Is it just me or are we constantly bombarded by sounds/noises?

I do believe that more than ever before (except maybe during times of unrest and war), our modern western society(ies) is getting much louder. Between the impossibly over-loud station announcements in the métros (subways) to the blarring of floors/levels in elevators, it seems everywhere we go, we are constantly assaulted by noises and sounds, something which a mere 10-15 years ago wasn't as intense (although the metro/Subway example has been going on for over 2 décades, the new AZUR métros PA levels are absolutely maddening loud). Maybe this is something most humans don't notice due to most humans not being as sensitive to their senses as I am (a design flaw, especially in today's day and age, and Something I did not have any say in during my inception), and perhaps people are more easily subdued to being slowly compliant by the noise pressures/pollutants, but I noticed this obvious elevation in sound level allienation (much like I am old enough to have seen the world change between the pre-internet age to the post Y2K censorship loving internet), Anyway....

I think for me it all started décades ago when I noticed I could easily hear my neighbours due to the newer sound systems becoming increasingly bass-loudness heavy, while the sound insulation in apartment walls was far from adequate to sheild us from other's music, stompings, construction work, talking, etc. When I realized my hearing seemed much more sensitive/developped than anyone I ever known or communicated with, I knew I would have to take steps to try to drown out the increasing levels of noises around me. Then of course I noticed that society decided to bombard us everywhere we went. It wasn't just forced music in public places, but now we had automated voice announcements everywhere we went: we are greated by robot voices when we go to the super market, robot voices blurt out announcement on PA systems almost everywhere, robot voices in elevators, robot voices in public transit, etc... Soon enough, I noticed you simply could not go anywhere at all for some peace and quiet! No quiet at home (neighbours, city contruction, traffic, etc.), no quiet outside (obviously), no quiet in the métros (obviously, but the STM do have a not-so-secret agenda to allianate their users, as I explained elsewhere on this blog), no quiet in retail stores, etc... The only real peace and quiet I noticed I was getting was when I leave for work before 05h30am in the morning... And even then, I have noticed over the last couple of years that ever since I started getting to work early, more and more people seem to be doing similarly.

And yes, add to this all those fucking iphones and shit, where people these days not only scream into their cell phones on speaker phone, but also force others to listen to their so-called music on these portal phone devices. We're back to the old days of teens walking with their ghetto blasters in the Streets, only now it's the kids with their iPhone listening to that rap crap. So yeah, call me an old fart or an ancient geezer if you will, but just because it's 2019 and you've never known a world without the internet or cell phones doesn't mean that the world hasn't become louder. I do however doubt that many other people of my or older générations will remember that there was a time when elevators and the metro (Subway) didn't scream at you two time per minute.

review: "The Black Hole" (1979)

First off, yes this movie was made to cash in on the Star Wars craze, and yes it doesn’t quite live up to the standards like all too many other sci-fi attempts of the late 70s/early 80s. And yes (again), the merchandising could have been handled better, but this was Disney’s attempt at making a science fiction film for the families (family-friendly, younger audience oriented), and they were indeed trying to cash in as much as they could in the wake of Star Wars.

 

“The Black Hole”, while flawed on many points (especially the “science”) does have a certain charm. At times it feels more like one of those 1950s space-oriented films, at others it is firmly planted in the 70s – the casting was surely done to attract the adults into the theaters (Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux, Ernest Borgnine and Maximilian Schell) as they weren’t the fresh faces for the target audience (and obviously long before the Hollywood youth culture obsession set in).

 

In terms of failings, we might point out the wire work during the weightless scenes and hovering robots (my DVD copy shows quite a bit of those), the obvious mime work for the sentry robots, the all-too cerebral aspects of the themes explored (more on that at another date), the “hero”/”rescue” theme which not only drags on for too long in one scene, but actually repeats it’s motifs to make sure it’s being hammered away properly. Surely there are others but these are those that pop up to mind immediately.

 

However there are good points in this film. Uncredited Roddy McDowell voicing V.I.N.Cent was one of the main reasons I purchased this film on DVD, and the overall acting by everyone is at the very least decent, if not above average (granted, one needs to remember what the actors were left to work with). Ernest Borgnine is always a great character to watch at work even though I feel he did not have much to do here. Anthony Perkins is wonderful, turning up a very sober performance as an intrigued scientist, something to pull him out of the obvious typecasting he may have had to deal with around that era of his career. Robert Forster manages to pull of a convincing space ship captain, and Yvette Mimieux is interestingly more “multi” dimentional than most of her co-stars. Again, one must remember the script they had to work with.

 

However it is in Maximilian Schell’s rather stunning performance as the “mad scientist” of the story who truly delivers a screen presence. He manages to evoke a sense of grandeur beyond his character, and is at times both oddly charming and restrained menacing. I did not realize it at the time but when I saw this film in the theaters back in 1979, he was my first exposure to a “demented” mad scientist in a film, something which I grew to enjoy in such films in terms of characters that actors seem to enjoy “chewing” through.

 

Another great aspect of the movie is it’s highly evocative soundtrack by John Barry (except for the aforementioned “hero”/”rescue” theme which was obviously done to emulate Star Wars). From the opening sinister waltz main title theme to the ending “inferno” journey into the hole, Barry’s soundtrack creates in itself a unique atmosphere which creates so much of the film’s tone that one simply can not imagine the movie with another soundtrack. In itself, the score stands up quite well, and I would even venture to claiming that I find this may be Barry’s best soundtrack work even put to use. While many will categorically label it as this or that, parodying it and mocking it for it’s use of repeating themes and somewhat melancholic progression, I find it to being the most (and I am quoting the character of Dr Hans Reinhadt here) “romantic” of his scores.

 

In terms of special effects, we must situate ourselves that this was an era before CGI (this was about 3 years before the original Tron was out) and when models and matte paintings, superimposed images (blue/green screens et al) and such were the height of special effects technology. While some effects will seem dated, the fact that, for the most part, actors were placed on real sets with real props meant a more realistic interaction with their environments, which held solidify the film’s somewhat “realism” in it’s own created world. Both ships (the Palomino and the Cygnus) have a weight to them and appear well used, as opposed to many science fiction films presenting us with a much too clean technology. Buttons, levers, and other manual controls also add a weight to the overall production design which is quite impressive.

 

And of course, as some may have already mentioned it or seen it/heard it somewhere in this interweb online world, the best robot death scene ever – considering one is basically watching puppets voiced after the fact in ADR and with Barry’s score added to thicken the sauce. I am sure many will laugh and cheapen the scene in question but if you happened to pay attention to the interaction and the discussions between said robots in the film up to that point, the scene is quite touching, actually tapping on the whole sentient / artificial consciousness theme.

 

In terms of the more “adult” themes of the film, we won’t touch the completely “wrong” “science” aspect of the film’s title “character”: what we know of black holes today will make one cringe and wince at how they are explained and theorized in this movie. However the film does touch aspects of the continual search for knowledge (and that even beyond human comprehension/understanding), mortality, and how far we are willing to go to explore the depths of the unknown and our own inner selves. There’s an obvious Frankenstein reference as well which seems all too flat-out exposed for today’s audiences, but was all-too-subtle for my pre-internet 8 years old self back in 1979.

 

In closing, I will say the film is quite dated considering what is being churned out by CGI Hollywood since the Y2K, and with the average attention span of tablet/cell phone addicts. But “The Black Hole” doesn’t pretend to be anything else than what it is, which is post-Star Wars family-friendly sci-ci firmly planted in the 70s with a slight 50s flavor.

The common thread...

Because even after years, it is still unbearable!

While we're on it: "SAD GIRL" (Beto, New Stories vol. 2)

Well while I was talking about Beto (Gilbert Hernandez) and his contributions to the second volume of "New Stories", I thought I should also mention his "other" mini story in that book: "Sad Girl". Contrary to his "Hypnotwist" story, this one seems much more firmly grounded in a form of reality, which character interactions and exchanges. It feels a bit like what Beto did after his had finished writing about his Palomar characters, where they were now planted in the USA (or some such area), and are living the everyday modern existance. This little story centers around a female character the guys refer to as "Killer", or "Sad Girl", since she seems very preoccupied by her ex-boyfriend and his new love interest (although we never see them in this segment). She talks about having a role in a Hollywood film, a remake of an old art-house film which took 10 years to complete, but thsi modern remake seems to have been put on hold due to a lack of budget. She complains about just running in front of a green screen, while everyone else around her think she did nudity, or even an adult feature! "Killer" works as a belly dancer in a restorant, goes to school, and seems to know everyone in her immediate surroundings. The story is interesting in the sense that Nothing really happens; it is as though we are exposed to a mere snapshot of a random part of someone's life, with no beginning and no end, and Nothing really of any consequence happening. As usual it is drawn in the now popular post Y2K Beto style which is less detailed and less lush / dense than his 80s or 90s work, but again is far better than some of his really "lazy" works (such as the disapointing "The Garden Of Flesh" which I had so much high hopes for...)

P.S. Come to think about it, and I did think about this prior to writing up this little post but I sort of forgot as I was writing it (good thing I save them as drafts before sending them out into the interweb world!), "Killer" might very well be Fritz's daughter (or one of her daughters), for she shares numerous physical characteristics as her pale skinned counterpart. She is also a belly dancer, and Fritz was known to have these incredibly strong pelvis muscles, able to crack walnuts with her belly muscles, and "Killer" also has aspirations as a film performer, much like Fritz became a B-movie actress. I'll need to look deeper into this!

Beto's Hypnotwist story (Love & Rockets, New Stories vol. 2)

I decided I was to bring with me smaller-sized Hernandez brothers books at work for when I take my breaks (i.e. go to the toilet!) and not kill my phone's battery playing games or rummaging around the internet. I decided to bring a smaller-sized paperback book collecting four stories from the Brothers Hernandez (Jamie and Gilbert), and Beto,s second story in the book is a Strange wordless one called "Hypnotwist". It is nicely drawn, although it does border on the post Y2K Beto art of seemingly being a bit more "minimal" and "simplistic", almost "lazy" in a way (not meant to offend anyone at all, of course!) - although this brand of "minimalism" is nothing near the poor quality levels of his "Garden Of The Flesh" stand-alone mini-book (what a disapointment that one was!). Anyway, "Hypnotwist" feels very abstract but plays out like a nightmare of sorts, but one simply can not stop "reading" it. While there are a few hints here and there of reality for our main protaginist, what she goes through and encounters seem straight out of something akin to a madman's hallucinations. Anyway, I thought it was quite a Strange and strong offering from Beto, and even though I finished the story as confused and dumbfounded as when I entered, I found it quite pleasing and worth a quickie mention here on my blog.

Lego Killing Joke - Requiem

OK so you seriously have to give whoever did this one major props, for not only did he/she do a Lego music video, but it is also on a Killing Joke song! Need I say anything more, seriously?