I watched Red Riding : 1983 last night and though initially disappointed with it, I am still processing some of the ideas in it. In the mean time, I thought I would put up a post linking to a couple of interesting pieces that touch upon Red Riding as well as a few other things I have been thinking about of late.
So yes, this is something of a links round-up. Sue me.
On the 8th of March, the West Yorkshire Police Force received a letter purporting to be from the Yorkshire Ripper :
Dear Sir
I am sorry I cannot give my name for obvious reasons. I am the Ripper. I’ve been dubbed a maniac by the Press but not by you, you call me clever and I am. You and your mates haven’t a clue that photo in the paper gave me fits and that bit about killing myself, no chance. I’ve got things to do. My purpose to rid the streets of them sluts. My one regret is that young lassie McDonald, did not know cause changed routine that night. Up to number 8 now you say 7 but remember Preston ’75, get about you know. You were right I travel a bit. You probably look for me in Sunderland, don’t bother, I am not daft, just posted letter there on one of my trips. Not a bad place compared with Chapeltown and Manningham and other places. Warn whores to keep off streets cause I feel it coming on again.
Sorry about young lassie.
Yours respectfully
Jack the Ripper
Might write again later I not sure last one really deserved it. Whores getting younger each time. Old slut next time I hope. Huddersfield never again, too small close call last one.
The letters and tapes that followed were a hoax that sent the struggling West Yorkshire investigation into a tailspin, convincing several senior police officers that the Ripper was from Sunderland. One particular way in which the letter hindered the investigation was by claiming responsibility for a murder in Preston in 1975. A murder, it turned out, the Yorkshire Ripper was not actually responsible for. James Marsh’s Red Riding : 1980, based on a novel by David Peace, considers what might have happened if certainly nefarious elements within the West Yorkshire Police Force had put Wearside Jack’s error to use for their own ends.
If Red Riding : 1974 is a film about the first bite at the apple of original sin then Red Riding : 1980 is the ensuing gag reflex.
When the Red Riding trilogy was screened on Channel Four earlier this year it came very close to making me regret an action I have come to think of as the great cultural emancipation. Five years ago, I unplugged the aerial from my TV, I cut the wire at the wall and forever freed myself from the great cognitive heat sink that is television. It was a close run thing. I was this close to buying a set-top aerial. A few months later with the DVD version now safely in my hands, I am still sure that I made the right decision as Red Riding : 1974 is a film that demands revisiting.
Futurismic now have my fourteenth Blasphemous Geometries column.
It is quite a bit shorter than my usual BG columns but this is because it is kind of a meta-column. Instead of grappling with a substantive issue, this month’s column announces (and explains) my decision to re-orient Blasphemous Geometries away from being about genre criticism and towards becoming a platform for video game criticism. My views on the state of video game writing and the challenges facing all decent criticism has already prompted a typically spirited response from John Scalzi whose interesting take on the subject of video game criticism can be found here.
I have been toying with the idea of writing about video games for a while now (it has, in fact, already inspired a BG column) and am quite excited at the prospect.
It is a pleasure to return to Cinematic Vocabulary and kick off Polanski Week by looking at what I consider to be one of Polanski’s less appreciated films. While The Tenant (1976) is the darling of cinephiles and Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is second only to Polanski’s Chinatown (1974) in terms of mainstream appeal, Repulsion is sometimes overlooked as an early work, sandwiched as it is between Polanski’s break through film Knife in the Water (1962) and his more famous Hollywood projects.
However, it is my contention that Repulsion is a substantial landmark on the the road of Polanski’s artistic development. The low-budget British Horror film allowed him not only to perfect some of the cinematic techniques that would feature prominently in his later works but also to tackle some of the themes dear to the generation of 1930s surrealist film-makers who clearly had quite an influence on Polanski’s thinking.
Futurismic have just put up my thirteenth Blasphemous Geometries column entitled “The Alternative Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form”.
Unsurprisingly, given that title, it is an alternative shortlist of five works of genre cinema that push the envelope a little furthers than the very mainstream indeed hugo shortlist. I’ll also take the opportunity to link to Mark Kermode’s discussion of Martyrs, which he agrees is an almost unwatchable film redeemed by its transcendental themes.
Write enough reviews and it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking of films as discrete cultural units. Artefacts cut asunder from the rest of the world and presented to the audience in a neat little package. Thinking of films in these terms tends to lead one to focus upon macroscopic issues such as plot, performance and theme whilst ignoring the fine-grained details of the film such as the cinematography, the sound editing and the techniques used to convey those plots and themes. In an attempt to wean myself away from thinking of films as discrete cultural artefacts, I have decided to write a series of pieces that focus on individual scenes from a critical perspective. My own take on the Anatomy of a Scene series if you will.
The first scene to go under the microscope is the opening sequence of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958).
My latest Blasphemous Geometries column has gone up over at Futurismic.
It’s an attempt to lay down some thoughts on a different way of looking at story-telling in video games, but it’s also an excuse for me to make wise-arse comments about a number of different games I’ve played over the years. Speaking of being a wise-arse I was intriged to discover a YouTube pilot for an Australian TV programme called Game Damage. Starring The Escapist‘s answer to Charlie Brooker, Yahtzee Croshaw. It will be interesting to see whether the show will be picked up because I think it highlights the problem with game commentary in a nut shell. If you watch the pilot you’ll see Yahtzee pouring scorn on what is evidently the contents of a press release while the other two scramble to say something positive. One the one hand, everyone who plays games knows by now that games companies are entirely self-serving massively dishonest and mostly incompetent. On the other hand, ‘Yay! New games!’.
VideoGaiden came close to solving this problems by being mostly weird and curmudgeonly with interludes of interest and enthusiasm but I think the problem is that gamers and TV people have tended to be on different pages. Gamers want to express their culture and that culture involves a good deal of snark and cynicism to counter-act the heavy handed and manipulative marketing techniques used to ensnare them. TV people, want something that taps into the popularity of games and you generally do this by being up-beat about the thing you’re covering. Result = generation upon generation of games-related TV that genuinely struggles to move past reading out press releases and playing game trailers.
My new Blasphemous Geometries column has gone live over at Futurismic.
It is entitled “To a Delightful Weekend in the Country” and it’s an attempt to detect emerging trends in British SF before they happen, it is entirely motivated by my growing sense of frustration with SF and my need to move discussion on from the current generation. This may or may not have something to do with the fact that I think that some authors are no longer worth the pixels devoted to them.
I just noticed that my latest Blasphemous Geometries column has just gone up over at Futurismic.
It is entitled Super Hero Fatigue – Why I am Tired of American Rubber. It deals with my growing irritation at the ubiquity of super hero films and the ways in which they have influenced American political discourse.
I’ll also include a link to Strange Horizons‘ review of 2008 as I contributed a small entry to it.
Ruthless Culture 