To literary enthusiasts, Phillip Roth needs no introduction. One of the most incisive, compelling, proficient and dense American novelists of all time – widely celebrated as one of the most prestigious and awarded writers of his generation –, the author of The Human Stain, American Pastoral and I Married a Communist, amongst many other successful books, knew precisely how to navigate by dark subjects and abrasive topics, controversial to American society and culture, that resonates with grandiosity and relevance beyond the atmosphere of the literary universe. Even a book that I haven’t liked too much, The Dying Animal, I admit is abundant in qualities and perennial density, that makes Phillip Roth such an audacious and uncompromised polemicist, at least if analyzed by a conservative outlook.   

Phillip Roth questioned severely the values and principles by which the American society of his generation lived. Nevertheless, by the perspective of drastically diverse literary characters – that were, to a certain degree, representations of himself –, the author expressed different aspects of his personality, through personas with relatively distinct values, priorities and preoccupations. Nathan Zuckerman, his most well-known alter ego, the main character of several novels, like The Human Stain and Exit Ghost, is a reflection of Roth trying to situate himself in a permanently dark world, doomed by the irreversible contingencies of human misery. David Kepesh, on the other hand, the character of three novels, The Breast, The Professor of Desire and the more concise The Dying Animal, is a graduated literature teacher, that has an intrinsically mundane existence. All that he really manages to do with a certain degree of competence, despite having real talents, like a profound knowledge about the subject he teaches, playing the piano, and being an erudite in classical music, is basically seducing and sleeping with his most attractive female students; and all these skills that he possesses and cultivates are used mainly as weapons of seduction. Devoid of this aspect, the life of David Kepesh becomes an absolutely empty, deplorable and meaningless existence.

Phillip Roth is also skilled in what concerns a beautiful prose, despite the fact that he is not a sculptor of the language, like Flaubert. Nevertheless, the beauty, the charm, the sequences, the correct and precise word put exactly in the proper place – combined with the always fragile, vulnerable, subtle, pungent, melancholic and sometimes deeply painful content that he exposes –, describing the ordinary, but constantly vulnerable situations that his characters usually have to endure, makes each one of his works a pleasurable and vivid literary challenge, that only someone that is his regular reader can understand.

​Frequently exposing his Jewish background – and as a consequence, appointed as an icon not only to literature in the broader sense, but as a primordial reference of Jewish-American literature in particular, something that Roth vehemently rejected –, the author blamed his religious upbringing for several constraints that took place in his infancy and adolescence, and as he grew older, he sought to drastically distance himself from Judaism. Eventually, he was known to disregard religion completely, saying “When the whole world doesn’t believe in God, it’ll be a great place”.    

Each book of Phillip Roth has a profound, lugubrious and dark intensity, that excavates and exposes the most tragic, difficult and painful struggles of life, and the intrinsic fatalisms inherent to human condition. In The Dying Animal, Professor David Kepesh falls in love and eventually has an affair with one of his students – a sensual, passionate and ardent Cuban-American named Consuela Castillo –, though after she graduates. So when their affair begins, she is technically not her student anymore, so if anyone discovers, he cannot be prosecuted or expelled from the university where he works. This is mainly his modus operandi, whenever he decides to seduce one of his students. 

​The two main characters get involved in a passionate and very torrid affair, but after some time, his inability to commit to a serious relationship – as well as his age, being Kepesh much older than Consuela – and his relatively indolent inferiority complex, drive the two apart. Though deeply passionate and even obsessed by Consuela, they walk away, to meet again after a long time apart. Noticing her decadent and weakened physical appearance, Consuela tells Kepesh that she was diagnosed with cancer, and has been battling the disease ever since.

So the largely promiscuous, egocentric, self-centered and sex-driven old man is forced to bring to light the more humanitarian aspects of his personality, that – although were there the entire time – he never actually allowed them to be displayed to the outside world. But now, adverse circumstances force him to be a gentle and comprehensible human being.   

Like I wrote some lines above – although I haven’t liked this book very much, it is relatively ordinary and inferior, especially if compared to another Phillip Roth’s books that I personally found marvelous –, even then this novel has qualities to be appreciated, whether it would be in the story, in the beauty and elegance of the prose, or in the subtlety and sensibility upon which the content is displayed to the reader. The conclusion of the book, the best part in my opinion, is very poetic, enlightening and sentimental. I remember Kepesh and Consuela seeing something on television, a theatrical performance broadcast from her home country, Cuba. So Consuela, deeply resented, dismisses the Castro tyranny, and denounces the image of happiness and joy given by the transmission as effectively a lie and regime propaganda. Her people suffers from government repression, persecution and arbitrary imprisonment, but all that the world sees is the fake happiness of a theatrical musical act. So Kepesh feels the anger driving the emotional Consuela, disturbed by his inability to do something extraordinary to please her, and improve her condition. 

Every book by Phillip Roth is a monumental picture of a certain aspect of existence – or a specific period in time –, filtered by his profound and lucid sensibility, exposed by the peculiarities of deeply disillusioned, complex and morally indulgent characters. The author deeply denounced everything that has disturbed him, and challenged his readers to think for themselves. Although he has died in the last year, Phillip Roth’s literature will continue to resonate deeply throughout the decades, and will remain a permanent anathema to American social and cultural conventions. 

(Read my other article about the author here)


​Wagner

Charles Bukowski is and always will be one of my favorite writers. Although I haven’t liked everything that I read by this author – Post Office is a good example of an exceedingly ordinary novel, though even so has its superficial qualities – his captivating and realistic depictions of life, mainly autobiographic in nature, and his abilities to portray everything in a relatively softer context, even delivering creatively sensible, incisive and organic lines of black humor, certainly makes the “dirty old man” a singular and incomparable literary icon of his generation, like no one else could be.

The first book that I read by Bukowski, I think more than sixteen years ago, was a very concise one, the non-fiction The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship, that was originally published four years after his death, in 1998. This book is very simple in content – even more than his short stories and novels, that are mostly personal, biographical recounts of his existence –, composed mainly of excerpts and journal entries that Bukowski wrote in his last years, about ordinary events in his daily life. Although there is nothing exceptional about this book, it is so well written, and Bukowski is so frank, direct and sincere with his reader, that it became impossible, at least for me, not to immediately love this book. Of course, I understand perfectly that literary preferences are an entirely personal matter; Bukowski works very well in what concerns my taste. 

One of the greatest achievements of Bukowski – in my personal evaluation – is impregnating his literature with the basic characteristics of his personality, cynicism and skepticism, while at the same time, whether this would be a conscious decision or not, his literary art never became something dense, profound, tragic or dramatic, as opposed to more “serious” authors, like Phillip Roth. With the fewer exceptions of some short stories and some passages in his novels, the aforementioned black humor that he masterly displays, as well as his natural, spontaneous and habitual reactions to everything concerning life around him – from ordinary occurrences to more extraordinary situations – makes his literary art a very unique achievement, while concomitantly the author displays a rude simplicity, in vocabulary and expression, that certainly makes him practically an unofficial, but quintessential spokesperson for the ordinary everyday man.        

Bukowski endured great pain, suffering and misery throughout his life, especially during his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood. His father was a profoundly intolerant and authoritarian figure, that imposed cruel punishments to the young Charles for literally everything he had done wrong, or wasn’t in accordance with this father’s strict demands. To make matters worse, when he was an adolescent, Bukowski had a terrible and severe case of acne that disfigured him greatly, for which he had to sought a painful and distressing medical treatment, that involved needles, ointment and bandages. By then, Bukowski was a shy, isolated and introverted individual, that had severe problems getting close to the opposite sex. This fact turned him into a more solitary and introspective individual, as his beautiful female classmates seemed distant and unreachable.   

By this time, though, he has discovered alcohol – something that would serve to anesthetize the pain and drudgery of life –, and the habit of drinking would become recurrent throughout his life, with drastic health issues as posterior consequences. The references to alcohol consumption would be constant and deeply celebrated in his literature.

These terrible occurrences of his life – which traumatized him to a degree – are abundantly narrated throughout his literature. Probably they are best retreated in his seminal novel Ham on Rye, published in 1982, which several fans and enthusiasts consider to be his masterpiece. The autobiographical work covers a large part of his life, from the beginning, in infancy, to later adulthood.     

Another book that I loved very much was Factotum, Bukowski’s second novel, published in 1975. In this book, we follow Henry Chinaski – Bukowski’s alter ego, a recurrent character throughout his works – from job to job (hence the book’s title; factotum is a Latin word that literally means “do everything”, a “do it all” person, someone who accepts wherever job is available) – wandering by several cities and locations throughout the United States, destitute of a solid and decent perspective of future, in a permanent search for employment opportunities. The book was adapted into a relatively watchable film in 2005, starring Matt Dillon. Unfortunately, the movie simplified too much the novel – that has its subtle textures and densities –, and unfavorably unveils the story as a contemporary narrative, as opposed to the forties and fifties USA, that serves as the period upon which the events took place. 

Another marvelous Bukowski book that I loved greatly was Hollywood. Originally published in 1989, the novel deals with a period in the life of Bukowski where movie director Barbet Schroeder asked him to write a script. Bukowski wrote – exclusively for a paycheck – and the result was the movie Barfly, starred by Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway. On this book, Bukowski narrates his relationship and eventual friendship with Schroeder, as well as with lead star Mickey Rourke, to a lesser extent, his attendance to the movie shootings, the problems with budget constraints and production, and his overall views about Hollywood and the movie industry in general. Bukowski had a cameo in the movie, appearing during a scene in a bar. The real characters depicted in the novel have all fictitious names. Nevertheless, Hollywood is a fantastic literary adventure into the underground terrains of moviemaking, with an incredibly captured outlook by Bukowski’s lucid, acute and uncompromised sensibility.       

To read Charles Bukowski is almost an act of redemption. Besides his natural ability to tell an interesting and involving story – and the veracity behind it, because, being majorly autobiographical, he has experienced firsthand everything that he is telling to the reader – you perceive a very humane and solidary person. Behind all that apparent frivolity and rudeness, that were basically his personal defense on dealing with the hardships of life and the brutality of the world around him, there was a sensible individual, with a profound empathy for human beings, and a clear insight about the precariousness of existence. All this sensibility has definitely produced one of the best and most elemental literary iconoclasts that the world has ever known. (Want to know more about this author? Read another Bukowski article that I wrote here).


​Wagner

American actor Wentworth Miller became famous in 2005, by playing Michael Scofield, the lead in the Fox television drama Prison Break; with an exhilarating premise, the show followed Scofield as he commits a crime deliberately, to go to the same prison where his brother, Lincoln Burrows (played by Dominic Purcell) is serving a sentence for a crime he did not commit. As his brother was facing a death sentence, Scofield had tattooed a large, complex drawing on his upper body, that contained effectively in a concealed design the plant of the prison, to help his brother escape. The show was an instant success. I personally watched several seasons. The first season followed Michael in prison, meticulously executing his detailed plan. The second season saw the brothers – with several other inmates – as escapees from the Fox River Penitentiary, while a subplot displayed how Lincoln Burrows was a scapegoat to a federal scale-conspiracy, that would persecute the brothers for the remainder of the show. 

The following seasons saw Michael arrested in other penitentiaries for similar purposes, with effectively well-designed premises, while the side story also developed consistently.  I personally haven’t followed the show religiously in all of its seasons, because eventually my interest was gone. But the show was quite a success. Having ended in 2009, it was revived in 2017 for an additional season. But after the show, Wentworth Miller’s career has stalled. And apparently, by his own conscious decision, fueled by personal difficulties. 

With only ten movies in his filmography, he has done mainly television, and even then, sometimes his work is mainly sporadic. Miller has revealed that he suffers from depression – as well as suicidal tendencies – and it’s difficult for him to deal with his illness. The actor is active on social media, and is known to be very open and sincere about his condition and personal life struggles. In 2016, the LAD Bible’s Facebook page published a meme mocking his weight gain, by which Miller frankly responded: "I've struggled with depression since childhood. It's a battle that's cost me time, opportunities, relationships, and a thousand sleepless nights”. The actor explained that he had gained an excessive amount of weight because he found solace consuming food. The actor was also semi-retired at the time. After his response, the LAD Bible staff immediately published a post apologizing for their drastically deceitful behavior.   

Nevertheless, Miller is a multifaceted individual, with a great array of talents. He is also a skilled and sagacious screenwriter, and his ability on this field has been slowly achieving modest degrees of recognition. He wrote the screenplay for Stoker, a 2013 mysterious suspense drama film starring Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode. On this movie, India Stoker – Wasikowska’s character – gets profoundly disturbed after her father dies in an automobile accident, and suddenly her enigmatic uncle Charlie (Goode), whose existence she was not aware of, starts living together with her and her mother Evelyn (Kidman). Although I can’t remember precisely the general storyline – I saw this movie several years ago – I recollect perfectly that I have liked very much seeing it. Miller submitted the story to studios using a pseudonym. Eventually, the script was integrated into a Hollywood blacklist, of the best unproduced screenplays circulating throughout the movie industry at the time. Miller also wrote the screenplay for a related story, titled Uncle Charlie, that would serve as a prequel to Stoker. A movie based on this screenplay remains unproduced.   

Miller also wrote the screenplay for the 2016 movie The Disappointments Room (that I personally evaluated, and you can read here), starring Kate Beckinsale. A real disappointment, this movie is so ordinary that you certainly cannot afford the luxury of wasting your time seeing it, though Miller remains cohesive as a storyteller. Currently, Wentworth Miller is reportedly in the works to write the screenplay for an adaption of a literary work titled The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, though this is not yet confirmed.

The most recent work Miller has done on television was as an incarnation of super-villain Captain Cold, on two different series, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. Apparently, his work was concluded on these shows, and the public doesn’t known precisely what he will be doing in 2019, or if he has already plans for 2019. With his mental state and general health being a primary concern, the forty-six year old (yes, he looks younger, but he was born in June, 1972) actor and screenwriter doesn’t have to justify each move he made, though he frequently does – very gently and kindly –, though it is not his obligation.   

His most relevant movies to date has been 2003 The Human Stain, an adaptation of a novel by Phillip Roth – where he portrays a younger version of Coleman Silk, the character of Anthony Hopkins –, 2010 Resident Evil: Afterlife, as Chris Redfield and 2014 The Loft, an English language version of a 2008 Belgian movie titled Loft, both directed by Erik Van Looy, where he plays an exceedingly malevolent character named Luke Seacord. His last movie to date is the 2015 short 2 Hours 2 Vegas. 

Miller is also involved in charities and humanitarian causes, like the ManKind Project and Active Minds. As his relevant and voluntary work helping people consumes his time, his professional activities will proportionally slow down. He also attends several events throughout the world – like Comic Con and WonderCon –, where he interacts directly with fans and admirers. Miller certainly deserves happiness and success in whatever projects he gets involved, whether it would be in his personal or professional life. We miss seeing him in movies and television, but everyone has the right and the freedom to redirect energy and resources to pursue the correct priorities. With his positive and mature outlook on life, though, Wentworth Miller definitely has everything to succeed and overcome the challenges that might get on his way.  


​Wagner

Replicas is a 2019 futuristic science fiction thriller film, directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, starring Keanu Reeves, Alice Eve, Thomas Middleditch and John Ortiz. On this movie, Reeves plays William Foster, a neuroscientist and employee of a biomedical conglomerate called Bionyne, that works to improve the technology to clone human beings, as a means to avoid death and perpetuate life, and transform this into a lucrative business. 

The movie is a relatively decent thriller, if you are willing to ignore the fact that has a storyline saturated with obvious and rude predictabilities. The movie begins with William Foster trying to transplant the conscience of an individual into an android machinery, but the procedure fails miserably, as the conscience rejects its unnatural cyborg body, despite the fact that Foster frankly believes he is really close to make the procedure a success. When he arrives home, he and his family – his wife Mona (Eve), his son Matt and his two daughters, Sophie and Zoe – are completely prepared to enjoy a well-deserved vacation.

They embark in their huge family van, but after a few minutes into the road, they suffer a terrible accident, where everybody dies, except for William (see where I want to get?); exceedingly desperate, he has the means to bring his family back to life, and asks for the help of his work colleague and best friend, Ed (Middleditch), who collaborates extensively.

They misappropriate the necessary equipment clandestinely from the Bionyne facilities. Unfortunately, William gets desperate when he sees that the company had only three containers, instead of four. So he would not be able to bring all of his four family members back to life. He inscribes in different papers the name of them all, and asks Ed to pick them up, but Ed refuses. Facing a hard choice – since, by force of circumstance, he has to exclude one family member –, William decides to exclude his youngest daughter Zoe. 

So, eventually, he initiates the procedures, taking all the necessary measures to do an impeccable work. Nevertheless, the procedures takes time, and – meanwhile – people from the social circles of his family starts to miss them. His wife, a doctor, is missed at work, the same way his children’s absence at school draws attention. So, William elaborates several excuses, saying that his family is sick. A high school principal visits them at home, and William receives the woman, telling her a similar excuse. He even engages in social midia activity posing as each one of his family members, to give the impression that everything is normal, and they are communicating online frequently. Inevitably, he is so absorbed by his personal endeavor that he became reckless and uninterested in his work at Bionyne. He even asks Ed to elaborate an excuse to justify his absence, so Ed says to Jones (Ortiz), their superior at Bionyne, that William became sick with pneumonia.   

Sad for not being able to bring up Zoe to life, William tries to erase her from their lives, collecting all her belongings – as well as all pictures they had of her in the walls – and throws them into the garbage. After one hour into the film, his wife wakes up, followed by Matt and Sophie. William is exhilarated to find that he is able to replicate human beings, and his best friend Ed celebrates his success with him. 

Initially, all things go well, but the illusion lasts only for a few days. Eventually, Mona has severe memory lapses, that exasperates her. William, disturbed by the hard demands that Jones constantly requests, asking him for immediate results, begins to succumb to pressure. Subsequently, Mona, hardly dealing with her mental and physical distresses, demands from William an explanation, and – feeling he has no alternative –, is obliged to tell her the truth about the accident: except for him, all of them died in a car crash. She is a replica, as well as her two children. When Sophie finds the name Zoe written on her locker, she asks William who Zoe is, and Mona gets disturbed, as she had in her memories glimpses of a child and precisely this same name, that she could not explain properly. So William is forced to reveal to Mona that Zoe was their youngest daughter, that he was unable to bring back to life, due to insufficient equipment.  

One night, Jones appears at the Foster’s residence, and confronts William. He reveals that he had known all from the beginning, having acknowledged that his family died in a car crash. He purposefully let William and Ed stole the equipment from Bionyne for the necessary cloning procedures, knowing that – with his family life at stake – William will have enough motivations to succeed. So Jones implies that the replicas of Mona, Matt and Sophie in fact belong to Bionyne.

Realizing the danger they are in, William manages to hurt Jones badly, and tells his family they have to escape. They embark on their automobile, and William manages to avoid Jone’s henchmen. Nevertheless, they are followed, and soon they suspect they are being monitored, as Mona, Matt and Sophie had tracker devices implanted in every single one of them, and they figure this out. Mona discovers that the electric pulses comes from their hearts, and asks William to drive to the clinic where she works. There – with a heart defibrillator – they destroy the device in all of them, so the signal stops, and the Bionyne mercenaries lose track of the Foster family.

Soon thereafter, William drives to a Marina, to pick up a vessel where he and his family will be able to escape. But when he is in the docs, Mona, Matt and Sophie are kidnapped by Jones’ bodyguards. Assuming that they are heading towards Bionyne, William go there as well, to rescue his family. This was a calculated move on Jones part, that was eager to attract William for a trap. 

Upon arriving there, William tries to negotiate. Displaying his rudeness and selfishness, Jones kills Ed in front of William and Mona. Then Jones demands that William succeeds in transplanting a human conscience into a cybernetic android, something William agrees to do. Unbeknownst to Jones, William had previously configured his own neurological pattern into a digital blueprint, having discovered that he could manipulate deliberately his own mental sequences in order to avoid the cyborg’s rejection of the conscience transplanted. So, while doing the procedures, William configures the android with a replica of his own conscience, ordering him subsequently to attack Jones and the Bionyne security agents. While Jones and his bodyguards are viciously attacked, Mona and the children escape. They are soon followed by William.  

Soon afterwards, we see William and Mona in a paradisiac beach with their children. William is holding hands with a now replicated Zoe. Apparently, everything ends up well for the Foster family. Then we see Jones receiving a man in a wheelchair, in a discreet hotel room, somewhere in the United Arab Emirates. He is driving the business of his dream: to transplant the mind of old and sick people into android machines, enabling them to live indefinitely. Helping him is the android who attacked him earlier, in the Bionyne facilities. The one who has a replica of William Foster’s conscience. 

While this movie is not a spectacularly good one, it’s not a bad one either. You will hardly be impressed, but will neither be disappointed. Overall, it’s a good and entertaining thriller. Definitely, it will make a decent, enjoyable summer flick. As a futuristic movie, Replicas rises important questions concerning human DNA and cloning technology, as well as the morality and ethics concerning these issues. The temptation that large corporations will have to make profit from it will probably dilacerate all the possibilities for this otherwise benign resource to be used for the common good. Beyond these questions, this story – whose screenplay was written and developed by Chad St. John – makes an extensive use of the possibilities allowed by this subject, exploring all that can go wrong when something that should have an altruistic purpose is mainly used for financial gain, and deceitful acquisition of corporate power.  

The desperation that William Foster has – and the moral dilemma he has to confront – is another important issue of the story. When he sees all his family members dead after the accident, he chooses to break his moral engagement to the company where he works, and uses the technology they provide to produce exact replicas of his loved ones. You can say he was not altruistic, or even maybe that a desperate man can resort to anything under certain circumstances to alleviate his pain. 
 

So, this movie has its share of decent qualities, but don’t expect anything too extraordinary. If you like this genre of movie, you will definitely have a satisfactory time watching it. It’s a pragmatic, dynamic and tense futuristic feature film, where survival requires constant diligence and distrust against the outside world. Nevertheless, Replicas wasn’t good enough to avoid exasperating clichés and limitations, that – at least for a few moments – will remind you of generic Prime Time melodramas of Hallmark Channel, or even some low budget, made for television Sci-Fi films. Especially in the family scenes.   

Another problem is the quality of Keanu Reeves acting, that has been declining, and is becoming more and more generic, as the years pass by. Doesn’t matter the movies he’s in, his characters are basically all the same. Don’t get me wrong. Keanu Reeves is a fantastic actor, one of my favorites. But for more than ten years now, he has been involved mostly in unnecessary and even precarious flicks, being too distant from his glorious times of Point Break, Speed, The Matrix and The Devil’s Advocate. His last fantastic movie was 2008 Street Kings, and even then he became involved in questionable films. From then on, he has been involved mostly in low budget and independent productions. His last blockbuster was the deceptive 2013 47 Ronin – after ten years without being cast in one –, a movie with an enormous budget of $175 million, that was one of the biggest box office bombs of the century.  

Another problem is that is very difficult seeing Reeves as a husband, and a father figure (I already have mentioned this some years before, on my review of Knock Knock, as you can read here, and my feelings concerning this roles for him hasn’t changed). He is hardly convincing. To watch him kiss a child, and call him his son, if it is a boy, or his daughter, if it is a girl, is so over the edge. It’s too artificial and implausible; becomes evident that it is just mechanical acting.  

But, if you press the button of your suspension of disbelief, make a blind eye to all the acting deficiencies, the soap opera clichés, and occasionally precarious loopholes into the history – that lacks cohesiveness sometimes –, Replicas still make a good movie. Like I’ve written above, the movie is not bad. It’s a somewhat decent thriller film, despite being regular and ordinary, for the most part. Keep your expectations low, and you will be not disappointed. Or at least, too disappointed. In the end, you will definitely have a moderately reasonable entertainment.   


Wagner

Let’s be real. We never see short movies with the regularity that we see feature films. This is a profoundly rooted habit that we have within ourselves, whose paradigm we have to start to deconstruct. Short movies are a dynamic genuine, legitimate and unique form of unquestionable artistry, with its own qualities and merits, that deserves to be recognized, especially in the genre of horror. Since I am exceedingly familiar, I think I can introduce to you the possibilities of cultivating the habit of seeing these movies more frequently, and learn how to appreciate its singular qualities.   

Generally, by virtue of the constraints of time, you will notice that short horror movies do not have a complex storyline. They usually explore a moment, a situation, a terrible and conspicuously sinister incident, upon which the main character – or characters – finds himself at the epicenter of it, having to fight hardly to survive a hazardous, treacherous and abnormal ordeal.  

Well, here I selected six short horror movies, that you may find relatively interesting to watch. When watching it, try to appreciate them for what they are, and avoid comparing this peculiar form of art with feature films, that usually have bigger budgets, are financed by major studios, and do have a more decent quality of production. Most of short movies are independent, so they lack the support that we normally see in mainstream motion pictures. Nevertheless, some of these movies are quite excellent, and do not possess an inferior degree of quality whatsoever. So I think you can easily appreciate most of them; they are, indeed, an excellent and genuine expression of passionate creativity. Of course, they are not perfect, but neither feature films are. 

So, let me invite you to lose – or gain – one hour of your life, opening your artistic perceptions to a more brief form of narrative. I hope you appreciate the selections that I have done, as well as my invitation for you to see this type of movies more frequently. And let me warn you: although this was not premeditated, here you will see a lot of sinister, dangerous and nefarious killer clowns, or at least subtle references to them. I think in the end they truly are – as unexpected and improbable as it might seems –, an authentic and pervasive source of genuine horror. 

On this movie, a young man discovers that crossing a street can be a task way more sinister and horrifying than one might actually think. 

A young man discovers too late that avoiding clowns – besides being an intelligent decision – is always good for your health.  

An exceedingly great short horror movie – in the best tradition of scary clowns –, on this film, an unsuspecting young man is surprised while walking the street at night by this apparently funny and extroverted clown on Halloween. Nevertheless, he acknowledges too late that he should have avoided the company of the mysterious and sinister opportunist that took him by storm. A marvelous sequel is also available on YouTube. You cannot miss these two fantastic short pieces, by anything in the world.  

Stalker – This is a very interesting, clever and involving movie. The plot is centered on a down on his luck young writer, whose literary drafts have been consistently rejected by prospective publishers, and eventually even his agent drops him. When he is drinking at a bar, someone stoles his mobile phone. When he acknowledges that he was robbed, he goes home, and activates the tracker device to locate his cell. The signal points to a garage, where he finds a killer clown mask, which proves to be something exceedingly bizarre, since his rejected manuscript featured a murderer clown. 

Soon, the mysterious person that grabbed his mobile phone sends him videos, first of the writer himself taking the mask in the garage, then of random girls shopping indoors, outdoors, and last, of the writer’s agent, in her own home. Seeing by the signal that the assailant is probably still there, he decides to rescue her, but upon arriving at her apartment, he finds only a note saying that it was too late, attached to a picture of her agent, with her face drawn as a sinister clown. So he goes home, to find another video uploaded, that shows her unconscious in a bathtub, with her hands tied. Then he sees a man in the clown mask, holding a knife. So he decides to call his own cell phone, and it rings inside his own house. When he goes to the bathroom, he sees the mask and the knife in the sink with a note, and her agent lying down in the bathtub. 

Another movie directed by Sheikh Shahnawaz – like Stalker above –, and starring Sam Malley, the same actor that played the writer, on this short film, the protagonist is a young man with an electronic anklet, that droves electric discharges on him whenever he starts to fall asleep. As terrific, fragmented and occasional imagery seems to trouble him in the beginning, especially when he is almost sleeping, when he talks to his roommate, we learn that he doesn’t want to sleep, in order to avoid terrible nightmares, that became recurrent to him. 

Nevertheless, his partner is deeply concerned, as he hasn’t slept in six days, and they start to discuss. His friend calls him a coward, and urges him to confront his problem. As the tension between them escalates, the young man becomes desperate, and starts to lose grip of reality. Soon, he grabs a gun, and starts to have reminiscences about a recent event, where we see him armed, apparently trying to rob someone, that soon we see, is his friend. As his friend – now posing as the victim of a robbery – shows that his empty wallet only had a picture of his daughter, the assailant tries to inspect his victim, in order to search for valuables. Unfortunately, thinking that he had a chance to grab his gun, the victim tries to subdue the thief, but is shot. So, the assailant gets desperate, and soon they are shown one more time talking to each other, in their flat. The robber now seems deeply resentful of what he has done, and reprehends his friend for trying to grab the gun. When he confesses that he is guilty for his friend’s death, it becomes implicit that he was a criminal, and that he killed his victim in a frustrated robbery attempt. So he is seeing frequently this individual that he murdered only as a delusional experience, a natural symptom of his conscience being overcome by guilt. 

This movie begins with a woman, Allison, staring at a medical bill for chemotherapy sessions, in excess of twelve thousand dollars. Then she sees a request for a babysitter job nailed to a pole, whose phone number she grabs. Her boyfriend Philip arrives, and picks her up. While in the car, she calls the number, applying for the job. She is immediately accepted, and given the address where she has to go. Alison and her boyfriend then discuss, as apparently they had agreed to enjoy a special dinner that night, but she forgot. Desperate for money, she is willing to grab whenever jobs are available. They finally arrive to what appears to be a giant mansion. Her boyfriend stops the car, and their discussion escalates, as her boyfriend complains that they are not spending enough time together. Nevertheless, she ignores him, and leaves the car. In the front door, she finds an important message written, where the parents say that they had to leave their house urgently, but she will find everything that she needs inside the house. 
 
Upon entering, she grabs the electronic babysitter device, and soon afterwards locates the baby room, whose name is apparently Rupert. When she is relaxing in the leaving room, doesn’t take too long for her to hear strange noises through the electronic device, so she runs to the baby room. Arriving there, she initially thinks that someone might be in the room, so she cautiously enters, and goes directly to the cradle to verify how the bay is doing, only to see a baby toy, besides the electronic device. When she looks behind her, she sees an enormous man with a white painted face, dressed as a baby, that attacks her. He terrorizes her, and demands that she changes his diapers, then clean him with baby powder, and threatens her not to inflict any harm on him. 
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Feeling exceedingly humiliated, she initially complies with her assailant’s demands. Nevertheless, Alison tries to escape, but he chases and eventually subdues her violently. Meanwhile, her boyfriend calls her to apologize, and leaves a message on her mailbox. Alison subsequently wakes up in a very obscure place, imprisoned by Rupert. He severely reprimands her, and tells her – contemplating a mural full of collages of missing woman reports –, that he had several other “mommies” before. When he threatens her, she explains her situation. If he kills her, her mother, who is sick with cancer, will have nobody to assist her. Rupert then tells her that if she behaves and do everything that pleases him, he will make her time worthwhile. He offers her twelve thousand dollars if she spends the entire night, which is precisely the value of the debt she has with her mother’s chemotherapy. He then demands that she feed him.   

So, when she puts the diner for him – in a very childish pattern – he demands the baboon. When putting the baboon, she feels tempted to strangulate him, but decides to give up this idea, since such a mistake could cost her life. So she starts to feed him. Rupert, behaving as a baby, denies the food. Alison apologizes, but then Rupert reprimands her, saying that she should behave like a mother, as he behaves like an infant. Just because he denies food, something every baby does, this is not an excuse for her to quit, as no mom would let her own child starve. So she plays his game, and even imitates an airplane with the colored spoon, while feeding Rupert. Just like a child, he then spits food on her. 

Then the doorbell rings, and Rupert threatens Alison with a meat hammer. Her boyfriend, though uninvited, enters the house. Alison screams, and then Rupert breaks her foot. Rupert then attacks and kills Philip, smashing his face several times, with the meat hammer. When Rupert return covered in blood, Allison realizes that he had killed her boyfriend, and she screams in panic. 

Allison then begs Rupert not to kill her, saying that she accepts to play Rupert’s twisted game. Rupert, enraged, says that they will, indeed, play a game. Hide and seek. He says that first, she will hide, and then he will find her, and bury her in a place where no one will ever find her. He then starts counting. Alison goes hiding.    

Allison hides below the kitchen table. When Rupert enters the kitchen searching for her, Alison dilacerates Rupert’s Achilles tendon with a knife, making him unable to walk. While trying to grab her, he tore her clothes apart, so he uses a snip of her blouse to improvise a bandage in his foot, while screaming in pain. Then he goes again after her. Soon thereafter, Rupert hears what appears to be Allison crying. When he goes to the direction of the whimpering, he sees only the electronic babysitter device, and, while distracted, Allison hits Rupert in the head with a blunt object. Then she catches Philip’s car keys, and runs outside. Nevertheless, Rupert – despite his injuries –, goes rapidly after her, and eventually grabs and attacks Allison. They fight hard, and Rupert tries to strangulate Allison. 

Allison then manages to grab the car key, that she already had inserted on the door, and sticks into Rupert’s right eye. Then she proceeds to strangulate him with his own baboon, eventually killing him. Exhausted, she falls asleep, and wakes up the next morning, besides Rupert’s corpse. She pulls the car key from Rupert’s eye, and then leaves, in total shock.   

Tremendously sensational and genuinely frightening, Die! Sitter! Die!: Rupert is a very tense, impactful and sinister horror film. Almost half an hour long, probably is the most extensive in this selection that I’ve done. With great acting, a cohesive script and a formidable production, this is certainly one of the best and most genuinely frightening short horror movies that I have seen. Despite the apparently ingenuous premise, the story was well-conceived, and its coherent development has not left any holes in the plotline. 

All these horror movies could be easily made into interesting, dense and promising feature films. With intriguing, genuine and solid premises, each one of these movies – as well as many others – have abundant potential for a complete story. Several great horror movies have started as short films. Good examples are All Hallows' Eve and Terrifier, both by American filmmaker Damien Leone, that were inspired by his shorts, The 9th Circle and the eponymous Terrifier. Terrifier, the feature film version released in 2017, that I pretend to analyze profoundly in an article, in the near future, starring David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown – inspired by the short movie of the same name – is certainly his masterpiece. Probably one of the best killer clown movies ever produced, on this state of the art work, the audience follows a psychopathic and deranged maniac known as Art the Clown terrorizing two young girls, Tara and Dawn (played by Jenna Kanell and Catherine Corcoran, respectively) in a night of fearful brutality and sadism, whose terribly nefarious dark essence only a handful of movies were truly able to capture with rude, realistic and hostile veracity. 

So, short movies are a fundamental form of art by its own rights and merits. Nevertheless, they can inspire good – sometimes even excellent – feature films. And the exponentially genuine, original and creative talents we see in this field of work definitely makes worthwhile watching short movies frequently. It’s always refreshing to discover new talents, and exceedingly inspired filmmakers challenging new horizons. I hope you have enjoyed this experience, as well as the movies that I’ve selected. See you soon in the next list! 

Maxwell Bodenheim – whose birth name was Maxwell Bodenheimer – is now a relatively forgotten American poet and novelist, who achieved great fame in the jazz era of the 1920’s. His mother and father were German-speaking European immigrants who settled in the United States by the 1880’s, and Maxwell Bodenheim was born in May, 1892, in Hermanville, Mississippi. It was in Chicago, however, that Bodenheim had started his literary activities.

There, with the now legendary writer Ben Hecht, Bodenheim founded a periodical, where several individuals that would become major icons of American literature have collaborated, like Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson and Carl Sandburg, amongst others. Nevertheless, it was in New York City that Bodenheim would become a more renowned man of letters.  
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Sadly, fortunes drastically changed after Bodenheim found fame in New York City. Only in the twenties and in the beginning of the thirties he remained regularly productive, after that he wrote and published only sporadically. Since there is absolutely no reliable biographies or documentaries about Bodenheim, everything that concerns his life, in overall, is largely obscure, and only a few facts about the writer are positively known with veracity. 

What can be said of Bodenheim for sure is that he was married three times. First, to Minna Schein, then to Grace Finan – to whom he became a widower – and last, to Ruth Fagin, a woman twenty-eight years younger than him. A little after the mid-thirties – for reasons that are largely unclear – Bodenheim’s condition and personal circumstances severely deteriorated. He even became a miserable beggar, asking for money in the streets. Despite the fact that by this time he was a published and moderately successful writer, he resorted to mendicancy for a living, and he was generally unrecognized by the people who gave him change. He was arrested by authorities several times for vagrancy, and even arbitrarily committed to mental institutions. By this time, Bodenheim had also become a chronic alcoholic. 

The death of Maxwell Bodenheim – which took place on February, 1954 –, was a particularly tragic one, and the main reason why his fame somewhat expanded; the incident supplanted his notoriety as a writer. In 1952, Bodenheim had married a woman – his third wife – named Ruth Fagin, that shared her husband’s degenerated, miserable and completely destitute lifestyle. Bodenheim did everything he could to survive, including marginal activities, treacherous, though innocent scams, mendicancy and he also wrote poems for changes. Most of the scarce money he made, though, were spent with alcoholic beverages, that Bodenheim somewhat used extensively to alleviate and anesthetize his suffering. His wife Ruth sometimes prostituted herself, to have an income, a degraded activity that frequently enraged Bodenheim. They were homeless people, used to sleep and live outdoors. 

On February 6, 1954, an acquaintance of the couple, a man named Harold "Charlie" Weinberg, offered to Max and Ruth the opportunity to spend the night in his apartment, to which the couple agreed. Once they were there, apparently – the veracity of the story is debatable – Weinberg tried to have sex with Ruth, and she was indeed predisposed to have an intercourse with him. Bodenheim was drunk, and appearing to be sleeping in the couch. Nevertheless, he was seeing everything, and suddenly stood up, enraged, and challenged Weinberg for a fight. Weinberg then killed Bodenheim with two gunshots, and stabbed Ruth to death. Weinberg shortly thereafter confessed the crime to the police, and tried to minimize his evil deed, by justifying that he had killed two “communists”, despite the fact that there is no factual evidence implying that Bodenheim or Ruth were communist sympathizers. Weinberg was arrested, considered insane, and locked for life in a psychiatric facility. The writer Ben Hecht – his friend and former literary colleague – paid for Bodenheim’s funeral expenses.     

Six months after Bodenheim’s murder, his biography, My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village, was published. Bodenheim himself, though, was barely involved in the project, whose work was commissioned by a publisher named Samuel Roth, and was ghostwritten by a professional writer named George Plotkin. Apparently, Roth had requested and paid in advance for Bodenheim’s account of his life as a Greenwich Village bohemian and respected literary icon, an assignment that Bodenheim – in this period of his life, mostly depressed and despondent – was barely willing to commit.  

Unfortunately, by the time of his death, Bodenheim was already a largely forgotten writer, and since then, his work has never been properly revived, analyzed, studied, republished or appreciated. Bodenheim remains scarcely read and debated in literary circles today. His poetry, in particular, has a peculiar charm, a picaresque and sometimes quasi-surrealist beauty, that explored in the density of ephemeral and frugal moments the most obscure and fatalist resentments of life. Never really compromised or preoccupied with form or metric, his poetry was prominently modernist, and celebrated the arbitrary agonies of existence, in a constantly candid and moderately vibrant melancholy, that, it is suspected, were typical of his behavior.  

If you want to know better the work of this marvelous – though unconventional and undisciplined, but mordacious and genuine – literary icon, the website Black Cat Poems is the perfect place to start. There, you can read more than one hundred poems by Bodenheim, for free. I hope you enjoy, as much as I do. 


Wagner

Well, that was 2018, a year with megatons of music, mind bending concerts and sick shit all over this little planet of ours. In that aspect, it was pretty much like 2017 and 2016 and 2015. Awful pop music, awesome underground sounds. Heaps of countries in crisis, awesome underground sounds. Shattered dreams and beliefs, awesome underground music. You get the picture. Anyway, some of our writers have actually gone through the trouble of compiling their "best of 2018" and I'd be glad to share these with you.

OTTONE PESANTE – Apocalips
RAPOON - Offworld OP1 Equs
AMBIENT NATION 5 - Various
DRUHA SMRT - Egocedeum
JETON HOXA - Vowel
KARIBU ORCHESTRA – Music Over The Ruins
SEAR BLISS – Letters From The Edge
NO ONE & ASHTORETH – Redemption
THY CATAFALQUE – Geometria
DIMMU BORGIR – Eonian

I suck at making end of the year lists. Half of the time i can't even remember what i listened to and/or what I've watched. That said, i'm pretty confident that all of this came out in 2018. so i deem this the best of 2018:

ears:

joint 1st place:

Unreqvited - Stars Wept to the Sea 
Unreqvited - Mosaic I: L'amour Et L'ardeur

runners up:

Blanck Mass - Odd scene / Shit luck
Book of Sand - Postmodern Witchcraft 
W O L F C L U B - Infinity

eyes:

1st place: 

Summer of '84

runners up:

Ant Man and The Wasp
Avengers Infinity War
Black Panther
A Quiet Place
Mission Impossible: Fallout

pretty sure i forgot loads. 


sucked the hardest in 2018: saying goodbye to Jef, our french bulldog. r.i.p.

filled my pitch black heart with endless joy in 2018: welcoming Jos, a miniature pincher and Leonie, a french bulldog, in our lives. as well as Mitzi and Ulrich, yet more cats.

be safe and well, dear MOA readers. hopefully more from me in 2019.


be kind to animals. love.

The year is drawing to an end, and it’s time to look back upon my life. No, scratch that, let’s just look back on some good music from 2018.
Year end’s lists are by definition very personal, so I’m not claiming these are the best records of 2018. They just made an impression on me that lasted longer than a few spins – on some cases, a lot longer. Enjoy!

-Wolvennest – Void

If their self-titled debut felt like a kick in the nuts, “Void” feels like Sharon Shazzula is driving one of her high heels up my nose, right into my corpus callosum. Krautrockers from Brussels, Great atmosphere, great live act. My favourite record of 2018. Unreal…

-Paara – Riiti

Fantastic riffs, majestic melodies and brilliant vocals (both clean and shrieking). On “Riiti”, these Finns created a moody mix of black and post metal, delivered in their supremely juicy mother tongue. This record shows that solid songwriting skills still is the most important aspect of any good release.

-Crow Black Sky - Sidereal Light: Volume One

Atmospheric black metal from South Africa, of all places! Too often, Atmospheric BM is stereotypical (they should start their own #metoo movement). Crow Black Sky, however, mamages to avoid this, and somehow sound very honest to me. If you liked Woods of Desolation, you’ll love this.

-Bliss Signal – Bliss Signal

About fifteen ago, I started to drift towards Black Metal, simply because it is a genre that is very open towards experimentation. A very good example of this is Bliss Signal’s debut album, where pummeling electro beats and dense layers of guitars/noise conjure a magical atmosphere.

-Empty – Vacio

Based on the book “La Lluvia Amarilla” (Yellow rain), these Spaniards deliver a gripping ode to solitude and a dying way of life in the Spanish mountains. Filled to the brim with original riffing, this record hit me on an emotional level like no other this year.

-Adaestuo – Krew za Krew

An electrifying mix of black metal and ritual ambient, and, as a cherry on the cake, the incredible voice of Hekte Zaren. Praise the Lord of Darkness! Boy, am I looking forward to seeing them playing live in Brussels in a couple of months.

-Gaerea – Unsettling Whispers

A couple of weeks ago, I saw Gaerea playing live in a freezing cold venue in Leuven, Belgium. Barely 50 people braved the harsh conditions to see these Portuguese guys perform the songs of their first record. Shame on you, Belgians! “Unsettling Whispers”, being a highly original and intelligent BDM record, really deserves more praise!

Mare – Ebony Tower

This is what Black Metal is all about, in the end: an enigmatic band that lets the music speak for itself. And what music! Glorious riffs, ritual chants, catchy songs. Halleluiah for the Horned one!