The Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc Cave in France is the subject of a new documentary by Werner Herzog called Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The cave was discovered in 1994 and is filled with cave paintings that date back from 26,000 to 32,000 years ago. There is a chamber at the end of the cave, 1312 feet underground, that is filled with CO2 and radon gas that is said to cause hallucinations. These hallucinations are reflected in the paintings on the walls.

A few are not even supposed to exist, like weird butterflyish animals or chimerical figures half bison half woman. These may be linked to the hallucinations. The trip is such that some archeologists think that it had a ritual nature, with people transcending into a new state as they descended into the final room.

[Gizmodo]

From the Too Cool Not To Share file, first the first time in decades Michael J. Fox has returned to his most beloved role as Marty McFly for this promo for the 2010 Spike TV Scream Awards, which will feature a 25th Anniversary Back to the Future cast reunion. The promo is an obvious homage to the original teaser trailer for the film. Here’s hoping the reunion is as awesome as it appears.  Get ready to go back in time!

I don’t know what to say about “Splice.” On the one hand, it does exactly what a thoughtful sci-fi story should: uses genre trappings to raise socio-culturally relevant, real-world questions without being so presumptuous as to provide pat, definitive answers. The story of a self-assured couple who literally have the equipment to create life, but lack the foresight and self-knowledge to responsibly care for it is essentially presented as the larger, catch-all story of modern parenting. The movie then painstakingly breaks down a variety of parental concerns – from education to discipline to gender imprinting to sexuality – all within a fast-paced and suitably creepy 103 minute runtime.

On the other hand, and I don’t really know how else to put this… the movie is kinda goofy. And I should love that, right? There are melodramatic lab sequences, crazy camera angles, lurid sex scenes, and a glut of increasingly nutty creature effects. Add in the thoughtful deconstructions of parenthood and the insight into genetic evolution and I should be a happy camper, right? A fun genre flick that’s comfortable enough in its own thematic depth to throw in some wild gore and zany action sequences. Why am I not obsessed with this movie?

(Before I get any more involved in my own personal struggle, I want to say now that if you haven’t seen “Splice,” go. Go watch it. I totally recommend it. Believe me I wouldn’t drag you through a post full of neurotic ambivalence just to tell you not to see a movie.)

Get the rest… AFTER THE JUMP
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The title “Snakes on a Plane” offered a fairly explicit promise, which the so-named film delivered on in full. Now, I’m not saying that it was an amazing movie, or that it provided said snakes on said plane to the scaly, flaming, fangs-v.-martial-law degree that the Internet hive mind rabidly hoped… just that all the grumping and grousing about it left a bad taste in my ears (which, on the upside, resulted in my being diagnosed with synesthesia). Snakes. On a plane. Say what you want about the less-than-stellar CG, fanboy pandering re-shoots and laughably self-conscious cult-status-hungry mugging – the film delivered on its title. How can anyone complain?

Is my view apologistic? Perhaps. Self-righteous? Definitely. Have I ever believed this opinion was anything other than 100% objectively correct? C’mon. I write. On the Internet. The thought would never occur to me. Until this weekend, when I saw “Human Centipede (First Sequence).” Now I feel like I can’t even tell my left from my right. (Dyscalculia diagnosis is pending.)

“Human Centipede (First Sequence),” as you’re probably aware, has caused quite the e-ruckus among cinematic thrill seekers and genre enthusiasts alike. If you aren’t aware, the film’s notoriety comes from its gruesomely straightforward premise – a mad scientist kidnaps three people with the intention of sewing them together, mouth to anus, in order to create the ultimate domestic plaything: the human centipede. First sequence.

Get the rest of this post AFTER THE JUMP…
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Look, people – I like those Saw movies. Judge if you want, but please don’t convict. I didn’t accost your delicate sensitivities when you were spit polishing the crown for Jason Reitman’s indie cred coronation. I politely clenched my throat to stifle the wet gags that came rolling up in the wake of your sacred dagger-wielding, blood-sworn Family Guy sacrament. Please withhold the stones, the jeers, the mass up-thrusting of rusty pitchforks, the lighting of oil-soaked rags
draped around halved shovel handles, the mob chants and rally cries and out-of-sync choruses – “Heretic! Blasphemer!”

I was at a bar the other night, ripping into a chorizo enchilada like I was the slow back-half of a wolf pack arriving late to the kill and diving in gracelessly, all desperate expectation, certain of the organic warmth, but unsure of the contents, and the topic of Saw wormed up to the surface. A bearded kid who was all Child’s Play and Elm Street (Brad Dourif and Robert Englund, we toast thee) before finally asking, maybe expecting confrontation, maybe even out for blood, maybe already charting a course to the door – weave around Giggling Cleavage, two steps left passed Ice-Stirring Stubble, then a cursory “scuse me” to Nose-Ringed Desperation and Dreadlocked Fear of Commitment before, swish, night air, fists up and into the ally – what do you think of the
Saw movies?

“I – I like the Saw movies” I responded, before, of course, appending the self-delusional caveat (read: justification) “or… I like the idea of them.”

Matthew decides enough is enough… AFTER THE JUMP

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If for some reason you haven’t see Alien, this post contains minor spoilers. And is probably really confusing.

Last week, Ridley Scott coughed up a bunch of details regarding his forthcoming Alien prequel. As many speculated, the film will, among other things, explain the origins of the strange chair-mounted “space jockey” that the Nostromo’s crew discovers inside the ova-packed derelict spaceship. In other words, Scott’s going for the obvious choice and, in doing so, opting to destroy one of the weirder, more evocative touches of mystery in the entire series. I have no problem with X-Men Origins-ing this bitch, but let’s be smart about it. There’s a whole Nostromo’s worth of characters to back story:

Treacherous Milk: The Story of Ash – How about a film centered on the construction and programming of this back-stabbing android? You can have the Weyland-Yutani scientists churning his robot milk and priming his dickish superiority engine while they have heated arguments about what sort of combat training to give him. Once they finely land on rolled up magazine suffocation tactics, there can be a bad-ass Danger Room-type fight simulation where Ash’s only means of defense is a bandolier full of National Geographics. Obviously, we also want to see them programming Ash’s weird xenomorph fetish, complete with complexly rendered sex dreams featuring the alien’s big, shiny banana head.

Or how about The Rise and Fall of Parker and Brett, a show business biopic in which we learn that the Nostromo’s engineering officers were once a popular Vaudeville act whose signature routine, “The Bonus Situation,” found them cashing in big on the interracial corporate-themed slapstick duo circuit. But when the mob comes knocking, Brett and Parker let them in, and take their coats. And then escape out a window. Now the mob wants their coats back. Disguising themselves as starship HVAC techs, Brett and Parker stowaway on a cargo vessel, flee the planet and contract space alcoholism. Cut to “Alien.”

I’d also watch South to Dallas, an action-adventure/coming-of-age movie depicting the thrilling tomfoolery of a rugged, young Captain Dallas as he smuggles, gambles and sass-talks his way to the wrong side of the tracks, where he meets, and falls in love with, a promiscuous tattooed smoker. During the course of their sexy, gun-slinging, cross-country romp, we learn that Dallas is terrible at orienteering and often gets North and South confused, which is like a metaphor for his life and decision making, and also, at one point, the hard-living couple actually travels from Oklahoma to Texas. What I’m saying is that the title is really clever.

Kane’s movie would probably be a raucous workplace comedy in which his good intentions, pleasant demeanor and consummate professionalism make him an object of scorn, ridicule and an escalating series of hilarious pranks involving toilets. Maybe it could be called Hazing Kane. That way, when you re-watch alien, you’ll be so used to seeing the quiet and sweetly pathetic Executive Officer bagged on, the chest burster sequence will evoke only resigned head shaking and tutting exclamations of, “Oh, Kane!”

Nobody wants to see a Lambert movie. Maybe if the plot of the movie was that she fell off a boat. Even then I wouldn’t want her to have any dialogue. And it would have to be a super awesome boat. Like, super super.

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. Look read about the origins of the legend from Monday and how Charlie Sheen inevitably got involved from Wednesday…

As we’ve already established that murder footage shot by a serial killer would not, in all but the most specific hypothetical conditions, be considered snuff, and because the Internet is already rife with clip art-skull-ridden serial killer annals, I promise not to belabor this bit. I’m only bringing it up because, going into writing this series of posts, I didn’t have any clear idea of how many killers, serial or otherwise, were known to have taken video footage of their crimes. If you had told me there was a government warehouse of the stuff right next to that ark storage depot, I couldn’t have argued with you. The reality, though, is that depraved maniacs who murder just for pickle tickles don’t tend to D.A. Pennebaker their heinous acts (or, at least, do a great job of hiding or destroying the tapes/discs/files).

In the 1980s, Northern California crazies Leonard Lake and Charles Ng tortured and killed at least 20 women, videotaping some of the torture, but none of the hands-on killing. Likewise, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, a couple of murderous Canadian sex nuts, videotaped the sexual torture of two of their three teenage victims, but none of the deaths. In 1997, two German citizens (Ernst Dieter Korzen and Stefan Michael Mahn) who recorded the murder of a prostitute became the first people ever to be convicted for making snuff, but, prior to their arrest, they made no attempt to distribute the film and documentation of the case (most of which I found in UK tabloids) is unclear (or in German). Also in Germany, that dude (Armin Miewes) who slaughtered and ate his willing Internet lunch buddy taped his Killin’ and Cookin’ pilot episode. Most recently, in 2007, two sadistic Russian thugs (dubbed the “Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs”) used a cell phone to record themselves murdering a defenseless old man.

(Rumors continue to circulate about “snuff” footage filmed by the Zodiac killer. Most recently, as reported by Blue Line Radio’s blog on January 14th of this year, a man named Dennis Kaufman, who claims his father, Jack Tarrance, was Zodiac, supplied the FBI with segments of a heavily damaged film reel alleged to contain video evidence of a murder.)

Where, oh where, kind readers, does this leave us?

Find out AFTER THE JUMP!

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Release all the Krakens you want. One of popular cinema’s most notorious nuts, Werner Herzog took a 3D camera into a cave and is planning doing a documentary about the paintings he saw.

[Guardian via Boing Boing]

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. Look read about the origins of the legend from Monday and come back Friday for the finale…

The grisly half-truths associated with the Manson Family did more than just inspire one author to off-handedly coin the term “snuff film” (see Monday’s post) – they inspired a nation to collectively wet its pants and shriek at the thought of a cult pandemic. Manned by the media and powered by irrational fear, the rumor mill began grinding out stories of cult activity, both in the US and abroad. The assumptions offered about Manson snuff films had some basis in fact – In 1969, several of Manson’s BFFs hijacked and robbed an NBC-TV truck packed full of film equipment, some of which was eventually recovered, snuff-free, by police. The ancillary whisperings of an International outbreak of brainwashed cabals with wicked leaders and sinister agendas, though? Grossly (and I mean really extra disgustingly) exaggerated in almost every way possible.

But no less artistically inspiring.

The story of the first nationwide snuff freakout supposedly began with one man, one newspaper and one appallingly awful exploitation film. When Allan Shackleton, President of Monarch Releasing Company, a small film distribution venture known for releasing low-budget nudie flicks, read a newspaper article about a rumored South American snuff ring, he saw dollar signs. And motorcycles. And boobs. Shackleton was remembering a little-known exploitation film called “Slaughter” that had been just barely released in the early ‘70s. It had what he needed: South America and a cult-themed premise. All it was missing was the snuff climax. But it took a lot more than that to discourage the executive producer of 1972’s “When the Cat’s Away” (tagline: “She’s X-rated and IN COLOR!”)

In 1976, Shackleton re-released “Slaughter” as “Snuff,” complete with the tagline “The film that could only be made in South America… where life is CHEAP,” and a newly filmed ending, in which an abrupt cut gives way to a vérité-style scene of an actual murder. To help sell the implication that the film contained real-life snuff footage, Shackleton even pulled a William Castle-esque stunt in which actors playing anti-“Snuff” picketers were planted outside theaters. He needn’t have made the effort. Women Against Pornography (WAP), a radical feminist group that, three years later, held a notorious protest march through Times Square, immediately bunched up their panties, declaring the film a revolting paean to sexual violence. Their very-real boycott of the movie was covered by CBS news. By the time “Snuff” was outed as a fake, and “Slaughter”’s original filmmakers were suing Shackleton for altering their film without permission, the idea of snuff had become a mass cultural folktale, spawning a bevy of low budget horror films (including Weird Things favorite, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”) and plenty o’ friend-of-a-friend accounts of actual snuff film screenings.

Learn how Faces of Death and Charlie Sheen play pivotal roles in our international fascination with the snuff film urban legend AFTER THE JUMP…

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I’m sitting here watching Wes Craven’s original “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” trying to ambivalently accept the almost-certainly mediocre reality of the forthcoming remake (or “reimagining” or “reboot” or whatever limp cultural buzz word the blogging apologists and taste-making glossies are using to describe the new Bay-produced “A Nightmare on Elm Street”) and I’m trying to be positive. How am I doing so far? Christ, guys, I know that the new movie won’t make the old one disappear, and I know that the original film’s latter-day sequels (save for The Dream Warriors and New Nightmare, which are awesome) tarnished the original’s reputation far more than any dully predictable modern update ever could, but still. I get weirdly emotional about this stuff, okay? Last time Pepsi changed its logo, I got drunk and set a fire in a graveyard.

The point is, if they’re going to recast Freddy and play with the story a little, I’d rather see them fully embrace a new mythology rather than simply redecorate the old one. Here are my suggestions:

Make Freddy something other than a power plant employee…

Apologies to all organ banks in Sector 7G, but Freddy’s a clever guy. His blade-gloves denote a flair for craftsmanship, his murders scream creativity, and he had the confidence and self-motivation to come back from the dead and learn how to murder people in their dreams. Imagine how fast he’d pick up QuickBooks. Maybe he was an architect. He could say stuff like, “I’m an architect of nightmares!” and “Your skin will shingle the gambrel roof of my Dutch Colonial hell!” Or maybe he was a chef – “I’m cooking up nightmares!” “I used to be a chef.” Either way, they should find a way to fit in an insert shot of his last W-2. I think the fans would like that.

Add a parents of Elm Street vigilante arson B-plot…

The parents of Elm Street rose up mob-justice style and burned Freddy Krueger to death. It only follows that, as a result, they’ve acquired a taste for blood and roam the streets of town looking for any excuse to reclaim the surge of empowering, adrenaline-soaked horniness they felt as they watched Freddy crisping away into a carbonized husk. Maybe do it so we begin to associate them with the weapons they use – like one guy only uses Molotov cocktails and one lady only uses hairspray and a lighter. The other two just use matches, but one’s really fat and the other has a weird birthmark covering half his face, so we associate them with those things and, anyway, those two die early on in a fight with drug dealers.

Have the token nerdy kid program a robot to dream, then use a wig and lipstick to disguise the robot as one of the girls so that Freddy goes inside the robot’s dreams and gets trapped somehow (software?), but then gains control of the robot’s consciousness. Then have the robot fight Molotov Cocktail and Flaming Hairspray…

During these scenes, the kids can watch Freddy on a computer monitor and he yells stuff at them. Either “I’ll open your skulls as if they were casement windows” or “I’ll chef all of you!” depending.

Each week, Weird Things’ own Matt Finley breaks down one of the oddest elements of our culture in a feature we call Monster Of The Week. Look for new installments Wednesday and Friday…

This week, I want to talk about the rumors and assumptions surrounding snuff films, and the supposedly booming black market that creates and distributes them. First things first, though, we need to look at how most folks define snuff in order to understand one of the core truths about it – Snuff doesn’t not exist because of the limits of human greed or depravity; snuff doesn’t exist because of the limits of its definition.

The verbal dances we undertake in attempting to nail down specific definitions for broadly understood, but taxonomically elusive, phenomena like pornography have nothing on the addendum-flinging rumba that people perform in pinning down snuff films. In this sense, snuff is the opposite of the former example – the struggle to dogmatically codify pornography is an exercise in encapsulating an ever-expanding set of subjectivities as they relate to the perceptions and intentions of both producer and consumer. Porn can encapsulate anything from video recordings of fully exposed penetrative intercourse to a photograph of a person’s bare feet. The working definition of a “snuff film” is so ludicrously specific as to systematically eliminate every known snuff-like recording from the mass hypothetical understanding of what constitutes true snuff.

Snuff started out as a fairly open-ended term. First used by author Ed Sanders in his 1971 true crime book “The Family: The Story of Charles Manson’s Dune Buggy Attack Battalion,” the term “Snuff films” was used to describe an alleged series of violent (possibly murderous) home movies shot by Manson and his acolytes. Though no footage ever surfaced, the term caught on and became a catch-all label for any video recording depicting the actual murder of a human being (I’ll get into the specific history and examples in Wednesday’s column).

Today, the definition has been vastly constrained by a huge honkin’ caveat:

Said murder must have been committed for the express purpose of distributing (and, according to the strictest definition, profiting from) the recorded footage.

Click AFTER THE JUMP for the rest!

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In which I add a wholly unnecessary narrative spin to the satisfying, straight-forward conclusion of a classic film.

Today: David Cronenberg’s “The Fly”

After killing Brundlefly, Stathis helps Veronica into her car. He scratches at his gross beard and offers to keep her company, but, still sobbing, she declines. As Stathis leaves and Veronica watches his aging car pull away, she immediately stops crying. She turns on the radio. The Bangles’ “Manic Monday” is playing. Cut to a street view. The music blares. Her car peels out and speeds away.

Cut to Veronica entering her apartment. A single lamp glows in the far corner of the living room. As she walks through the door, we hear a loud smoker’s cough. “Ah, Vladimir!” she exclaims. Cut to a man, shrouded in shadow, sitting on Veronica’s couch, holding a bottle of vodka. As he fills two glasses, we can just barely make out his craggy, chiseled features and dark, threatening suit. In one smooth motion, Veronica pulls off her curly, brown Geena Davis hair, revealing that it was a wig. She shakes out her natural thick blonde tresses and accepts a drink from the man. “Do Svidanya,” the man declares as they clink glasses. He downs his liquor in a single gulp, then pulls a manila folder out of his suit coat and throws it down onto the coffee table. Veronica smiles and sips her drink. As the man walks out, he speaks in a Russian accent: “the money for Brundle has been wired to your account.”

After the man leaves, Veronica clicks on another lamp and picks the folder up off the table. Inside is a picture of a nerdy geek with big dweebish glasses and a dorky cowlick. The photo is pinned to a small dossier. Veronica lifts the bottom of the photo. Cut to a close up of the dossier. We see the name “Dr. Norman Valient” and a column below it that says, “Field of Research: Teleportation.” Veronica closes the folder and, sipping vodka, slowly walks over to what appears to be a closet. She opens the door and we immediately hear a low, humming drone. As she flips on a light, we see a small room full of glass terrariums, each of them abuzz with hundreds of flies. Veronica smiles and brings the photo of Dr. Valient up to her lips. We hear the faint smack of a kiss. Veronica speaks: “Pleased to meet you, Doctor Walient.” Cut to close up of Valient’s photo, with a lipstick stain across his poindexter face. Voice over (Veronica): “Pleased to meet you.” Credits roll.

The story of a faraway island still inhabited by legendary creatures has been a captivating idea since before Homer wrote down the Odyssey. Recent incarnations include the works of Jules Verne and stories like King Kong, Jurassic Park and recently Where the Wild Things Are.

When we think of fascinating creatures we tend to put them into two categories, those that came before recorded history and those that came after and are mostly still around. While we can comprehend recent extinction and acknowledge that our caveman ancestors dealt with beasts that are no longer around, we tend to think of things having been the status quo since we started writing stuff down – with the exception of a dodo bird or two.

The truth is a little bit weirder. A number of fantastical creatures continued on well into recorded history and only vanished quite recently. Oddly enough, many of these creatures survived on remote islands (this isolation might explain why they survived as long as they did).

Here’s a list of amazing beasts that survived in remote places well into historical and almost modern times. Some are sure things, others are a little far-fetched. All are just as plausible as another.

The last Wooly Mammoth died on Wrangel Island (Near Russia) probably around 1,700 BCE – close to the reign of Ramesses the Great and over 1,000 years after the Sphinx was built.

The Elephant Bird was a giant bird (a ratite to be precise) native to Madagascar that went extinct in the 1600′s. At 10 feet tall and close to 1,000 pounds in weight, this was no dainty emu. Given what we now know about dinosaurs and their relation to birds, this is one scary creature.

Megalania was a giant monitor lizard that may have survived into historic times. At 26 feet long and 4,000 lb in weight, it’d be the closest you’d come to seeing something that looked like a classical depiction of a dinosaur. Some cryptozoologists claim recent sighting as evidence that that there may be populations still alive in New Guinea and Australia.

The Giant Hutia was a large rodent that got as large as 440 lb – as big as an American Black Bear. Indigenous to the West Indies it may have been hunted to extinction by aboriginal humans but some may have lived into historic times. One smaller species may have survived as late as when the Spanish explored the Caribbean.

Homo floresiensis – “The Flores Man” or “Hobbit” was a possible distinct humanoid species that is believed to have died out 12,000 years ago. However local folklore about creatures called “Ebu Gogo” that match the description of these creatures suggests that they may have existed as recently as the late 19th century.

It was ten years ago today that Fight Club was released. Both the film and the book by Chuck Palahniuk explored a variety of themes. Besides the intricacies of soap making, starting your own cult and the downside of consumer culture, at its heart is a story about a man with a strange condition that causes him to develop an alternate personality. In psychological parlance, that’s called dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder.

In the book and film this alternative personality resulting from this disorder was quite liberating for the main character.

Many people have asked if this is even a real condition. Prior to the 19th century people who displayed radically different personalities were assumed to be possessed. In the 19th century it was explored on somewhat more scientific, if not rigorous grounds. From Wikipedia:

These conversion disorders were found to occur in even the most resilient individuals, but with profound effect in someone with emotional instability like Louis Vivé (1863-?) who suffered a traumatic experience as a 13 year-old when he encountered a viper. Vivé was the subject of countless medical papers and became the most studied case of dissociation in the nineteenth century.

That was all it took for writers from Mary Shelley to Edgar Allen Poe to start running with the concept of one person inhabited by two or more personalities.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde explored the notion of an alter ego acting entirely on the impulses of your id.

Fight Club in many ways is a descendent of these concepts. Both Mr Hyde and Tyler Durden displayed extremely anti-social behavior – the exception being in Tyler Durden’s case, author Chuck Palahniuk created a narrative structure that made it justifiable from the assumed point of view.

Despite case studies giving some credence to the condition and the plethora of scientific rationales provided, some remained skeptical. A number of researchers who initially believed the condition to be genuine began to second guess that assumption when they paid closer attention to some of the more celebrated cases of the field’s pioneer Jean-Martin Charcot. From Wikipedia:

In the early 20th century interest in dissociation and DID waned for a number of reasons. After Charcot’s death in 1893, many of his “hysterical” patients were exposed as frauds and Janet’s association with Charcot tarnished his theories of dissociation. Sigmund Freud recanted his earlier emphasis on dissociation and childhood trauma.

Eventually the book the Many Faces of Eve published in 1957 and the film adaptation caused a resurgence in diagnosis of the condition as did the book and later film Sybil did in 1974. From Wikipedia:

Skeptics claim that people who present with the appearance of alleged multiple personality may have learned to exhibit the symptoms in return for social reinforcement. One case cited as an example for this viewpoint is the “Sybil” case, popularized by the news media. Psychiatrist Herbert Spiegel stated that “Sybil” had been provided with the idea of multiple personalities by her treating psychiatrist, Cornelia Wilbur, to describe states of feeling with which she was unfamiliar.

It’s particularly interesting how uniquely American this condition is (unless you buy into the premise that hyper-consumerism was the flashpoint for developing a split personality in Fight Club). From Wikipedia, figures from psychiatric populations (inpatients and outpatients) show a wide diversity from different countries putting the legitimacy of the condition under suspicion.

Despite the clinical controversy over this condition, there remains a fascination in many of us over the idea of developing a stronger personality capable of doing the things we’re unable to bring ourselves to do.

It’s that fascination with alternative personalities and the expression of free will in Fight Club that still resonates today. We know what it is, but we just don’t know how to express it. Weight loss and substance abuse treatment are billion-dollar industries because we can’t quite get our bodies and minds to agree on things.

Where Hyde and Durden were expressions of the id, self-hypnosis and pseudo-psychology like NLP offer the promise of giving you control over your id to allow your higher functioning free will the ability to overcome your animal instincts.

Is the next desired evolution in mankind, not a physical one, but the ability to actually do the things we want?

Jeckyll and Hyde was about a Victorian scientist who may have been a bit repressed. Fight Club was the story of an everyman who felt emasculated by modern civilization. For both of them, part of their expression involved extreme violence and unleashing the id. Arguably in Durden’s case the violence (in particular the destruction of private property) was a byproduct of the world not being the way he wanted it to be and not something done for the sole sake of violence.

The lesson we can learn from Fight Club (we’ll pass over its conflicted view of personal freedom and anti-Capitalist message) and Jeckyll and Hyde is that the more civilized man is, the more frustrated he is by his inability to exert complete free will over his actions. So frustrated that he’s willing to start cults that destroy individuality and embrace violence to let that inner animal out to wreak havoc.

On one level Fight Club is about setting loose our id to unleash its fury that it can’t express itself in a less id-like way. And that is what we call a paradox.

link: Dissociative identity disorder – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One movie. Five people, living or dead, at the screening. Who and why?

Today’s screening: “eXistenZ”

An indispensible entry in the mid-‘90s oeuvre of sci-fi mind-ef cinema, David Cronenberg’s “eXistenZ,” a pseudo update of his 1986 opus “Videodrome,” is the story of a state-of-the-art simulated reality game played on a bio-organic console that plugs into the user’s spine. But it goes wrong! Or is it just part of the game? Only some mutated lizards and Willem Defoe know the truth.

William Gibson (1948- ), Author

Gibson, whose 1984 novel “Neuromancer” kick-started the literary cyberpunk movement, was the first author to write in detail about an artificial reality accessed via surgically installed bio-ports. After the screening, he’ll want to personally thank Cronenberg for blatantly sexualizing his concept. Get in line, Will. You’re behind the inventor of the VCR and the first car crash victim.

Nick Bostrom (1973- ), Philosopher

Before the Wachowskis mated simulated reality with an S&M munitions factory, Bostrom posited the simulation hypothesis, which offers an empirically reasoned argument for reality as a technologically generated simulation. I have a lot of questions for Nick. “That door…is that a simulation? Okay, but what about the TV? Really? How about the ocean? Damn. But the moon is real, right?…”

James Woods (1947- ), Actor

Noted maniac and star of “Videodrome,” Woods can entertainingly contribute to the inevitable discussion comparing the two films – Which is cooler, “Videodrome”’s flesh gun that shoots cancer, or “eXistenZ”’s jawbone gun that shoots teeth? Would you rather have sex with Woods’ VCR tummy vagina or Jude Laws’ Konami spine anus? Woods responds, “yes to all.”

Carol Shaw, Video Game Designer

Best known for creating Activision’s “River Raid” in 1982, Shaw, now retired, was the first female game designer. Given that “eXistenZ” portrays a savvy female game designer (definitely not a Hollywood archetype), it would be fun to watch it with her. Plus, she’s something else I can point to and ask Nick if it’s simulated.

Jerry Holkins (1976- ), Writer

Writer of the hilarious gaming-centric webcomic “Penny Arcade,” Holkins is an outspoken gaming expert. He’s likely to offer a funny, intelligent critique of the movie’s portrayal of video game art and cultural. Also, I don’t know what his policy is on people rubbing his big, bald baby head, but I think Woods is gonna be all over it, regardless.

One movie. Five people, living or dead, at the screening. Who and why?

Today’s screening: Gremlins

The incomparable Joe Dante directed this 1984 holiday horror comedy in which a boy receives a strange, furry creature (a “Mogwai”) for Christmas. The animal, a delightful cutie named “Gizmo,” comes with a strict set of rules. Of course, these instructions aren’t followed and the creature reproduces, creating an army of horrific gremlins that proceed to terrorize the town.

• Roald Dahl (1916-1990), Author

Before Dante filmed them mocking “Snow White,” gremlins were a running joke among Royal Air Force pilots who, during WWII, blamed the devious creatures for instrument malfunctions. It was Dahl, beloved children’s author and RAF veteran, who, in writing his book “The Gremlins,” popularized these beasties. Worst case: he hates the film. Best case: he goes into a screaming, flailing WWII gremlin flashback.

• Arthur Rankin, Jr. (1924- ), Writer/Producer/Director

Along with partner Jules Bass, Rankin created some of the most memorable holiday movies of all time, including “The Year without a Santa Claus” and “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer.” Given his passion for bizarre Christmas movies, he might enjoy this film; given his alleged penchant towards racism, he’d definitely enjoy that the characters ignore the old lecturing Chinaman.

• Moses, (Unknown) Prophet

Moses famously hefted two giant stone tablets upon which were written the ten divinely mandated dogmatic principles by which humans are expected to live. And nobody listened. “Gremlins” presents a separate, smaller, and possibly more important, set of rules that are also disregarded. The screening will clear up any hard feelings – “See, Moses, it was nothing personal. All rules are boring. Except “no cloning.” That one’s cool because it mentions cloning.”

• Thomas Edison (1847- 1931), Inventor

In “Gremlins,” Billy’s father is an inventor who builds malfunctioning prototypes for useless household gadgets. Edison created the light bulb, the phonograph and the motion picture camera. He would probably get a kick out of watching said camera chronicle another inventor’s failures. And, if you feed him after midnight, he turns into Nikola Tesla.

• Stephen Herek (1958- ), Director

Forget your “Armageddon”/”Deep Impact”- in 1986, Herek directed a horror comedy called “Critters” about a group of toothy little monsters that terrorize a town. To this day, he denies any connection. Let’s see how insistent he is when he’s in a room with Moses and a dude who enthusiastically electrocuted an elephant.