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ericmvan can describe Videodrome (1983) as the best adaptation of a book that Philip K. Dick never wrote, then I reserve the right to call Eastern Promises (2007), which we saw tonight, very close to a nonexistent short story by Simon Logan. Or at least to hope that someday David Cronenberg will direct an adaptation of Pretty Little Things to Fill Up the Void, because while the setting of Eastern Promises is present-day London rather than an industrial neverwhere, the underworld of the vory v zakone has much of the same elsewise, timeslipped feel without a single definable incidence of the fantastic or the science-fictional—a motorcycle and a black limousine are character traits, casual extensions of identity; skin and ink are their own language; a character can rage, "You pronounced the name of my father!" and the line carries the old charge of invocation: to know a thing by its name is both powerful and perilous and sometimes impossible. There are no demons and no angels, but the air is full of their potential. For one reason or another, there is blood on everyone's hands. I like ambiguity. I loved this film.
On a rather different note: I'm a feature, not a bug. My first published poem "Turn of the Century, Jack-in-the-Green" is now online at Mythic Delirium as a sort of retrospective treat, along with video bytime_shark. I can never get used to the way my speaking voice sounds outside my head. But I am still proud of the poem.
ericmvan can describe Videodrome (1983) as the best adaptation of a book that Philip K. Dick never wrote, then I reserve the right to call Eastern Promises (2007), which we saw tonight, very close to a nonexistent short story by Simon Logan. Or at least to hope that someday David Cronenberg will direct an adaptation of Pretty Little Things to Fill Up the Void, because while the setting of Eastern Promises is present-day London rather than an industrial neverwhere, the underworld of the vory v zakone has much of the same elsewise, timeslipped feel without a single definable incidence of the fantastic or the science-fictional—a motorcycle and a black limousine are character traits, casual extensions of identity; skin and ink are their own language; a character can rage, "You pronounced the name of my father!" and the line carries the old charge of invocation: to know a thing by its name is both powerful and perilous and sometimes impossible. There are no demons and no angels, but the air is full of their potential. For one reason or another, there is blood on everyone's hands. I like ambiguity. I loved this film.On a rather different note: I'm a feature, not a bug. My first published poem "Turn of the Century, Jack-in-the-Green" is now online at Mythic Delirium as a sort of retrospective treat, along with video by
time_shark. I can never get used to the way my speaking voice sounds outside my head. But I am still proud of the poem.
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