p e n g u i n d e v i l

Talk about sickly sweet… We watched a good documentary about what one would probably call a bad relationship. Sadly, I don’t think that I can really say anything about this movie without giving away too much, but here goes. An interesting reflection on the highs and lows of relationships, we watched Crazy Love. Beginning in the 1950’s, it’s the story of a well-to-do, young lawyer with a fondness for ladies who happens upon young Linda on the street one day. He gets her number from her and immediately begins calling her and sending her flowers. His continual attentions and his fun and free-spending lifestyle quickly takes her in and they begin seeing each other. Of course, when it comes out that he is married, she is put off. But, his persistence pays off and she is again taken in by his stream of lies (including forged documents) about his impending divorce. A few months later, Linda finally tires of this and leaves him once and for all.

Things take a big turn here as her rejection of him and her taking up with another fellow sends ol’ Burt over the edge and into an asylum. He doesn’t stay nearly long enough so when he is released, he is still nutty over the whole thing and falls into the old “if I can’t have her, no one will” school of thought and begins planning his revenge. He hatches a plan (which he, of course, hires someone else to do) which is shocking, rather despicable and quite effective. It is also just the beginning… The film takes us through the trial and the aftermath, and we end up suprisingly seeing that Burt’s rather vile revenge plan against Linda ended up working out perfectly for him. I don’t think that he could have imagined it being any more successful.

But Crazy Love is touching in an odd sort of way and the reuniting that takes place seems sweet… Until you think about it. At which point you can’t help but consider that, regardless of how charming some people might find him, Burt is an arrogant womanizing creep who probably wouldn’t hesitate to threaten, main, wound or kill someone if they denied him what he wanted. And, on her part, Linda’s actions were out of desperation (due to his awful actions against her) and she is fooling herself if she sees it as anything better than that. His revenge was a success, but, I can see why she ended up following that path that she did, it’s really just sad. Quite sad. But a good film.

Also, after hearing rumors that it took place it St Johnsbury, we rented Ghost Story. Of course, it doesn’t actually take place in St Johnsbury, though a sign for St Johnsbury is seen when they are at the station in White River. The movie does though takes place in a wintry Woodstock, Vermont, so that was nice. Featuring a bunch of old timers: Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and John Houseman, the story here jumps back and forth from these old fellows in the “present” and their younger selves of 50 years before. See, it is the story of a “club” of four fellows who, in their youth, accidentally caused the death of a young lady and covered it up. They have spent the last decades together, avoiding any discussion of the issue. Of course, no one wants to be forgotten and hidden away, so now her ghost has come back and, with the help of an obscure couple of folks, she is seeking revenge against these fellows and their families. Accidents are waiting to befall everyone as they see a mysterious woman lurking about everywhere. While the movie wasn’t all that exciting, it wasn’t that bad, either. Easily something one could sit though on a dreary afternoon if it came on the TV.

We also watched Dark Harbor. Sort of a dull point in the career of the wonderful Alan Rickman , but it was alright. The story of a grumpy couple who find a poor fellow on the side of the road and lend him a helping hand. Once they strangely run into him some more, he ends up staying with them on their wonderful little private island, which, of course, is something that never turns out well. The husband gets jealous and begins fuming about their guest and as the wife gets a little too close to this young chap, hubby begins over-imagining things. At first I found it to be a fairly nondescript thriller, even with the presence of Alan Rickman, but it did sort of grow on me. As things heat up and the emotions start becoming more obvious, the fact that it is a thriller becomes noticeable. There is also a great twist that is the rare twist that is both unexpected, and yet plausible.

I came across, thanks to Slashdot, an article at Technology Review about the state of TV news. Yes, I know that we all know how irrelevant TV news is, but the author of this article formerly worked for Dateline and was around those offices in the immediate post-9/11 times and has some pretty interesting comments. The first page wasn’t too exciting, so I’m linking to page 2 instead, about his encounter with the head of NBC..

At the moment Zucker blew in and interrupted, I had been in Corvo’s office to propose a series of stories about al-Qaeda, which was just emerging as a suspect in the attacks… It had occurred to me and a number of other journalists that a core mission of NBC News would now be to explain, even belatedly, the origins and significance of these organizations. But Zucker insisted that Dateline stay focused on the firefighters. The story of firefighters trapped in the crumbling towers, Zucker said, was the emotional center of this whole event. Corvo enthusiastically agreed. “Maybe,” said Zucker, “we ought to do a series of specials on firehouses where we just ride along with our cameras. Like the show Cops, only with firefighters.” He told Corvo he could make room in the prime-time lineup for firefighters, but then smiled at me and said, in effect, that he had no time for any subtitled interviews with jihadists raging about Palestine.

and…

This was one in a series of lessons I learned about how television news had lost its most basic journalistic instincts in its search for the audience-driven sweet spot, the “emotional center” of the American people. Gone was the mission of using technology to veer out onto the edge of American understanding in order to introduce something fundamentally new into the national debate. The informational edge was perilous, it was unpredictable, and it required the news audience to be willing to learn something it did not already know. Stories from the edge were not typically reassuring about the future. In this sense they were like actual news, unpredictable flashes from the unknown. On the other hand, the coveted emotional center was reliable, it was predictable, and its story lines could be duplicated over and over. It reassured the audience by telling it what it already knew rather than challenging it to learn.

Read it here:
You Don’t Understand our Audience

Lately we’ve been engaging in some of that good old time fun… finding things to sell. Though we’ve had some luck on eBay (including my Ulver Trilogie boxed set, something I’d always thought about selling, since I’m not an Ulver fan, but never got around to), I am always open to finding more things to ponder selling. I took a stroll through the CD’s, to see what I might be able to part with and I took a gander at the Mercyful Fate. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a Fate fan for quite sometime. I was first introduced to them by Dave Murphy in probably 1984. He was talking about how King Diamond’s vocals go so suddenly from high-pitched to low-pitched and that was because “he’s evil man, evil”. That was enough for me! I knew I had to hear it and I went out and bought Don’t Break the Oath and Melissa and was hooked. I never looked back, but I never really looked forward either. Oh sure, I would pick up the odd Fate or King Diamond album as I came across them, but I never really gave them a listen.

classic.

This week though, I pulled out the four cd’s of theirs that I have. I doubt I’d ever listened to them so I thought they might be fine to part with. Of course, after the last couple of decades of black metal, Fate doesn’t seem quite as evil as they used to. But for someone of my taste who prefers the solace of early 80’s metal, those old albums had just the perfect amount of evil drama, metal sensibilities, layered guitar solos (or would those be “feathered”) and creepiness. But I feared what directions they may have gone in over the last 20 years… Admittedly I did see them here live in the late 90’s and it was one of those “personal greatest moments”, but recordings? You know what? They were pretty good. Here I am with: Dead Again, Time, Into the Unknown and 9.

not quite so classic.

While 9 doesn’t really move me, both Into the Unknown and Dead Again are both worth having around. They both have good songs without real much weakness. The big surprise album was Time. I thought it was quite impressive, right up there with Melissa and Don’t Break the Oath. Well, maybe not with Oath, and it certainly can’t begin to compete with those on cover artwork (but then again, what can), but it’s darn good. Of course, looking them up I do see that Time is the oldest of these and 9 is the newest, continuing on with the stereotype of bands declining with time, but considering that Time was released 10 years after that last album of theirs that I has listened to, I was impressed. Maybe now I need to dig out some King Diamond!

they speak for themselves