By One Line - Issue 3. Movies

OK then, today we have some movies to smear with poo-poo, as could dr. Martin Ssempa say.

Remember, here we have the same scale to check:

- definitely awesome but nothing to say

- matter of taste and controversial

- get the fuck out of here

Welcome to the Cinemarathon:

By One Line - Issue 2. Music again.

Sorry, but there is no material for big reviews now. Maybe it will appear later.
As earlier, we have such marks here:

- definitely awesome but nothing to say

- matter of taste and controversial

- get the fuck out of here

And now for something completely different:

Altitude (2010)

XXI century brought us into the controversial state comparable with emotional, axiological and theleological tetraplegic paralysis while hanged in weightlessness. People of XXI century saw everything, heard everything and pretend to know everything so it becomes very hard (nearly impossible) to wonder them. The big amount of media also makes a contribution in this actually sad situation, so the chance to see something moreless uncommon and peculiar decreases day by day. So each successful attempt of such case arouses the more pleasure and interest; the dark side is difficulty to mine such film from annually made pile of homogenous cinematographic ore and distinguish it from boring and secondary brood. Of course in such genre you cannot hope to discover a New Guinea, but considering this event of facing moreless uncommon movie as a pleasing surprise could be really wise and useful deed.

“Altitude” is truly independent and maybe this factor has become the reason of its dissimilarity with anything. Because the plot writer has no demands dealing with audience or restrictions, he wrote anything for himself and thus avoided a lot of stamps that could appear here (although he couldn't avoid all of them). Starting as an interestingly (from technical point of view) even though merely low budget short story-about-teenagers-who-decided-to-go-somewhere-and-will-atone-for-that, narration turn things twisted. First, teenagers are going to trip somewhere by a small plane with one of them as a pilot, and second – the very atmosphere that I personally felt only in Stewart Gordon films. And this foretoken was a kind of true – the chthonic horror which is an imprescriptible attribute of Gordon’s films definitely has here a place to live and does its very horrifying deeds. The only drawbacks of this actually interesting attempt is relatively weak performing of actors, especially main; when girl at least tries to dissipate attention using her cute face and advanced mimics, the buddy is emotional as facial nerve paresis victim. Nevertheless, for an ending they have a little more freedom to express themselves and thus almost have drawn the final of movie. Almost. But even with their acting, the ending is still chilly and strong enough to even take a tear or two from an emotional overcharged schoolgirl. LIKE FUCKING ME.

As A Result: an additional proof that crowdfunding is a future of indie filmmaking

Watch It?: better yes, but not necessary

Frozen Ocean "A Perfect Solitude" distribution

Spectral Halls proudly announces distribution of Frozen Ocean's "A Perfect Solitude" that was released on Wolfsgrimm Records and is now available to buy on their mailorder.

43 minutes of intricate fusion of atmospheric metal and ambient. 43 minutes of pure and bottomless solitude.

Glance digipack with totally breathtaking artwork strictly limited to 300 copies.

http://spectral-halls.net

http://wolfsgrimm-records.de/website

Frozen Ocean - The Withering Eidolon

New track is available on SoundCloud!

The Withering Eidolon

Here's the lyrics:

Frozen Ocean - The Withering Eidolon

Famished serpent that abominably crawled
From times before the light of reason
A bewitched eidos, a venomous entity
A shield from iniquity lurking within

Fetters of fidelity

Bestial rage and inescapable pavor 
Hide under the cloak of exoneration
Yawning chasm of spurious enlightenment
Will relentlessly devour the weak

Hear the vanishing echoes, last call
Of souls that was vainly fed to abyss
We saturate our spirit with hate
To withstand the obsolete lies

By One Line – Issue 1. Music

I decided to begin new series of posts where I will observe music or movies or books just by one phrase. Often you cannot say more, and my past experience showed that any intermediate format of review expands to full-length without such a restriction. Welcome then!

Pictograms near the title are analogues of Watch It/Listen It line in full-size reviews:

- definitely awesome but nothing to say

- matter of taste and controversial

- get the fuck out of here

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

You know, it is really rare case when the movie could really break the stub. For last years cinema industry had been choosing technologically intensive way of development, constantly improving shooting technologies, special effects and computer modeling. Since viewer used to consume such kind of product, movie industry changed its direction from acting and interesting films to epopees and blockbusters, and while technical quality of film increases viewer’s indiscriminateness, quality of plots and screenplay accordingly gets lower and lower.

So because of that tendency each movie with story even a bit differs from common is being accepted as a revelation; such movies get awards, their director becomes famous and gets a lot of money and promotion for further films and usually fails on it. The best example is Christopher Nolan, whose triumphal rise with “Memento” turns into complete fuck-up with “The Dark Knight Fails Rises”. Joss Whedon, a corpulent redhead and possibly jew (that is definitely good) is already self-established scenarist, so I hope he will not repeat this sorrowful way. Whedon is an author of gorgeous “Firefly”, mysterious “Doll House”, and many more awesome or just outstanding works, so it was evident to anticipate something special from him.

As every another well-established subgenre of well-established genre, slasher movies have a wide variety of stamps, clichés and traditions. The beginning of the tendency was brought years ago, and it was supported recently by “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil” where Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk portrayed all the feelings laying on another side of slasher movie conflict, but those efforts was not enough. Thus the universe still had need in a film that will point dots over “i” about slasher clichés once and for all, and finally this film arose – welcome “The Cabin in the Woods”.

It is almost impossible to tell something about this movie avoiding any kind of spoilers. This obstacle appears on the way because of monolithic unity of movie’s all components, but what should be mentioned is general wit running through the whole movie. Witty is all in this film, from opening and closure titles (especially the latter), from characters and dialogues to plot and screenplay, no need to mention citations, parallels and all homage to slasher movie history. In addition to wit, second weapon (hail Spanish Inquisition) of Cabin is inpredictability that could compete with M. Night Shyamalan best works. Although director and story writer constantly give us clues and hints during the narration development, but you can try to get an idea about what the fuck is going here only near second part of the movie.

The Cabin in the Woods is brand new (without irony or mistake) sight on the slasher movie, sight full of both sarcastic mockery and gentle admiration, and unfortunately this sight declines all the possibilities to genre evolution. This movie points all the dots on all “i"’s, and the biggest dot gets its place at the end. I doubt that sometimes somebody could invent something that could overcome “The Cabin in the Woods” on its field, so do not hesitate to see this movie.

As A Result: brilliant postmodern movie in best meaning of these controversial words

Watch It?: not a matter of discussion

Gorod - A Perfect Absolution (2012)

Bands who chose Russian words as names often look ridiculous especially when name is transliterated to Latin alphabet, for example German sludge/doom band Schakhtyor. There are two exits from this semi-linguistic, semi-reason-bound trap: either you take the name without transliteration (like Finnish band Курск) or you choose a word that looks pretty cool and do not contain any complex trigraphs or something weird like “shch” or “tsch”. The best instance (although pretty absurd in whole) is famous Austrian avant-garde black metal band Korova – just look how this work appears, it has the pleophony in center, that merely rolling in mouth (but this word means “cow” in Russian, so the sense remains mystery to me).

“Gorod” is an example of second way indeed, and it is necessary to notice that this word both sounds and means quite convenient for music these magicians used to play and present. “Gorod” (“city” in Russian) is a kind of word and notion behind it that are abstract enough to absorb all diversity and peculiarity of art of these French guys, simultaneously simple enough to avoid any parasitic secondary associations and of course short enough to look and sound quite cool.

Gorod’s technical death metal is no doubt technical, moreover I would like to see a group who could compete with them on equal velocities; but the technicity is not their main goal or the point they are would like to underline. For Gorod technicity is just a kind of means, a tool and a clay that will construct the whole sculpture, and such high plank of means just allows them to build things that are unavailable to many their congeners. It is nothing contradictive to call their death metal “progressive” but I doubt that this dry, restrained word can describe all the capriciousness and whimsicality of Gorod’s musical constructions taken, in all modesty, from jazz and related musical endeavours. Furthermore, “A Perfect Absolution” sounds definitely eclectic because of usage of tiny pieces belonging to another genres, small and acting as ornament; this eclectic is not so obvious like for example in music of Iwrestledabearonce; here it is imperceptibly woven into the fabric of album, becoming everything from knots to embroidery flowers.

And last thing I cannot avoid writing about “A Perfect Absolution” is a comparison with its predecessor “Process of a New Decline”, which looks obligate when you deal with bands like Gorod whose artistic manner is quite subtle and needs thorough observation during diachrony. And standing these worx near each other, I can conclude that “Absolution” is a bit inferior than “Process”. In spite of fact that the last album sounds (in whole) much more better than penultimate one, especially the sound of supporting solo guitars which was sometimes even irritating on “Process”, the whole picture of album becomes less bright and lucid. If “Process of a New Decline” has a light and a bit malicious, even venomous atmosphere, moving it to step aside from grey mass of progressive death metal albums, “APA” is bereft of this peculiarity although preserving echoes of it. But nevertheless this is Gorod in its best form.

As A Result: just wonderful and astounding as always, and 2012 top candidate of course

Listen It?: only if you have a taste otherwise go fuck yourself

The Quiet (2006)

If we continue the talk about independent movies and stay thrillers aside, indie drama films should definitely take the place in this trend. Among inexperienced directors drama films are even more popular than thrillers because you have no need to invent an interesting storyline rather make the action and narrative more and more weird and deviant. We could call this “tension”, a thing analogous with suspense in thrillers. Thus we obtain hundreds of films about completely odd things and completely odd people, up to disgusting and abomination, and the one question remains: for whom are they fucking filmed?

Often the necessary concentration of tension (like suspense) is maintained and supported by a story background related with a kind of deviation, from sexual to social. Sexual ones are used more often, maybe just because in case of social one (sociopathy - child trauma - family troubles) it is harder to formulate and solve the conflict, leaning on psychology. Sex and its role in human life are lucid by default, intuitively, so, using the words of V. Pelevin, it all is a direct trial to control audition through wow-impulse (preferentially oral).

Background of sexual deviations (from sexual side of relationship in isolated microsociety and up to deep psychiatry like paraphilias) is not a token of profanation in state of art or act that aspires to be one, but usage of such provocative substrate should have strict story foundation and be supported by all (ALL, I said) auxiliary means from actor’s performing to light distribution in a single frame and soundtrack subtleties; otherwise such trial has to be considered as an attempt to have an easy ride without any perspective, in other words, this is a straight road to B type.

Director of “The Quiet” definitely was impressed as fuck with Sam Mendes’ “American Beauty”, and with this impression he started to build his own “American Beauty”, with black jack and hookers. Just compare actors representing two of main personalities: Elisha Cuthbert is definitely a reminiscence of Thora Birch, and Michael Donovan is a price-off variant of Kevin Spacey. Moreover, airtight type of action in movie (almost always in the house, close to classicistic unity of time and place), and conflict distributed between the characters of gender and age gap are reminding Mendes’ film more and more.  But, as it was to be expected, this variant became less interesting and a bit secondary, so then director decided to tighten the screws.

First of all, from story of conflict between teenager and adult Babbit transfers the drama into space within the whole family, endowing the action with the huge piece of sickness. Second, transparent and quite expectable main storyline is equipped with merely weird satellite tale of Dot the Deaf yet Cute Girl, whose still gaze drills viewer and whose mute speeches gather chills near the neck. She thoroughly listens: how the guy like to masturbate, how the girlie hates his father, how mother slowly goes nuts due to medications, and all this with ultimate poker face. Cool story, ha? Like a lever?

So, is “The Quiet” just a cheap family drama about silly daughter and naughty father, peppered with some kind of parallel winking sidestory? However not, it is not, because I would like to guess that all aforementioned things was the screen, that should overshadow the real movie sense. Dot, from adornment of originally poor storyline, become the linchpin of it. She isn’t a passive onlooker beholding on true inferno gaping near her, although it seems to be opposite; her inner struggles are not background anymore, and words she pronounced silently with such reluctance are not mere words.

As in “American Beauty”, additional personality placed in the storm’s eye become a catalyst, a spit that gives rise to avalanche, and directly with the help of Dot this anthem of self-destruction went right to the chorus. Moreover, the action is dramatically expanded by the trace Dot leaves on the plot while reacting with another people. Simple alchemy of teenager interrelationships kneaded on sex, sport and pop culture became feeble when stood face to face with her, and only with her severe, self-merciless monologues movie get its wholeness.

And of course, the real pearl of this motion picture is Dot herself performed by peerless Camilla Belle. Her image combines almost touchable fragility and simultaneous utter, ultimated hardness; she is definitely like a string – trembling, thin and seemingly weak, but made of metal and able to bring death, the string that was broken in that grand piano, the string that has become the solution of all. Dot carries emptiness with herself, a kind of shell that constantly surrounds her with the center in her bottomless grey eyes, and all the sounds and intentions are slowly withering approaching this center.

As A Result: movie with false bottom, whole and stylish

Watch It?: yes

Jamin Winans - Ink: The Complete Soundtrack

One of the most beautiful and most universal thing of the whole art is fairytale. Good fairytale is convenient to anybody, good fairytale gently carries and smoothly teaches the very essence of any moral imperative that cannot be force-fed or integrated artificially, good fairytale is just interesting, beautiful and merely charming. But what fairytale is good? This is the question, and unfortunately here we cannot answer to it, but nonetheless we can notice that all well-known fairytales are heavily burdened with moral load of some kind. Fairytale teaches – this is its obligate property and possibly the most significant one, and it teaches children.

Thus we could make a conclusion, that fairytales host some values which are perpetual – such values that don’t alterate during the time and are and will be valid now and forever. So the scenery can differ, background can substitute the other one, swords and bows become lightsabers and blasters, but values of love, friendship, trust (underline what you would like more) are everlasting. Well, this conclusion seems right, but we cannot decline that the world is changing, and modern children lives not in a shanty near the dark and creepy forest full of hungry animals, but among wireless connection and synthetic polymers. So questions like “Why couldn’t this stupid Red Riding Hood call 911?” or “Does Davy Crockett have an optical sight on his gun?” are illegible no more – they are logically supported, and thus we need a new type of fairytales, stories of our world, world that we live in.

Fortunately, we have such kind of stories, although there are not so many examples of them, and despite people’s conservatism and headthickness, and “Ink”, independent movie filmed by Jamin Winans, is the very fairytale – fairytale of XXI century. We will not discuss the film here, because I already wrote about it (though in Russian), but I should notice that this film has number two (silver medal) in my movie top. So the one thing that must be mentioned particularly while talking about “Ink” is the music used in it.

Director of a movie usually is a man that has the whole look of it in his head. This look of course includes not only the picture and video work, but all the sound engineering. Often director has no talent or time or just don’t want to do this, and then he hires a sound director and/or composer, but we have totally different realisation level when director can do this (write music and arrange it) by himself – the best examples are John Carpenter’s “Halloween” or Don Coscarelli’s “Phantasm” whose main themes run a chill down the spine. Situation with “Ink” lays in the same sphere of events – Jamin Winans is also the composer of it, and he did perfectly know how should his film sound.

As well as all “Ink” and particularly its picture, its sounds are cold and fragile, run far and far away in hollow chilly air of the action. Narrative temp is not so fast even in the moments of the most story acceleration, and music flows spilling its crystal drops as if it is already nothing to hurry. Leisure, transparent melodies backgrounded by similarly cool effects and pads weaves the same story that is being pictured on a screen, and it adds even more emotions that separate picture contains (for example, it makes scenes of Jacob’s Chain or John’s walk through the hospital just harrowing and bloodcurdling). Every time or couple of seconds is tightly conjugated with the action, and music doesn’t leave the viewer until the end of film.

I cannot call music to “Ink” outstanding or breakthrough – it does no revolution in any style and genre, it is not complex or unusual, it is not even academic. Jamin Winans wrote quite simple themes that could be easily recognized and distinguished from another, and despite their simplicity and sense that you already heard this somewhere, they are quite memorable. Instrumentation, simple as well as music structure – soft, cold and deeply sounding piano (with gentle touch of reverberation), pizzicato strings, curtains of deep and warm synth pads, and different percussions with different effects – this is all and enough that could be needed to make a masterpiece.

As it should be, there are reprises, variations and modulations of sequences and motives; themes float up and slowly drown down, alterate and appear again, and most of them create the sense of something really private that know only you and something that only you can tell to somebody.

And the main theme – soft, chilly and nearly disappearing piano sequence dusturbs something profound, something that lay on the very bottom of the reason and heart, and is just touching as fuck. Moreover, it is so touching that Joe Carnahan was not fastidious to borrow it in a form of “The City Surf” song to his new film “Grey”, and damn me if it didn’t sounded awesome there.

As A Result: perfect soundtrack for perfect modern fairytale

Listen It?: of course, but better is to watch it

Watch It?: fuck yes what are you waiting for, dummy