Film For The Future

Victor Vasarely outdoor work, Váradi Zsolt, 2005

Despite the hype, I refuse to see Avatar. I can see through it. People keep talking about how amazing it looks, they even admit that the story is hackneyed. I can't quite understand why Avatar is up against The Hurt Locker for awards. No, that's no true. It's pretty obvious Avatar is the big 3D revolution tentpole release - what better way to cement that, than by showering it with psuedo-critical praise. The phrase you are looking for is 'circle jerk'.

Most won't know this by name - L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat. It's the short film with the train coming towards the camera. Cinema goers in 1896 may not have scrambled out of their seats to get out of the way, but they were impressed by the lifelike images on the screen. That's really what Avatar is - a glorified IMAX demo. The Hurt Locker on the other hand concerns its main character and his motivations. Long after the special effects of Pandora are superseded, The Hurt Locker will offer its narrative for continued contemplation.

If You Tolerate This

For about a decade I've politically identified myself as a Marxist. That happens to coincide with my existential crisis at the age of 14, so naturally I'd find revolutionary upheaval appealing in a world of shit. I read 1984 at roughly the same time, which I understood as a very obvious criticism of Stalinism, which makes me a Trotskyist, though my own thoughts about the failure of the Soviet Union (which I'll be posting later in the year) align me closer to Council Communism than any Leninist strand.

Brothers, Sisters, We Don't Need This Fascist Groove Thang

Public Domain, 1945

The final episode of the European Civil War is a safe harbour for many films and games. The Third Reich was probably the most unambiguously amoral belligerent in history, and because of this no-one objects to massacring entire Wehrmacht divisions in Medal of Honor ('the acceptable face of war'). It's probably the war that least needed a series of films entitled Why We Fight.

Nearly everyone has played soldier against the Nazis in some MoH clone, as shooters tend to outnumber games on the other forms of combat - naval and air power. One of my favourite games is B-17 Flying Fortress: The Mighty 8th. I find the gameplay very appealing - training as a navigator and trying to figure out if we're on target by which of the Frisian Islands we're passing over, or being the bombardier and desperately trying to spot a steel works in Essen through nine tenths cloud cover, lest we have to restart the bombing-run and go back through the flak - I love that kind of technical roleplay.

A Suicide/The Kiss

I've always been interested in space and astronomy. Unfortunately, the sense of proportion that comes with that is a form of torture. I had what can only be described as an existential crisis at the age of 14, bad enough that the school contacted my parents.

Whilst I may not be as acutely mind-fucked a decade on, I've never actually exited the crisis, just attempted to ignore it. It popped up again in 2006, as a large bulk of posts will testify, and now and then since but the lack of posts mostly hide it. I was thinking a lot, however, and I happened to be reading this article:

A particular way of breaking through the sense of isolation is through touch.

when it struck me like a diamond bullet through the forehead, that I already knew this. Nothing could more be described as transcendent than the random hug the girl in my chemistry class once gave me. It sounds so petty and laughable a saudade, but it just could keep me going. Somewhere out there is a connection to be made.

Art: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Extract), Georges Seurat, 1884
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Quadrant 3

F-35 JSF Developmental Pilot Helmet, Image Editor, 2007

One of the more overdone tropes of Western cinema is the notion of the machine revolt. Most people are familiar with The Matrix and Terminator, but I highly recommend Colossus: The Forbin Project from 1970 as an early example of the genre. The final scene of Colossus is as poignant as John Connor's radio broadcast at the end of Terminator 3 (which was in all other respects a bad remake of T2).

In all these films the machine revolt is preceded by a common act - a computer is empowered by man to do what we are either unable or unwilling to do or think.