"Hard Times For Killing Machines" - Buck Theorem album

Hey, so I’ve made more music, This one is called 

 

“HARD TIMES FOR KILLING MACHINES”

 

which is from a hashtag I irreverently put on an Instagram post accompanying a picture of local shop dummies that looked like the T-1000 had taken up a modelling gig. The artist Found Object suggested it should be the name of my next album: and so it is.

 

Starting off with a sad lament of an assassin android being decommissioned, there’s a little fist-shaking at the gulf between those that have and those that have not, and then a little philosophical shrug at loss. Then we move on to a selection of romance scenarios, on beaches, in alleyways, and an couple of obvious declarations of neediness (including a cover of The Cars' "Drive"). Only interrupted by musings on the intent of dining implements and desserts, ending up with a credo that we should protect our nearest and dearest, if only by fantastical means.

 

This one is electrocynical and started life as an intended EP, but soon became LP length. -ish. It’s cheap (£1!) and should you download, you get a pdf of words and pictures too.

 

Why not give it a listen?

 

 

And here's the original picture and Instagram post as evidence of the T-1000s new fashionista career.

"The T-1000 has seemingly fallen on hard times and is modeling for my local superstore place. Shame."

Guardians of the Galaxy vol.3

Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3

Writer & Director – James Gunn

2023,     United States-New Zealand-France-Canada

Stars – Chris Pratt, Chukwudi Iwuji, Bradley Cooper, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillen, Will Poulter

 

Humorous banter, lashings of CGI and overwhelming sci-fi visuals, needle drops, down-to-earth characterisation of crazy protagonists, equal parts sentimentality and horror detail. In this final volume, with Rocket’s history being central, never has the horror/sentimental mash-up taken such precedence in‘Guardians’. The whole vivisection-animal-experiments angle veers the narrative into darker terrain than before, giving pay-off to Rocket’s reluctance to talk about his past in previous volumes. It’s like ‘Toy Story’s Sid for adults, plus eugenics and genocide, topped off with a genuinely unhinged turn by Chukwudi Iwuji as the High Evolutionary (achieving psychosis even more than scenery chewing).

 

Gunn delivers an arguably overlong final instalment without once taking the foot off the pedal, although all the oddball pathos of the Rocket flashbacks inevitably ends in an explosive CGI space-free-for-all. The rapid tonal changes might cause “emotional whiplash” but Gunn knows how to juggle. In fact, there such an Anything Goes element to Gunn’s writing that it’s entirely possible that some major characters might get killed off. Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) is arguably superfluous but inevitably setting up something else (there’s a lot of hints of that); there’s a great corridor fight feigning one-take (those are always highlights and Gunn has elsewhere hat-tipped to ‘Oldboy’); arguably too many characters, yet Gunn gives them all their due, mostly (maybe not Warlock though); excellent detail gives way to broad character arcs and declarations. 

 

And the most gratifying and unexpected needle drop for me was The Flaming Lips ‘Do You Realise?’; and there’s another outing for The The’s timeless ‘This is the Day’ (been listening to that one for nearly all my life), but Faith No More too.

 

It's a lot of fun that probably won’t win over those bored of super-hero hi-jinx, even if in space, but proves again that Gunn is one of the consistently best at this. After all, it’s the genre trend to emulate the ensemble funny banter that the first ‘Guardians’ pretty much pioneered, though few are as good (see Gunn’s ‘The Peacemaker’ series for even better, more hilarious banter). It’s all much of a muchness, and it ain’t subtle, but there’s a genuine core centred on the characters rather than just performative drama hitting the marks. Something to do with believing in the ragtag rough-and-ready group of outsiders, which he excels at, and spinning out everything from there. It’s just as scrappy, motivated, all-over-the-place and charming as its central team.

 

 

Barbarella

Barbarella

Director – Roger Vadim

Writers – Jean-Claude Forest, Terry Southern, Roger Vadim

1968, France-Italy

Stars – Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg

 

It’s intentionally silly because it is fully tongue-in-cheek: not quite a spoof in the same way as ‘Airplane!’ or ‘Austin Powers’, but there’s certainly a throughline to De Laurentis’ ‘Flash Gordon’. ‘Barbarella’ parodies the kind of sci-fi-epic-porn-lite that you could find in ‘Heavy Metal’ and ‘Metal Hurlant’ magazines -  well, actually it’s based upon Jean-Claude Forest’s comic. A comedy. Yes: laugh at the alien ray-sled thing. Many reactions are from the “you can’t do that anymore” as Barbarella goes on an adventure as a somewhat slightly oblivious sex-kitten, by which they seem to mean that they lament the days where it was just fine to objectify women on screen, which tells more about them than the film. Yes, it’s unrepentantly leery and a sexy romp in a Sixties style, but the film is also far trickier and it’s too self-aware to come across as malicious. It’s too playful and parodic.

Jane Fonda may have had reservations afterwards, but her natural intelligence always shines through; she’s never dumb or quite exploited in a ‘Carry On’ manner and crucially her performance is knowing, always in on the joke, so the sexism is more a punchline than just exploitative. For comparison, the men are nothing to write home about – although the child-catcher she first meets seems hairy and fair enough (Ugo Tognazzi) – being vapidly angelic (John Philip Law) or cackhanded or duplicitous. And then there are little subversive touches such as an orgy of women bonging of essence of man.

 

It's the sets and costumes and the outrageous décor and campness that is so enjoyable. The story itself goes off into the clouds and is quite expendable, but it’s the costumes and design, the set-pieces and goofiness that matter. There’s Barbarella’s fully furred-up spaceship; the children-and-biting-dolls is a nightmarish classic; the encounter with Dildano (David Hemmings) is perhaps the most accomplished comic sequence. And if you go with it, it’s fun and gleefully of its psychedelic era.

When I saw this now at the cinema, it had the right audience laughing with and not at it, to the full benefit of the screening. It was certainly a film I enjoyed more the second time around and treating as the kind of self-aware genre amusement that are everywhere now. And then afterwards, in the tiny bar, there was a DJ playing Sixties psychedelica, which was most pleasing. 

 

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Nineteen Eighty-Four

Directed – Rudolph Carier

Adaptation – Nigel Kneale

1957, GB (b/w live TV broadcast)

Starring – Peter Cushing, Yvonne Mitchell, Donald Pleasance, André Morell

 

A fairly definitive adaptation: a BBC play filmed live seems correct for George Orwell's timeless warning about state control and dehumanisation, of fake truth and up-is-down cruelty crushing citizens, exercising power for its own sake. The message hasn’t dated so much. Certainly it was enough to cause controversy at the time, with its post-war grimness and doom-mongering.

 

Cushing is of course great, Donald Pleasance of course show-steals, and André Morell makes for a formidable O'Brien, just as scary in his slickness as Richard Burton was in his drollness in the 1984 adaptation. If some of the acting is a little on the ripe side, the minimalist sets with the inserted filmed sequences of genuine post-war bomb-sites make for an aptly barren backdrop. It's a tale that has lost none of its power. Or maybe its pertinence and poignancy comes around in historical cycles.

 

One of the greats, and this is an admirable adaptation.

Infinity Pool

Infinity Pool

Writer & Director - Brandon Cronenberg

2023, Canada-Croatia-Hungary

Stars - Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Colem

 

The Cronenberg brand always delivers. Impotent with writer’s block, author James (Alexander Skarsgård) – retreats with  Em (Cleopatra Coleman) to an holiday resort to relax and for him to discover his mojo again. On this fictional island of La Tolqa, they meet Gabi (Mia Goth), who says she’s a fan and fun and introduces them to an increasingly hedonistic group of holiday goers.

 

When he accidentally kills a local, James discovers that the natives have a punishment system where they can make a clone of the offender to take the penalty – in this case: the death sentence. Cronenberg introduces cloning into the mix to lay bare the selfishness, privilege, decadence, etc, of the upper-class tourists exploiting and abusing the local people and customs. These people never suffer the consequences. It’s an easy target, but an ever deserving one. Seemingly having avoided the death penalty, James is somewhat perversely thrilled at this brush with mortality and getting-away-with-it and throws in with this irresponsible crowd. But of course, they just might be clones themselves… perhaps losing a little empathy and humanity with each cloning? It’s all something to laugh about over a night of hedonism and drink.

 

 

 

There’s not quite the hyperviolence of ‘Possessor’, but until things get going, Cronenberg makes sure we have traditional masks that look like meat packing and a graphic hand-job to be getting on with.  Skarsgård, as tall and handsome as he is and coming from the machismo of ‘The Northman’, is increasingly convincing as a man out of his depth and self-sabotaged by insecurities and gullibility. After ‘Pearl’, Goth ranks up her Horror Girl status and solidifies her reputation as a considerable presence. There are Cronenberg’s arty-trippy sequences where, although they don’t, things look like they might go the way of ‘Society’. These may lose some viewers and straightforward narrative drive, but that’s the point: everything slides apart. “Where are we?” James asks at the start, but by the latter half, he is thoroughly lost in hallucinogenic decadence.

 

The appeal of irresponsibility is chief here, but you must have the privilege and money to get away with it. And the victims are left shellshocked and ruined, but still enamoured of its allure and the faded glamour despite themselves. The descent into psychedelic mind-bending will lose a few, and as a cautionary tale about falling in the wrong people it won’t leave as much of a mark as ‘Speak No Evil’ or ‘Wake in Fright’, but Brandon Cronenberg continues to assert himself as a reliable source of unhinged ideas told in a clean, near-clinical but empathic style.