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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: January 2020

The Curator of Schlock #308: The Stuff

31 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #308 by Jeff Shuster

The Stuff

You are what you eat. 

I finally got around to trying Popeye’s chicken sandwich. For those of you living overseas, the Popeye’s chicken sandwich was a bit of a phenomenon over here in the United States. It’s a good chicken sandwich, but nothing worth crashing your car into a drive-thru line for. I’ve tried both mild and spicy. I prefer the spicy. The filet seems too big for the bun, and it’s a decent size brioche bun. Popeye’s has huge wings, too, not those dinky little things you get at KFC. Are they growing monster chickens over at Popeye’s headquarters? I’m concerned. I like me some big wings, but not at the expense of Popeye’s employees being attacked by mutated, oversized chickens.

The Stuff poster

Speaking of dangerous vittles, tonight’s movie is 1985’s The Stuff from director Larry Cohen. It’s a movie about a deadly, sentient confectionary dessert. One night a railroad worker notices some white crap bubbling up from the earth. Naturally, he reaches his hand in and sticks some of it in his mouth. And he thinks it tastes good. And then he thinks he can package it up and sell it to his fellow Americans. Some time later, a new dessert is all the rage in the United States. It’s called The Stuff. It looks like vanilla soft serve and people are eating it up like there’s no tomorrow. The Stuff tastes great, is highly nutritious, and very low calorie.

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But not everyone is buying into the hype. A boy named Jason (Scott Bloom) wants nothing to do with The Stuff because he saw some moving around in the fridge when he got up for a midnight snack. His family doesn’t believe him, and pester him to try The Stuff. Once you get a taste of The Stuff, you’re hooked. The following day, Jason visits a grocery store after school. He’s disgusted by all the people buying The Stuff and wrecks all The Stuff displays. Eventually, he’s subdued. No one listens to his warnings about The Stuff.

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Meanwhile, the heads of various ice cream companies have hired an industrial spy named Mo Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) to find out what he can about The Stuff like what it is and how is it made. They mention that the same laws that protect the secret formula of Coca-Cola protect The Stuff. While investigating, Mo runs into Chocolate Chip Charlie (Garrett Morris), whom I assume is based off of Famous Amos. Charlie is upset that his brothers overrode his authority and sold his chain of chocolate chip cookie outlets to The Stuff Company to be converted into The Stuff shops.

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I wonder if they’ll sell more than one flavor of The Stuff.

Rounding out the investigative party is Nicole (Andrea Marcovicci), an advertising executive in charge of marketing The Stuff that Mo managed to charm into helping him. As the movie progresses, we learn that The Stuff ends up possessing the people that consume it, and The Stuff then consumes them from the inside. This movie reminded me of a cross between The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I’m sure there’s some social commentary about American eating habits and fads, but I can’t be bothered to go into that now.

I’ve got a hankering for another Popeye’s chicken sandwich. Funny. I’ve already eaten about five of them today.


Jeffrey Shuster 3

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #55: We All Live in the Shadow

29 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #55 by Drew Barth

We All Live in the Shadow

Do you remember when Marvel comics was headed by someone who wasn’t a stooge for Donald Trump? I remember those years fondly—when I could pick up a Marvel book and not worry about my money going to Ike Perlmutter so he could further grind the VA into the ground.

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Those were the years that spawned one of the greatest pieces of superhero fiction from Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen: Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. And it’s easy to say that one series is a great piece of superhero fiction—dozens of great stories exist—but Nextwave was something special and is something we all live in the shadow of. And it’s one of the only series with its own theme song.

Nextwave offers a fairly straight-forward story: five heroes defect from H.A.T.E. (Highest Anti-Terrorist Effort) due to it being funded by the Beyond Corporation—itself the remnants of the terrorist organization S.I.L.E.N.T.—and must continually thwart Beyond’s development of bizarre weapons of mass destruction. Massive damage is done to whatever town or city the heroes are in, many things explode, many more people are punched, there’s a giant gorilla dressed like Wolverine, and every single page is like a new revelation in what superhero comics can be when they forget the 80s happened and obstinate realism wasn’t the end goal for every story.

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Nextwave is the kind of story that sees a machine man, a woman who can turn herself into particles, a demon hunter, a drunk with super strength, and a teenager who can blow things up with her mind, and realizes that this is a story that needs explosions and jokes. Sometimes all we want to do is give punching a chance.

But then there’s the moments throughout where Ellis’ penchant for the best character work comes through as well. Almost every character has a moment, even if it’s only two panels, that encompasses who they are as people. The Captain has a moment where his mom hangs his bear by its neck when he was a kid; Aaron Stack is called an asshole by The Celestials; Elsa Bloodstone is thrown into a pit of beasts before she can even walk. They’re small moments bookended by punching and exploding, but they’re the kinds of small moments that can make them feel more rounded.

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Nextwave is distilled superhero comics, ninety-nine percent proof. There has been very little before that was like Nextwave,and there’s been almost nothing that has come close to the mood and feel of the story. It’s one of those things that’s tough to describe—it’s comedy without parody, satire without spite. Ellis and Immonen crafted a story that will last long into the next century, and we can never escape its shadow.

Get excited. There’s lots more punching.


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Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #83: The Tempest (2019)

26 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film

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Tags

The Donmar Trilogy, The Tempest

Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film 2

83. Phyllidia Lloyd’s The Tempest (Part 3 of The Donmar Warehouse’s All-Female Shakespeare Trilogy), 2019

I have a fondness for prison theater. When Beckett directed a trilogy of his plays at San Quentin in 1985, he found actors who embodied his existential tragicomedies with an ease few professional actors could muster. Those productions were much more successful on an artistic level than the Broadway production of Godot I saw about a decade ago, in which Studio 54 was filled with an audience fawning over every breath Nathan Lane took. It wasn’t Nathan Lane’s fault as an actor, but rather his fault as a beloved Broadway icon’s fault. He could have been performing a passion play and the audience would have deemed it cute.

I have written about the documentary Shakespeare Behind Bars, in which prisoners with serious crimes in their pasts wrestle with similar themes in The Tempest. With any good documentary about a production, though, there is some disappointment that watching the performance itself isn’t an option.

I love theater. 

I don’t know if I have expounded my theory about watching theater and film in this blog, dear readers, but here it is in case I haven’t. 

Too much is made of the difficulty of Shakespeare, especially in high school and college classrooms in which the bard is perversely read rather than witnessed, or if witnessed, usually with a film so dusty and antiquated that students are conditioned to loathe the experience all the more. (Olivier’s Hamlet or any of the BBC’s Complete Shakespeare is a suicidal point of entry.) 

Any good performance of a play makes that text come alive the way it was intended to. Imagine a cult of people who sit around only reading a screenplay of The Matrix rather than watching the movie. Such a thing can be done; doing so more than once a year will transform one into a hipster. When I have shown undergraduates Michael Hoffman’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, after 10 minutes they are watching it as if it were any other good movie. When I attended a matinee of Romeo and Juliet at Orlando Shakespeare Theater surrounded by mostly high school students, they understood the play perfectly.

What to make, though, of a film of a theatrical performances of Shakespeare half-set in prison?

The Donmar Warehouse’s All-Female Shakespeare Trilogy comprises three films of theatrical productions in a warehouse space, something akin to a black box gym. These shows were performed in 2016, and released on film later.

Donmar Tempest 5

The framing device used for all three films is a prison context. Guards somberly march in the prisoners who will be the actors. Then, one prisoner-actor performs a testimonial about her crime, and her hope or lack thereof for her future. Then, the play begins. Much of the discourse about these productions indicates that they are set in a prison, but the prison is more of a meta-setting. It’s not Prospero in prison—instead, it is Hannah, played by veteran actor Harriet Walter. At times in the play, the prison frame intrudes into the action with a jolt, such as the guards demanding the shipwrecked nobles of The Tempest to strip down out of their suits. That wouldn’t happen in a prison production of Twelfth Night. The reality of the play shifts in this production.

Donmar Tempest 3

Ariel causing a tempest.

There are some upsides to this prison-as-meta-setting—and I apologize for how fucking academic all this sounds, but please believe me, I am using this jargon specifically, to save us some agony here:

  1. The all-female cast doesn’t need any more explanation. If you’ve read much of this column, dear readers, then you know I like nontraditional casting, but dislike distracting color- and gender-blind casting. Give me half a reason to believe in your non-traditional casting, and I will. The Donmar Trilogy made me forget that this is an all female cast instantly. This provided an unpretentious opportunity for women to play leads in Shakespeare. 
  2. The plain costumes, lots of grey sweats, make these productions seem urgently primal, both modern and ancient.
  3. The basic special effects and props require the emotional buy-in from the audience—one can sense from these films how theater is a fun collaboration between performers and audience.
  4. The strange dislocations of the setting are actually a welcome distraction for an audience overfamiliar with Shakespeare’s work. I imagine The Donmar Trilogy would be a bumfuzzling introduction to these plays (“What the hell is happening?”), but to Shakespeare junkies, the weirdness makes these classics feel new. 

Okay, I am over 700 words deep and haven’t even mentioned The Tempest yet.

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Harriet Walter kicks ass as Propsero. When Helen Mirren played the role in Julie Taymor’s film, I couldn’t see what she was trying to do; she seemed medically sedated. Harriet Walter makes the dialogue seem both natural and appropriate, and can convey so much magic through her gaze and the sound of her voice. She wears a gray tank top, and there is so much perfection in her muscles and wrinkles. She is a woman who has gained power through her age, it seems.

Donmar Tempest 1

Jade Anouka is a wonderful Ariel—her singing voice is beautiful, and jumps around singing styles so well. One of the island’s spellbound sequences was presented as a carnivale outpouring of excitement.

As I learned from Lisa Wolpe’s one woman show in which she portrayed Romeo, any great actor can play any part. The Donmar Trilogy reinforces this idea, as the actual gender of the actors seems like an afterthought (even when the guards call the actors ladies). 

Donmar Tempest 2

Race is an afterthought. These characters emerge so forcefully from these actors that it seems almost like the most perfect way to experience the story. Love is love. Betrayal is betrayal. Family is family.

The play moves along quickly, which is a relief, since The Tempest doesn’t have great villains. Prospero really is never not in control of everything. The strength of the ending is the teetering emotions of Prospero, who forgives his usurping brother, which does not require the repentance of that brother.

The prison setting ends the play with a surprise: Prospero may leave the island to return to Milan, but Hannah (the actor-character Harriet Walter portrays) will never be paroled, and as the other actors are released and say their goodbyes with a voiced-over babel, Hannah will remain, sitting resignedly in bed, with only a book for company.

The irony of this production is that so much energy and discipline went into making the play unique, yet the result is a perfectly transparent story, much like the first time I watched The Tempest, which is a gift I am grateful for.


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John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

Episode 403: Jericho Brown and Richard Blanco!

25 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Poetry

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Episode 403 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)


This week, I talk to two poets.

First, I speak with the joyous Jericho Brown about his complex relationship to poetic tradition, identity, and music. Frankly, I kept making tangents to music. Perhaps too many. But this was one of my favorite interviews from Miami Book Fair International.

Jericho Brown MBFI 2019

Second, I speak with Richard Blanco about the poetry of we, and the importance of giving an audience an entertaining performance, and writing poetry that makes me cry in yet another of my favorite interviews from MBFI.

Richard Blanco

TEXTS DISCUSSED

The TraditionHow to Love a Country

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover

Episode 403 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)

The Curator of Schlock #307: The Brood

24 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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David Cronenberg, Oliver Reed, Orson Welles, The Brood

The Curator of Schlock #307 by Jeff Shuster

The Brood

Seriously, what is wrong with David Cronenberg?

Criterion DVDs are weird. They have weird special features. On my DVD for David Cronenberg’s The Brood, we have an interview with Oliver Reed on The Merv Griffin Show from 1980. Other guests include Orson Welles and, naturally, Charo. I’m terrified because Oliver Reed starts taking jabs at Welles and I’m expecting the whole affair to get bloody, with Merv Griffin getting set on fire at some point, but Reed spends much of the interview talking about his love of American hamburgers and eventually praises Orson Welles as a god among directors. At know no point in this interview is The Brood even mentioned.

Why did Criterion include it in the special features on the disc?

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1979’s The Brood from director David Cronenberg is a disgusting little movie. The movie begins with Oliver Reed wearing nothing but a robe while sitting in yoga pose on a stage berating his son in front of live audience. No, this isn’t a method-acting lesson, but a public therapy session. Oliver Reed stars as Dr. Hal Ragian, a psychotherapist who runs the Somatree Institute where he employs the use of psychoplasmics, a therapy method that has patients unleash their suppressed feelings by physically altering their bodies through pure will of the mind.

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Frank Carveth (Art Hindle) thinks Dr. Ragian is a quack. Nola Carveth (Samantha Eggar), Frank’s wife, is a patient at Somatree, dealing with anger issues while fighting with Frank over custody of Candace (Cindy Hinds), their five-year-old daughter. Frank notices marks and cuts on Candace’s back and doesn’t want her staying at Somatree. Dr. Ragain tells Frank that Nola needs Candace there to help with her therapy. He tells Frank that he’d better bring Candace back the following weekend or there will be legal action.

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Frank drops Candace off with his mother-in-law while he goes talk to a lawyer. I suppose Candace is having a better time with Grandma, as she seems more mellow than her mother. Granted, Grandma is indulging in some Scotch and it’s not even 3 PM. While going to refresh her drink, she gets attacked by what seems to be a small child in her kitchen. The attacker hits grandma with what I believe is meat tenderizer. It’s quite awful. There’s blood everywhere.

The child shrink at the police station tries prying some info out of Candace, but the girl remembers noththing. Frank’s father-in-law flies over to attend the funeral. Grandpa and Grandma got divorced about ten years prior, but he gets distraught over her death and decides to get smashed in his old house. Guess who shows up again? It’s that same child that killed Grandma earlier. The child beats Grandpa to death with a snow globe.

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Frank discovers Grandpa’s body and we finally see what the killer child looks like. It’s some kind of mutant freak. A really ugly kid. Its face is all caved in. The kid drops dead after fighting with Frank for a bit. Doctors do an autopsy on the deformed child. The kid has a beak-like mouth, no sexual organs, and no navel. This is bizarre. You’ll be seeing more of them as the film rolls on. And trust me, you don’t want to see how these things are born.

I could go on, but I’m about to lose my lunch. The toilet beckons.


Jeffrey Shuster 3

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #54: Reaper of Tears

22 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #54 by Drew Barth

Reaper of Tears

Kelly Sue DeConnick is one of the best writers of this century. Emma Ríos is one of the best artists of this century. Pretty Deadly: The Rat has recently wrapped, and no other series that has come out that has so thoroughly affected the way in which I engage with monthly comics.

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Pretty Deadly: The Rat is the third volume of the Pretty Deadly series, but is the first of planned miniseries that will continue the story forward. I discussed the return of Pretty Deadly after a three year hiatus a few months back and having the entire story laid out before me is an experience that has brought me no shortage of tears. As the story centers on the Fields family in 1930s Hollywood, we meet Clara Fields, granddaughter of Sara Fields from earlier in the series and niece to Frank Fields—a man who is looking for the reason his niece had to die.

As a noir-tinged mystery, Pretty Deadly excels in creating a mood and atmosphere that draws readers and characters alike deeper into its world. But as a story of family and the ways in which people are broken by their own obsessions, DeConnick and Ríos bring us a story fraught with such sadness and hope that it is difficult to walk away without feeling overwhelmed by emotions.

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There is a particular way that comics approach storytelling that will always be unique to the medium, namely in many of the modern, independent comics. A series can go on hiatus and return to us after a few years—the feeling of those series returning is like coming home to settle into a warm blanket. The characters and story bring such a comfort to the senses. Even in a story like Pretty Deadly centering on death and revenge, seeing the final image of Ginny in the first issue brought a small swell of tears to my eyes. And that is the power of a good story and good characters—the emotional connections we make that persist even after a story ends. However, Ginny’s story isn’t quite over yet. There are still a few more miniseries planned for the future, and I can only imagine the devastation they will bring.

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I predict Pretty Deadly is going to remain as one of the greatest pieces of fiction in this century and maintain as a shining example of what comics can do when words meet pictures. It is mythic and massive with its storytelling, but intimate in characters that you want to get closer to throughout. To read Pretty Deadly is to experience the best comics have to offer.

Get excited. Dry those tears.


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Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

 

The Anonymous Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #2

19 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post, Sozzled Scribbler

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The Anonymous Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #2

As transcribed by DMETRI KAKMI

19 January 2020

The Sozzled Scribbler sizzles as the Great Southern Land burns.

People are, of course, upset and yours truly thinks, What a bunch of whingers. What happened to the great Australian spirit? Let the fires burn, I say. Only good can come of it.

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Let’s list three positives so that we can get a proper perspective on the affair.

First, the vast columns of smoke visible from space might alert aliens to life on earth. Let them come. Most Earthlings are barely sentient anyway. The Martians can’t possibly be worse than us.

The only problem is if they land in the land down under, they will end up in a refugee concentration camp…I mean immigration detention center… until they are approved by that arm of Rupert Murdoch, Inc. alternatively called a government.

Perhaps the aliens are better off going to the United States, where they will be merely shot at by the citizenry? Better bullet holes in the space suit than indefinite incarceration in Manus Island.

Second, the conflagration is said to be worse than anything that happened in the Amazon (not sure if that’s the forest or the company). If this is true, then it’s an occasion to celebrate.

I mean to say the fires might kill off Australia’s many deadly pests: flies, snakes, crocs, spiders, Derryn Hinch, Alan Jones, Michaelia Cash, Tony Abbott, and the serial killers that hunt down German backpackers. Though the latter could be said to be performing a public service. Australia likes its ‘quiet achievers’, you know.

Third, the smoke will block out the UV rays that mar with unsightly cancers the golden skins of the sun-loving populace. Think of it. It could be a return to the 1970s when persons of lower class lolled about all day on the beach, slathered in coconut suntan lotion. Now you can just grab some free ash straight out of the sky and rub it on.

See, take a negative, turn it to a positive. We must see the humour in all things. After all, what’s not to laugh about a town called Smoko going up in smoke?

As it happens, the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (ScoMo to the Twitterati) rang before Christmas last year to seek my advice on this very topic.

Incidentally, ScoMo once invited me to his Pentecostal Church, where we shared the same buttock-numbing pew and even spoke in tongues. Though it must be said I garble my words at the best of times, especially when I haven’t had a martini or two for breakfast. I did not go back. The lay person may not know but Pentecostals, in keeping with their Methodist-Holiness heritage, use non-alcoholic wine (!), or worse grape juice (!!), during communion. I ask you what is the point of going to church if there is no alcohol?

But back to our pre-Christmas phone conversation.

‘There’s a bit of a fire on, mate,’ ScoMo drawled, the usually assured voice quivering.

‘Beg pardon,’ quoth I, looking in some alarm around my luxurious, smoke-free apartment.

‘There’s a big barbie on,’ the Prime Minister clarified. ‘The wildlife’s roastin’ in the bush and the do-gooders are pissed off ‘cause the koalas and the galahs are falling out of the trees, burnt to a crisp. But the family’s booked in for a nice little shindig in Hawaii. I mean tah say I even sent the Deputy Prime Minister to buy me a luau shirt and a grass skirt.’

‘It’s wise to blend in with the natives,’ said I, leaning across to freshen up my drink. It was going to be a long call; ScoMo is not the brightest candle in the tabernacle.

‘Yeah, but should I stay or should I go?’

Silence from my end, as I waited to see where this was leading.

‘If I go will there be trouble?’ ScoMo pursued.

‘And if you stay will it be double?’ I hedged with caution.

‘So come on and let me know.’

I chuckled at this, but our purely unconscious reference to the 1970s rock band went unheeded at the other end.

‘It’s hard to know,’ I replied, wiping the smile off my face. ‘What have you done to mollify your subjects?’

‘I denied there’s a such a thing as climate change.’

‘Always a good start. What else?’

‘Oh, you know, I sent them thoughts and prayers.’

‘That always pacifies the simpleton. What else?’

‘We’re gonna legislate sentences up to twenty-one years for environmental protest and we’re gonna stop journalists from going to disaster zones to report our stuff-ups.’

‘When all else fails, fall back on dictatorship,’ I quipped, draining my glass and reaching for another.

‘I’ve done all I can, mate. But the friggin’ lefties are still being mean tah me.’ The usually assured voice trembled further; I was afraid there might be tears. ‘Why can’t they see Gina Rinehart’s coal is good for them?’

‘You may be putting out the fire with gasoline,’ I said, indulging the sing-song mood of the day.

In the end a more determined note crept into ScoMo’s voice. I could almost hear the Australian national anthem strike up behind him.

‘See these eyes so red,’ he proclaimed. ‘Red like the bush burning bright. Well, I’m gonna wipe ‘em dry and go to Hawaii with my god-fearing, all-hetero family. And that’s that.’

‘Well said, Prime Minister.’

‘Yeah,’ he added, with rising determination. ‘Tel meth eta ocal.’

‘Scotty,’ I garbled into the phone. ‘You’re speaking in tongues.’

‘Sorry, mate. Got excited for a minute. All I said was, “Let them eat coal.”’

And he hung up, leaving me to think anyone who makes a melange of The Clash and David Bowie with Marie Antoinette deserves hell’s fiery storm.

Until next we meet. Cheerio!


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The Sozzled Scribbler was born in the shadow of the Erechtheion in Athens, Greece, to an Egyptian street walker and a Greek bear wrestler. Of no fixed abode, he has subsisted in Istanbul, Rome, London, New Orleans and is currently hiding out in Melbourne. He partakes of four bottles of Bombay gin and four packets of Dunhill cigarettes a day.

His mortified amanuensis, Dmetri Kakmi, is a writer and editor. The fictionalised memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia. He edited the children’s anthology When We Were Young. His new book The Door and other Uncanny Tales will be released in May 2020.

The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film #82: Hamlet (1964)

19 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Shakespeare, The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film

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Rogues Guide to Shakes on Film 2

82. Grigori Mikhaylovich Kozintsev and Iosef Shapiro’s Hamlet

I am not sure why I enjoyed this Russian Hamlet so much. Jaded churl that I’ve become. I have had a surfeit of Hamlet (this is my eighth for this blog), and I don’t see that Kozintsev and Shapiro’s’s gorgeous, yet understated presentation is breathtakingly original.

Hamlet Kozintsev 2.png

I have no right to judge the Boris Patsernak translation, as the subtitles are those of the bard (“Nyet, m’lord”).

The acting isn’t bad. Mikhail Nazvanovas Claudius seems interesting, and Anastasiya Vertinskaya as Ophelia is arresting.

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Innokenty Smoktunovsky is completely adequate as Hamlet—it should be telling that he’s not the first actor I want to discuss in this film. His legs are really skinny, which look pigeon-like in his tights.

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But he avoids Orsinoesque levels of angst. The whole cast seems to have a stoic approach, and I must confess I am unfamiliar with Russian film of this period to see a clear cultural rule in the performances. 1964 was eleven years after the death of Stalin.

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I suppose I feel about this Hamlet something like what I felt about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It was competent enough, and felt both superior-looking and familiar. Few complaints. Pass the Grey Goose.

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The lived-in sensibility of this Denmark encompasses the additions Kozintsev, Shapiro, and Pasternak have added. The extras react in surprising ways to the action, which lets the political aspect of the story to feel immediate. Claudius’sopening monologue is repeated like gossip in the court, as if by an anxious chorus. Later, the courtiers try to keep up when Claudius applauds “The Murder of Gonzago.” They falter instantly when the king cannot maintain the charade.

Hamlet Kozintsev 10

An insensate Ophelia is dressed in mourning clothes by servants. Laertes is shown fetching his ancestral sword before confronting the royal family for his father’s murder. The visual language of cinema enhances the story, letting the plot emerge rather than racing to squeeze a tragedy into two hours. (The running time is 2 hours and 20 minutes, but doesn’t feel that long.)

This is what I think people mean when they say setting is a character. A well-established setting can make the fiction seem more real–the setting of a story is as important as characters. (This does not mean that might heart and brain are interchangeable; the setting-is-character theory seems really lazy to me.)

Hamlet Kozintsev 9

The crisp cinematography by Jonas Gritsius shows off the ancient castle with regal, Renaissance pomp, and the lives lived within such beautiful cages, too. The depth of field and painterly composition of shots makes the viewer, or this rogue at least, become absorbed. This is the best-looking Hamlet I have seen, a world above the gauzy haze of Olivier’s 1948 version.

Kozintsev Hamlet 1

One of the highlights of this Hamlet is its cinematic ghost, with a gothic cape perpetually unfurling behind it in slow motion. It’s difficult to convey a Renaissance sense of dread over hauntings, but this film’s apparition makes an impact.

Kozintsev Hamlet 4

Dmitri Shostakovich’s music splits the difference between modern orchestration and classical brutalist music, but also conveys court music with a light touch. This is a soundtrack I would gladly own. At times, music and action sans dialogue carry this film. If you don’t love Shostakovich, stop reading this blog right now. Or give him a listen while you read.

Solomon Virsaladze’s costumes are outstanding. The Renaissance wardrobe looks authentic without looking ridiculous.

Hamlet Kozintsev 8.png

Gertrude appears at the start of the play in mourning clothes, including black chiffon gloves that look too dainty and sexy for mourning (or maybe just Byronic in taste). Gertrude’s vanity is especially apparent in this version. When Hamlet looks what’s he’s killed behind the arras, there were royal dresses adoring headless mannequins.

Okay, I officially like this Hamlet more than The Rise of Skywalker, but less the than the nearly perfect Zeffirelli version. If this 1964 Hamlet ever comes out in blu ray format, or whatever high-resolution format comes next, I recommend picking this one up.


1flip

John King (Episode, well, all of them) holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, and an MFA from New York University. He has reviewed performances for Shakespeare Bulletin.

 

 

Episode 402: A Craft Discussion of T.S. Elliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent” and “Hamlet and Its Problems”!

18 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Episode, Essay, Poetry, Shakespeare

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 402 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)

This week, Vanessa Blakeslee and I assail more essays on the craft of literature, this time two by T.S. Eliot.

TS Eliot TDO

TEXTS DISCUSSED

“Hamlet and Its Problems” can be found here; “Tradition and the Individual Talent” can be found here.

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 402 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)

The Curator of Schlock #306: Rabid

17 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Horror, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 1 Comment

The Curator of Schlock #306 by Jeff Shuster

Rabid

David Cronenberg ain’t right.

I’ve got nothing profound to say about anything at the moment. I’m cranky. I’m wishing I could time travel back to 1997. I miss my Nintendo 64, my bubbled out CRT TV, and a new X-Files to look forward to on Friday nights. Or had The X-Files moved to Sundays at that point? I don’t remember.

This is why I like movies. They can be miniature time capsules that let you wallow in a particular decade for a couple of hours.

Tonight, we’ll travel back to 1977 to experience a violent rabies epidemic that could have occurred on the outskirts of Montreal, Canada.

Rabid1

1977’s Rabid from director David Cronenberg was released in not just a very important year for movies, but also a very important year in the history of the world as it is the year I was born.

Imagine if that hadn’t happened.

Rabid 6

You would not be reading this blog right now. What would you be doing with your life? Contemplating plastic surgery? Speaking of which, our movie begins at the Keloid Clinic for Plastic Surgery somewhere in the Quebec countryside. A young couple named Rose (Marilyn Chambers) and Hart (Frank Moore) are riding motorcycles near the clinic, but get into bad accident because some loser can’t get his RV started and he’s blocking the whole Canadian road.

The Keloid Clinic is the closest medical facility in the area. Hart’s injuries aren’t critical, but Rose is going to die unless Dr. Dan Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) tries an experimental procedure to that uses morphogenetic skin supplements to repair her skin and organs.

Don’t ask me what that is. I ain’t no doctor.

Rabid3

Rose stays in a coma for a couple of months until she wakes up screaming. A patient named Lloyd (J. Roger Periard) at the hospital goes to check on her, and Rose asks him to hug her because she’s cold and he’s warm. Lloyd complies because she’s young and attractive, like someone out of Behind the Green Door, but then a tendril emerges from her armpit and sucks his blood. This Rose has a thorn.

Rabid - 1976

Lloyd wakes up later with no memory of the attack, but gets transferred to another hospital because his blood isn’t clotting. The next night, Rose leaves the clinic to feed on the blood of a cow, but, naturally, decides to snack on a purvey old farmer instead. Both of these men develop a nasty case of rabies and begin attacking people like zombies. If they bite you, it’s only a matter of time before you start foaming at the mouth too. Rabies shots don’t work either.

Rabid 5

Rose leaves the clinic and begins spreading the rabies as she takes the blood of one victim after another. Martial Law gets declared in Montreal as the rabies zombie army begins to grow. There’s a rather tragic scene of a police officer gunning down one of the infected in a mall, and a mall Santa Claus gets caught in the crossfire.

Rabies ruin Christmas.

Rabid 2

I don’t think this is going to end up well for anyone. Anyway, Rabid is a good little body horror/zombie movie from the late 70s. It’s no Dawn of the Dead, but this will keep your attention on a Saturday night.

Pray for David Cronenberg, though.


Jeffrey Shuster 1

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

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