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24 August 2007
Just Another Day At the Office (with Amnesia)
This is a creepy movie with deeply psychological overtones. The scenario is a future reality where a couple of office worker types are in charge of a massive maze that torments its pitiful inhabitants who are some kind of prisoners. From the costumes and the settings, the role of captor and captive seem to be interchangeable - it is a bleak dystopia. They all seem to be typical Americans, but the context is far from America, and I might speculate, seems more like a modern version of Dante's Inferno. No one seems to have any insight into their condition, such as where they came from, or what they are doing. In fact, as regards people's memories, they could be in some kind of bizarre Alzheimer’s nightmare. That is what I find to be so personally disturbing, that they could be in some kind of induced or altered state and not know it. Sort of like the Matrix without the high tech machines, or even worse trapped in a machine-like prison without the friendly Matrix to relieve the horror.
I could have done without all the blood and gore; these people in the prison generally do not meet a pleasant fate, which is emphasized in the opening scene. The casual nature of the captors witnessing such horrific violence seems to be just like the guy who just rapidly passed you in the office saying; "There's donuts today!"
It was Hannah Arendt, who made the quote about the "banality of evil" in reference to the Nazi overlord Adolf Eichmann, and this could be an extension of that, but since the captors seem to be so little concerned, it almost takes on tones of the TV series Lost, where some viewers speculate that the characters might be in Limbo. For this movie however, the scene is changed to from Limbo to the Dark Depths. I plan to go get the other Cube movies, which I have not seen yet, and find out if there is another explanation for all this weirdly charged dementia.
22 June 2007
Underappreciated but Excellent
Cheb i Sabbah has been flying under the radar for years as far as mass media goes, but he has a loyal following. I am not really sure if he is a musician, a producer, or a compiler of music, but to call him a "deejay" seems a little disrespectful. He seems a little hard to categorize, but creative is definitely a word to describe his CDs.
His music is a little of this and a little of that - from the shores of the Ganges and chanting holy men in his earlier efforts, to this North African remix of infectious melodies and rythyms. I always check in from time to time to see if he has put out anything new on CD. He is one of my favorite artists, or if I think about it now as I write this review, probably my favorite artist. I feel like hopping a plane to someplace like Benares or the Maghreb whenever I hear his music. It is intoxicating. It is "world music" with an attitude.
22 June 2007
Tales of the Unexpected
1 of 1 found this helpful It takes courage to read this book, since it challenges all notions of freedom, justice, and even salvation.
"All the people you see, all the people you know, all the people you may get to know, are machines, actual machines working solely under the power of external influences, as you yourself said. Machines they are born and machines they die."
A bleak assessment of modern life, but it offers a solution.
New Age big-mouths have been stealing Ouspensky's ideas and his former mentor Gurdjieff's ideas for decades. These would-be gurus are now in the process of distorting these ideas, turning them into pop-psychology, even jewelry of the most superficial type. But the original ideas are still there, and the possibility of escape from this illusion still exists.
The work is dense and at times difficult. There is a corresponding tradition within the international groups that carry on The Work, but a good first step is to read the books and then learn to doubt. Here is an electrifying quote from Gurdjieff to move you out of your chair:
"You do not realize your own situation. You are in prison. All you can wish for, if you are a sensible man, is to escape. But how? No one can escape from prison without the help of those who have escaped before. An organization is necessary."