"Glow in the Dark Penis" revisited:

"Glow in the Dark Penis" a tag/hook, a phrase which appeared years ago on the blog "criticalwomen of film' still attracts "hits"; Internet surfers from around the world; 111 to 116 countries/territories per month are repeatedly registered on the Google scale. At the core of this statistical success is the experience of the hidden desires of those who suffer from guilt; the so called "pervert".

It is a brilliant phrase because it uses the word penis - which is one of those trigger internet suffer words - coupled with the word Dark which denotes hidden/ forbidden secretive sexual thoughts. In short, it appeals to those steeped in guilt

Guilt: How strange, how powerful it is!

It's source can be either: Heinous acts of destruction (murder) or acts or ideations of construction (sex) or anything that makes us feel "bad'.

Did the Ancient Greeks experience guilt? Most likely not.

In the caveman times, was guilt a prevalent emotion? Not likely.

Today almost every adult feels guilt from one source or another and our children are inheriting this crippling emotion as well.

Common sources of quilt:

i didn't separate out the metal cans from the newspapers,
I help pay for the next generation of Drones or the nuclear bomb dropped on civilians or
I killed a man because I was told to..........
I killed a man and I don't know why....
or did I dream it,
imagine it.


I want/crave a man's penis in my mouth.
I want to taste his semen
I want to get into that woman's pants
I want to live..........
without pain
and I can't.

I am guilty because I think about suicide all the time.
I think about masturbating, then I do it
to feel better
but it makes me feel guilty
which is worse.

I killed a man
I watched him die
I saw his blood
it was real,
I saw life flow from his limbs
I am guilty

I killed a child
he was running
i said
I think I said "stop"
but he didn't

I banged open the door
a private space
exposed:
A home
their home
my gun held just so
my fingers worked without thought
I am a killer
A hero

My flesh littered with tattoos
indisputable though revocable
evidence
I am guilty

Yet to be charged
I punish myself
everyday

I live in hell
in silence
in eternal
Agony

Freud said Americans substitute aggression for sex. What he meant is that the processes for guilt-formation and the struggles that this emotion poses are substantially confined to Aggressive acts in this country as opposed to the illness from sexual ideation experienced in the Europe of his lifetime.

Although I think this is changing what has happened is an entire industry propelled by an undertone of religious indignation that is infiltrating the "Women's liberation" movement; a worldwide prohibition against sexual strivings which is ever increasing in its visibility and its wealth of ideas, actions identified as worthy of reprimand/prohibition.

What happens, and we see/hear it in the news to the point that it no longer surprises even the most virtuous among us, is the very people who talk the talk do not act in accordance to the good 'clean" life.

They are and have always been the repressed but repression does not work. The repressed ideas become an energy block, like a huge onslaught of fast moving water stopped at the point of urgent egress it must find an outlet.

We block our human nature to conform to a pathological state of purity.

Into this mix of gratifying both the aggressive drive and the sexual drive is the ever growing sex trade, pornography and all those trigger words that makes a blog, a web page garner notice.

Is this a problem?

Or is pornography a solution, an answer to pathological fallout from War?

Should it be legalized along with Pot and Liquor and masturbation?

"Tell me, Daddy, what did you do in the army? What did you see?" are questions that are seldom answered and for good reason.

Although we know this, my point is that there is a relationship between this obvious omission of communication and the proliferation, the need for pornography to ease our pain.

That is the human condition, our living hell.

Our experience of ever increasing and more urgent feelings of quilt.

The Killer Inside Me: Interesting but............?

THE KILLER INSIDE ME

Michael Winterbottom

Based on a novel by pulp writer Jim Thompson:

An idyllic West Texas town in the early 1950’s:
handsome, charming, unassuming small town sheriff's deputy, Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) has difficulty juggling his long-term girlfriend Amy (Kate Hudson) and a prostitute named Joyce (Jessica Alba). His siopathic tendencies steer him and us, his audience towards an unusual finale.

Does it matter to you if the basis of a file is right, true to its depiction of the potential for human behavior? That is the underling question posed by this film, a difficult one to answer.

There is no question that emotion, such as anger, can trigger behavior that seems to defy intelligent mediation. We have all experienced going from an identified feeling to an action we would later regret. Can this happen with the intellectual/emotional experience of "Love" or is it more to the point that the experience of the sexual orgasm is what triggers an unconscious or preconscious reaction? In this film, The Killer Inside Me this is an essential question because it is the basis of the plot, the foundation of the story.

If the latter is what holds true and the former not, then this raises the question of authenticity - not an easy one to answer, but important nonetheless.

I don't know about seeing the film on a large screen. I recommend The Killer Inside Me be seen, at home, on DVD.


Release date: June 18th
The film will be available simultaneously on VOD

Finding Bliss: pornography in the making

Cast: Leelee Sobieski, Matthew Davis, Donnamarie Recco, Denise Richards

FINDING BLISS, a romantic comedy that explores the adult film industry through the eyes of an idealistic 25 year-old award-winning film school grad, Jody Balaban (LEELEE SOBIESKI).

With sex as the landscape and pornography the issue to be explored, punctuated with visual images that manage to stay on the date-flick side of the divide, it is hard to imagine how this film will not make back the money spent on its creation.

An interesting film that addresses issues rarely spoken about even in those private moments when "the girls" get together: the fear of inability to perform is not limited to men, not in this country, this century. It is a universal fear but women rarely admit to feelings traditionally attributed to men. In Finding Bliss this curtain of silence is lifted and the "good girl", the Virgin of choice, is exposed as a frightened child trying to survive in an adult world.

The film is compelling in content but is amateurish in construction and weak in acting. There is so much good and so much lacking in this film that I recommend it with strong reservations.

Hopefully writer/director Julie Davis will learn more about filmmaking before she attempts to bring her compelling and important ideas onto the screen again.

Release Date: June 4th, 2010 (limited)

Paper Man: funny/poignant, one of the year's best

Written and Directed by: Michele Mulroney & Kieran Mulroney

Cast: Jeff Daniels, Ryan Reynolds, Emma Stone, Lisa Kudrow, Kieran Culkin

Comedic Drama

Richard (Jeff Daniels), a failed middle-aged novelist quirky in his immaturity as contrasted to his wife (Lisa Kudrow), a physician who embodies the ultra-successful adult persona.

Richard embarks on a month-long trip to Long Island's pristine winter setting, a self imposed solitude, to lift his "writer's block". During his stay, he rides around on a child-size bike, a symbol of the child persona that engulfs this 50+ year-old man. While on a trip to town Richard befriends, and hires as his babysitter, Abby (Emma Stone) - a 17 year-old victim of childhood trauma that has left her accepting a masochistic male companion even though or rather because he degrades and hurts her.

The comedic element is mostly based on the contract between Richard and others. Richard relies heavily on his imaginary friend, a costumed superhero known as Captain Excellent (Ryan Reynolds) whom no one other than Richard sees, but his wife knows about. Abby's equivolent "super man" is a fellow ex-"loony bin" friend who follows her everywhere.

Given the details of the plot it is difficult to anticipate that this usual older man/very young girl scenario is a film worth seeing. But this film is very much worth seeing because the dialogue and the hook, an extinct bird, are so compelling that it raises the film into the realm of Great.

Paper Man's extinct bird is America, a country which has outgrown its 'super power of the world' status and along with it the comic book character Superman or Captain Excellent. Richard's problems and our problem are twofold: In a society that has no factories, that makes no thing, what do we do with our Hands? What can we make - Origami, slice up fish, sofas out of books.............nothing of substance, of inherent worth. We are insubstantial people and what we manufacture is unhappiness and we, the denizens of this once productive, thriving super power America are becoming extinct, like the bird.

The political/emotional impact of Paper Man is immense. We are all victims - of the fallout from the cell phones/computers, all means of non communication communication. We don't even type on a substantial Corona typewriter anymore. We tap delicately on our computers, barely touching the keyboard.

The imagery is endless, delivered in the most delightful, funny interactions that resonated deeply.

It all felt so real, as if I was involved in the scene right there with the messy eating of a Lobster, the slicing up of the Fluke, the making of a sofa out of unsold books that otherwise would have remained in unopened boxes for ever and ever, and the arguments between husband and wife.... I've been there, i heard them, I've had them.

I see an average of 7 to 10 films a week, standard for today's film reviewer. But Paper Man was so rich in detail, so compelling a film that I saw it twice within three days. What else can I say?

PAPER MAN opened Friday, April 23rd