I’m not ruling that stuff out, but I don’t think they’ll retread ground that they tread in S1 with Will, and I don’t think that they’ll put Hannibal in any sustained position of weakness. They never do either of these thing, and that limits where they can go with the coma and fugue state things.

Inception

What you’d expect: A wanted corporate espionage dream-hacker tries to get his name cleared in order to return to his children after being blamed for the death of his wife, so he agrees to attempt to create an idea in the mind of an unknowing victim by generating a dream within a dream within a dream, where there is a danger of not knowing what is real and what is not.

Well…not quite knowing what is real and what is not is Hannibal all the way, and Will is a dream-hacker if ever there was one. And he will probably be wanted by the law. Kinda doubt he’ll be looking to return to his wife and child, though maybe he is interested in clearing his name. And Hannibal and Will do share mental space, just as Cobb and Mal do…and there could be some comparison to be made between Mal and Hannibal here, in how they haunt their husbands…and how Mal frames Cobb for murder. XD

People get very hyper-focused on the dream-within-a-dream business from Inception, but I found that to be kind of beside the point, tbh. “Inception” refers to the process of planting an idea in another person’s head in such a subconscious way that they believe that idea is their own and they make it a part of themselves and their reality. I guess because I find this to be the more interesting part of Inception, I’d personally like this to be what Bryan Fuller is talking about here, rather than the dreaming stuff. It’s very psychological, and if Will is looking to understand who he is on the other side of the veil, I feel like there’s a lot of opportunity here for both or either man, within that alchemy of truths and lies.

If we were looking for a more plot-driven similar circumstance, a situation in which some rich person paves the way for Will to clear his name in America. We do have some powerful rich people on this show.

To be quite honest, the first thing that came to mind when Bryan said Inception was him talking about how Richard Armitage and Gillian Anderson never had a chance to be in a scene together, so maybe they could be in a scene together in the future in Will’s mind--like he’s hosting all the people he’s killed, or whose deaths he blames himself for (sorry, this thought isn’t very optimistic about Bedelia’s chances). And that reminded me a lot of Cobb with Mal.

I’m less clear on any of this with regard to Hannibal: it’s as he says himself in “Digestivo,” it’s dangerous to get everything you ever wanted, and that’s where Hannibal finds himself at the end of TWOTL. I’m not sure where that will take him after, though Hugh being convinced that Hannibal would always have to fight for Will is somewhat heartening. I’ve spoken elsewhere on my preferences for where Hannibal goes in S4, but I don’t have a particular sense of anything for him that comes from either Inception or Angel Heart. He’s more likely to be the devil than Will is, and he’s more likely to be compared to Mal. I could see scenarios that would cast him as Cobb, I suppose, but nothing concrete.

I wrote a lot here to say that I don’t have much to say, but the truth is that I think we should be skeptical about taking anything Bryan says that sounds like an elevator pitch too literally.

#hannibal meta #hannibal lecter #will graham #bryan fuller #s4 speculations #inception #angel heart #anonymous #bear answers #season 1 #season 2 #season 3 #not gonna tag the individual eps on this one i don't think

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frankenstein-assistant · 7 years

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but did victor frankenstein actually have a phd?

Have you ever noticed that Victor Frankenstein seems ... well ... a bit whiny? You're not alone. Whether you're in a book club, high school class, graduate school seminar, or special collections library, Victor Frankenstein's constant complaining makes it seem like he spends "90% of the novel moping instead of doing literally anything else." [1]

My quick keyboard-shortcut search of Mary Shelley's 1818 text* yields the estimate that, within the novel, variations of the word "wretch" are used over 60 times, and variations of "miserable" or "misery" occur over 100 times. Often, these words are used to describe Victor himself, as he bemoans, and bemoans, and bemoans the misfortune of ... having accomplished exactly what he was trying to.

An excellent Tumblr post has joked that this is because, contrary to popular film depictions, "Doctor" Frankenstein "WAS AN UNDERGRAD" [capitalization retained from original] who "...had no degree at all, he was at college for like, a year." One Tumblr user comedically calls Victor a "19-year-old sin machine," and another suggests that to recontextualize how we might view Victor today, we should: "Imagine hearing about the dudebro living next to u [sic] in the dorms: 'yah Dave dropped out cuz he built a [...] person.'" [2]

Above: "Yah, Dave dropped out cuz he built a person." In the frontispiece of the 1831 edition of Mary Shelley's novel, 19-year-old sin machine Victor Frankenstein flees the scene of his monstrous act of creation.

Hilarious and valid as these arguments may be, which attribute Victor's moping to his age, immaturity, and hubris, Mary Shelley herself seems to have intended for Victor Frankenstein to be as overtly whiny as he is. In her introduction to the 1831 edition of her novel, she explains her inspiration behind Victor and his Creature:

My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw -- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, -- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. His success would terrify the artist; he would rush away from his odious handywork, horror-stricken. He would hope that, left to itself, the slight spark of life which he had communicated would fade; that this thing, which had received such imperfect animation, would subside into dead matter; and he might sleep in the belief that the silence of the grave would quench for ever the transient existence of the hideous corpse which he had looked upon as the cradle of life. He sleeps; but he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold the horrid thing stands at the bedside, opening his curtains, and looking on him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes. [3]

True to her inspiration, Shelley's fiction brings this imaginary scene to life on the printed page, using intensely emotional language to craft the story's miserable tone and characterize the voice of our wretched Victor.[4] The Creature haunts Victor's every sleeping and waking thought, as he always stands at his Creator's literal and metaphorical bedside, wide eyes "following" the guilty undergrad, no matter how far he flees.

Moreover, in a future post for this blog, I’ll also connect Victor’s transition from “made-a-bad-choice” (1818 edition) to “was-always-Destined-for-Doom” (1831 edition) with Mary Shelley’s own growing fatalism due to the losses in her personal life. Anne K. Mellor presents this argument articulately in her book, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fictioon, Her Monsters -- and, if you can’t wait, you can listen to my English 20C lecture on this topic at UC Riverside here.

Lastly, as a jokey, all-in-good-fun addition to UCR’s FrankenBlog, I have created the Twitter account @whinypantsfrank, which places images of the "whiniest" passages from Mary Shelley's original novel alongside Tweets that use social-media-style punctuation and capitalization conventions to emphasize Victor's misery.

Click “keep reading” for sources & footnotes.

[1] This quotation comes from a viral Tumblr blog post, which can be viewed here.

*Note that this is a quick estimate rather than a thorough digital humanities project. I used an etext version of the novel available here via archive.org.

[2] See footnote 1. Some spelling and punctuation modified from original for clarity.

[3] Appendix G: Introduction. In Frankenstein: the Original 1818 Text. By Mary Shelley, edited by D.L. Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf (Ontario: Broadview Press, 1999), page 357.

[4] Yes, I am aware that Mary Shelley changed the origin story of Frankenstein several times during her life. I look forward to dedicating an entire blog post to this subject soon!

Image source: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein (London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley), 1831. Eaton Collection. From the holdings of Special Collections and University Archives, UCR Library, University of California, Riverside.

Tagging original conversation/contributors: @macklesufficient, @necro-romantic, @banal-adventures, @runwithskizzers, @dedalvs

#mary shelley #victor frankenstein #whiny victor frankenstein #shelley #frankenstein #did victor frankenstein actually have a phd #frankenstein phd

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billnewcottblog · 7 years

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10 Scary Good Halloween Flicks

The Shining

Stephen King didn't much like Stanley Kubrick's version of his novel about a haunted hotel, and I have to admit I found myself at first insufficiently terrorized by it when the film opened in 1980. But the older I get, the more I appreciate the movie's relentless creepiness, its steadily mounting atmosphere of dread, its uncanny sense of being buried alive in a wide open space. Jack Nicholson's normal-to-nutso transformation offers much more nuance than I gave it credit for, and Shelley Duvall's awful awakening to her hubby's case of stark raving crazies should have earned her an Oscar nomination. Cite virtually any scene from The Shining, and I'll show you a film that tries to copy it.

Psycho

Is there any director more rewardingly manipulative than Alfred Hitchcock? He spends the first 45 minutes of Psycho getting us invested in the story of a young woman who's on the run after having stolen money from her boss — then he abruptly kills her in the most shockingly stark murder scene ever filmed. And then what does he do? He introduces us to a whole new cast of characters, knowing full well we'll have a queasy suspicion that he could do away with any of them at any moment, as well. Even without that shower scene — which may have changed the direction of movies forever — Psycho would stand as a landmark horror movie. As it is, it borders on deliciously unbearable.

The Bride of Frankenstein

Director James Whale's original Frankenstein was a straightforward affair — you know, gather the body parts, stitch 'em together, pull down some lightning and, voila, "It's a-LIIIIIVE!", followed by peasants with pitchforks. The sequel, though, is quite something else, a masterful mix of horror and sentiment. Boris Karloff infuses his monster with an astonishing level of humanity — witness his sentiment-dripping scene with a blind hermit and his heartbroken reaction to the Bride's horrified scream. The film's unapologetic attempt to humanize the monster, and thus make all the more tragic his ultimate fate, hinges completely on Karloff's ability to convey emotion from beneath a mountain of makeup.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Maybe you had to live through the gnawing nationwide suspicion that communists were everywhere in the 1950s, trying to infiltrate American society, to appreciate the full impact of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It's scary enough upon viewing today, as pods from outer space land in rural California, hatching aliens that become blank-faced, emotionless versions of the humans they kill. But in its day, the political subtext of director Don Siegel's masterpiece was equally disturbing for those who feared the communists and those who dismissed those fears as overwrought. Seldom have science fiction and real life found such chilling resonance.

The Exorcist

Sure, you can laugh about it now, but the night in 1973 when you slunk into that dark theater, informed only by the nervous rumors circulating among your friends, you were seized by a sense of chilly foreboding. Then came Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells theme, and before you knew it all Hell was literally breaking loose on screen, what with the turning head and the spewing pea soup and the unwelcome news regarding what one character's dead mother was doing at that very moment. The Exorcist still informs our vision of what close encounters of the satanic kind should look like, and if you dare to think about it, even now, you realize that those skittish friends of yours back in '73 didn't know the half of it.

Silence of the Lambs

The characters had already existed in book form, and indeed there'd already been a movie made about Hannibal (The Cannibal) Lecter. But when Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal and Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, a student at the FBI Academy, squared off in director Jonathan Demme's twisted melding of horror flick and police procedural, all bets were off. After it was all over, the shaken audience not only felt they had barely escaped with their own lives; they were left with the sickening sense that the depths to which human evil can sink are, really, unfathomable.

Dressed to Kill

Director Brian De Palma had been cribbing off of Hitchcock for years, and he really hit his Hitchy stride with this story of a serial killer stalking beautiful women in New York City. As his first victim, Angie Dickinson meets an unfortunate end in an elevator. There's no shortage of suspects, including the victim's psychiatrist (Michael Caine), a cop and a high-priced call girl (Nancy Allen). Through it all, De Palma maintains the uneasy notion that anyone could be a killer, if you push just the right buttons.

The Devil's Advocate

Keanu Reeves is a hard-driving defense attorney and Al Pacino is Satan incarnate in this delicious little 1997 morality tale. Impressed with how Reeves' character got a child molester off in Florida, Pacino enlists him to join his unholy law firm in Manhattan. What follows is a devilishly delightful battle of wits as Satan skillfully manipulates the lawyer into deeper and deeper levels of decrepitude — all the while reminding him he's operating under his own free will. By the time he's too deep to dig himself out, the lawyer finds himself knocking on the gates of Hell in a very cool, hideously baroque finale.

Scream

Ingeniously, director Wes Craven resurrected the slasher movie genre by satirizing it in this supersmart 1996 tale of teenagers terrorized by a killer in a ghost mask. The kids, all well versed in the conventions of horror flicks — never tell people "I'll be right back" when you leave a room; never assume the killer is dead, etc. — discover in the course of the evening in question that those old saws are all too true. With a severed tongue firmly planted in its cheek, Scream earns its laughs, and its gasps, honestly.

Peeping Tom

Director Michael Powell was known for lush A-list movies such as The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffman, so when he unleashed this savage little film on unsuspecting British filmgoers in 1960, they never forgave him. It's the truly macabre tale of a handsome young filmmaker who focuses his little Bell and Howell movie camera on terrorized women while impaling them with a sharpened leg of his tripod. We do get to watch as the cops spend much of the film tracking down the killer, but the sheer cold-bloodedness of his crimes — he eventually mounts a mirror on his camera so the victims can watch themselves die — leaves the viewer with a sick sense of complicity. Ecchh.

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comiconverse · 7 years

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Film Review: The Mummy (2017)

Shared universes are all the rage in Hollywood today, as both Warner Bros. Pictures and Disney headline the idea with big projects of their own. Universal wants to join in all the fun with their monsters universe (Dark Universe), beginning with a reboot of The Mummy (2017). Film critic Jordan Samuel brings us the official ComiConverse review.

Film Review: The Mummy

Though safely entombed in a crypt deep beneath the unforgiving desert, an ancient princess, whose destiny was unjustly taken from her, is awakened in our current day bringing with her malevolence grown over millennia, and terrors that defy human comprehension.

Credit: Universal Studios

A shared universe can be a daunting task in the current age of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, adding new stories in a movie series can also make it seem more alive. Universal are known to have attempted pushing famous dark monsters into box-office gold, with various bombs ruining any chances for efforts like Van Helsing, The Wolfman remake, and Dracula Untold.

Earlier this year the studio announced their “Dark Universe”, which brings monster icons like Frankenstein and Dracula into a shared world, concentrating on the strange rudiments of such characters. Universal’s Mummy franchise started with the 1932 Boris Karloff (The Mummy) classic, and has become iconic in modern culture spawning various iterations. Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy (1999) made the series popular again in the early 2000s, shifting tone from grounded horror into one grand adventure; making it’s a family friendly affair.

I grew up with those movies, as their wide accessibility brought the family together for a few hours. They also gets replayed countless times on television, due to the balanced tone. But after the lackluster sequel The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008), all that positivity was thrown out the window.

2017 brings us a Mummy reboot focused on the horror roots of the franchise, but retaining the adventure themes found in the more recent films. As the hype surrounding it has been silent, I’ve always been optimistic. But does it wrap around modern cinema tightly? Find out as our film critic Jordan Samuel gives us his thoughts on the picture.

Credit: Universal Studios

The Mummy is a bad start to the Dark Universe, being an incomplete meshing of iterations without the charm and imaginative direction seen in the last couple films to bare this title. Unoriginality blares out from the film’s Marvel Studios-style introduction, which from the get-go feels like a rushed goal. Alex Kurtzman takes on the classic tale, and forgets to make the audience feel engaged with the story. Instead, drops us into the battleground head on.

Introducing bland characters, and assuming that we would already be accustomed to their personalities, the connected storytelling bogs the film down in universe set-up; reminding me of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014).

Alex Kurtzman tries his best in elevating beyond those constraints, but the terrible script limits his vision, building walls which block any sense of style and tone. The film ends up seeming like an unnecessary journey towards a larger film franchise.

The Mummy (2017) focuses on an ancient princess, Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella), who is awakened from a crypt in the dessert by Nick Morton (Tom Cruise); an explorer overly taken with his discovery; but that all changes when he is cursed by a great power.

The story is basic and doesn’t expand upon the previous incarnations, as Alex Kurtzman plays everything extremely safe.

Lacking much needed scary moments, The Mummy (2017) comes across like a generic superhero origin movie, with some painful universe set-up thrown in. Instead of being the franchise refresh imagined in the trailers, The Mummy (2017) relies heavily on clichés that feel alien in the current generation of Hollywood.

Credit: Universal Studios

Tom Cruise (Mission Impossible) is Nick Morton a soldier of fortune, specializing in treasure-hunting and tomb-raiding. He is hired alongside an American military unit in Iraq to retrieve an ancient sarcophagus from Egypt and bring it back to London. Cruise provides one decent performance, bringing his beloved physicality into the role, but ends up being wasted due to some bad screenwriting

Cruise is always great in his movies, he just painfully doesn’t get to do much in this pointless 2-hour reboot. He acts circles around the co-stars, which didn’t shock me, but the audience is not given the chance to care about Nick Morton.

Annebelle Wallis plays the archaeologist Jenny Hasley, The Mummy’s female lead, who is also searching for the lost tomb. Her performance is sadly thrown out in the cause of a blindly dumb female protagonist.

I’m quite disappointed that Alex Kurtzman (Transformers) didn’t provide a nice sidekick for the main character, just leaving us with one giant sour taste of old-school Hollywood horror clichés.

Now on to the focus, Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service) as The Mummy. This actress is beautiful in the classic role looking both fierce and intense.

Sofia just lacks any connection with the audience, due to her laughably bad motivations for taking over the world. Alex Kurtzman directs her towards some terrifying moments, but these are disconnected from the big-budget action.

Credit: Universal Studios

The screenwriters make her life before the while undead thing, a story of pure evil, limiting any sadness felt but her terrible plans. I feel bad for Sofia Boutella, as the actresses deserves better than this frankly boring villain. The action is uninspired and isn’t enough to keep you distracted from the terrible storyline. The editing is also very average.

The Mummy (2017) is one silly attempt at an unnecessary larger universe, which fails in giving us a good movie; which is surely how every successful shared universe must start. This movie forgets what made those earlier films so precious and beloved for all time. Universal could have done so much better, I would have preferred a lower-budget horror movie focused on the franchise’s roots.

The post Film Review: The Mummy (2017) appeared first on ComiConverse.

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