Myth-Direction
The spirit of Sisyphus is flowing through me. Again the boulder has rolled back down on me…but unlike the original punishment dished out for squealing on Zeus, this is my choice.
It is this damned job. Forever on the verge of finishing, but there's always another week or two to go. They keep asking, and I keep fretting about having enough money. This time I have elected to stay in the belly of this beast until the middle of December, despite tearing an escape door in the beast's flesh that would have seen me out of here on Friday.
But I have my distractions. A shiny box of ten James Bond novels appeared on my doorstep a few days ago from The Book People, which means I can finally get to grips with Casino Royale without wishing there was more Woody Allen in it.
Hmm…Casino Royale. That was a bizarre film and few people can account for it. The film was awash with directors, but none of them could stop Peter Sellers pulling a vanishing act half way through filming. It was that kind of production…a gross, monumental folly where critics could only gasp at the chutzpah shown by the makers in shovelling so much money onto the fire in such a short period of time.
It was also one of the most surreal films of its day. "Peter Sellers is tortured and for no apparent reason thrown into a dream sequence filled with Scottish pipers, one of whom is Peter O’Toole who asks Sellers if he is Richard Burton, to which Sellers’ reply is no, that he is Peter O’Toole." -- Richard Scheib, 1991 (full article here)
Most critics wouldn't even grant it the status of curate's egg. Besides, the curate would smash their balls with a sledgehammer for the insult. But on a cold day with a warm fire nearby, it is possible to gain some enjoyment out of the film. Burt Bacharach's music is excellent. Lopping off the first half an hour would help the film's cause no end. And…no, actually, that's about it. The film is an example of all that is rotten about Hollywood's bloated ego…it is easy to see how too many people trying to stamp their brand on a film can result in some nasty burns, and it remains a lesson in vision. Many people can stand in the same place at once, but they can all be looking in a different direction.
Ah, but I have watched it more than once before and I expect I will watch it again. As I was trying to say in the previous paragraph, Casino Royale can be enjoyed in the right mood and preferably whilst in the grip of something intoxicating that will fuck with your time perception and tickle your incredulity when you find yourself swearing that Ronnie Corbett is leering menacingly out of your television and about to burst through the screen and headbut you in the kneecaps.
James Bond…surreal? Surely not…but then accepted wisdom states that Bob Holness was the first James Bond, appearing as Bond in a radio adaptation of Moonraker in South Africa back in 1956. But is this even true? Or is this some cruel urban myth designed to feed our love of messy and bizarre trivia? It has become impossible to separate truth from fiction because the Internet is our first and last and everything, and we have forgotten how to research properly. Just throw a net into the Google sea and let a hundred tonnes of junk get caught up inside.
Thanks to the Internet, the average urban myth these days can spread in seconds, given the right combination of the weird and the only-just-possible. There are some important lessons in gullibility and research we can learn from this…Let's say for instance that, in the course of one year, eight spiders crawl into your mouth whilst sleeping. Sounds possible, doesn't it?
But this is a myth that was "invented as an example of the absurd things people will believe simply because they come across them on the Internet." -- snopes.com (full article here)
Well…I appear to have wasted a surprising amount of time writing this nonsense. I may have more than two weeks left of this job, but as I said somewhere in that mess above, I have my distractions…
It is this damned job. Forever on the verge of finishing, but there's always another week or two to go. They keep asking, and I keep fretting about having enough money. This time I have elected to stay in the belly of this beast until the middle of December, despite tearing an escape door in the beast's flesh that would have seen me out of here on Friday.
But I have my distractions. A shiny box of ten James Bond novels appeared on my doorstep a few days ago from The Book People, which means I can finally get to grips with Casino Royale without wishing there was more Woody Allen in it.
Hmm…Casino Royale. That was a bizarre film and few people can account for it. The film was awash with directors, but none of them could stop Peter Sellers pulling a vanishing act half way through filming. It was that kind of production…a gross, monumental folly where critics could only gasp at the chutzpah shown by the makers in shovelling so much money onto the fire in such a short period of time.
It was also one of the most surreal films of its day. "Peter Sellers is tortured and for no apparent reason thrown into a dream sequence filled with Scottish pipers, one of whom is Peter O’Toole who asks Sellers if he is Richard Burton, to which Sellers’ reply is no, that he is Peter O’Toole." -- Richard Scheib, 1991 (full article here)
Most critics wouldn't even grant it the status of curate's egg. Besides, the curate would smash their balls with a sledgehammer for the insult. But on a cold day with a warm fire nearby, it is possible to gain some enjoyment out of the film. Burt Bacharach's music is excellent. Lopping off the first half an hour would help the film's cause no end. And…no, actually, that's about it. The film is an example of all that is rotten about Hollywood's bloated ego…it is easy to see how too many people trying to stamp their brand on a film can result in some nasty burns, and it remains a lesson in vision. Many people can stand in the same place at once, but they can all be looking in a different direction.
Ah, but I have watched it more than once before and I expect I will watch it again. As I was trying to say in the previous paragraph, Casino Royale can be enjoyed in the right mood and preferably whilst in the grip of something intoxicating that will fuck with your time perception and tickle your incredulity when you find yourself swearing that Ronnie Corbett is leering menacingly out of your television and about to burst through the screen and headbut you in the kneecaps.
James Bond…surreal? Surely not…but then accepted wisdom states that Bob Holness was the first James Bond, appearing as Bond in a radio adaptation of Moonraker in South Africa back in 1956. But is this even true? Or is this some cruel urban myth designed to feed our love of messy and bizarre trivia? It has become impossible to separate truth from fiction because the Internet is our first and last and everything, and we have forgotten how to research properly. Just throw a net into the Google sea and let a hundred tonnes of junk get caught up inside.
Thanks to the Internet, the average urban myth these days can spread in seconds, given the right combination of the weird and the only-just-possible. There are some important lessons in gullibility and research we can learn from this…Let's say for instance that, in the course of one year, eight spiders crawl into your mouth whilst sleeping. Sounds possible, doesn't it?
But this is a myth that was "invented as an example of the absurd things people will believe simply because they come across them on the Internet." -- snopes.com (full article here)
Well…I appear to have wasted a surprising amount of time writing this nonsense. I may have more than two weeks left of this job, but as I said somewhere in that mess above, I have my distractions…
posted by Jamie at 10:36 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home