"I'll See You Again in 25 Years."

In the wake of Showtime's announcement of a long awaited/unexpected Twin Peaks third season, my curiosity compelled me to dig out my old print article of Fire Walk With Me as film reviewer for my university paper after a recent re-watch of both the show & film:

[Think the press kit got the caption wrong, since Michael J Anderson was The Man from Another Place.] 

Re-examining this vintage evaluation at the prophesied time later, I didn't give enough credit to Sheryl Lee, who had to travel soooo far down the emotional rabbit hole to get what she needed to play Laura Palmer's final descent into the Black Lodge. (And that Pink Room music still stands as the best Twin Peaks soundtrack cut!) Otherwise, I still agree with all the above, and feel that the David Lynch's strangely unique & nightmarish vision still haunts us ... and will always haunt us.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

a life cast in John Hughes.

There's that montage in Pretty in Pink where Andie/Duckie/Blaine are sitting by the phone soon after the physically decisive hay-rolling horse stable date, it's raining outside like the world's trying to drown itself, and New Order's Elegia creeps its way in & builds into an inexorable throb as the next day at school comes to cast its harsh light on the emotional shortfall.



That's exactly where I'm at right now.



Surprise. Joy. Frustration. Disappointment.

I can hear myself counseling a friend not so long ago that we were better men for holding onto our romantic ideals, that they imbue our souls with worth & value, that they represent an undefeatable hope that we will one fine day find that girl, that our desires will be met & exceeded with passion & comfort, and it will all be achingly transcendent.



"What about prom?"



All I want to do right now is listen to The Smiths, nurse a three finger tumbler of scotch while hucking cards into a bin, ride my BMX until I collapse in unthinking fugue, or go beat the crap out of something. And to seriously back whatever kickstarter or tech stock that's working on gynobots.



Yet I also want to believe I'm still right, to hang onto my 1980s optimism and teen drama motion picture ending.



I watched two friends of mine at work not look at each other today. They'd talked about moving away together, about taking trips to far cities & deep wildernesses, worked on merging dreams, and helped each other through some of their past damages. But they broke up last night, showing up so bitter and unhappy, just standing there 20 feet from each other, unable to escape, unable to look. It killed me to watch it, though it might've been for the best and beyond repair, the selfishness outweighing their willingness to understand & accept the other. It was so uncomfortable & ugly. But they aren't me, nor are they she.



"No! What about prom?"



A girl I'd had a crush on since my freshman year asked me to senior prom. She asked me. Because it happened once, I have to believe it could happen again.



It just feels so, so, so, very, very, very, hard right now.



Fuck.



Fucking happen already.

[Andie, I feel you. I would've called because I still believe in you. I wish upon your star.]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him.

the way of Car-Fu.

In the wake of the Wachowskis' "Speed Racer", and car-centric cinematic franchises like "Fast & the Furious" and "The Transporter", classics like "Bullitt" and "Grand Prix", or cult favourites "Gone in 60 Seconds" (1974 original) or "The Road Warrior", or "Death Race", the subversive "Drive" (2011), and grindhouse horroramotive "Death Proof", the theme of cars equipped for aggressive and offensive driving pervades and fascinates as a highway accident does rubberneckers. The guilty spectacle of cars duking it out sells tickets, but as with everything the roadtrip begins with the written word, realized to the vanishing point where death imitates art. 



Taking it back to source materials, Ib Melchior's "The Racer" inspired Roger Corman's "Death Race 2000" leading to its 2008 update, while Alan Dean Foster's "Why Johnny Can't Drive" influenced Steve Jackson's enduring "Car Wars" boardgame that later seeded Sony's "Twisted Metal" titles. Both short stories passenger us into a creepy dystopian near-future where the worship of the machine outweighs the value of an annoyingly overpopulous humanity. 



That annoyance makes itself felt on the highways, as the stories both key into road rage where lies the inevitable confrontation of ineptitude & obstacle followed by the immediate emotional reaction of frustration, a roadblock to the 1950s idea of the car as ultimate freedom and vehicle for liberation, an impedence to the "grins" as many automotive journalists like to characterize the joyride of high speeds granted by performance cars. 



In Arizona last year a man who believed he'd been caught speeding, drove up and shotgunned a photo van, disabling not only the equipment but killing the non-police technician inside. The state pulled all the monitoring vans off the roads for awhile, fearing more of the same might happen. If authorities aren't able to stay on top of it, such doubly wrong minor revolutions might become more widespread. 



With ego and identity being wrapped up for so many owners in their rides, some drivers' automania manifests in a "Move Bitch", my car is better than yours, bolstered by the false sense of unstoppability. Whether that exoskelton is 2000 musclebound pounds of Detroit steel, a carbon fiber sword cutting through the windflesh, or a drifter carving a mountain, the need for proving one's superiority on the road has the aspect of an armoured arms race. Given the exponential fast-forwarding of technology, and the widespread popularity of aftermarket kits, it may not be so far off the map that customizers could install such modifications under the pretense of personal on-the-road protection to take care of business. 



Such may herald the grim way of Car-Fu.

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1/21/2014 Addenda: Yes! Pima County has eliminated the totalitarian speed enforcement cameras in Tucson! Hopefully this will be followed by the City of Tucson removing their financially onerous & legally entrapping intersection cameras, too!

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Into the Velvet Darkness: Vincent Price & The Masque of the Red Death.

During the mid-1960s aspiring director Roger Corman was wrangled by producers into making a series of films loosely based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe, most starring Vincent Price. Unforeseen by anyone, it would be this unlikely congruence of resourceful auteur, gothic progenitor, and incomparable leading man which resulted in the dark miracle that is "The Masque of the Red Death".



Set in early renaissance Europe, a plague known as The Red Death makes everyone it touches bleed from every pore of their body -- an excruciating end to the lives of millions. Yet safely within the sealed keep of tyrannical nobleman Prince Prospero (Vincent Price) an endless party of sinful delight and decadence goes on. Three peasants are also trapped with them whom Prospero plans to use as both fodder for his court's entertainment and object lessons to spread his satanic gospel.



As inhuman as Price's Prospero seems, he's also potently charismatic, and slowly convinces and compromises peasant girl Francesca (Jane Asher), whose life and faith (and the lives of her fiancee and father in the dungeon below) hangs in the balance, towards her first tentative steps to a darker illumination. At the same time his courtship of the naive Francesca destabilizes his relationship with fetching princess and disciple Juliana (Hazel Court), making for poisonously royal intrigue.

[It almost looks like they've been caught doing something ... .]

While much of this plot is not in the original 30-page short story, Corman integrates Poe's "Hop-Toad" too, and adds fitting elements to flesh out a top-notch hour and a half. And a viewer would never know Corman worked on a less than shoestring budget, with only five weeks to deliver it. Early Universal monster films aside, there are few other horror offerings more classic than this parade of costumed revelers, garishly gorgeous path color splash, and soul-stirring dialogue.



So put on your best Venetian mask and listen as Prince Prospero mellifluously intones, "The way is not easy, I know, but I will take you by the hand and lead you through the cruel light into the velvet darkness." Thank you for the soirée, sweet prince.

[Francesca listens to Prospero!]

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.

Your Future Looks Like a Danish Luxury Hotel: Aeon Flux's Sexy Dystopia.

The future will look like a very large Danish luxury hotel. At least if "Aeon Flux" has anything to say about it.



Set 400 years from now, a disease has decimated the world's population to a mere five million, all enclosed in the walled city-state of Bregna run by an iron-handed committee, opposed by righteous alt-looking Monican rebels who feel not all is right with the way things are. Disappearances and strange dreams for starters.



The attraction of the 1995 cartoon, aside from the obvious machine pistol toting lanky domina in catsuits with ram's horn tendrils, is the dichotomy of order versus change set within a mysterious Moebius-esque world. Totalitarian Chairman Trevor Goodchild and anarchist-assassin Aeon Flux are more than just characters -- they're concepts that give the other context. They need each other. And in that need there's a palpable lust that electrifies the story of their working at crosspurposes. They recognize they require each other to mean something, and that internal conflict of individual desire against a greater duty (whether it's to the state or the revolution) always made the outcome uncertain. Translating all these qualities to live-action movie, however, only works in some ways and not others, but the basic spirit is captured.



The severe design of the sets, some shot in Berlin with its Bauhaus concreteness, is gorgeous. By contrast, bad props, such as very plastic explosive charges, stick out like sore thumbs, along with fake computer generated elements. Costumes are all wonderful. Charlize Theron's black numbers are all winning. It's a shame that her performance doesn't hold up under equal scrutiny. Oh, it's mostly good like Marton Csokas' Goodchild, or Jonny Lee Miller ("Plunkett & Macleane"), but for all the principals there's moments where the emotional integrity just isn't being delivered, and those moments fail to skate by on looks alone.

Direction's from an MTV school -- understandable since it's an MTV property. But like many action films using tight shots and quick cuts, we lose a sense of space and fight choreography, and the far too trebley foleys do not help matters. Only when director Karyn Kusama selects long shots in some sequences, which is about half the time, a graceful ballet of violence is revealed.



And the movie explains much about the enigmatic cartoon -- why Aeon actually wears such a high-maintenance hairstyle, the rebels' rational for trying to destroy their perfect society, some practical uses behind Aeon's BSDM couture, and why the law of eternal return occurs. This last one was the most confusing for fans, but as the cartoon progressed it became accepted. The film underestimates general audiences by not using that device. If it had, it could have made one of its big revelations with so much more impact. (Yes, I'm being oblique here, but I'm trying very hard not to spoil things for you.)



Cinema can add "Aeon Flux"'s Bregna to its depiction of far future dystopias, like those of "Metropolis", "Dark City", "Logan's Run", and in extremis "1984" & "THX-1138". It's not the best of these predecessors, but it places as the sexiest.

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While a mostly happy bookstore fixture for over two decades, Guillermo Maytorena IV is currently willing to entertain your serious proposals for employment as a literary/cinema critic, goth journalist, castellan, airship pilot/crewperson, investigative mythologist, or assisting in a craft brewery. Should you be connected to any of the above or equally interesting endeavours, do contact him via LinkedIn or G+.