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Gilliam once described Brazil as being set on the Belfast/LA border.
Alien? Weerl, Alien is your whole vagina dentata thing, isn't it? Alien was spoze to be a sterile female, al la worker insects. Then you have the laying-eggs-in-people-while-they're-still-alive inna ichneumon wasp stylee, such that you have a female that can impregnate you, fatally, regardless of gender, and you have one of the most disturbing beasties ever invented. That's why Aliens is up there with Frankenstiens and Draculers and zombies, and everything else is just old man Cooper from the fairground who would have got away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids. Q.E.D.
Mordant I know you wrote this a while back but did you mean the face huggers as the vagina dentata or the aliens themselves. Whilst the imagery of the facehuggers would fit as VD wouldn't the act of penetration and insemination be seen as more male? That and the look of the aliens (phallus like) would suggest that like vampires it was about rape. Also isn’t a lot of Giger’s work about penetration? This would also tie in with the stalk and slashness (albeit a more sophisticated then much of the rest of the genre) of the original movie.
Not to say there's not a lot of VD in the genre: Predator (the creature came from an idea by James Cameron, someone who seems to have fetishised the idea of a strong female)(also if aliens are the penis is anyone surprised that Aliens vs. Predator is just a porn film), the Thing at times, one of the Blade films and even the Sarlac Pit off the top of my head. I have considered starting a thread about this but I seem to lack anything more constructive to say than: Gee isn't there a lot of vagina dentata in horror/sci-fi and does that suggest there's a strong fear of females running through out? Wonder why that is?
GGM was it Holy Mountain that Jodorowksy was tried for heresy in Mexico for?
Perhaps it's because I really, really like him but I keep on thinking that Michael Mann is trying to tell us something about how we relate to the modern city as an entity. Probably seen in Collateral the best, a journey to overcome, LA as the third principal character, the use of technology as a focus (in this case high definition cameras that show more than the human eye can pick up, what are we seeing beyond what we consciously see), the trickster in the forms of the coyote cross in front of the taxi etc. Sadly I lack the requisite knowledge to understand it in anything but quite a shallow manner.
Does anyone else think that Mel Gibson is trying some kind Christian Ritual with his films? Leaving aside the theme of revenge, which seems to run through a lot of his work (Mad Max, leathal Weapon, Braveheart all similar stories in a way, I'm looking forward to Passion of Christ IV, with Joe Pesci as Doubting Thomas and Jet Li as Pontius Pilot: "If you said this in Galilee you would be dead by now."). At the end of Braveheart he seemed to want to transform himself, in the character of Wallace, into a Christ figure. Is this idea continued in the Passion of Christ?
On a personal note American Beauty and Grosse Point Blank for me in terms of magical. Just a peak behind the scenes, letting you know that there's more to what you see and how that relates to how you approach life.
I strongly suspect that in 1000 years, people will look back at the 20th century and talk about the World Wars, the Holocaust, the Internet, and Star Wars.
That would be depressing.
I haven't seen Cigarette Burns but there is a book by Ramsey Campbell that deals with a similar idea of a missing occult film. In this case one starring Bela Lugosi but I can't remember the name of the book.
Also I’m quite surprised that nobody’s mentioned Donnie Darko. |
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