The man under the tree

Today I saw an old man napping under a tree.
He was wearing short black rubber wellington boots.
After a while he woke up, propped his head on one hand, and lit a cigarette.
When he finished his smoke, he got slowly up, rolled up his mat, picked up a bag of rubbish, and headed towards a van, which had another old man in the driver's seat.
Before getting to the van, he asked a fat man with a clipboard something.
The clipboard man had been striding around importantly.
The clipboard man prodded a phone and put it to his ear.
Lots of old men in short black or grey rubber wellington boots, some of whom wore brightly-coloured green or red safety hats, were standing or walking around the flower garden by the river. One was taking pictures. Two of them were chatting and a loud chuckle rang out.
They were having a good time.

Edogawa

Over by the reeds, a boy has set his shoes neatly down

Nearby, the purple grasses shudder in the late summer breeze

A bronzed old man picks his way across the meadow, hauling unknown cargo

And soon a train, on the slatted metal bridge, will shatter the quiet

Phoebe

Her hair grows long, wild and grey

There may be goose feathers in her smock

Some say she crazy - but she ain't

She just a cool old lady who seen a lot

Sometimes the kids come round her porch

She don't tell them to go away

She just give them that old Phoebe stare,

Wheezes on that black old cigar -

And starts on another yarn

That's what they been waiting for

Sometimes they leave her presents

They all love her, that old gal Phoebe

123-year-old Phoebe 

Ain't as active as she used to be

Her main activity be

Sittin' on her porch

Tendin' her bees

And swillin' that ol' cider

She been brewin'

That old gal Phoebe

Pigs trapping troubles

Stifled struggle
Selfish muffle
Trapping troubles
Why?

Told the way
Fold the way
Hold the way
Why?

Shiver notes loosen bones
Shiver notes gust the clouds
Shiver notes soar the gulls
I'm alive

Shiver music touch my feet
Shiver music rub my knuckles
Shiver music cradle ears
I am free

The Hateful Eight

Our cinema-eye ponders over a Jesus Christ crucifix, himself static against a desperate snowy wilderness, the camera wandering minimally yet lingering fixedly upon his stone stare as a deep, unearthly, score tingles the napes of our necks. Is this really a Quentin Tarantino film, or a David Lean epic, miraculously unearthed and polished to pristine, 70mm glory?

Here, the pop-funk-hip-hop cinema DJ seems to have abandoned his cosy home of scintillating pastiche concoctions and slowly, gracefully glided up the mountain into the arena of brooding, cinematic mastery. This is his Kubrick film.

Tarantino has always put his characters front and centre, so fascinated with the idiosyncratic minutia of their thoughts, philosophies and (oft-suspect) wisdoms, yet always they play out their stories in the context of a glorious genre mish-mash, a thick bubbling soup of thumping euphoria and old worn-out chestnut tropes remoulded and jazzed for our delectation. Murderous thugs groan about everyday hassles, set against an eclectic bubblegum mix-tape. His gruesome, funny characters are present and correct yet he has abandoned his gleeful mish-mashing in favour of a slow, sober stare, allowing them (and us) time, time, time to brood. This has a powerfully unsettling effect, as we find ourselves repulsed yet obsessed with each one of this murderous group, their broken psyches (and later, bodies) laid out all over the snow for us to examine and recoil at. Rarely in cinema are we given this chance to look into the hearts of such cold souls with such a grandly sedate magnifying glass. Morricone's score is glorious yet festering, eking out dread from every gnarled face. Arguably, The Hateful Eight can be considered a horror film. Indeed, during the final bloody climax, we are treated to a playfully sinister violin motif composed (by Morricone) for John Carpenter's classic snowy horror, The Thing (also starring Kurt Russel).

Walton Goggins must be heralded as perhaps the most convincing, disgusting villain to have graced any western of this era. Watching him drooling, snorting, grimacing and chuckling through dirty, mangled teeth had a peculiarly disarming effect, as though one had been transported to the late sixties, perhaps watching an unseen Dollars film. He is not of this time, a surviving relic, conjured up from celluloid dust lying on Sergio Leone's cutting-room floor.

While Tarantino has here abandoned much of his trash-collage modus operandi, he retains an obvious playfulness with genre. More subdued perhaps, yet here is a grandiose 70mm (!) epic confined almost entirely to two sets - a cramped stagecoach and a large, messy "haberdashery". What the hell is going on? This is Quentin up to his old tricks, and while he may not have come to this bizarre juxtaposition of epic and tiny, weird mystery-movie (for structurally, much of The Hateful Eight embodies an Agatha Christie story) by creating something wilfully strange, I bet he was delighted when he realised just where he was going. After all, he is someone who has a track record of deep affinity with cinematic oddities.

The Hateful Eight contains many peculiarities, yet remains a satisfyingly grim, logically stately cinema-play, complete with sizzling dialogue delivered by a coterie of magnificent actors, all doing something entirely different, all portraying beautifully twisted, tortured individuals, hanging on to their grim reality with a steel grip. As we long to empathise with one of these miserable humans, our brains struggle to shuffle and re-shuffle an endless stack of their qualities, none of them really warranting any pity, yet all gleaning a little, here and there. Fascinating, beautiful, crazy, I loved it.

A selection of film tweets

"The shades come off at midnight." Re-watched #TheyAllLaughed. #Bogdanovich conducts camera and actors in virtuoso, magically comic dance.

youtube.com/watch?v=deTGYinacYg … - Peter Cushing Lives in Whitstable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1almB9zxX4 … - High Plains Drifter, AIM to see it.

Timothy Carey steals the show in Kubrick's (great) Paths of Glory - crazy, hilarious, disturbing, endearing - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC_UO8k1CNA.

Last MA work - Humans as Monsters: An Investigation into Political Allegory in American Horror Cinema in the 1970s and 1980s is finished.

Man of Steel - peculiar if fun blend of doom and light-heartedness. Superman fine with killing countless humans despite supposed empathy.

During a long session of sorting, I came across a very poorly written film treatment from 2006. Title? "Dial N for Nun"...

"Take it easy! We're not making a western here." - Uncle Junior.

Made it, Ma! Top of the world! #JamesCagney #WhiteHeat

"Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire. It tells you how to desire." #SlavojZizek, philosopher.

"I will perfect a race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world!" Bela Lugosi at his finest. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cE1fzfOogo.

My new favourite song - by Morricone, from "Night Train Murders" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSe3oDNfBEM.

"I guess I'm just not used to being chased around a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots." #KarrieEmerson, #ChoppingMall (1986).

#Dinotasia - bizarre "documentary"/anthropomorphised look at the entire history of dinosaurs on Earth. Narrated by #WernerHerzog. Fun/weird.

#Jaws at the cinema last night. Bad fish. Not like going down the pond chasin' Bluegills and Tommycods. This shark, swallow you whole.

Just saw #DannyDeVito bumbling around the streets of Hackney looking lost.

#TheAwfulDrOrlof. A fun and atmospheric entry in #JessFranco's #Frankenstein-esque series. Particularly disturbing is monster Morpho.

Finally saw #LookingForEric - thoroughly satisfying and moving, and not a little bizarre. #EricCantona in a #KenLoach film, brilliant.

#Martin - this is a moving, bleakly atmospheric gem from George A Romero. Very interesting in comparison with #LetTheRightOneIn.

#PulpFiction at the cinema this weekend, excellent.

#JohnCarpenter has proven himself time and time again as the king of audio commentaries. #horror #film

#TheDisappearanceofAliceCreed - taught, tense, well-plotted and entertaining, with an excellent, satisfying ending. #EddieMarsan #Film

"I am an oil man!" #ThereWillBeBlood revisited on Blu-ray. As stunning, compelling and horrifying as I remember. #Film #DanielDayLewis

The Switch - surprisingly, very moving. And Jeff Goldblum is on top form, why isn't he getting better roles?

Going the Distance and Roger Corman's The Raven. What a double bill.

Piranha is a huge amount of fun - good job, Aja. The 3D didn't look nearly as bad as the trailer had suggested either.

Love & Funghi (aka Now, Forager)

I wanted to like this film, I felt attracted to the premise, setting and genre. A love story set among the beautiful, wild forests one must visit if one is in the mushroom-picking business. Unfortunately, neither Jason Cortlund (who co-directed) as Lucien Echevarria or Tiffany Esteb as Regina Echevarria managed to move me into caring much about their plights with their work, or indeed their relationship. So concerned with projecting a sombre tone, the performances come across as simply morose, without interest or a foundation of reasoning behind their glum faces. The film needed a little infusion of subordinate characters, simply as a mechanism to ground our protagonist's lives in a reality we could understand or care about: we spend the entirety of the film mushroom-picking, cooking, or solemnly grieving an inexplicably broken marriage. The mushrooms look tasty and beautiful, and the photography, though markedly digital, at times suffering from artefacts, is excellent. Otherwise, there isn't much here to recommend.