on being gwyneth

getting rid of the opening ballad was a terrible mistake. as i said elsewhere, this is why, as talented a stylist as burton is, he’s a hack when it comes to actual dramaturgy.

consider, for a moment, the opening to henry V. the chorus sets the tone, introduces the ideas, creates context. he invokes the muse, and draws the listener in.

the ballad of sweeney todd very deliberately references one of the great (and few) bogeymen of our culture and sets it apart as a “tale” – with all the mythic and moral baggage of such a thing – and not just another of burton’s immersively scenic alternate realities. it’s *prologue*, in a classical manner, and wholly appropriate to sondheim’s goals.

the movie met expectations: it was exactly what i expected to see when i heard that tim burton was making it. it was exactly what one would expect the tim burton version of sweeney todd to be.

i am so, so damned tired of heavy color casts… especially “gloomy greyblue.” movies are not just photoshop in motion.

who knew johnny depp could sing? though it took a while for me to get used to sweeney not being a baritone.

some of the singing performances were not as crisp as i am used to for this work, and in places missed the rage. depp’s quiet, hoarse “at last, my arm is complete again” was clearly meant to be menacing, but just didn’t carry the force of it.

i think my favorite scene was “pretty women”, the first encounter between sweeney and judge turpin. it was the first time i’d seen the intimacy between them – their shared obsession and fate – so well expressed.

i appreciated the image of the boy, viewed as he kills sweeney at the end, with the makeup beginning to reflect sweeney’s own madness. it made vengeance a communicable disease.

less appreciated was the Pietà, which was merely obvious.

i love “a little priest” too much not to have been bothered by the edits. but i still got a huge smile out of it.

i didn’t think that turpin’s solos would make it in. i was right. just too kinky for the mass audience.

violence? are you kidding? cartoon blood, no viscera, swift dispatch? i want to see the director’s cut. maybe there’s something actually “disturbing” there. as it is, this was acceptable postmodern grand guignol.

nihilism, mass murder, rape, cannibalism…

what’s not to like?

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every time i look at a mushroom i’m aware that the knowledge that i can eat it – knowledge which i can only take for granted in the case of those brown fleck caps and stems enticingly stacked before me in the market – is marked by the act of a potential victim – perhaps a crippled, aged and expendable member of the tribe, perhaps a particularly courageous or foolhardy alchemist, perhaps just a very hungry farmer caught in the rain far from his fields and herds – who didn’t die when they ate this one, whose breathing didn’t lurch to a halt as he doubled over from pain like an iron claw pulling his guts out through his throat, black agony racing up his nerves like acid to shroud his mind, shocked, terrified, pleading and finally silent.

in that brief moment of lucid peace he looked up, and the creature – a hissing gantry of black armor and springsteel – leaned down almost gently, almost with frank curiosity, smiled its gleaming double smile, and took a core sample of his skull.

his heart got the message four beats later, and he went down still pumping meaty curds and flecks of bone in a thick flood across his back.

imagine a nightmare of blood and iron, so darkly furious that ashen despair is actually a sanctuary.

see silent hill, and see just a little bit of the inside of my head.

what does it say about us, that so much of the interface is horror? a mind has fixed paths. the eye sees only what it can – the angstroms of color, the parallax of space. and vaster things intrude, and are reduced… symbols and metaphors and sometimes we see the flock of psychopomps ascending, fluttering darkness.

so much is horror at the interface. purposes beyond mind, minds beyond knowing strike eddies in our spacetime, shimmering mirages of matter and fearful aspect.

what does it say about us?

remember flatland?

darkened minds and animal hearts. all luminance filtered through the fact of our meatbeing, our nerves and veins and skeins of skin trapping, sifting, extruding the interface into petty terror, simple and terrible pain.

for many years of my earlier life, i used to toss and howl in my sleep, and several nights a week i would wake up screaming.

in an odd way, i sort of miss it.
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tonight i’m planning on cooking up a steak and watching the remake of texas chainsaw massacre.

mmm. zesty.

gritty. nasty. relentless. frustrating. excessive.

my kinda fun.

to be played with the lights off and the headphones on.