surrealism

The Night Bookmobile

brittany — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

I am new to the world of graphic novels and so is The Night Bookmobile’s author Audrey Niffenegger, bestselling author of The Time Traveler’s Wife. According to the author, the book was inspired by a short H.G. Wells story and a dream she had as a teenager. In just thirty-three pages, Niffenegger manages to intrigue and captivate with the story of Alexandra, a young woman who gets into a fight with her live-in boyfriend and begins wandering the neighborhood in the dead of night hoping to blow off some steam. That’s when she comes across The Night Bookmobile, a mobile library run by Mr. Openshaw.

Once inside, Alexandra soon discovers that the library is filled with everything she’s ever read, from old takeout menus and her childhood diary to her family Bible and various Jane Austen titles. When daylight breaks Mr. Openshaw rushes Alexandra off, not allowing her to check out any of the books. For weeks after this bizarre encounter, Alexandra wanders the streets in the middle of the night searching for the mysterious Mr. Openshaw and his roving library. Her boyfriend, convinced she’s having an affair, eventually leaves Alexandra and so she lives alone, spending a majority of her time reading.

Nine years later in front of Wrigley Field, Alexandra has another chance encounter with the bookmobile. Once inside she takes note of all the new titles that have been added and asks Mr. Openshaw if she can be his assistant, but he refuses and recommends that she become a “regular librarian”—and so she does.

Twelve years elapse before she sees Mr. Openshaw again and during that time she’s become a librarian leading a rather solitary life. The story ends in a rather surprising way just a few pages later, which left me feeling a bit shocked and sad that Alexandra’s story was over so soon. Thankfully, this is just the first installment of a much larger work called The Library that will be released in segments.

From its very first pages, The Night Bookmobile has a sort of lovely sadness that lingers over each frame and you find yourself—right along with Alexandra—loving the idea of the bookmobile for unidentifiable reasons and wondering what it all means. With The Night Bookmobile’s quiet intensity, Niffenegger has made me a graphic novel believer.

Written by: Tina Vasquez, October 14th 2010

Taxidermia

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:00:00 +0000

Directed by György Pálfi

Regent Releasing

I was given a bootleg copy of Taxidermia about a year ago, before its North American release. True to bootleg copies, the disc went kaput about fifteen minutes into it, leaving me with the opening scene burned into my brain: the image of a flaming orgasm. Fire literally shoots out of a man’s penis.

When I had the opportunity to review this critically recognized and awarded Hungarian film, I was excited to get past the opening scene. All the reviews praised the cinematography and aesthetics of this film, with one caveat—if you can stomach it.

I will freely admit that I could barely stomach it. The flaming orgasm was only the tip of the phallic iceberg. Other masturbation and sex scenes prevailed. Again, tolerable. But then came the pig slaughter, and the subsequent sex scene on top of the pig entrails. I felt myself slinking down in my seat, looking around at my fellow reviewers, hoping someone else would walk out. But they sat tight, so I did as well, queasily.

Director György Pálfi’s Taxidermia is the story of three generations of men in Hungary. The grandfather Vendel Morosgovanyi, the pyro-masturbator, is an orderly for a crude family in the countryside, searching for love. His son Kalman becomes a competitive eater, pursuing victory as voraciously as a professional athlete. Finally Lajos, the last of this family, becomes the film’s namesake: a taxidermist seeking to preserve his own mortality.

The competitive eating chapter pushed me to the point of gagging, so I won’t indulge you with the details except that it involves vomiting and gorging on gelatinous delicacies. And the gruesome finale is a spectacle in itself. Self-taxidermy with the precision of a sculptor’s chisel.

However, lest this review be too tainted by my hang-ups, there are very impressive elements of this film that deserve noting.

A film like this makes me think, why? Is it a satire, a parody, or just sensation? There are plenty of torture films out there that probably rival the grotesque found here (such as the neverending Saw franchise), I just don’t go see them. Taxidermia should not be categorized with those films, because the purpose of this film is not to shock and disgust. This is a film about a family, linked by desire.

The cinematography truly is beautiful. A mix of realism, surrealism, and magical realism create an almost erotic experience, which makes the grotesque that much more disturbing. Two of my favorite scenes come in the first part, as the camera circles a wooden tub that is used for everything in a family’s daily life: to cradle a baby, to bathe in, to knead dough on, to hold the body of a dead relative, and to hold the recently slaughtered pig. It’s so beautifully and seamlessly shot that you forget about the unsavory details of this arrangement. The other scene is in Vendel’s imagination, as he walks into a three-dimensional fairytale storybook.

Consider yourself warned regarding the grotesque, and if you do go see Taxidermia, focus on what Pálfi is really doing here. If you can handle the sight of bodily fluids and animal slaughter, you will experience a unique story, set against a gray backdrop of intensity and hopelessness.

Written by: Claire Burrows, August 25th 2009

Synecdoche, New York

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:58:00 +0000

Directed by Charlie Kaufman

Sony Pictures Classics

It sucked.

Any other questions?

Okay, I know all the reviewers are raving. My husband raved (and I’ll let him justify that on his blog). I suspect the reviewers are raving because that’s what they think they’re supposed to do. It’s a deep and serious movie. It’s existentialist! It’s about the meaning of life! It’s surreal!

Yes, it’s all those things, but that doesn’t mean it’s good.

But it was directed by Charlie Kaufman! And it stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and other great actors! Saith the reviewer, “Surely I’m the only one who isn’t getting it. Ergo, pretend I got it.”

I admit I’m tired of that schlub’s (Hoffman) schlubby act. I’m tired of his potbelly and his patchy skin and his mouth hanging open in bewilderment. He may be a good actor, but he’s done his schtick one too many times for me. So that’s part of it. He’s just aesthetically offensive. I like my actors to have some bones in their faces, some grace to their bodies, even if they are dying of pustules.

There was no discernible storyline. Or at least, they started out with one, but lost it somewhere along the way, but kept bringing it back. In other words, they couldn’t decide on a course of action and stick to it. Indecisiveness that stretches over two hours in a difficult movie is not my idea of entertainment.

And at the end of the day, this is what it is supposed to be: entertainment. If I’m not entertained, and if the most profound thing they could present in the way of a meaning of life was that we’re all actors in a play, each the lead in our own tragedies, that’s not profound. Well, it may be profound, but it’s still a cliche.

If I want deep, I read a fucking book. Not saying movies can’t be both deep and entertaining. They can. This one wasn’t. It was slow. It was boring. They could’ve shaved thirty minutes off it without losing anything, and it was full of plot twists that neither made movie sense nor contributed to the point of the movie, if the movie had a point. There were changes in tone and in the characters that were senseless, random, arbitrary.

There comes a time when a filmmaker tries to do something ambitious, and in the process of doing it, his head starts swelling. Then he starts inventing words and throwing random stuff in to make it deliberately confusing. He’s brilliant! Nobody will get it and everybody will think they got it (or should get it), and they will all write reviews that are wildly different from each other’s, which the reader will promptly forget as soon as she reads them because they aren’t actually saying anything of substance, anything that has much relation to the movie.

There were a few clever moments. Of course. I’m sure Finnegans Wake had a few witty lines. Or maybe not. This wasn’t quite that bad. Let’s say Ulysses then.

It still sucked.

Yes, I just indirectly admitted I thought Ulysses sucked. What of it?

Cross-posted at The Apostate

Written by: The Apostate, December 2nd 2008