blacksundae

Sweating sickness:

Sweating sickness, also known as the “English sweate” (Latin: sudor anglicus), was a mysterious and highly virulent disease which struck England and later Europe in a series of epidemics, the first beginning in 1485 and the last in 1551, afterwards apparently vanishing. The onset of symptoms was dramatic and sudden, with death often occurring within hours. Its cause remains unknown.

Read on.

or, Journey to the Center of Eden

JESUS CHRIST, IT’S A JESUS LIZARD! GET IN THE CAR!

According to Walden Media’s Wikipedia entry, they deny that they are an overtly Christian production company. They have had to make this denial as they are owned by Philip Anschutz (noted conservative Christian and funder of the Discovery Institute), not to mention they produced the film adaptation of your favorite Feline Christ narrative and mine, The Chronicles of Narnia.

I’m actually inclined to go along with them. As I look at their filmography, it’s all family oriented stuff, but very few of their films have overtly Christian themes. Some of their output has been absolutely atrocious, but only Narnia is clearly Christian propaganda.

At least I thought so. That brings us to Eric Brevig’s 3-D Brendan Frasier vehicle, Journey to the Center of the Earth. Wait a minute, I can hear you asking, How can an adaptation of a Jules Verne novel be seen as Christian propaganda? Well, that’s the thing: it’s not an adaptation.

The premise of this theme park ride film is that Verne’s account in Journey to the Center of the Earth is literally true. Frasier’s older brother was a geologist with some kookie ideas about lava tubes thousands of miles deep, who went off to Iceland to investigate his theories and vanished. Ten years later, Frasier comes across an old, dog-eared copy of his brother’s favorite book (guess) that’s cryptically annotated¹ in ways that suggest what he was up to.

Frasier, being the sort of grossly irresponsible adult that keeps these types of movies clipping along, scoots off to Iceland with his annoyingly-surly-cum-annoyingly-eager teenage nephew (the lava-tube-kook’s son, of course). Yadda, yadda, yadda… Strained comedy happens. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

In short time, they find out from the leggy, blonde, Icelandic love interest that their brother/father was a “Vernian:” someone who believes that Jules Verne’s account of the lost world at the center of the Earth is literally true. Whether Vernians extend this to his other works is never addressed, although I’m rooting for Mysterious Island.

Through a series of unlikely events (lightning, mine cars), Frasier, the kid & the hottie end up falling down a lava tube and landing in Verne’s weird subterranean world. “He was right!” Frasier says of his dearly departed brother, “People ridiculed him for what he believed but he was right!”

This is the point in this post when I get a bit nervous, wondering if I’m reading way too much into what is otherwise simple escapist fare. “Overthinking a plate of beans,” as they say at MetaFilter. OK… is this aspect of the story speaking directly to the Creationists in the audience?

This guy takes a clearly fictional and ridiculous story and interprets it as true, all evidence to the contrary, and is ridiculed by the scientific establishment. But, get this: it turns out he was right!

I could have left this alone as a plot device, but that line of dialogue quoted above just won’t let me. In context, it seems shoehorned in, and it seems specially designed to cater to the persecution complex that most conservative Christians share these days. Especially Creationists.

Once that one line planted the seed in my mind, something else started bothering me. Despite the movie’s assertion that Verne’s novel is complete non-fiction, the reality of the underground world differs from the novel in a key way. From Wikipedia:

The living organisms they meet reflects the geological time; just as the rock layers become older and older the deeper one gets, the animals get more and more ancient the closer the characters come to the center. From a scientific point of view, this story has not aged quite as well as other Verne stories, since most of his ideas about what the interior of the Earth contains have since been proven wrong. However, a redeeming point to the story is Verne’s own belief, told within the novel from the viewpoint of a character, that the inside of the Earth does indeed differ from that which the characters encounter. One of Verne’s main ideas with his stories was also to educate the readers, and by placing the different extinct creatures the characters meet in their correct geological era, he is able to show how the world looked like millions of years ago, stretching from the ice age to the dinosaurs.

This is an element of the story that is completely thrown out the window, in favor of a smattering of “prehistoric” creatures that pop in here and there, such as bioluminescent birds, predatory plants, and a giant carnosaur that appears to be twice as large as the biggest T. rex.² I find it surprising that this blatantly educational aspect of the story was thrown out, considering Walden’s emphasis on education. Wikipedia again, because I’m feeling lazy:

Walden Media is unique among film production companies in that it works with teachers, museums, and national organizations to develop supplemental educational programs and materials associated with its films and the original events and/or novels that inspire the films.

But you eliminate this one element, you also eliminate two Creationist pet peeves: discussion of an ancient earth and a narrative that also functions as metaphor. There’s no room for metaphor in this literal view of Verne.

Again, I realize that I may be reading way to much into this, but keep in mind that it kept me entertained when the movie did not. I had absolutely nothing else to think about! The movie is a chore to watch, in a way that has nothing to do with religion or politics. The writing is flat when it’s not sappy, the action scenes are dull and few in number³ and, as an advocate of digital filmmaking, I’m going to pretend this movie was never made. By that, I mean it displays all the staginess of a movie that was shot in a small green screen studio by someone who doesn’t know how to make that not matter. The characters always seem confined to small areas as their epic surroundings swirl around them. I didn’t see this in 3-D, mind you, but I doubt it would have helped too much. Poor Frasier… I usually enjoy him!

¹ Why bother with encoding your notes if you’re going to half-ass it? Frasier and the kid crack it during a plane ride.

² Seeing as how we never see any prey animals of any size, I have to wonder how this environment supports an alpha predator this big. /DORK

³ “The food here is terrible!” “I know! And such small portions!”

Polybius (game):

Polybius is a supposed arcade game featured in an Internet urban legend. According to the story, the Tempest-style game was released to the public in 1981, and caused its players to go insane, causing them to suffer from intense stress and horrific nightmares. A short time after its release, it supposedly disappeared without a trace. No evidence for the existence of such a game has ever been discovered.

[...]

According to the story, an unheard-of new arcade game appeared in several suburbs of Portland, Oregon in 1981, something of a rarity at the time. The game, Polybius, proved to be incredibly popular, to the point of addiction, and lines formed around the machines, quickly followed by clusters of visits from men in black. Rather than the usual marketing data collected by company visitors to arcade machines, they collected some unknown data, allegedly testing responses to the psychoactive machines. The players themselves suffered from a series of unpleasant side-effects, including amnesia, insomnia, nightmares, night terrors, and even suicide in some versions of the legend. Some players stopped playing video games, while it is reported that one became an anti-gaming activist. The supposed creator of Polybius is Ed Rottberg, and the company named in the urban legend is Sinneslöschen (German for sense-delete), often named as either a secret government organization or a codename for Atari. The gameplay is said to be similar to Tempest, a shoot ‘em up game utilizing vector graphics.

Read on.

List of terms for gay in different languages:

This is a list of terms which are widely used today to refer to “gay” in different languages and which derive from concepts unrelated to homosexuality (e.g. the words “gay” or “pederast”) or its common stereotypes. Their original meanings are also given.

My favorite is the Italian, frocio: “old term for the Swiss Pope guards in Rome.” LINK!

Whoa. The Onion’s A.V. Club has an article up entitled “The Worst Band Names of ‘07.” Included on this list:

Hubble Funk-O-Scope

This band has obviously stolen my idea, and must be punished accordingly. And as for it being a terrible band name, I agree. I mean, “The Hubbell Helloscope” has a much better ring to it.

[via the onion]

Issei Sagawa:

Issei Sagawa served time in a French jail for the murder of the Dutch Renée Hartevelt, a classmate at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris. In June 11, 1981, Sagawa was studying avant garde literature. He invited her to dinner under the pretense of literary conversation. Upon her arrival, he shot her in the neck, then began to carry out his plan of eating her. She was selected because of her health and beauty, those characteristics Sagawa believed he lacked. In interviews, Sagawa describes himself as a “weak, ugly and small man” and claims that he wanted to “absorb her energy.”

He said he fainted after the shock of shooting her, but awoke with the realization that he must carry out his desire to eat her. He did so, beginning with her hips. In interviews, he noted his surprise at the “corn-colored” nature of human fat. For two days, Sagawa ate various parts of her body. He described the meat as “soft” and “odorless”, like tuna. After two days, he dumped the mutilated body in a park, but was seen in the act. Five days later, he was arrested by the French police. However, the French psychologists found him legally insane and unfit to stand trial. Instead, he was deported back to Japan, where he was put in a mental institution. However, the deportation order did not specify how long Sagawa must remain in the institution. Fifteen months later, Sagawa checked himself out, and has been a free man ever since.

Sagawa now lives in Tokyo and is a minor celebrity in Japan. He is often invited as a guest speaker and commentator. He also writes restaurant reviews [emphasis mine] and in 1992 he appeared in Hisayasu Sato’s film Sisenjiyou no Aria (The Bedroom) as a sadosexual voyeur. He admits to still having fantasies about cannibalism, but says he never wants to realize them again.

Whoa. Crazy.

McCLANE
[in Austrian accent]
Come with me if you want to live.

MAC GUY
Dude, you’ve changed.

Live Free or Die Hard, 2007
Dir: Len Wiseman
[rating:2]

First off, a recap. Die Hard was Die Hard in a — well, it was Die Hard. That means it’s one of the greatest action films of all time. Die Hard II: Die Harder was Die Hard in an airport. Die Hard: With a Vengeance was Die Hard in a torrent of Sam Jackson’s obscenities.* Following that pattern, I suppose Live Free or Die Hard would have to be Die Hard in an alternate universe where both John McClane and computer hackers are capable of just about anything.

The “McClane” character here is nothing like the one in previous films, instead being an indestructible throwback to the 80s action heroes that the original film made look cartoonish. Instead of his usual world-weary humor, we have bitter one-liners that are sometimes just crude (or cruel).

We don’t fair much better with the bad guys. I’m fine with the unrealistic depiction of technology here (or maybe I’m just numb to it), but the use of omnipotent computer hackers as the heavies is just lazy writing. We knew the bad guys’ limitations in the previous installments and we knew McClane’s as well. Here, McClane is an unstoppable machine and the hackers have infinite power because everything’s online! This is not so — especially not of a decades-old elevator during a region-wide blackout. Even if this were accurate, the fact that that’s the central conceit of the story drains every last bit of suspense out of the proceedings. Technology is magical here. The hackers pull one impossible thing after another out of their hat, while John “Kevlar” McClane just pounds through henchman after henchman, wincing over his superficial wounds the entire way. Highlight the following line for a spoiler:

After a bunch of this stuff, McClane somehow (magically) stumbles upon the hackers’ hideout and pounds through them too. The end.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh. The movie’s well shot and edited, the action scenes are fun and the stunt work is, for the most part, pleasingly practical. I probably would have enjoyed the hell out of this movie if it weren’t pretending to be a Die Hard film.

*”Zeus. As in father of Apollo? Mt. Olympus? Don’t fuck with me or I’ll shove a lightning bolt up your ass? Zeus! You got a problem with that?”

Transformers, 2007
Dir: Michael Bay
[rating:3.5]

I have one word for this film: “Wheeeee!”

I won’t go into too much detail. We know the “plot.” Giant robots that turn into vehicles. Explosions. Uh… I know I should think of a third item in order to comply with the rule of three, but… I know! Shia LaBeouf! He’s great in this. It’s been said many times before, but LaBeouf is going places.

Anyway, yeah… This movie is big and gloriously dumb. It’s an adaptation of a Saturday morning cartoon/line of toys, and it wears that pedigree on its sleeve. Underneath all of Bay’s trademark camera jiggle, hyperactive editing and patina of “grittiness,” this is the kind of movie where the lead bad guy wakes up from a 100,000 year sleep, immediately roars, “I… AM… MEGATRON!” and proceeds to destroy whatever the hell is within reach. Keep in mind that the name of the giant frozen robot had been firmly established by this point, so he identifies himself in such an overly dramatic fashion because… well, because that’s the sort of thing that overly-dramatic-giant-robot-bad-guys do when they wake up.

Transformers is an odd mix of thrill ride and camp. When a bad-ass Camaro screeches into frame, pops into the air and assembles into a kung fu posing ‘bot before it hits the ground, you “whoop” and pump your fist at how bad ass/ridiculous it is. Then it opens its chrome-plated mouth and you laugh at the cartoon dialogue.

I think this movie shows what Bay is capable of when he’s not being self-important (Pearl Harbor) sadistic (Bad Boys II) or sappy (Armageddon). It’s just giant robots doing what they do best.* It also seems that Spielberg’s involvement had a tempering effect on Bay’s oft incoherent visual style. This is good.

A final note on the visual effects: hells yeah. It’s very easy for animated robots to turn out like clusters of geometrical shapes. The animated characters here sport some great texture work and some genuine heft, the later of which is rare for large CG characters in movies. Other than an ill advised break dancing scene, the Transformers seem physically real. To see what I mean, check out this exclusive clip from the movie.

*Fucking shit up.

Flehmen response:

The flehmen response, also called the flehmen position, flehmen reaction, flehming, or flehmening (from German flehmen (of animals) meaning to curl the upper lip), is a particular type of curling of the lips in ungulates, felids, and many other mammals, which facilitates the transfer of odorant chemicals into the vomeronasal organ. In the flehmen reaction, animals draw back their lips in a manner that makes them appear to be “grimacing”. The pose, which is adopted when examining scents left by other animals of the same species, helps expose the vomeronasal organ and draws scent molecules back toward it. This behavior allows animals to detect odorants, for example from urine, of other members of their species. Flehming allows the animals to determine several factors, including the presence or absence of estrus, the physiological state of the animal, and how long ago the animal passed by. This particular response is most recognizable in stallions when smelling the urine of a mare in heat.

Courtesy of srah, from her comments in the first installment of this feature.