Raving & Lunacy

Where's Poppa? is a darkish 70's comedy about a beleaguered son tending to his crabby, increasingly deranged aging mother. After falling in love in with her new nurse he decides to rid himself of his hectoring burden once and for all. The script although amusing relies too much on a glut of farcical situations for most of the laughs and though George Segal and Ruth Gordon put in reasonable performances the film's dark discontentment gets squandered somewhat. It's good but not really worth the effort required to find a copy.
Donald Sutherland and Gene Wilder perform double duties in the silly farce Start The Revolution Without Me. Set in pre revolution France the duo play a pair of muddled-at-birth twins, with one pair destined for penury and fecklessness while the other luxury and ruthlessness. A plot to murder the King reunites their fates in a madcap torrent of misunderstandings and slapstick antics. The comedy comes in all guises with pratfalls, satire and irreverence steeped in a quick but goofy wit that’s handled marvellously by the talented cast. Though it’s probably too silly for most it’s a nice little nugget of offbeat laughs.

Rare Good Feelers

The Bird People in China is a beautiful, quite touching film about the toil and toll that contemporary life fosters reflected against the simplicity of country, peasant life. A salary-man and yakuza are sent to mainland China to investigate a jade mine and after a gruelling journey they become entranced by the picturesque village and the purity of the villagers lives. Aside from stunning cinematography and the marvellous performances there’s a gentle humour to the script and depth to the plot that takes the viewer on a remarkable, emotive journey. It’s not often I gush about films but this is probably one of the best films I’ve watched this year as well as the most surprising, who knew Japanese horror maestro Takashi Miike was capable of such humanism.

The heart warming continues with Harry &Tonto, a 70’s road trip flick about an old man crossing the US with his pet cat after being evicted from his apartment block. The central performance of Art Carney as Harry, the weary but wise pensioner, shines with a warmth and understanding throughout which occludes some of the cheesier encounters during his journey. For the most part it’s a charmingly amusing, poignant movie that takes the time to address the darker aspects of our lives and our treatment of the elderly, it’s just a shame that it’s period styling seems almost laughable now. Still it’s a testament to it’s effectiveness that Carney won the Best Actor Oscar against Pacino in Godfather Part 2 and Nicholson in Chinatown.

Artful Factuality

Information is Beautiful has been doling out awards for infographics and there’s some stunning entrants. The Lunar Calendar above and Cover Song river below are some of my friends.
There’s a lovely chart depicting hurricane paths on CoolInfographics.

Bartel's Twisted Past

Paul Bartel had a varied career as successful actor, writer and director. His 1972 debut behind the lens, Private Parts, is a sleazy black comedy which follows a virginal teenager fleeing her squat and into the care of a distant aunt who runs a decrepit hotel populated with a bunch of perverts and weirdos but as the young girl settles in, her attachment to a creepy photographer puts her in jeopardy. The acting is piss poor and there's barely enough comedy to justify it’s existence but it does have a sort of grubby charm and an enthusiasm to offend (even if it does seem tame by today’s standards) so it’s not a complete waste of time.
Eating Raoul followed a ten years later and is much more accomplished dish of bad taste chuckles. Bartel himself plays one half of a professional couple who come up with a unique method for funding the culinary ambitions however their peculiar plan becomes unstuck with the arrival of a young handsome confederate. The script is much tighter than Private P and despite the murderous lunacy of the main characters Bartel still, somehow, manages to elicit some sympathy. Sure it looks terrible and the shock has paled over the years but it’s a decent watch
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Hailing Halloween

Sound engineer Toby Jones arrives in Italy to work on a Giallo in the ambiguous psychological horror, Berberian Sound Studio. Never quite finding his feet nor making friends with his colleagues Jones finds himself a little lost and reality and the disturbing film he’s working on begin to seep together. The juicy audio and murky cinematography churn a deliciously thick atmosphere which is ably magnified by Jones’ marvellously crumbly performance. I was a little disappointed that the drift into a Lynchian weirdness didn’t amount to much but this is still an unnerving, quite brilliant homage to 70’s Euro-horrors.

A little Irish island gets plagued by rapacious squid-ish critters from Outer Space in the modest but entertaining Grabbers. Playing out much like Tremors, the monsters soon start munching the locals with much abandon but, rather fortuitously, the key to the villagers survival is drunkenness and the fight back begins albeit in a slurred, uncoordinated fashion. The reasonable cast have enough laughs in the script to keep things ticking along between the action and though it probably had a tiny budget the sfx are quite good. With a bit more work this might have been great but it’s a strong b-movie effortless and the sort of film our film industry should/could easily bang out a la Hammer or Amicus.

Animal Antagonisms

Peter Weller stars a rising exec tormented by a jumbo rat in 80's psych-horror/comedy(?) Of Unknown Origin. When Weller’s wife and kid take a holiday, he neglects his work for the task of ridding himself of the irritating rodent invader but the slow burning feud takes it’s toll and descends into all out man v rat war. The production is horribly dated and plot totally preposterous but Weller puts in a suitably tormented performance that manages to stitch together all the nonsense. Not great but surprisingly not awful.

Stephen King's canine horror Cujo, also from 1983, shares the simple man vs beast storyline as Origin but lacks the competent acting to bring it to life. A backwater mechanic's lumbering St Bernard gets rabies and after munching the family hounds a woman and child for a couple of days when they arrive to pick up their car. It's got a decent reputation but this little thriller bored my rigid and by the end I was wishing that more of King's usual one-note characters had got the chomp too.

Scientific Spatters

Jaw dropping pictures by some Russian photographer of the an Icelandic eruption on a river.

Scientists discover a method for repairing defects in crystals by inserting particles. Via Reddit.

Evidence builds for a massive Earth strike 13,000 years ago. DailyGalaxy.

Nice demonstration that your conscious mind isn’t quite as in control as we like to think. Via Reddit.

Interesting story about the discovery of unusual ‘ritual’ tunnels at Baiae. Simthsonian.

Bird brains appear to have cell structures similar to those found in the neocortex – a formerly distinguishing characteristic of mammals. ScienceDaily

Looks like we’ve found an ancient Martian river bed. DailyGalaxy.

Haphazard Image Array

Bibliodyssey have some lovely prints from a 19th C book of eccentrics and oddballs.

Gorgeous but mistitled gallery of liquids up close. Courtesy of Reddit

Adorable scifi covers from a early 20th publication. Via Retronaut