Horror Movies Suck!

I just saw The Conjuring and am disappointed with it, because the first forty minutes were absolutely great and then there's this one scene where it all completely comes crashing down, and I just immediately knew that after that scene the movie was gonna turn to shit. And it struck me...this, where there's just this one scene that makes you 'oh, there goes that movie', it only happens to me when I watch horror movies. Only in that genre are what makes a movie great so sensitive, so fragile if you like, that it can be so easily undermined. Because filmmakers love to overdo their horror, and horror is one thing which does not benefit from being overdone.

I love horror movies, I just wish they didn't suck so much. Especially so the American ones. Here's why: subtlety is scary. The unknown is scary. Suspensions of disbelief is the basis for being able to be scared. When the premise of a horror movie is too ridiculous to be even remotely believable, the whole sense of mystery, fear and dread dissipates as soon as that premise is revealed. When the special effects are too far-fetched, too badly done, or simply too ridiculous, the same thing happens. So here's my easy points on things to avoid at all cost when you make a horror movie:

(A quick sidenote: While I also love slasherfilms, I don't consider them true 'horror' movies, and the same goes with zombie films; they rely on completely different moods and premises than the kind of movies I intend to discuss here, which is movies where the main source of suspension is the supernaturality and unknowability of the phenomena portrayed. The emphasis on this is why [REC] qualifies as a proper horror movie as well as a zombie movie, and why The Fourth Kind is horror rather than scifi).

1: The God Premise

Please, fucking pretty please, Hollywood; STOP DOING FUCKING HORROR MOVIES WITH THE PREMISE THAT GOD EXISTS. By all means, use the devil, or witches or whatever you fancy, but then make the demons/hellish entities very vague and unknown, don't over-define them and give them a solid foundation in a christian cosmology that the movie will then have to define as true. Because I can't believe in a christian cosmology. The less you talk about hell, horned men, and upside-down pentagrams, the better. Rather talk about the spirit world, a vaguely defined underworld, or secrets embedded in a creation not explicitly associated with any god.Needless to say, this whole problem is vastly less prevalent in Asian and European horror films.

How to do it: You can use satanic imagery and mythology without making it a blatant assumption that christianity is true. Examples of movies that succeeds with this particular element (without necessairly being great anyhow) are [REC] (possession, mysterious church conspiracies, everything keeps unexplained), The Unborn (a holocaust victim possessed by a jewish mythological demon very subtly handled), Grave Encounters (vague satanic ritual imagery), Paranormal Activity (vague satanic elements, like the demon seem to have clawed feet).

How not to do it: The Conjuring (lots of statements of facts regarding witches and demons, and a completely non-mysterious church organisation devoted to battling them), The Omen, Drag me to Hell.

2: The Unbelievable Possession

Possession is scary because it's about losing control and having something unknown and malevolent inhabit a person's body. But possessions in movies often serve to make the source of fear less mysterious, less unknown, by personalizing it, letting it have dialogue and making it's motivations way too clear. Mosre importantly, they're often done in a way that completely ruins the suspension od disbelief, by letting the possessed person completely change their voice (I hate this one sooo much because it's in every fucking possession move ever), defying gravity, getting weird eyes, communicating meaningfully with people, etc. Possession should be about scary behaviour, just like scary sleepwalking, and if possessed people have to do supernatural things, yes,sure, it can be scary, but it has to be unexpected and very subtly done, effects-wise. It is also scary when possessed people talk languages they shouldn't have been able to know, but for god's sake, let them do it in their normal voices or something very close to it.

How to do it: Paranormal Activity (the possessed look normal in every way but behave strangely and scarily, have almost no dialogue), The Fourth Kind (fake case study-footage, and the only case I know of where 'weird voices' has worked, because they are so mothafuckin' scary), [REC] (very, very vague, defined only as backstory)

How not to do it: Sorry but, The Exorcist. The Conjuring, every other possession movie ever.

3: The Physical Demon

I understand that your bloated special effects budget makes you tempted to use a cool, physical sources of horror, like, old witches in torn victorian clothes, or a horned demon covered in fire, or maybe an unnaturaly frail woman in a withered dress, surrounded by weirdly behaving shadows. But please refrain from it, because it almost never works. It doesn't matter how believable you can make it look, for the problem stems from the fact that the defined is not scary. There will naturally be exceptions to this, for just one scene or two, if you have a really mothafuckin' scary design going, it might be okay to showcase your demon/witch/ghost/whatever, but almost every single truly scary horror movie have that in common that they never ever do. It's much more fearsome to have something invisible assail you at night, or too see a vague shadow in the corner of a room, or a pair of eyes glowing in the dark of a cellar, than to be hunted by a completely physical old hag with sharp teeth, no matter how scary her design. Because when you portray her like that you create the feeling that she can be defeated by normal human means, and it's a subconscious thing, it's not important whether this actually is the case in the framework of the movie. But more than that, you disrupt the suspension of disbelief, because a shadow in the corner of a room is much more believable than a physical beast in your closet. Again, it is possible to use very physical looking ghosts/demons/whatever if you know exactly what you're doing, and make them look extremely scary and/or very human, but nine times out of ten it's better to just not do it.

How to do it: Paranormal Activity (the demon is completely invisible always), Blair Witch Project (is there even a physical being? who knows?), Hollow (no real pshycial being), Grave Encounters (mostly subtly used, terribly scary effects), Ring (subtly used, terribly scary effects), Kaïro (subtle techno-horror), [REC] (the original, first movie; the physical demon is only seen in the distance, through blurry night-vision),  Lake Mungo (no real evil being, just a girl's ghost)

How not to do it: The Conjuring, Mama; two movies that could have been great but where ruined by overuse of non-scary, unsubtle physical monsters. This is, by far, the most common problem in horror movies, especially american ones (though asian ones also fall prey to it quite a lot). 

By now, I'm starting to realize that I've seen so many run-of-the-mill horror movies that I can't remember them; on my harddrive, I find a huge pile of horror from many different countries, and I know I've seen them but I hardly recall the plot at all. Part of the reason is probably that all horror movies have the same name; The ing; The Conjuring, The Gathering, The Haunting, The Summoning, etc. Please stop with this? If you can't think of an interesting enough premise that your movies deserves a better name, maybe you shouldn't make a horror movie at all? I'd rather have one great horror movie per year than 50 mediocre ones.

This is hopefully the first post in a series of posts I intend to do about my love for horror/slasher movies. So if you liked it, drop by once in a blue moon and check for updates.

FFF 2013

I've just come home from a full day of movie-watching at this year's incarnation of Lund's Fantastic Film Festival; having already seen all the movies on my 5-card together with meimei, I don't know if I'm gonna see any more; I already feel quite satisfied, never before has the average grade of the movies I've seen at FFF been this good (which is ironic, considering that at first I wasn't too impressed with this year's program). If I do see any more films, I'll update this post later, right now, I just need to get something of what I've seen out of my system because I feel so inspired and affected and wanna share some great films with my friends. The main function of this post will actually be to give more or less spoiler-free recommendations, but certain friends of mine; if you don't want even the slightest spoiler, you'll just have to take my word on that you need to see the movie in question.

This friday, we started out strongly with The Machine. It's a moody british cyberpunk movie that does an absolutely amazing visual job out of a tiny-winy budget, and manages to both look and seem like the production values were ten times greater. There's only a short teaser trailer out this far:

The plot is not very original (and yes, the military-industrial complex is evil...), but it does handle some themes in slightly new and inventive way, and because I've just spent a year or more writing Neotech X, it's great to see a good cyberpunk movie that, just like NX, tries to re-invent the genre a bit, take it away from the dated 80s feeling, and make use of more up-to-date issues and sentiments regarding technology. The movie especially might surprise you a bit on how the 'doomsday' theory of technological singularity, as seen in for example The Terminator franchise, is handled rather differently.

My rating: In the end I gave it a 4 out of 5. It's very good, and has good acting and a great atmosphere, but the world felt a bit too constrained, and I really dislike the ending scene for some reason.  

People I know who needs to see this one: Martin Fröjd, Joel, Björn


Next in line; OXV: The Manual, also from Britain. This is a quirky philosophical/scientific romance story set in an alternate world with weird natural laws. I don't want so say too much about it as I feel certain people I know will absolutely adore it but should see it with an open mind and heart, but the basice premise is that people have certain frequencies, and people with pronounced frequencies are geniuses. If their frequency is really high, they'll be extremely lucky and succesful in everything, but completely emotionally dead. If their frequency is really low, however, they'll be unlucky losers with lots of emotions. The main characters are a boy with the school's lowest frequency and a girl with the scool's highest; whenever they meet, nature freaks out because they are so incompatible, and bisarre things happen.

This is not a truly bizarre movie, it has a miniscule budget and does not rely a lot on special effects, so don't come expecting the special effects/high concept-type of quirkyness. The odd premise is instead primarily used to explore the psyches of the main characters, and later on the potential consequences of certain radical discoveries they've done. It actually manages to have something in common with the italian book/film The Solitude of Prime Numbers, in how it portrays the main characters and their psychologically impossible relationship develop from childhood to adulthood (In the italian book/film, the main characters has the idea that he and the girl are different prime numbers and therefore they can never meet). As far as I know there's no trailer released yet, so I give you a picture of the main characters as adults for filler instead, isn't that guy just dreamy?:

My rating: The acting is great both in the child actors and the adults, the plot is intelligent and emtional, if a little bit disjointed at times, the premise is tought-provoking and utterly brilliant, and in generally they've done such an amazing job with tiny resources to make this movie outstanding. I didn't hesitate to give it a 5 out of 5.

People I know who needs to see this one: Joel, Björn, Alva, Elin, Kalle, Bunny


Then came Mars et Avril, a french-canadian movie that I can only properly describe in swedish: gubbsjuk och totalt spejsad. To try to put it in english, it's the kind of surrealist pretentiously freudian move where young girls somehow randomly has an uncontrollable lust for the flesh of fat bearded old Hemingways who spend their time making celebrated music on handmade instruments designed like voluptuous women's bodies. At the same time, there's a Mars landing going on, and these two themes are drawn together by the Music of the Spheres, and of course I adore that they used that supermega-awesome ancient philosophical concept, and the movie is visually amazing and ethereal beyond the level of even The Fountain, and creates a visually compelling portrayal of a distant future Montreal with fashion and hairstyles that all look like they were designed by Alexander Bard on crack. All these good things, unfortunately, does not take away from the fact that this movie is essentially about boring old men having gubbsjuka and navelskådande existential crises relating to the freudian connection between their overblown ego and the universe, or something, and the pretty girl that randomly gave them a blowjob last night before being accidentaly teleported to Mars.

My rating: So no, it doesn't really work, and while very, very special and visually interesting, most of my friends would cringe if they saw it, and so did I. I gave it a 3 because it's so beautiful.

People I know who needs to see this one: None, you are all too feminist. But watch the trailer, that way you'll get to see a sample of the gorgeous visuals.


Next up was Chastity Bites, an american high-school horror flick made on, to quote the director, "the catering budget of The Avengers". While the lack of budget shows a bit in this one, and the actors are a bit uneven (most critically the actress playing the villain is not very good), it's made by a writer and a director who are true horror freaks and put so much love in this movie that it's about to burst from all the obscure references. The dialogue is great, which is very important to high school movies, the absurdity at just the right level, and when they have gotten the casting right, it's amazing; the main actress is absolutely fantastic and her embittered hipster feminist genre-savvy character one of the hottest and most likeable I've seen in a long while. A cool, anti-stereotype thing they did, very consciously the writer told me, was to put an asian girl as the leader of the classical evil bimbo-girl posse. Certain geeky friends of mine will also recognize the actress of that character...

 Chastity Bites is not great because the plot is amazing or anything, which high school film is? It's great because it has a feminist slant throughout, combined with dark humor and meta-jokes. Also, it has a wild sex scene which starts with the couple discussing Simon de Beauvoir...

My rating: At FFF I gave it a 5. It's really more like a 4, and that's what I'll give it on filmtipset later, but it was extremely fun to watch and basically made with the target audience of swedish feminist geeks (this was the european premiere, and the producers were impressed by us seemingly getting all the Simone de Beauvoir references that the audiences at american film festivals didn't understand).

People I know who needs to see this one: Everybody who likes feminism and high school films, but in particular Cornelia, Joel, Alva and Maria. Also Mika because the main character looks like her.


Last but not least, and the only movie I knew about before the festival; the british vampire movie Byzantium. When I first heard about it long ago I wanted to see it because it had Gemma Arterton in it (I've liked her since the excellent 'The Disappearance of Alice Creed', shown on a previous FFF), was about vampires and was namned Byzantium, though to my disappointment I later realized it would have nothing or extremly little to do with the byzantine empire, instead being set in contemporary Britain. But I then learned it would also have the likewise excellent Saoirse Ronan and it and she and Gemma Arterton would play like vampire sisters or something...and then it was of course a must-see anyhow.

But I never expected it to be, y'know, good. I expected it to be some kind of Underworld-style movie with Gemma Arterton in tight leather pants slaughtering millions of mooks in super-effects-heavy action scenes. But even though the movie starts with a lot of Arterton in a thong, it quickly turns out to be something...very, very, very different. Byzantium has almost no action scenes, the vampires have almost no super powers, it relies heavily on dialogue and moody monologue scenes, it's more close to that british 'I'm arranging matches'-style of film, as vampire films go actually most similar to 'Let the right one in'. Without spoiling to much, it's a tale of two renegade female vampires shunned by a misogynist vampire society, being alone, hunted and haunted for two hundred years. Their contemporary life on the run is juxtaposed with flashbacks to the Regency era when they became vampires, gradually building up the series of events that led to their current situation. But  the younger of the two vampires (Ronan) is fed up and tired with their deadlocked life patterns, which builds up to a conflict with the older (Arterton), who is hell-bent on protecting the younger but don't know how (or can't muster the strength) to do it any other way.

Though of course not completely without flaws, this is among the best vampire movies made, alongside Let the right one in and Interview with the Vampire (which had the same director). The acting is amazing (Arterton in particular makes one of the most compelling performances of her career), the characters psychologically and morally complex yet very likeable, the plot is intriguing, the production values high, the lighting gorgeous. But what really sets it apart is the theme of patriarchal opression, running like a dreadful red thread between the two time frames of the story. The movie's script is apparently based on a play by a female irish playwright, which maybe sort of explains certain themes and the dialogue-driven narrative.

My rating: 5. It's among the best vampire movies ever, a huge positive surprise, entertaining and thought-provoking, but, though not exactly a pure tragedy, likely to make you somewhat depressed. It passes the Bechdel test with flying colors, though I think maybe a few people might take slight issue with the ending, as it could be argued that it robs Arterton's character of some of her agency.

People I know who needs to see this one: Alva, Frans, Björn, Joel, Bunny.

Lyrics for Amethystium's "Shibumi"

This is a great song by norwegian artist Amethystium:



I've seen people ask for the lyrics on youtube sooo many times, so I thought I'm just gonna try to make it so that they can be found on google instead, as a small, small favor to humanity. As the lyrics are nowhere given by Amethystium, painstaking research have been used to unearth them, my only clue, originally, being that they were somewhat the same as the lyrics in Karunesh's Bombay Pure, Enigma's The Child in us, Vangelis' Bizarre Bazaar and even on the soundtrack of Diablo II. I did recognize the language as sanskrit, and I was right. I could find transcripts of the lyrics from the Enigma song, and by googling it's subject matter, find the original hymn upon which all these songs are based. It's a sanskrit hymn praising Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, and it goes like this:

वन्दे पद्मकरां प्रसन्नवदनां सौभाग्यदां भाग्यदां
हस्ताभ्यां अभयप्रदां मणिगणैर्नानाविधैर्भूषिताम् ।
भक्ताभीष्टफलप्रदां हरिहरब्रह्मादिभिः सेवितां
पार्श्वे पंकजशंखपद्मनिधिभिर्युक्तां सदा शक्तिभिः ॥

vande padmakarāṃ prasanna-vadanāṃ saubhāgyadāṃ bhāgyadāṃ
hastābhyāṃ abhaya-pradāṃ maṇi-gaṇair-nānā-vidhair-bhūṣhitām।h ।
bhaktābhīṣhṭa-phalapradāṃ hari-hara-brahmādibhiḥ sevitāṃ
pārśhve pa~Nkaja-śhaṃkha-padma-nidhibhir-yuktāṃ sadā śhaktibhiḥ


Which means:

I bow to the one who has lotus in her hand, has a pleasant happy face, who gives good fortune and destiny, gives refuge (fearlessness) with her hand (posture), who is adorned with lots of gems and other ways, who gives the very much desired fruits to the devotees, is attended upon by viShNu, shiva, brahmA and others, behind whom are lotus, conch and other opulence and who is always with power.

If you want a more thorough analysis of the sanskrit words, you can go here.

"Shibumi" uses just parts of the hymn, and it's exact lyrics would be:

Sadā śhaktibhiḥ śhaktibhiḥ pārśhve pa~Nkaja-śhaṃkha-padma-nidhibhir-yuktāṃ sadā pārśhve sadā śhaktibhiḥ sadā pārśhve sadā śhaktibhiḥ.


Hopefully this will now turn up on google, so people in the future who are looking for the lyrics of this song will find it (edit: a quick try shows that indeed, it does!). Just in case:

Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium
Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics Amethystium Shibumi Lyrics.

Peace out! /Ola

Snyggaste filmaffischerna 2011

Jag hade tänkt skriva div. pretentiösa utläggningar om det gånga året, jag hade tänkt skriva om de bästa filmerna jag sett under det gångna året, eller något...men orka. Jag tänker göra något mer awesome och mindre omständigt.

Men först en kort reflektion. I en diskussion på rollspel.nu just ny beskylls jag för att vara sinofil, ha ett bias gentemot amerikansk film till förmån för asiatisk film, etc. Men sanningen är att av cirka 70 filmer jag såg det gånga året, var 3 asiatiska, och en av dessa var en anime, och en annan Shanghai, som knappt räknas som en asiatisk film, den bara utspelar sig där. The Haunted House Project, en riktigt medioker rulle för övrigt, var alltså den enda "riktiga" asiatiska spelfilm som jag såg 2011. (Eller okej, jag borde räkna "The Circle", eftersom den är från Iran, men jag tänkte nog mer på film från östasien). Det är inte så att jag inte fortfarande är intresserad av asiatisk film, det är jag, och det finns maaaassor av asiatiska filmer på min "vill se"-lista, men av någon anledning känns många av dem mer daunting att börja titta på än amerikanska eller europeiska filmer. Jag såg för övrigt massor av europeisk film under året, jag orkar inte räkna exakt, och jag misstänker att det är där min verkliga passion ligger numera. Europeisk, asiatisk eller australiensisk skräckfilm är jag vad känt mig allra mest taggad på i filmväg under det gångna året, och det kommer märkas när jag nu listar de bästa filmaffischerna från filmer jag såg 2011:

Uninhabited
Jag gillar extremt minimalistisk skräckfilm, och det har Uninhabited going för sig. I stort var den väl en besvikelse, inte läskig eller psykologiskt tät nog, men affischen är ett litet mästerverk i kategorin And I Must Scream; jag älskar ångest i paradiset-temat:


(Större bild).
Det är inte ofta en filmaffisch allena får mig att se en film, men den här gjorde det. Hela kompositionen av bilden är perfekt, varenda detalj snygg och fängslande, ner till typsnitt och textplacering. Fucking awesome.


Triangle
är däremot en film som levererar. Plotten är intrikat, och hela alltet välgjort, berörande och tillfredställande. Det här är en psykologisk film som blir bättre ju mindre man vet om den på förhand, så jag ska inte säga mer, men affischen är snygg på samma sätt som Uninhabiteds, om än inte lika perfekt så åtminstone med en noga genomtänkt komposition, och liknande estetik som leker med snygga tjejer, blod och blå himmel.

(Större version).
Det enda jag inte gillar med den här affischen är att det är något med den som ser alldeles för grindhouse ut, kanske speciellt den där röda texten uppe till vänster. Den alternativa affischen är också intressant.


Altitude
Och sen finns det såna här filmaffischer som liksom kör Reign of Fire-paradigmet och liksom tvingar en att se rullen enbart på pur awesome. Altitude är knappast nåt mästerverk, men i skarp kontrast till Reign of Fire så håller den iallafall vad den lovar på filmaffischen, och handlar mer eller mindre de facto om Cthulhu som antastar ett flygplan sexuellt:

(Större version).

Jag har ingen djupare analys här, det är helt enkelt en snygg affisch. Sparsmakad, hotfull, awesome. Taglinen är förstås töntig, men det finns värre varianter...


The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya
Problemet med att designa en poster till den här filmen var presumably att den, liksom tv-serien, egentligen inte handlar om nånting. Haruhi Suzumiya är slice of life-drama at it's finest, förvisso med en fantasyartad och totalt vansinnig premiss, men den är liksom svår att skildra i bild, jag har iaf ingen aning hur man skulle gjort det vad gäller den här rullens karaktärsdrama runt tidsparadoxer (möjligen något i stil med variantpostern till Triangle ovan?). Jag tror därför det var ett pragmatiskt val att bara ha casten som lutar sig mot en vägg och ser koola ut:

(Större verre).
Men ett lyckat pragmatiskt val; jag tycker väldigt mycket om karaktärsdesignen i Haruhi, färgskalan och ljuset och vinkeln är snygg, och japanska tecken är koola. Men framförallt är det en poster med attityd somehow; de står basically där och tittar uppfordrande på en att gå och se deras film. Om liknande upplägg för affischer till spelfilmer någonsin blir så här bra får ni gärna peka mig till ett exempel; oftast när folk ska stå och posera på spelfilmspostrar ser de bara stela och plastiga ut; liksom.


Let Me In
Filmaffischen är kanske det enda den här rullen gör bättre än originalet (though vissa utländska varianter till originalfilmen var briljanta). De flesta Let Me In-postrar är förvisso mediokra, men den här äger:
(Större verre).
Jag älskar den här bilden; den sätter tonen från boken perfekt, liksom lurar en att det rör sig om nån sorts såsig feelgoodfilm om vänskap, tills man märker den lilla detaljen som är...fel. Karaktärerna är ensamma, hand i hand, i ett ödsligt, kallt snölandskap, i både faktisk och känslomässig bemärkelse. Det enda som är fel är träden; det borde ha varit en backdrop av byggnader snarare, berättelsen är så...urban.


Sennentuntschi
Det är alltid koolt när spelfilmer har tecknade postrar in this day and age, men sen finns det de som går bortom att plocka pluspoäng för att det är udda, och går vidare rakt in i awesomeland:

(Större bild, och tro mig, den här gången är det värt det).

Det händer så mycket på den här affischen och det är så vackert. Jag ska erkänna att jag blev lite besviken, för medan Sennentuntschi definitivt är en riktigt bra film (trailer här), så är den mer av en weird dramathriller, lite Wicker Man typ, än en fantasyfilm, men dess premiss med en magisk docka hade kunnat få en att tro att den är det senare, och det tycks mig som filmaffischen också anspelar på det, den ser helt enkelt sagolik ut, med sina små skuggteater-liknande figurer och gammeldags drömska virvlar. Filmen var alltså inte riktigt vad affischen utlovade...tills man tänker efter, det här är ingen Reign of Fire. Sagodimensionen av filmen finns där, det är mest att den inte faktiskt sker i narrativet så mycket som existerar i bakgrunden i karaktärernas medvetande, och folktron är en viktig aspekt i handlingen (och det går att läsa in fantasyelement om man vill, ett finns där odiskutabelt, resten är...tolkningsfrågor). Affischen eftersträvar inte att luras, utan att belysa och ge credds åt en specifik bit av filmens tematik och inspirationen bakom den, och det gör den fucking grandiost. Sennentuntschi-affischen är inte bara snygg, den förstärker dramat, stämningen och mystiken i filmen den är gjord för, särskilt när man skärskådar de många detaljerna på den, som är små skuggteater-varianter av filmens händelser.

Men vad fan är grejen med den alternativa postern? Det är som om någon tänkte "uhm, hörst du die Menschen...nu när vi gjort die schönsten Film-Poster in der Welt, ska vi inte ta och göra en wirklich widerwärtig und mittelmäßig en som alternativ? De har ju så dålig smak de där amerikanerna, de kanske föredrar en riktigt medioker affisch..."

Jag fattar helt enkelt inte.

Det är också lite synd att jag inte fått mig en bra titt på filmaffischen när jag pratade med regissören, jag hade velat ge honom credds för den snyggaste filmpostern sen Lake Mungo...

Diktatorbingo

Jag valde att satsa på lågoddsare i vänster-höger-diagonalen, men Lukasjenko ställer förstås till det där (medan Castro obönhörligen kommer kola snart, mot döden hjälper inga nivåer av awesome). Vänster-höger-horisontella raden i mitten är också lågoddsare, utöver då Yahya Jammeh som inte lär ryka nån gång snart. Den översta horisonella linjen är högoddsarna, de här snubbarna kommer sitta i evighet, undantaget Khamenei som är uråldrig. Den näst understa horisontala raden är också högoddsare, featuring despoterna i Saudi, Syrien, Sudan och Laos.
Notera också hur det inte finns en enda kvinna bland världens auktoritära härskare. Betänk också att det finns demokratiskt valda statschefer som är betydligt mindre sympatiska än tillochmed många av de här snubbarna; vad säger det om världen?

Efter en idé av Martin Ackerfors.

Freeeeeeeeedooooom!

I'm very, nay, extremely, seldom emotionally moved by events in the news. I dunno exactly why, but I guess it has to do with my personality in general; I always want to take a detached, analytic stance to everything, appeal to reason and caution. In part, I'm convinced that this is a good thing; for example, it makes me detest culture-chauvinistic hysteria of various kinds, and I might often have good arguments against such stupidity. On the other hand, it might make me appear inconsiderate or insensitive to others, and I'm not convinced that it, to begin with, stems entirely from positive factors in my subconscious.

Anyhow, I find myself genuinely moved by the ongoing revolution in Egypt. Or, well, it's to early to tell if it's really a revolution, but I really really hope it is. (Not lame-ass reform, we want to see revolution here). I dunno why. It probably has something to do with the fact that I studied islamology last fall, giving me many further insights into (and feelings for) the muslim world, past and present. Also, it began on my birthday ^_^

Maybe I'm fed up with that particular modern type of dictator that Mubarak represents; the pseudo-democratic. The world is filled with psychotic bastards who hide behind a façade of democracy (This guy is a good example), and they get nowhere near the same amount of shit from the West as more honest tyrants do. The US, fucktards that they are, have often been known to ally with them to various degrees, something they'd never do with Kim Jong-Il or the junta in Myanmar, just because of the shitstorm they'd get if they did. If you just pretend to be democratic, it'll work fine though, and you can basically reign supreme and abuse your subjects for 30 years without anyone noticing...


Do western countries, or the democratic world for that matter, now call for Mubarak to resign? No they don't. They whine a little about "listening to the people", or at the very best, call for reform. If any single country have officially taken the Egyptian people's side in all this, please point it out to me; I sure can't find it.

And the Egyptian people's side is quite clear by now. They want their asshole president-for-life to step down. It's not too much to ask, after 30 years of blatant abuse of power. But oh, nooo! Mubarak is to important to the security in the middle east! Islamists could take over! (As if. And I'd love to see the reaction from Israel in the unlikely event that they did).

(I, of course, use the term "people" somewhat vaguely here. There are, of course, supporters of Mubarak in Egypt, it's not like everyone hates his guts (those in power always need the support of a clique). But it's significant enough how many that does, and the sheer magnitud of their frustration and anger).

His people fucking want him gone. By not openly and honestly supporting them, the "democratic" world has yet again shown its true colors (something in distinct shades of brown and blue). I am well aware of Egypt's importance in global and regional affairs (that's partly why I feel more for these events than I do for Tunisia), and yes, of course there are political issues to considered, but it was we, the west, that fucked the world up to begin with, and it should therefore be our fucking responsibility to do all we can to fix it.

Just imagine if TV had subtitles that told you what stuff was really about, beneath the continental crust-thick layers of bullshit:



The next video is something I'm gonna post here because I think everyone (and their grandmother) should see it. I'm getting a bit heart-tugged by the bearded guy who angrily, passionately and tearfully shouts: "We will not be silenced! Whether you're christian, whether you're muslim, whether you're an atheist, you will demand your goddamn rights, and we will have our rights, one way or the other! We will never be silenced!"

Could the quote of the year be here already?

Top Ten Most Bloated (and Awesome!) Military Stuff Ever

As we'll later learn from this post, the one who invests the most in military technology and tools almost always wins. Yet, once this paradigm is adopted, it can easily go waaay to far. A prime example of this was the nazis, who were so overly enthusiastic about superweapons that they even gave birth to the nazi super science-trope. And that's really the whole point, fuck strategic and economic considerations; superweapons are awesome. I give you - the most blatantly bloated, advanced and pricey (often vastly overrated, sometimes actually rather efficient) military stuff in history:

10. The Maginot Line

Like basically everyone else, the french managed to die a whole lot in World War 1. Actually, they died so much that the whole country got a manpower shortage in the decades to come. This was seen as a strategic problem, for the french were not stupid - they realized that Germany would come back with a vengeance. Oh, wait, they might have been stupid after all, given how they choose to mitigate this problem. The defense minister André Maginot got the "great" idea to build a giant line, several kilometers deep, of fortresses, turrets, artillery, tank stops and stuff along the borders to Germany and Italy. This would allow the relatively small french army to withstand an attack, and buy time to draft older men into the army. In practice, it might have been one of the dumbest investments in history, as a): static defenses would turn out to be rather worthless with the new doctrines and technologies, b) the line didn't cover the border to fucking Belgium. You all know what happend next.

So, was the maginot line awesome? Well, a bit I guess. Expensive; definitely. Bloated? God yes.

9. M50 Ontos

This is a tank destroyer that was used in the Vietnam War. The US Army originally decided it was too absurd to be built, and cancelled the order. This was after firing all the guns at once during prototype testing knocked bricks out of nearby walls. The Marine Corps, though, realized this tool was to cool not to have, and ordered 297 of them. They apparently turned out to be rather useful during the war, even though they were used for infantry support rather than their original puporse (tank-raping), but the awesome design did have some disadvantages of course, otherwise it couldn't justifiably be called "bloated" - in this case, the thing had to be loaded from the outside, making the crew vulnerable to snipers.

So why was it awesome? Just look at it. It had not one, not two, not three...not four...not five...but six 106 mm recoilless rifles. Lest you not be confused by the word "rifle" here, we're talking about stuff so big that stuff a third of its size has to be mounted on turrents and wheels when infantry use it (for example the Bofors 37 mm). And again; six of them.

8. Schwerer Gustav

Ok, if the french has the Maginot Line, the germans needs something to blast their way through it with, right? That's where this baby came in. Except, the nazis didn't actually need to blast through the Maginot Line, as they could just walk around it. So yes; unnecessary technology; check.

The Schwerer Gustav was a gun so absurdly big that it had to be mounted on a train. The various european powers had constructed such cannons before, so of course the nazis, true to form, had to beat them all. The result was the largest calibre rifled weapon in history ever to see actual combat. On the receiving end was, of course, the poor, poor russians. We're talking shells this big. And still, for all its awesomeness, Schwerer Gustav was only actually used during the Siege of Sevastopol, spending the rest of the war being moved back and forth to places where someone thought it could be of use, yet it never was. I can imagine the talk at headquarters:

"Ok, so where do we need the absurdly gigantic railway gun?"
"Err...I dunno...maybe you can blast Leningrad with it?"
"When we managed to actually get it there, the siege would be long over"
"Oh, alright...use it against Stalingrad then?"
"Isn't that a wee bit overkill? We don't need that kind of firepower there"
"But...but...it's....awesome".

7. Lun-class Ekranoplan

Next to the nazis in terms of superweapon fetisch, the soviets put their vast resource base to good use in constructing some of the wierdest shit ever. Ekranoplans are pretty bizzare to begin with, being "flying boats" somewhere halfway between a hovercraft and an aircraft, vehicles that uses the so-called ground effect to basically float a few meters above the ground. That's awesome by itself, but the MD-160, the only Lun-class Ekranoplan actually built, was also very large (73 m, rivalling modern jumbo jets) and equipped with six missile launchers, pretty much silos really, carrying these babies for ground attacks. It's still around; rotting away in a town at the Caspian shores that's bleak, run-down and god-forsaken in that particularly depressing way only post-sovietic stuff can be. It's not pretty, but still, one really should look at these pictures (and this video, it appears about 4:40 minutes in) just to realize the awesome. A huge object similar to it was spotted in the Caspian Sea area by US reconaissance sattelites in the 60's and dubbed "The Caspian Sea Monster", but it seems they could never find out exactly what it was, making for some intriguing and awesome possibilities.

6. Timurid War Elephants

In 1398, When Tamerlane went, very literally, medieval* on the Sultanate of Delhi, he captured a host of indian war elephants that he seems to have appreciated to an almost fetischistic degree. Tamerlane had already combined horse archers, siege artillery and heavy tarkhan cavalry into steppe warfare's grande finale in history, so naturally, he just had to add the only thing (except chariots) that was missing among the most awesome stuff of pre-modern war. Accordingly, he had the elephants dragged all the way back to Samarkand, and later deployed them in the epic Battle of Angora against the Ottoman Turks and their sultan Bayazid, together with Tamerlane considered the greatest general of the age. Historians seem to disagree about how many the elephants were (but it's known that Tamerlane's army faced and defeated about a hundred elephants when they invaded Delhi) and to what degree they were actually useful in the battle, but that doesn't matter. In any case, the Ottomans were crushed, and how could they not be? They were facing mongol hordes with knights, and cannons, and armored fucking elephants! If not by superior tactics and/or numbers, Tamerlane would still have won on sheer awesome.

*"The killing and wanton destruction that characterized the Delhi campaign may be unsurpassed in history" - Vernon O. Egger

5. The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall had its origins in several different systems of defensive earthen walls between the Warring States of antiquity. Once the king of Qin had defeated the other states, he declared himself emperor and embarked on extending and joining together the different walls into a single, giant one. The human toil and misery this caused in the laborers became stuff of legends in China, and later chronicles echoes with hatred against the Qin emperor. A common myth is that the bones of dead builders became filling stuff in the Great Wall. More than a thousand years later, the wall had fallen into ruin and was barely a heap of earth, and was reconstruced by the Ming dynasty, in stone and brick, but spanning over a somewhat different area than the original wall. Both incarnations of the wall were of absolutely epic lengths and is generally considered among the greatest achievements of human civilisation, yet it can be debated how effective they were. The traditional view is that the walls were built to ward off the barbarians of the northern steppes; if that's the case, they were epic fail. While they might have discouraged lesser war bands, China has been successfully invaded by nomads from the north so many times it's almost absurd - Xiongnu, Jurchens, Tanguts, Mongols, Khitans, Turks, the list goes on and on. The wall thus stand solidly on the list of the most worthless defensive structures ever built.

A less common but interesting viewpoint is the theory that the wall were never intended to keep barbarians out, but the chinese in. With this line of reasoning, the idea is that the ruler's wanted to keep the peasant population of China from getting dangerous influences and ideas from the nomadic population of the steppes. Restrictions on free mobility has been a common feature in despotic regimes throughout history, so it's an interesting possibilty.

In any case, the wall is the very definition of epic, expensive, bloated, and awesome.

4. Korean Turtle Ships

The Turtle Ships were used by the Korean navy from the 15th century, and are especially known for their role in the Imjin War with Japan, where japanese warlord Hideyoshi tried to use Korea as a launching board for an epic assault on China. He failed.

Some role in his failure played this ship design, supposedly perfected by legendary korean admiral Yi Sun-sin. The whole design stemmed from the idea that, by covering the deck of the ship with walls and a roof, the enemy wouldn't be able to board it, but the awesomeness was soon increased by gunpowder; Yi Sun-sins ships had five different types of cannons, one of which was hidden in a dragon head at the bow, spewing fire from its mouth. Another variant of the dragon's head could launch a cloud of toxic smoke created from a mixture of sulphur and salpeter. Tradition has it that the turtle ships were iron-plated, but the evidence for this is weak, though they did have a shitload of iron spikes to further discourage boarding.

Yi's ships were intended as close-assault vessels; using sails and/or oars, they would speed towards the enemy ship, ramming it, and unleash a broadside of cannon shots at close range. Korean commander's especially favored targeting the enemy's command ship with this tactic; the Turtle Ships' resilience allowed them to plow through an enemy fleet straight for the command ship, and upon sinking this, would severely damage the enemy's morale.

Unlike most of the stuff on this list, Turtle Ships were actually really useful. Still, they were apparently exotic, advanced and awesome enough to become stuff of legends.

3. Tsar Bomba

Tsar Bomba is the nickname for AN602, a hydrogen bomb that the Soviet Union detonated in Novaya Zemlya archipelago in 1961. As the russians really liked big stuff, it was originally designed to have a payload of 100 megatons of TNT, which eventually had to be reduced to half once they realized that the fallout from the explosion would be a bit much too handle. To put this into perspective: the bomb actually detonated was still the most physically powerful device ever utilized by mankind, and shattered windows in Finland. The blast could have caused third-degree burns a hundred kilometers away, the mushroom cloud was seven times the height of Mt Everest, and the seismic shock from the blast could be measured even on its third passage around the earth. Getting the plane that dropped the bomb away in time not to be destroyed by the shockwave was actually an issue.

The Tsar Bomba was the culmination of a paradigm where precise bomb targeting was not assured, and bomb blasts accordingly should be large enough to destroy a target even if dropped five to ten kilometers away. The development of more precise ICBMs would soon make this paradigm obsolete, but even before that, Tsar Bomba might have been overdoing it just a little. At 1,4% the energy output of the sun.

2. The Cannon That Destroyed Byzantium

Absurdly huge bombards, great cannons designed to shatter walls, were very much in vogue in the 15th century. Especially enthusiastic about such stuff was the "Gunpowder Empires", one of which was the Ottoman Turks. In 1452, they stood ready to conquer Constantinople, something they had a history of failing with - despite that they had taken all surrounding lands, the city itself had defied them for a century. Constantinople's walls were stuff of legends, and it seemed they simply couldn't be breached.

At this time lived a little hungarian gunsmith called Orban. He had thought up a design for the biggest, baddest cannon the world had yet seen, and presented the idea for the emperor in Constantinople, who quickly decided he could neither afford nor needed such a thing.

Not very discouraged, Orban instead went to the turks, claiming that his cannon could "Blast the walls of Babylon itself". The sultan was all like: "Sure, but...can you make it...bigger?"

Forever proving that bigger is better and that military investment pays off, the Ottomans employed Orban and had him construct a cannon so absurdly big that 60 oxen had to drag it to Constantinople, where it blasted the epic walls to bits. The thousand year old Roman Empire thus came to an end, and while the Ottoman fascination for big fucking guns continued well into the 19th century, when they used the then ancient Dardanelles Gun to take a shot at a british fleet, Orban himself died a karmic death when one of his superguns exploded.

(No picture of the cannon remains; depicted is the russian Tsar Cannon, which is another gigantic bombard. Note the girl in the lower right corner for scale).

1. Battleship Yamato

Battleships were, in essence, gigantic floating platforms with equally gigantic guns that could be fired simultaneously, backed up by a vast host of smaller guns, mines, torpedoes, etc. Add to this the nice bow shape and sleek yet brutal look of a really large ship, a small nations' steel production's worth of armour, a couple of catapult-launched seaplanes and a crew counted in the thousands, and we have the closest to a Star Destroyer that humanity has gotten thus far. The faith in and prestige associated with battleships were immense in the early 20th century, despite the absurd amounts of time, cash and manpower that had to be invested in order to build even a single one. Yet, despite all this, and despite their sheer awesomeness, historians argue that battleships were never really useful; everything they could do, smaller ships and airplanes could do much more cost-efficiently. This view is further strengthened by the fact that there only was two real confrontations between battleships ever; the Battle of Tsushima and the Battle of Jutland. Battleships never accomplished much, other than wasting steel, lives, and money.

So yes, they were both unneccessary and overrated, a money-sink of epic proportions. And the most egregious of them all was the Yamato, the pride and flagship of Japan. She and her sister ship Musashi was designed with the philosophy that, as the americans had more than a 3:1 advantage on the japanese in number of battleships, Japan simply had to build two huge enough to compensate for that all by themselves. That's the spirit of awesome!

Yamato was pathetically sunk by american aircraft in 1945, and only got to fire her absurdly huge cannons on surface targets one single time. Yet, german battleship Bismarcks brutal destruction of british battlecruiser Hood a few years before had demonstrated what a battleship could do, and Yamato was bigger, better, and stronger than her. While the American Iowa-class of battleships was almost as large and much more technically advanced, the Yamato class was much heavier, and had 46 cm main guns, compared to Iowas puny 40 cm. With a great name, epic size and looks, and the biggest fucking guns ever mounted on a ship, Yamato stands out as the king of all battleships, and battleships were in themselves the epitome of expensive, advanced and uneccessary, being so awesome that they crossed the spectrum from worthless to great and all the way back to worthless. This gives them a firm place in history among the coolest of humanity's achievements.