Four Quarters

Disorderly Minds

China Mieville's Embassytown follows the story of a deep space pilot who becomes enmeshed in political and social upheaval in her home city, a community of ambassadors on a nexus world with a linguistically unique indigenous population. Mieville creates a vivid, rich milieu for his characters to play in and, though it takes a while to get going, it snowballs into a thrilling and surprisingly emotive read. Mieville continues his golden streak.

The Psychopath Test sees Jon Ronson investigate, in his usual idiosyncratic fashion, the business of diagnosing and treating psychopaths. With a cast including Broadmoor prisoners, proselytising practitioners, activist Scientologists and borderline CEO's Ronson packs in the giggles as he uncovers the murky world of the DSM and the challenges inherent in assessing someone else's sanity. Due to Ronson's scattergun approach this is closer to Them than Stare at Goats but it's a effective, charming primer about the business of noggin doctoring.

Art & Magic

Werner Herzog's quiet, thoughtful documentary The Cave of Forgotten Dreams offers a rare glimpse of the prehistoric art in the Chauvet cave system. Accompanied and informed by a clutch of scientists, Herzog explores the works and our current understanding of how, when and why they were made. The cinematography is stunning and the film has a wonderfully meditative atmosphere, assisted by Werner's ambling drone and infectious wonderment.


Brion Gyson and his Dream Machine are the subject of documentary Flicker. An innovative artist and close chum of Burroughs Gyson tinkered with calligraphy, printing, poetry but most famously developed, with Ian Sommerville, the Dream Machine device, which oscillates light at the magical 10hz frequency and causes mild euphoria and hallucinations. It's an interesting film which, along with the the requisite biographical information about this curious, undervalued artist, has plenty of testimonials from celeb and otherwise machine advocates.

Trenchant Trenchard Bs

Hunting humans was a well worn trope even by the 80's but Turkey Shoot's gleeful attitude adds plenty of, er, vigour to the usual proceedings. A gaggle of 'deviants' are interred in a brutal, dystopic prison after getting softened up by a vicious-yet-camp warden are soon chosen to become the prey for a bunch of blood hungry elites. Throw in some gratuitous nudity, visceral almost relentless violence and a random lycanthrope and the things get dumb and ugly fast. Sure the acting, script and plot are solidly B-movie quality and it's made on a shoestring but director Brian Trenchard-Smith keeps things bubbling over and somehow it ends up lots and lots of brainless fun.


Four years later and Trenchard-Smith was back with another, even madder, scifi dystopia called Dead-End Drive In. Society is crumbling fast and while violence and disorder paint the streets a young hoon takes his girlfriend to an old fashioned drive in only to discover it's some sort of weird, government sponsored honey trap/prison from which there's no escape. The couple take divergent views on their uncouth neighbours and their future but it's not long before the tentative peace is disrupted by escape attempts and an influx of Asian 'immigrants'. While Turkey was unabashed nonsense the ham fisted attempt to shoehorn satire into the barmy plot means there's a less time for the requisite sex and violence.

Celestial Visions

Psychobabblers

A Dangerous Method is Cronenberg's glossy examination of the troubled relationship between crazy Carl Jung and single minded Sigmund Freud. Jung, while enthralled by his master's revolutionary thinking, embarks on a foolish affair with one of his more attractive patients which presages/underpins the intellectual feud between the two men. Fassbender, Mortensen and Knightly take the main roles in this little psychodrama and perform reasonably well however their accents do drift towards pastiche at times. There is a couple of intentionally humorous moments at the start and given the pomposity of the subject it's a shame Cronenberg didn't continue along in that vein. I dunno it's a very watchable film and probably a quite good primer to the two thinkers and the milieu that they lived and worked in but it wasn't exactly revelatory and I was a little underwhelmed by the end, the only highlight I guess was watching Knightly getting spanked.

John Huston's Freud: A Secret Passion is a more comprehensive look at the early life and work of the famed nut doctor. Following his career from his association with Josef Breuer and their investigation of neuroses using hypnosis, his subsequent therapeutic 'successes' and onto the development of his barmy theory of Infantile Sexuality and it's riotous debut. Huston keeps things rolling at a decent pace and doesn't bother his cast with the comedy accents but uses a single patient, played by the stunning Susannah York, to elucidate most of Freud's theories which is a little odd and unnecessary. If you're wanting to learn a bit more about how Sigmund developed his ground breaking theories it's probably a better watch than Cronenberg's effort but it's not nearly as pretty to look at and almost an hour longer.

Twenty Questions

1. Johnnie Taylor - Who's Making Love?
2. Bobby Womack - What is This?
3. The Chi-Lites - Have You Seen Her?
4. Al Green - Are You Lonely for Me Baby?
5. Marvin Gaye - Can I Get a Witness?
6. Ray Charles - What'd I Say?
7. Funkadelic - Can You Get To That?
8. Al Green - Could I Be The One?
9. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On?
10. Marvin Gaye - What's Happening Brother?
11. Bill Withers - Who Is He & What Is He To You?
12. James Brown - Why Does Everything Happen To Me?
13. Al Green - What Is This Feeling
14. War - Why Can't We Be Friends?
15. Rufus Thomas - Can Your Monkey Do The Dog?
16. Al Green - What Am I Gonna Do With Myself?
17. Terry Callier - What Colour Is Love?
18. Bobby Womack - What You Gonna Do?
19. Professor Longhair - Who's Been Fooling You?
20. Syl Johnson - Is It Because I'm Black?

70's Sex 'n' Sleaze

Looking for Mr Goodbar is a dark 70's drama following a school teacher's sexual awakening and her subsequent bar trawling and drug addiction. With an excellent, nuanced performance from Diane Keaton (the same year as Annie Hall) this starts off slow but soon builds into an intimate, aching portrayal of a woman searching for satisfaction in all the wrong places. Apparently based on a true story it darkens considerably as her needs deepen and though a handful of her conquests make an impression her luck eventually runs out and she meets someone who she can't handle. It's an excellent, neglected film that has one of the most memorable finales I've seen in ages. Catch it if you can.

The murky side of America's sex life is also the subject of Hardcore starring George C. Scott. When Scott's teenage daughter absconds from Bible camp he hires a seedy private detective, played by Peter Boyle, to track her down and to his horror finds she's been lured into drugs and pornography, his subsequent efforts to track her down open his eyes to the reality of modern life and the depravity lurking beneath the surface. It's dated badly, almost comically tame by today's standards, but Paul Schrader's script still packs a punch and Scott's performance brings a grim humanity to the distraught father. Hardcore like Goodbar is definitely worth a look and though it doesn't quite match the impact of the latter it's still a fine film. Strange that both these films have been forgotten, given they both capture a particular, era of America's grubbier past.