We are the Sprocket Holes vol. 49/Quotant Quotables vol. 21/Double You, Tea F. vol. 59/Just Needed to Share vol. 24

I raised my head. The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.

- Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

ALL ENCOMPASSING YEAR END POST.

2008 will go down as one of the bleakest, most frustrating years not merely on a personal level, but a societal level also. Culture truly became anemic, with movies and music twisting and turning unsure of where to go, thus settling into middle-of-the-road self awareness and bubblegum sensuality that's flavor has been chewed out a long time ago. We were left with a glut of forgettable meaningless bullshit on the market, which is already hurting from overrunning product and minimal disposable income on the part of the consumer. The economy finally pooped its pants, and while the fat bastards in charge were able to walk away with incalculable millions in government bail(hand)outs being cradled in their avarice-veined arms, we were the ones left gnawing at the flesh around our fingernails for lack of affordable sustenance.

On my end of the spectrum; stuff happened that i can't even mention because i keep getting told by everyone to keep my mouth shut on this thing. Not because they fear for my safety, but because they don't wanna look bad, and they don't want any trouble. Because people can dish it out, but they can't take it... because they can't stand to have the truth about themselves revealed to the world, because it is almost always less flattering than they anticipated. So they lash out... come at you with vague threats of a physical nature, or even go as far as to cost you your fucking job, robbing you on an income for most of the year because they are to chicken shit to face you (or themselves) for real. That's something that stuck out to me most this year; that people just can't deal with people on an individual or an intellectual level. They can't even deal with themselves, let alone others, let alone society, so they anesthetize themselves with I-Phones and Beer Pong and Guitar Hero and Tabloid Tales of Loss and Redemption.

I'm no different i suppose; Personally i found solace in foreign cinema (specifically the Existential Slashers coming out of France ie. Inside, Frontiers, Bizarre Asian Psycho-Sexual Gorefests, and one zany Russian by the name of Andrey Iskanov, whose Philosophy of a Knife is less a movie and a more a hyper-real nightmare factory) and submerging myself even further into underground sounds from the past and present (also predominately from other parts of the world)... but i also write out my grievances. i also pay attention. I also can deal with the fact that many people probably don't think very much of me. I learned this year that most people can't. Everyone seems to truly care what other people think about them, and unfortunately they are so insecure that when they discover that one person may not think they're the cat's ass, they freak.

it was disheartening and aggravating to watch everyone else just give in, just settling and even bowing out for the watered down arena rock stylings of bands whose relevancy and power has long since went the way of the dodo, for all-blow-no-show political figureheads, for a tween-centric Disney Channel version of reality that is leaving the youth of the nation a little more than ill-prepared for the horrors that lay ahead due in no small part to their myopic caregivers overzealous spending which ironically is in hopes of satisfying the unquenchable desires of their screaming post-infants. a cyclic chamber of terror that is ringing the souls from our bodies as if we were rags that just mopped the floor around the toilet after a post-coital forked piss stream.

That may be the biggest heartbreak in all of this; most of us stopped fighting. At a time when our outrage should have been able to peel the paint off the walls, we just took it up the ass, put our heads down, and buried it inside, unable to fathom how we could survive without our capricious employers, our ubiquitous techjunk, and other people's opinions to guide us in the direction we're "supposed" to go.

That sums up everything this year, don't it? We were too lost to know that we were lost. We were too frightened to admit we were afraid. We looked to each other and got even more turned around... more confused. We looked to politicians for change, ignorant of the fact that it's been the same 2 party system for all of our lives. We looked to movies and music for escapism, and came back frustrated when we realized this was a life we would never know. Super-Heroes aren't real (even the realest ones), Politicians change nothing, and Katy Perry will never be your girlfriend's girlfriend.

here's a post i made last year in Quotant Quoatables vol. 6

"Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night

Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

- from Watchmen by Alan Moore.

Happy New Year. Here's Hoping."

i said it last year, so why not say it again? maybe we'll get it right this time.

Just Needed to Share.

PS: The best thing about this entire year? the one thing we can look at and say to ourselves "hmmm... maybe 2008 wasn't all bad"?

....SUPERJAIL.

We are the Sprocket Holes vol. 48/Quotant Quoatables vol. 20

segments from an Ain't it Cool News Interview with Pascal Laugier, director of Martyrs

"The Northlander: Yeah, I know exactly. Do you think that's something that's missing too often from horror movies, that they're just too tame, [that] they don't affect you?

Pascal Laugier: Well yeah once again as a fan you know, I watch more or less everything - theatrically released films and direct-to-DVD stuff, and I haven't been challenged by a horror film for a long time, you know? It doesn't mean that there aren't good films, I see a lot of good films, but I'm talking more about the very, very low budget you know? And I'm talking more about the direct to DVD community. Because these films are shot more and more on DV for a VERY very low budget so the guy who does the film is totally free because he deals with such a low amount of money he could do what he wants and nine films out of ten are pale copies of the classics. Another fun, you know - supposedly funny - horror zombie horror trick, another TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, another slasher with a masked killer, and nobody believes in it anymore you know? It's like a ghetto, it's like belonging to a community that is absolutely unable to surprise itself, you know what I mean?

The Northlander: Yeah.

Pascal Laugier: So we pay to watch films that we already know in advance what it's gonna be and we are not challenged anymore and I think the very reason for the horror film genre's existence is to break some rules - to be free, to be wild, you know like the 70's. In the 70's you paid for a ticket and you sat in a theater and you didn't have ANY kind of idea of the film you were going to see. It was really energetic and really experimental. Can you imagine the guys in '75 who first saw TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE? In the markets, at midnight? Or THE EXORCIST? It's impossible to realize now what these people must have felt before the films turned into classics, you know? So... and that's the kind of feeling I very rarely feel by watching horror films. And it's very sad, in a certain way actually, a lot of actual horror films are absolutely as safe as any family film produced by Hollywood. You know? There is no chance, no breakings.

The Northlander: Do you think it's also difficult for people to make horror films because they don't know sort of where the line is drawn or how to cross it, or they won't allow themselves to?

Pascal Laugier: No, I think it's more [got] something to do with the post-modernism of our time. I am talking about the entire time we are living in right now I would say for one or two decades. The problem is that we have lost something [of] our faith, [our] primitive innocence. Everything in the world has become so self conscious, and it goes with politics, ideology, you know? the lost of illusions. Now, to be cool, is to be cynical. You can't be surprised because you're [a] cool guy. And everybody is always the same, you know it's the 'cool attitude' and cynicism that kills everything because it's the opposite of the faith we need to be told some stories, you know? We have lost the faith in narrators, to the people who [told us] what the world is, to make us believe in other worlds, to [tell us] stories. Now it's the opposite - it's the post-modern world we are living in, and we are very aware of everything. And I hate that. As... I hate that as a director. And I hate that as a member of the audience. Any time I feel like the director wants to be clever, wants to tell me very precisely that he is more intelligent than the film he is doing, you know by pretending being funny, being... I hate that. For me, it's a betrayal. I want to be like a child and I need some primitive feelings facing a work of art. You know, when you're in a museum, watching a painting or listening to music you know?
`
The Northlander: Do you think that's also why horror movies are going more and more meta?

Pascal Laugier: More and more what?

The Northlander: Like they're the film within the film like...

Pascal Laugier: Absolutely...

The Northlander: ...THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, REC, CLOVERFIELD.

Pascal Laugier: ...[they're] self-referential. Very aware of where they come from and who they are made for. You know like, you... how do you say that? You do a blink...

The Northlander: "Nudge-nudge, wink-wink"

Pascal Laugier: Absolutely, "I love the same films that you do, guys. We all know where it comes from, isn't it fun?" Some people find it fun, [but] I don't. I know it makes me sound like an asshole - very arrogant, very pretentious - but who cares? I don't. I pay... I go to see movies to be amazed. I go to see movies to believe in what I see."

Double You, Tea F. vol. 58

"Angry monkeys turn on their cruel trainer and beat him senseless with his own stick after he handed out a vicious beating to one of the trio during a performance riding mini bicycles in a market in Sizhou, China"










"Yeah it's the JUGGERNAUT, Bitch!"

NEEEEERRRRRRRD!!!!! vol. 5

Breaking News: Judge Rules That Fox Owns Rights to Watchmen

Posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 9:49 pm by: Peter Sciretta



United States District Court judge Gary A. Feess has a horrible Christmas present for Watchmen fans. The judge concluded on Wednesday that 20th Century Fox “should prevail on crucial issues” in their lawsuit with Warner Bros over the rights to the comic book movie adaptation. According to the New York Times, Feess says that “Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the Watchmen motion picture” and that “The parties may wish to turn their efforts from preparing for trial to negotiating a resolution of this dispute or positioning the case for review.” The trial had been scheduled for January.

You’re probably wondering what this decision means to you, the eager movie ticket buyer. Let me preface this by saying that I’m not a lawyer, but this is what I have gathered from the various legal articles I have consumed over the last few months. To start, it means that Warner Bros likely has no rights to distribute a film based on the Watchmen graphic novel. They could appeal this ruling and continue to fight, what is appearing to seem like an unwinnable battle, or start negotiating with Fox on some sort of settlement. An earlier LA Times report states that:

“The more likely outcome is Fox studio chief Tom Rothman or Warners’ head Alan Horn striking some sort of compromise deal in which the studios share the movie’s costs and proceeds. But because Warners already is sharing the portion of the film it didn’t sell to Paramount with financing partner Legendary Pictures, the studio doesn’t have that much to divvy up.”

The talks will likely result in a deal that will give Fox co-distribution rights to the film, or even full rights to the motion picture. It seems doubtful that Fox would squash the release of the film altogether, but from what I understand, that possibility exists. Making a deal with Warner Bros could be a dangerous precedent for the company to make to make in terms of copyright ownership.

That said, I would be surprised if a deal doesn’t go down. Also, I would be surprised if Watchmen keeps it’s March release date. If Fox and Warner Bros can’t ink a deal before mid January, the Judge will issue the injunction to prevent the release of the film in March. I doubt that the two companies will come to a deal in the next two weeks, so its very possible that the film might be pushed back to Summer. Nikki Finke says that “if WB goes own the appeal road, then Watchmen may not come out until 2011 considering the glacial speed which the court system move.” There will be a lot more to this story, and we will keep you updated as the news comes in.




"...hurm...haha....hahahahaha....AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!"

Quotant Quotables vol. 19

"A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin."

—H. L. Mencken

Quotant Quotables vol. 18

"I would like that to be my revenge as a writer, at a time when we are entering into a culture of the all-powerful image, which threatens to kill literature: to invent a language that would be capable, by liberating the vital forces of imagination and thought, of resisting the images -- seductive, manipulative, stultifying, alienating -- that invade us from all sides."

- Marie Redonnet

Song for the Week of 12/21/08

given the state of our current economy during the holiday season, this song is fairly prophetic.

KING DIAMOND - "No Presents for Christmas"



Christmas time is here again
Santa needs a helping hand
We cannot find his evil sheet
To draw his laying for the night
So all the waiting christmas trees
Gonna hear their master sing....
There's no presents, Not this Christmas
There's no presents
Tom and Jerry, Drinking Sherry
They don't give a damn
Christmas time is here again
Santa needs a helping hand
It's getting very, very late
St.Peter's crossed the Golden Gate
An Donald Duck is still in bed
I wonder who he's gonna help
There's no presents, Not this christmas
There's no presents
Tom and Jerry, All done Sherry
They don't give a damn
There's no presents, Not this Christmas
There's no presents
Tom and Jerry, Still Drinking Sherry
They don't give a damn
I'm dreaming of a white.... Sabbath....

Double You, Tea F. vol. 57

SWANS - "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (Joy Division)



Childs remains found near Casey Anthony's home

ORLANDO, Florida (CNN) -- Authorities cordoned off the home of missing toddler Caylee Anthony's grandparents on Thursday, hours after the remains of a small child were found nearby.

The sheriff's office in Orange County, Florida, said it is seeking a warrant to search the home of George and City Anthony.

Sheriff Kevin Beary said the home has been secured "pending more investigation." The house has the "possibility of being more of a crime scene later," he added.

A child's skull was found at about 9:30 a.m. by a utility meter reader who alerted authorities, sheriff's spokesman Jim Solomons said. Investigators, including those from the Anthony case, rushed to the scene, he added.

CNN affiliate WFTV reported that the meter reader picked up a plastic bag at the site and a skull fell out. The remains will be sent to the FBI lab at Quantico, Virginia, Sheriff Beary said.

The agency has told its lab analysts that the case is top priority, Beary added. "If they have to work through the weekend, they'll work through the weekend."

"Bottom line, it's real simple, folks," Beary said. "We've recovered this human skull, it appears to be that of a small child, and now the investigation continues. We've got a lot of lab work to do, a lot of DNA work to do, a lot of crime scene work to do. We could be here all night."

Prosecutors have asked police not to disclose many details surrounding the discovery, Beary said.

Caylee Anthony, 3, has been missing since June in a case that has received national attention. Casey Anthony, the child's 22-year-old mother, was charged last month with murder and other offenses. She is being held at the Orange County Jail.

The area where the remains were found had been searched as part of the investigation into Caylee's disappearance, he said. But the precise spot where a county meter reader found them -- "45, 50, 60 feet back" from the street -- was flooded at the time of the search.

No clothes were found with the remains, Beary said.

Asked whether the remains could belong to another child, Beary said, "Not that we know of, but that's always a possibility, and that's why we've got a lot of work to do on this case still."

Earlier, authorities said the Anthony family had been notified of the discovery. The remains were found "in very close proximity" to the Anthony home, Solomons said.

An attorney for Casey Anthony filed legal papers Thursday afternoon seeking a court order to preserve all evidence collected, and to permit the defense to conduct its own forensic testing. A hearing has been scheduled for Friday morning.

In a court hearing earlier Thursday, 9th Circuit Judge Stan Strickland postponed Casey Anthony's trial at the request of defense attorney Jose Baez. The attorney said he had not received all the evidence due him from prosecutors and was not ready to proceed with the January 5 trial.

Baez asked Strickland whether the trial could be delayed until March. The judge scheduled a hearing January 15 to consider a new trial date as well as a possible change of venue.

Prosecutors said this month that they would not seek the death penalty against Casey Anthony. If convicted of murder, she could be sentenced to life in prison.

Authorities have said Casey Anthony waited about a month before telling her family that Caylee was gone. Cindy Anthony -- Caylee's grandmother and Casey Anthony's mother -- called the Orange County sheriff's office July 15, saying her daughter would not tell her where Caylee was.

When questioned, Casey Anthony gave conflicting statements to police, including some that were later disproved, according to hundreds of documents and investigative reports released in the case.

She claimed that she dropped Caylee off with a baby-sitter, but when police checked out her story, they learned that the address Casey Anthony supplied belonged to an apartment that had been vacant for weeks. The woman Casey Anthony named as her baby-sitter told police she did not know her.

Investigators have said that cadaver dogs picked up the scent of death in Anthony's car, as well as in her parents' backyard. They also said air quality tests conducted by the FBI found evidence consistent with human decomposition and chloroform in the car's trunk. A neighbor told police Anthony had asked to borrow a shovel.

Also, an analysis of Anthony's computer found that she had visited Web sites discussing chloroform and had done Internet searches on missing children, according to information released in the case.

"There isn't a motive, and they haven't found a motive," Cindy Anthony said Wednesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live." Video Watch Cindy Anthony insist her daughter is innocent »

She added, "They told us they thought it was an accident, and she's scared and tried to cover it up. They don't feel there's a motive."

Cindy Anthony stressed that five searches for the girl's body have "come up with nothing. There's nothing that they have found that, you know, has given them any evidence that Caylee is no longer with us."

The Anthonys said they believe that the girl is still alive and that someone has her, noting several reports of sightings.

Last month, Strickland denied prosecutors' request to impose a gag order in Anthony's case, saying he could not state that continued publicity would pose a threat to her trial or even that a gag order would stem the flood of media attention.

Just Needed to Share vol. 23

This was my favorite video when i was 13 years old;



I wasn't that in love with the band or the song ("Milk" is a way cooler tune), but there was something about Shirley Manson (especially in this video) that really captivated me. It wasn't a sexual attraction... she just seemed like a cool chick... like the older sister i always wanted. Someone who would've introduced me to 4AD bands at a much more impressionable age. Someone who would've had her hot weird girlfriends over for slumber parties, where i could press my ear to the door and swoon over their clove-husky sardonic put-downs of everyone who gave them shit for being so different.

Girls like that didn't exist in my school. The "freaks" were all just as grotesquely trendy and obnoxious as the people they claimed to hate. They enjoyed flavor-of-the-month crap rock and drinking light beer. They were bland grunge hold-outs and lightweight necro-posers. If you mentioned SWANS or Le Fleurs Du Mal they'd stare at you blankly before resuming to their Marilyn Manson albums and tired Willy Wonka references. needless to say I was pretty much left to my own devices.

Just Needed to Share.

We are the Sprocket Holes vol. 47

"Be Afraid... Be TWICE as Afraid!"







Rifftrax w/ Mike Nelson of MST3K

We are the Sprocket Holes vol. 46

The first trailer for the new Coffin Joe film: Encarnacao do Demonio



official site
Wikipedia page on Jose Mojica Marins and all the Coffin Joe films

Double You, Tea F. vol. 56