Blog Update September 2021

 The following post will be brief, but a necessary one. Simply put, a significant change in my personal life, involving moving home, will transpire within the remaining year into 2022. This is significant because, whilst it may not affect the blog's existence, it will affect content currently and may affect it in the future.

Currently, there is a significant amount to clear out, including old notes with one of the goals to have content ready even a month plus ahead if need be for the likely effect of the move. In mind to this, recently, there has been less focus on "abstract" cinema, but hopefully this will change alongside a very odd and esoteric mix. This move encourages a need to go through planned ideas that never came to be, for this blog, for the side content Games of the Abstract, my other blog 1000 Anime and possibly some Archive material too so that everything is dealt with.

I intend to plan ahead for October 2021 and Halloween by trying to have as much content in most of these topics ready, maybe covering horror films beyond the month, for a very eclectic choice. I intend it to be celebratory, in mind to the move's likely effect on me, so it is going to be a curious mix of many types of posts. Clearing out old notes, which I admit are handwritten, I am not just going to dump odds and sods as they are, but wishing to flesh them out, they are a going to be a weird mix even for my standards of topics, which in itself may lead to some entertainment for your dear readers is just finding the least expected juxtapositions every time you long onto the blog. This will last into the next year as I want them all cleared out, alongside topics which come of interest as always happens when you plan ahead but find things you want to write about as time passes.

In terms of the future, even if it means a change in content, if it leads to fewer posts to focus on other concerns and/or bearing in mind a change in what is covered, that will simply because this will clear through indulgences, including streaming subscriptions, and a change of personal life in a positive way. I do not see this as a concern in truth baring concerns of how it will go, and the wait to see how it goes, but that does not mean this blog, which was a hobby to do to unwind, will be left to gather dust or have less passion place upon it.

Summery for October to December 2020

Drawing plans together for the last three months of 2020, I had originally structured October to be a return of Halloween 31 for 31, themed with the idea of covering thirty one films for each day based on a film from thirty one countries. Truthfully, my plan had had to be changed somewhat as, in the grander scheme of more priority, my intentions for the last three months of 2020 is to clear through the back catalogues and To-Watch piles, entering 2021 with a clear slate, which takes priority over this initial plan and means horror films will be regardless of their country of origins.

Thankfully, this will include an eclectic selection nonetheless, and especially without a bias to know, big budget films as always. And, realising my original plan can go beyond thirty one countries, including the foggy area of international co-productions, and that countries like Germany due to 20th century history have existed in multiple forms, I can free this plan out and continue it to as long as I can sustain and locate the titles. It allows for another plan, now for a couple of months the Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) posts have returned, to get over the two hundred mark in reviews.

There will at least be thirty one reviews in October. Maybe more as, depending on practicality, there could be days with more than one review, one in the morning and one in the evening, of tangential material to television work being reviewed, all suitable for the season if even not horror.

November and December will collect together and finish off as much of my unused notes as possible, finally clearing the cobwebs. They will be planned and worked on ahead of time even if by a month. They will also be an eclectic mix, all to tie up as many loose ends not only for this blog, but 1000 Anime too, and even tidying up the blogs' presentation respectably. As much of this, to pull back the curtain, is a form of therapy, overcoming stress and anxiety at this point in my life with a greater focus on goals to improve my mental health, by refocusing and re-sharpening my interests to relieving these. Clearing the excess too, for both blogs, is a necessary anyway for this task, to relieve myself of time consuming materials and literal physical piles blocking a clear slate. It will allow DVDs left gathering dust to finally be seen, materials to be cleared out, and a sense of a new page being turned.

This will include some heavy hitters being covered as well, alongside my interest in eclectic obscurities and returning to old writing, not only possible re-posts but also very old material from before this blog to be returned to and rewriting, rewatching the films and hoping my writing style has improved considerably since I did not know have to space out text in paragraphs.

This is all written, in autumn 2020 before the leaves turn yellows to reds, with knowledge of how 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic has completed changed the world in terms of public mentality, both for positive enlightenment as much as unfortunately exposing its complacency, making the issue worse with a lot of anxiety for us all. If one person is helped through this ongoing scenario still by reading my writing, merely one, I have done something virtuous.

For me as well, I am thinking of how when the pandemic lockdown measures had ended¹ and cinemas started to open again, the pleasure of just being in a cinema, regardless of the film, would be experienced with a new found insight. At the time of writing this, sadly, the United States are still suffering the pandemic, and lockdowns are threatening to return again in other countries. And to a much lesser extent, the same problems as before for me with the theatrical experience are still there - lack of choice, lack of access, and for the more older films being shown now, you however now have less films being shown at practical times as a person who uses publish transport.

In spite of this, that sentiment has encouraged me to have an occasional, if potential indulgent, experiment in other forms of writings. Less film reviews, more diary entries taking this idea, but extending this as a regular cineaste thinking about what the moving image, not just cinema, mean to me in terms of access, how they are presented and what they are.

The first, as a non-horror piece in October, will be arriving soon. I hope you enjoy it.

 

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1) Sadly in the United Kingdom, despite them being eased back into September 2020, the threat of them coming back harshly still hangs over when this post was published.

Cinema of the Abstract 2020 Assessment

This piece is dated to when it was penned on purpose, as we cannot hide from the great and terrible effect COVID-19 has had on society globally. This has affected us all differently, to which I am among those who still has to go to work, but there has been a drastic change existentially which is fully starting to influence how I perceived the world around myself. I still have to walk on streets in a small town where stores I was complacent about entering have now gained an aura now they are no longer open, or that the community and world around me in general is one I will to attach myself to with a greater emphasis than ever before. I am beginning in my reappreciation of the simplest of aspects of my day-to-day life that have grinded to a hault during this period.

In cinema, the pandemic has had a pronounced effect. As cinemas have had to close, we have leaned more on the reliability of streaming services and the internet more. Unfortunately the problems I have always had with them are still there, that to be able to see everything you have to amount a monthly bill that is expensive, that not everything is available globally, and that there is probably not as much online as there might be if you are still comfortable buying physical media, making these sites' use as an archive with some cases as practical as a chocolate fireguard. There have however been good things from this. MUBI in particular, and like minded sites, even if they have temporary licenses are beacons of hope. Creators and owners of motion picture work have made their work for free online even if it only temporary, to which this is a fascinating world between HBO to Trent Harris among many who have let a mad variety of curiosities available without cost. And, for every group like the Cannes Film Festival who have decided to delay themselves until everything is normal, a very egalitarian attitude has been taken by the likes of the South By Southwest festival or the BFI Flare festival to make their premieres available online through streaming services, with the potential of wider audiences for premiers that might have not done beforehand¹.

This is as important for me as, whilst I have enough to cover until next year, this scenario also brings up the fact that, whilst productions that were finished or can still be completed will be premiering over the year, if the pandemic and social lockdowns last in countries for the year, new work will eventually dry out. Unless homemade work produced in self isolation becomes popular, or at least very elaborate and spectacle Twitter creations come in existence, there will be a drought, potentially forcing people to have to watch older films unless the time is spent merely watching what Netflix and Disney Plus has. This is interesting for me, whose blog here is devoted rarely to new work, and whilst I do not have the time many others have in their mandatory confinement, the world has stopped in England and the time I have spare has started to take its effect in positive ways for all the paranoia and dread.

Namely, that many simple things have grown in meaning for me and, as someone on the autistic spectrum, the moment this finally resolves I wish to be in contact with people fully than before. Also, it means I have to re-listen, rewatch and reread the materials I own after all these years, which is for the better; the longer this lasts there is the potential for my appreciation of them to actually be a true form of it. This is of note as the idea of Cinema of the Abstract has changed; this has transformed into a natural time to come forth with this as the additional free hours can be used for this change and improve upon the blog. First, in mind to the only methodology I have on this site being a charmingly cringe worthy post early on, I intent to post up a proper and simple methodology of what "abstract" means for me and what makes something more than that. If this can be defined in one sentence, it is thus: a tribute to the moving image that stands outside the idea of a mass produced product or even the work viewed as the best by film critics. This blog is one written by someone who is always suspicious, even if a character flaw at times, of anything which gets universal acclaim and popularity, especially for how it leaves a narrow canon in existence. This is the blog that desires to see the wider and sometimes strange world of figures who lead to these various works, even those that are terrible for me and indefensible.   

There will be some slow changes over this month or so. The output has been numerous every month, but has also been unwieldy and erratic for my sometimes overbearing perfectionism. Once the pace has been improved however, the plan is to just fine tune this blog. Rather than exasperate the simple ideas in mine, it will be kept to these precise points. The abstract film reviews will be the same, as is the "Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs". I intend to bring back "A Night of a Thousand Horrors", which was a subtitle for any horror films and shows, stopped when I was just covering horror over actual abstract films; this time I also intend to track down the most obscure work, even if it is the bottom of the barrel, as part of the growing ideal of the whole blog I will get to later.

The most important aspect is that there will be more emphasis on a canon, to which it will be updated much more often, and that there will be more emphasis on the people behind and in front of the camera. Eventually a greater emphasis on an actual canon in terms of the men and women behind these films, TV series and ephemera will be built upon. This includes expending the attitude beyond cinema to its origins in the "moving image". When this is talked about in most mainstream critical publication it is only for "the Golden Age of Television", a limited usually English language period of television usually heavily promoted which is very narrow minded. Neither is this "vulgar auteuism", which I was a witness to its development on the MUBI forums (when they were still called The Auteurs website) in the late 2000s, which was admirable in its attempt to look critically at pop culture but limited itself to American action cinema. The attitude for this blog instead is to look to the many fascinating productions being made on new mediums, like YouTube, but also the work that is forgotten or ignored, even in disreputable areas. The point is not for artistic masterpieces, unless they are found, but cinema and moving images as an extension of the human society in its cultures, facets and curiosities.

Probably the most important moments to this change in attitude for myself was a) the review of the instructional video Surviving Edged Weapons (1988) but in a very serious non-ironic way, b) the review of the French porn film Liberté sexuelle (2012) by former adult actress and director Ovidie, and the trio of films covered from American practical effects creator and director Joe Castro. (HERE, HERE and HERE). These three examples would rarely be covered even in podcasts and amateur reviews about cult cinema (barring the few exceptions to be admired). This attitude is not an attack on a canon, but the reality that cinema is a vast form in itself before you even step outside of it, where even the likes of Sight & Sound magazine and professional critics can have a predictable opinion on the medium when they cover the most advertised art cinema. Considering that even an admired auteur like Raul Ruiz, who has been covered on this blog, has most of his work still unavailable is already a problematic issue with how we treat cinema and moving pictures, before you consider a lack of equality. Instead this site wishes to be where the disreputable mediums like pornography are considered, where ephemeral filmmaking is not ignored, and fascinating work can be found in homemade web videos and outsider gonzo videotapes from the past are looked are with interest. Even the unintentionally compelling work should be treated with seriousness, not with irony, but from a perspective of asking where it is from.

Art is communication, which is what I have come to consider it as, a form that creates artificial dreams but also can tell one about their creator, which presents themes and ideas but is far more interest not for politics but the world in reality and imagined form being interpreted. It allows one to enter other's minds in how they express their perspectives of the world, and even if it is less than well made or morally problematic, it can usually be far more fascinating than a merely well made and manufactured production. Originally this blog was for "abstract" cinema, but that has grown into a fascination for outsiders, artists, reprobates, figures clutching at pennies in their time periods, and my fellow viewer who found a camera to shoot something themselves. Like a combination of a dreamt exposition and amateur anthropology of the silver and digital screen, I am more concerned for what is spoken and what is between the lines. Not of hiding spoilers or chasing trends, the notion that all around me is worth studying in what the language means and where the figures in them came from.

Particularly now, as the pandemic has left me with an absence of the world before I had looked at in complacence, I have grown both a fonder appreciation for what is temporarily lost and also a desire to grow in connection to the wide world around me. One such thing is the idea many of us, when cinemas open again, will go to any film just for the pleasure of the experience of communal screenings. I will likely do this too yet, truthfully, even back when they were open the choice was inherently limited and felt behind in terms of the fascinating work I have covered both good and bad away from theatrical screens, entirely because geographically I am not in a metropolis where such media was available to me. For every good film I carefully choose, the cinemas themselves could be far more interest as a form of human culture than any of the blockbusters they were actually showing. Exceptions good (The Lighthouse (2019)) and exceptions bad but still stuck with me (Cats (2019)) have been covered over the last month, their existences but also their background history worthy of covering², but if anything this period challenges the stereotypical image in a county like mine in Lincolnshire of cinema, which is usually multiplexes and rare one-offs screenings, more so. Being forced to slow down and improve upon my work like this has increased my passion to champion the outsiders and the ignored more so.

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1) The distributors of Japanese anime have actually, arguably, been ahead of the ball for streaming as they have to rely on online distribution or physical media for the most part to get Western fans to see their licenses. The cost for every site together is still expensive, and the British do not get everything the Americans do, but between new shows premiering new episodes at the same time as in Japan to old classic work, the template the likes of Crunchyroll is something the cinema distributors should look to.

2) Cats will likely be re-reviewed one day, entirely in light to the background of the production being made available and that, to truly figure out how it came to be, looking at things like the T.S. Elliot source material and the original musical itself is worth bearing in mind. That and the phrase "jellicle cats" has been stuck in my mind since January 2020 and refuses to budge.

Cinema of the Abstract: A Möbius Strip Back to the Beginning Again

Abstract (ab+stract) adj.

1. having no reference to material objects or specific examples; not concrete

2. not applied or practical; theoretical

3. hard to understand; recondite; abstruse

Abstruse (ad+struse) adj.

not easy to understand; recondite; esoteric

Taken from the Collins English Dictionary, 1979 Edition

In the middle of October 2017, in the midst of the Halloween 31 for 31 season of film reviews I completed annually, a sudden emotional shock was felt. I had become unemployed at the start of October but it only sunk in two or so weeks after was quite a horrible effect. A depression which took advantage of sadly my worst tendencies, imagined cataclysms and pessimism, and grew deeper. It fed on aspects which were idiotic to worry about, fearing my mortality despite only being twenty eight. But it also fed on aspects which were a small existential crisis. A spiritual one but also of greater important trying to reconnect back to simple pleasures that actual meant something to me. Before this becomes a morose, oh-woe-is-me scenario from someone far more well off than many, there was instead a realisation that I hadn't lived up to my own personal expectations of what I should accomplish. Placing myself into my community and helping those around me is one such factor. The other to get back to cinema is that for a blog called Cinema of the Abstract, it's drifted from the original plan to be both entertaining and actually cover abstract films too much. I had already realised this and planned to take this blog back not only to its roots but improve on it, to take the blog's point of existence more seriously. The emotional shock and depression, now October's past and I'm dusting myself off, have pushed this plan forward. To tidy up and focus this blog. To spend more time on it and on the quality of what I write. With this in mind, I am going to go through some drastic changes...

1) Of greatest importance is to improve my writing. I had rushed some reviews and need to work on them. To stop writing in a generic style of review fed from Total Film magazine articles I read as a kid and actually create my own voice. Which means spoilers will no longer be a concern for reviews, as that actually regressed and undercut some reviews in the past. Taking the time to write these reviews, but to not take too long, is of importance. To take the time to cover films whether they are high art or unintentional surrealism and, rather than use clichéd phrases, to prod why say a Doris Wishman film causes a reaction in a viewer as much as a David Lynch film.

2) To do so I need to drastic improve the Abstract Spectrum aspect of the reviews. The entire page on the subject, The Colour Spectrum of Abstract Films, has been an embarrassment for a couple of years, never looking at the section again when I completed it and never daring take it down. Likely from an emotional fondness for how absurd the process was, which involved even drawing around a plate in a cafe and using Microsoft Paint to create a diagram. When this post is put up, it will be deleted, the "Abstract Section" in the reviews now to be terms to describe the experiences felt from the films using existing artistic movements or terminology you can look up as a reader easily. Eventually a new page will be built up once I relearn a college worth of Films Studies and significantly more to the point I can rewrite it with some greater knowledge.

3) The Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None) will stay as it is untouched, only with the Abstract List page updated more.

4) As of now, this will be the last of the Halloween 31 for 31 series I'll do unless anything changes for next year. The issue is that, whilst I've loved doing them over five years over two blogs, even a month's worth of preparation eventually led to rushed reviews.

4b) In general the A Night of a Thousand (Horror) --- reviews will be curtailed down to a small number being published at a time, having ended up writing more of them than about reviews about the actual subject of the blog. Thankfully horror in many places is inherently surreal or weird, so the number (currently at #148) will increase still. It will mean that films I have no interest in writing about will just be ignored¹.

5) TV Series will still be covered. The longer amount of time needed for them however does bring up an important question in terms of covering them or not, whether it's worth investing the time if they are important to cover or not. I was meant to cover Gantz, the 2004 adaptation by Studio Gonzo and Ichiro Itano but I couldn't finish it off after two months going through it, at episode twenty with only six episodes left abandoning it. A realisation, after having had patience with the series with its tonal shifts and decision to stretch plot points over multiple episodes, that my investment was broken by a terrible storytelling decision² which lost me completely.

6) This blog is still meant to be fun. Thankfully in the time that's passed as this has been typed together has allowed me to cheer up. I wish though to be better in terms of emotional state than before, to completely avoid depression in the slightest unless unavoidable, and the only way forward with that is to bring my spirits up.  The blog is meant to tackle the "Abstract" in cinema, that which is less than easy to define. That separates this from a website like 366 Weird Movies in that the pool I draw from is significantly more larger in what "abstract" could mean. It also means that the type of films covered will not just be cerebral serious art films. In fact a significant factor to this type of cinema (and why I prefer so much to Hollywood and narrative led mainstream filmmaking) is that even that stereotype is undermined continually. The serious dramas with minimalist realism can suddenly burst into music numbers with people dressed up as giant penises, as Tsai Ming-liang fans can attest to, amongst such other unpredictable examples. I got into cinema after 2008, with the 2000s became an era of unconventional films made by the likes of Ming-liang, Claire Denis, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Carlos Reygadas etc., fed upon by predessors from the classic era of art cinema of the fifties and sixties, and pushing what a film was in terms of genre, in terms of content, in terms of style to extremes. Not just extremes in content but structure. That type of cinema is the one I embrace the most and everything that deviates outside of it does however link even by accident to them in content. Weird exploitation films from the dustbin of genre filmmaking which are regional productions, showing their environments, or deviate from what it expected from cinema. Ephemeral films and home movies preserved by archives. Material which deviates from expectations and depicts human life and beyond in its vastness. This is why, barring horror, I find that genres like high fantasy bore me completely and even then I prefer horror which isn't conventional. You have to tackle these sub basements of moving pictures,  the art films to the strange smelling residue of ephemeral filmmaking and grotty exploitation dustbins, with humour because intentional or unintentional it's impossible to avoid humour within talking about them.

7) Finally, I have ambitions for this blog as things pick up. To cover non-Abstract films as well, those that don't qualify for the main point of the blog but are worth covering as they are on a subject that interests me in lieu of point 7. To  span a map of Abstract cinema. At least have a Hall of Fame. To cover films which generate countless emotions - shock, confusion, melancholy, bafflement, lack of comprehension, the sensation of time compacted or expanded, disgust, distress, gibbering incoherently at illogic - and so forth.

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1) For anyone curious why the reviews of the Phantasm series have stopped at part 3 abruptly, I felt it was impossible to write anything really rewarding and to the point of the blog. I really liked Phantasm IV: Oblivion (1998) as an example of low budget film making, overcoming its severe restrictions to be as introspective and fascinating as the original 1979 film, but Phantasm V: Oblivion (2016) was such a flat climax, likely the last of the franchise due to Angus Scrimm's passing, that it was not only a bad choice to end those Halloween reviews on but not worth posting reviews about Phantasm further.

2) Major spoiler warning for Gantz - how badly episode twenty, alongside its tonal rollercoaster throughout it, depicts killing off the major female character in presentation. Imagine a human shield scenario which, due to how the scene is depicted, could've been prevented with both people surviving if she actually pushed the other person out of the way. The series does, reading spoilers out of curiosity after a few weeks away from the show, have an actual ending unlike what I previously thought but, as much as it temps me to finish the series, especially as someone fascinated by this type of Japanese genre storytelling which blends genres, there's as much to push me away from investing in those final six episodes to complete everything.