It's a fine night for the longest night of the year. I've been having trouble sleeping. Paranoid alien abduction scenario dreams. Are these "night terrors?" I suspect my brain is being snared by some electromagnetic cage created by a conjunction of fields from power lines and assorted appliances and machinery in my environment. i believe that EM fields can muck up one's brain while sleeping, pushing one's dream experience into a seriously f'd up paranoid state, typically characterized by a good chunk of Mulder's "have you been abducted by aliens?" checklist. The big two... One, the certainty of a presence in the room, and a menacing one, at that. Perhaps a clown. And two, paralysis. Gotta love that. Who doesn't love paralysis?
Anyhow, TV tells me that that's a winning combination for the start of an abductee story. Perhaps the aliens use an EM weapon to turn our stupid brains against us, making us easy targets. Or it could be other, human, sinister agents at work. Who soften us up in the same way for whatever dark designs. Or, it's just bad frickin luck and three neighbors with satellite dishes angled Just So, relative to the location of your skull while you slumber...
Speaking of oneiric fun, I hit the Brattle to partake of David Lynch's latest and greatest bit of dreamlike cinema. I really must get myself back to Santamating soon (another happy solstice coincidence =), so I'm not even going to try to describe the experience, except to say that its oddness-vs-mainstreamness index falls in the middle of the spectrum that has ERASERHEAD on the far odd side and BLUE VELVET on the near mainstream. Also, Laura Dern is remarkable in a half dozen different roles, if you can call them that. Identity is pretty damn fluid in the experience of this film.
Right, I wasn't going to do that. Sorry. =)
Off screen, in the real world Brattle, I was struck by the conspicuous addition of the MEN and WOMEN signs on the restroom doors, when for years, for as long as I can remember Brattling, the photo of beach bunny Marilyn Monroe (perhaps from SEVEN YEAR ITCH?) marking the women's room and the still of Sean Connery's James Bond (towel-clad stepping out of a posh hotel bath) for the men's more than sufficed as signifiers. Why the new additions? I like to think that people were stumbling out of INLAND EMPIRE, into that hallway, and confronted with the choice of doors and images, could not suss out their meanings. =)
Good extra long dreams to all. I'm gonna sit most of this out and make a push on my Santasm. =)
Keep on keepin on~
p.s. Went and saw UNKNOWN tonight. Great premise. Great cast—Barry Pepper, James Caviezel, Joey Pants, Peter Stormare, Greg Kinnear. Not-so-great execution. Would've been a great one-hour of something. The 90 or so minutes on screen just needed something more, some fixxin. Should be a good rental, something to watch w friends and half-wiseass-half-seriously blurt out theories, y'know?
3 comments:
Judging by the number of people who thought that INLAND EMPIRE was a comedy worthy of hysterical laughter for nearly every single shot, I'm not inclined to be optimistic about the intellectual abilities of the audience and their capacity to discern one door from another.
Sleep paralysis has existed for a long time, but now it gets associated with Aliens. Fun!
I think you'll have to be a guest on the next Pseudocertainty. We'll get to the bottom (no pun intended) of this alien issue..,
Bill---
Wow, that sounds like a painful viewing experience. I caught a late show and was pleased to see the room nearly three-quarters full when the house lights went down. Once the film got rolling, there *were* laughs and giggles at some of the dialogue and visuals, but thankfully, it was limited to a small minority, at least as far as I could tell from the balcony. I imagine these were curious newbies or first-timers escorted by Lynch fan friends. I do hope that the gigglers will at least come back for some more Brattle goodness, if not Lynch experiences.
Dern is pretty frickin amazing. I love the dream-logic and puzzle-boxiness of the film. Damn good crack.
Zorky---
I don't know that I'm ready to talk too publicly or on the record about this. I'll hafta think about it...
Absolutely no regression hypnosis! If I'm not remembering something, I'm sure there's a good reason!
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