Rosenbush Cafe

WARNING: Language and themes will be offensive and inappropriate for some readers and gratuitous for all others!
Part 3 of 4: Reserving records at The Dickery: Emerson, Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, Kraftwerk, Nilsson and that familiar scent in the black light poster room!

A different vampire son

Son of Dracula

By Henry B. Rosenbush
The Obsessive Collector

There is a risk of becoming platitudinous when reminiscing about the profound which may in fact be the ordinary. When we go into a movie theater the EXIT signs are clearly visible designating where the audience must leave in the event of an emergency. The color red is a warning but unlike a traffic light is means go rather than stop. While the Exit can be used to leave a particularly odious motion picture it usually takes a fire or calamity to get people out of their seats before the end credit scroll.

Usually, when the final production logo and MPAA Rating is flashed unto the screen I am the only patron left in the theater anyway.

The tangled cobweb of the world wide has its own exit signs that are practically invisible; computers are equipped with their own designations: esc, del and x, which is red, and the all powerful x, located in the upper right quadrant of the page, allowing readers absolute control to immediately exit the ether without an emergency unless whatever they are reading, viewing or hearing overloads their level of risibility and they wish to avoid brain seizures.

Music has its own exit; radio and television can be turned off as easily as on or changed to a different channel. What makes the old fashioned record players of the seventies a wholly different technological marvel was that if you didn’t want to listen any longer you had to get up off your ass, leaving a comfortable chair, sofa or bed and walk to the turntable to end the album eject the needle from the LP.

No one today would dare walk across a room to eject a cassette or 8-Track tape from the deck and certainly not take additional time to remove the format and return it to its sleeve and cover, in the case of albums, or plastic container if it be a compact disc. There was a time, long gone now, when there was as much exhilaration in the removal of shrink-wrapping and the unmistakable aroma of a fresh pressing; the whiff of the vinyl itself coupled with the printing ink on pictures so new you’d think it was completed minutes before your purchase.

Harry Nilsson, was one of dozens of musical talents who provided me with endless hours of enjoyment and reminiscent of Pink Floyd, Three Dog Night, Grand Funk, Hot Tuna, Wishbone King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer – naming only a few - was one of those artists who always excited me with a new release.
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Visit documentary-log.com for more documentaries online!

One thing is certain, we owe our very existence to closest object in the night sky; our very own moon. It controls tides and keeps a delicate balance on the surface of this planet that without it would lead to an alternate reality for Earth. If the player doesn’t load immediately, you can access this doc by clicking on the icon, next to the volume speaker on the Guba player, and it will display pictures. Then click on the first image (of Mars) in the upper left corner.

Enjoy this speculative and thought-provoking episode of The Universe, Tuesdays at 9 p.m. EST on The History Channel

eXisTenTiaLNihLisT
Who is movie cynic, too!
Profanity and Smugness Ahead

Watch the Japanese Trailer for “2012″ first so you’ll be in the mood for my decidedly reliable negativity!

I was moderately surprised to learn recently that Alabama is the most conservative state in the union. Why couldn’t I have been born on Jupiter? Oh, right, too much carbon monoxide. I grew up in Alabama and promised myself in 1972 I would never, ever live here again.

What a schmuck. I enrolled in the uni at Southern Mississippi and spend my entire journalistic “career” (Ha, ha; I delude myself - I was a Newspaperman from 1978-83 and when you add all the assignments in various places I worked it equals about 3.2 years) and for the next decade was inevitably always surrounded by the South. No matter what I did to escape, like a magnetic force, I was trapped in the temporal warp. I worked to not “sound southern” and succeeded. When I returned in 1984 to care for my aging parents I thought it was the end of my world.

It was my death sentence, except the date of the lethal injection keeps getting commuted; I may be pardoned but not paroled.

I took care of dad until he died in 1995; then my aunt who passed in 2003; and finally, mother say “Good bye” in 2007. There is no family left to hold me back so why in the exponential neutron star am I still here suffering the sight of a hundred portable toilets next to my office?*

My motto: “Transmogrify or Die” but my Epitaph extolls:

From the Farthest Star He Spies
Yet Too Stubborn He Flies
Into Contiunation of Lifes
Until He Gives Up and Dies

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Previewed by Henry B. Rosenbush

It seems that many movie fans are intensely awaiting director James Cameron’s December release of Avatar

I have casually followed the excitement surrounding the film and hope my cynicism doesn’t prevent me from totally enjoying it. I may be one of the few people on this planet who is pissed that the Martin Scorsese thriller, “Shutter Island,” got bumped off the fall sked from October to 2010. I enjoy a wide range of genres and anyone who reads El Cine is bound to learn that fact through my movies reviews, retrospectives and arcane knowledge of the medium.

I still attain a level of giddy excitement at the prospect of a new film by David Cronenberg, John Carpenter, Sidney Lumet or Christopher Nolan and enjoy such a wide range of foreign and indie movies it’s a shame I don’t have the connections to become involved in the trade. I was reading Variety, Film Comment and (now defunct) American Film in the early seventies and still enjoy Video Watchdog and several fanzines devoted to the offbeat and classic eras.

As technology trumps storytelling, however, my writer’s heart grows heavy with regret that all too often, movies are either remakes or needless sequels and Hollywood especially has the uncanny ability to take wonderful foreign works and so badly Americanize them as to destroy the original concept, re: The Pang Brother’s The Eye, Pulse and Ringu. The talent pool is in deep water with multi-million dollar deals but the conglomeration of media outlets doesn’t allow for much audacious projects.

How I miss Luis Buñuel’s surrealism and wonderful twisted visuals to Catholicism and Alfred Hitchcock’s often languid style in talking the ordinary and revealing the perversity beneath the quiet exterior. David Lean could make an audience so thirsty with “Lawrence of Arabia,” one would think he got a percentage of the soft drink sales and when Sergio Leone presented the subtle, but menacing, lengthy opening of “Once Upon a Time in the West,” to introduce The Man with the Harmonica (Charles Bronson) appearing across the railroad track to confront three soon-to-be-dead killers, he did so in a manner presenting massive spectacles where humans were dwarfed by environmental elements; the fly on Jack Elam’s face, the squeaky rusty metal of a spinning windmill.

As a true movie fan, who sits through credits, not just to be surprised if the filmmakers drops in an after credit-scroll surprise (”The House on Haunted Hill” Remake, “Iron Man,” or “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”) but for the appreciation of the thousands of people it takes to make movies. In John Mackenzie’s unnerving 1971 Brit thriller “Unman, Wittering and Zigo,” for example, the killer isn’t revealed until after the credits, so if you leave early you’re bound to say, “That’s it?” How many times have you seen the name Mo Henry, negative cutter because you knew he worked in countless films? Do most audiences know, or even care, what a foley artist does or the significance of an ADR performance?

Does “Avatar” look technically polished? Yes. Exciting? Most certainly. While it may change movie experiences with its use of the proprietary FUSION digital 3-D cameras developed by Cameron in collaboration with Vince Pace, specifically for this film it is after all, still just a movie. The trailer displays the distant moon, Pandora and its inhabitants in a striking computerized and live-action hybridized manner but will the story become overwhelmed because the visuals must be something we’ve never seen before?

I hope not because I’ve been overloaded with imagery lately and while I enjoy a sensory experience it’s still refreshing to sit through a film with a strong story that is dialogue and character-driven.

From the silent era, when a one or two reeler was enough to satiate the audience to the later realization why some actors were better never being heard when the talkies came, in the craft of movie making never rests.

I always enjoy new technologies and the entertainment business is always compelled to find new and expensive visual tricks. We’ve come a long way Georges Méliès and his astounding visual treats. Today, aside from film buffs, historians and scholars or writers, like me, who understand the trade, most movie audiences wouldn’t know who Méliès was or his contributions to the moving art. When I look at the silent film era and compare it to the first talkies there is a moment when I imagine some people truly said, “It’s just a phase. No one wants to sit in a building and watch trains get robbed or listen to Al Jolson sing.” It still amazes me the number of people who believe movies would be just a “passing phase” that would quickly wither and die. I suppose when Hollywood began fearing television would empty theater seats the prescience returned like a ghostly promise.

Movies have always enjoyed bending around corners and fast-forward from the silent era to present day and imagination is no longer contained within the mind. Always a new hook, like a designer drug that immediately addicts viewers: 3-D, Cinerama, Sensurround, Cinemascope and Odorama (thank you very much John Waters!) and the high concept, albeit short-lived Showscan technique by Douglas Trumbull (the special effects wizard behind such science fiction classics as “Blade Runner” and “2001: A Space Odyssey.” I was lucky enough to see Showscan in 1984 in Dallas of all places; the Showbiz Pizza chain had several franchises with the unique movie experience and it was an adventure that now, thanks to the revitalization of the current 3-D is a reminder of where the process has blossomed.

In New Magic (1983) Gerritt Graham (Beef, in Bryan DePalma’s underrated seventies horror movie hybrid, Phantom of the Paradise) stuns the audience when he pushes his face and hands into the screen from behind the screen of a photographed screen that is so realistic it really appears he is behind the screen in the theater with the audience.

Confused? Forget the 3D glasses. Aside from a real acid trip this was as surreal a movie experience as I ever experienced. When the great British actor Christopher Lee’s face fills the screen and he says, “Fireworks. I’ll show you fireworks” and a photographed fireworks display gets so close that it burns away the entire screen one would be forgiven for running for the exits. As the final piece of material burns away the audience is left with the realization the movie screen is gone while the theater screen is intact but the high definition deep focused 23 minute short was never to be duplicated. There was another short, Big Ball, that was pretty cool, too, but “Magic” literally left me sitting alone in the tiny theater after the other patrons had left as I realized I was fortunate enough to see something I’d never see again.

Or would I?

A few years ago, I sat in an Imax Theater in Mississasauga, near Toronto, Ontario, Canada, with Natalia watching The Matrix Reloaded, after having already seen it in Birmingham at a Rave Theater midnight show a week earlier. What a difference. Who knew Keanu Reeves had such a rough facial complexion. The quality of lens, digital verus celluloid now made a difference I had not experienced since Showscan.

Showscan Film Corporation only produced 12 films, the last in 1997, but what a lasting impression. Just to recall that all this excitement occurred inside a pizza restaurant makes it all the more of a Dadaist’s dream come true.

According to promotional material, “Avatar takes us to a spectacular new world beyond our imagination, where a reluctant hero embarks on a journey of redemption and discovery, on a distant movie, Pandora, as he leads a heroic battle to save a civilization. The film was first conceived by Cameron 14 years ago, when the means to realize his vision did not yet exist. Now, after four years of actual production work, Avatar delivers a fully immersive cinematic experience of a new kind, where the revolutionary technology invented to make the film, disappears into the emotion of the characters and the sweep of the story.”

Uh-oh. I am one of those people who cringe at “world beyond our imagination.” Imagination IS a world beyond. I hope the story matches the visuals of the trailer.

Titanic was so immensely boring, at least to me, that I actually found myself repeatedly checking my watch which is never a good sign while watching a movie. I set through all 10 hours of the the great documentary Shoah, mesmerized by its profound nature and humanistic real story of WW II atrocities against the Jews, and never once checked the time.

December is four months away and there will be plenty of other movies between now and Avatar and I really hope it succeeds with a strong narrative to compliment it’s fascia.

I take comfort in the fact that the printed word will always evoke passionate imagery only available inside the brain of the individual reader. While that imagery can be manipulated by expensive and innovative revisionism via computerized effects it can never be duplicated so long as our imagination remains personally encapsulant.

Precious Phantasma

Cats understand the value of language even if humans misrepresent what is being said. A recent look at another popular YouTube cat vid is a perfect example. For whatever reason, known only to the mind behind, the clip is from a “senile cat.” Oh, so now carbon stick figures know what mental shape we’re in, eh? I listened to this feline and can tell you much of what is being said is profane and meant to intimidate the tux cat who seems to understand if he moves one inch in any direction the orange roughie will be wearing his ass like an expensive toupee. Language is important for all species and animals, even if they are old, generally know what they want to say but humankind has not yet fully learned to interpret their syntactic musings. Suffice to say, we keep our words between other felines and enjoy how often people think they know what we are saying. A quick excerpt from the vid has the orange cat noting: “See that camera? They’re recording us for their amusement. When the photographer sleeps we’re going rub our (expletives) on their toothbrushes, silverware and underpants….”

—– Precious Phantasma, Food Critic and Linguistics Strategist