Iteration 4: Naked (2017)

Yesterday was March 372nd 2020, and I celebrated it with another time-loop movie, this time Marlon Wayan’s Naked. It’s actually a remake of a Swedish film, and it would have been funnier to watch it after the original – making a loop within the loop – but I can’t find any streamable versions of Naken. Spoilers follow.

Naked is a time loop comedy starring Marlon Wayans, one of the main actors from Requiem for a Dream. This is a much lighter movie, about a man waking up naked in an elevator on his wedding day. It’s not much-loved, but there are a few good jokes, and the naked-in-public scenes have that feeling of horror one gets in dreams. I particularly loved how the disapproving father-of-the-bride meanly invited her ex- to the wedding.

Unlike the previous three time-loop films I watched, I found myself wondering why this man was in a loop, what was so metaphysically special about this particular wedding? The plot was a combination of mystery and improvement narratives, and it felt a little like it struggled to hit 96 minutes. I wonder if that was because a 1-hour loop doesn’t give the character enough options? All the other films had much longer for the loop.

Statistics

  • Length of first iteration: 7 minutes
  • Length of second iteration: 8.5 minutes
  • Reset point: death or church bells ringing the next hour
  • Fidelity of loop: perfect
  • Exit from the loop: marriage

This was better than the reviews suggested, but I probably won’t see out any more Wayan’s comedies (it would have to be a very long lockdown before I watched White Chicks). But there are more time loop movies on Netflix…

Iteration 3: The Map of Tiny Perfect Things

Today is March 371st 2020, and day 355 of my personal lockdown. I’m watching time-loop movies today, and my third is The Map of Tiny Perfect Things (currently free on Prime). And it turns out to be exactly the film I need right now.

The film comes close to being twee, but it worked for me. It starts with Mark, who has been in a time loop for ages. He loves repeating the same day, and has got it down to a fine art. The opening sequence, showing Mark’s morning routine, is awesome. He’s making a map of all the tiny perfect moments in his town on that day. And then he discovers that someone else, Margaret, is also in the loop with him. Spoilers follow

There are so many things this connects to. There are nods to Groundhog Day, and to Edge of Tomorrow. The theme of not wanting to grow up reminds me of Peter Pan – I love that Mark is content to spend his whole life within the anomaly – even if it means he cannot do anything that takes more than 16 hours.

Statistics

  • Length of first iteration: 9 minutes
  • Reset point: midnight on the day
  • Fidelity of loop: Perfect, apart from interactions between Mark and Margaret

Mark and Margaret wonder why they are the only two people who are repeating the day. They consider themselves as having free will in comparison to the other people. At one point Margaret compares everyone to sleepers; and her and Mark to lucid dreamers. That idea that there might be lucid waking fascinates me.

This is a gentle film. I love how Mark visits the same friend each day, watching him play videogames. Life is not really about the collection of little perfect moments. But it’s great to watch a film where that is something worth looking for.

At one point they use the phrase “Time is Broken”. I’ve used that in connection with the pandemic a lot. My sense of how long ago things happened is shattered. The days pass slowly, while months pass by. Still, today a shopkeeper was telling me about how he and his wife have been vaccinated; and it felt good to hear of more and more people being protected and maybe this won’t last forever. Maybe there will be a time when I’m not sat at home watching three films one after the other.

Iteration 2 – Happy Death Day

Today is March 371st 2020, and day 355 of my personal lockdown. I’m watching time-loop movies today, and my second is Happy Death Day. Spoilers follow. This was a fun slasher movie that uses the Groundhog Day structure to avoid the Final Girl cliche.

Statistics

  • Length of first iteration: 13 minutes
  • Length of second iteration: 15.5 minutes
  • Reset point: death
  • Fidelity of loop: Some internal trauma is carried over to future iterations
  • Exit from the loop: survival

This film was obviously not trying to be Groundhog Day (which it made a nod to at the end), but it was slick. It started well, with the Universal ident at the start looping. The script was funny, with awful characters saying awful things (Tree confesses to spitting on an Uber driver). The mystery element worked pretty well too.

It didn’t do anything novel with the time loop idea, although I liked that the main character, Tree, found an ally. There wasn’t enough of the growth through the iterations, and she didn’t take advantage of the situation – understandable, given that she was facing a murderer. Good slasher film though.

Iteration 1: Groundhog Day

Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Ralph: That about sums it up for me.

Today is March 371st 2020, and day 355 of my personal lockdown. I’m watching movies today, and the first was Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day has been described as the perfect lockdown movie, since every day is the same. That comparison only holds so far. While Phil Connors lives the same day again and again, there are distinct events in the day and his life is slowly changing within the repetition. And, you know, the film is based around a large social event with no distancing.

Over the last twenty-odd years since I first saw it, I’ve thought about Groundhog Day a lot, but rarely re-watched it (the film turned up most recently in an episode of Imaginary Advice). There are a lot of details I’d forgotten, including that the film has two car chases.

Spoilers follow for a 28-year old movie.

Statistics:

  • Length of first iteration: 11 minutes
  • Length of second iteration: 7 minutes
  • Reset point: sleep or death
  • Fidelity of loop: Day repeats with little degradation
  • Exit from the loop: spending the night with the main female character / becoming a better person

The film is from 1993, and parts have dated in 28 years. Phil’s hostility and workplace sexual harassment doesn’t come off as a quirky character traits now. I also wondered what happened to make him so invested in his own misery. Fortunately, given the way Netflix and Amazon are reusing old intellectual property, the Groundhog Day prequel TV show can’t be far off.

There’s also something a little unbalanced in Phil’s relationship with Rita, played by Andie MacDowell. The film focusses on their relationship and not the other things that Murray does with his repeated day (one DVD commentary says that Phil spends ten thousand years in Punxsutawney, usual estimates are about 20-40 years, although we only see 37 days in the film). Does Phil know this is the aim of the loop, or has he just tried everything else he can think of? Also, it’s a good thing Phil was not stuck in the loop until the movie passed the Bechdel test or it would still be going on.

Rita is treated as a prize to be won in the film, with Phil as the ultimate stalker. While the movie ultimately has Phil becoming a good person, the movie uses the trope of men deceiving women into falling in love, with the female character having little agency. In one iteration, Rita is horrified to realise “This whole day has been one long set up”, but the film is lamp-shading that issue rather than dealing with it. There’s definitely something a little uneasy about the film from her point of view (which someone has compiled on Vimeo)

When he emerges from the cycle, Phil remembers what he has been through. But how does Rita deal with him after that point, when he does not have years to set-up a perfect day? Will he ever tell her what happened? Will he stay a better person?

And surely Phil’s experiences within the loop have left him scarred in some way. There are some touching scenes where Phil’s mental health collapses, as he tries to deal with his situation. It’s painful to see the scenes where Phil breaks down and begs Rita for help. There is a shocking sequence where Phil repeatedly kills himself, which is (thankfully) played lightly.

A detail that puzzled me was the piano teacher. There’s a section fo the film where Phil decides to learn piano. He goes to a piano teacher and pays her $1,000 dollars to kick out her current student and teach him instead. It’s a scene played for laughs, but you wonder how many people’s lives are touched by Phil’s strange behaviour in this one day where the world revolves around him. Some of them will be left with very odd anecdotes.

Phil continues learning piano until he is an expert –

(This raises the question of how Phil manages to learn within the loop when his brain is being reset at the start of each cycle. I guess this is probably the sort of nit-picking metaphysics best cut in favour of jokes).

(At one point, Rita says she has deja-vu in one of the loops – does this mean there was a chance of her learning what has been happening?)

Anyway, Phil continues learning piano until he is an expert, returning to the piano teacher each day, presumably paying her $1,000 dollars for each step of tuition until he is a jazz virtuoso. On the final day, when Phil uses his piano skills to help him ‘win’ Rita, the tutor turns to Rita and proudly says “That’s my student.” How does she know? On that final day, he was an expert who came for a quick top-up lesson – or else, she is the only person in the film to remember previous cycles.

Another weird diversion is when Phil, on camera, describes the Groundhog Day ceremony as the town “worshipping a rat”. I hope we one day all get to watch a folk-horror version of Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day is a well-made film whose flaws have become more obvious over time. But it was fun to watch again, and I did like the film’s message. Phil only ‘won’ Rita when he built a community in the town, and she saw how much they loved him.

February Monthnotes

February was a bleak month but, as it drew to a close, I was feeling hopeful. The government’s plans for returning to normality gave me something to look forward to. At the same time, my house sale is ticking over in the background, with the promise of big changes once that completes. Most of February was challenging, though. I felt isolated under lockdown, and my company was handling remote working poorly. The repetition of the days was difficult, with my energy very low.

I reduced my daily step goal to 10,000 in the middle of the month as I was struggling to do much more than that. My total for February was 323,882 (compared to 415,784 in January), an average of about 11,500. I’ve been so bored of walking that I resorted to buying a new pair of running shoes. I’ve not been doing any more than occasional lengths of jogging, but it is the first positive thing I’ve done towards running in some time. I’m taking it very easy and doing lots of physio to avoid setting my hip off.

Not for the Faint-Hearted has continued its weekly writing session, and I’m enjoying being part of that community. There was also a new issue of Bodge, and sending out the physical copies of that is fun.

Work on the South Downs Way project continues slowly. I’m in an informal workshop with Rosy and Sam, where I’ve polished up a couple of new pieces. I’m finally putting a new actual collection of stories together. I’m moving slowly (so slowly!) but I don’t feel as if I am wasting time. Rather I’ve been improving as a writer and this will hopefully show in the new work.

I’ve been reading less news, which has resulting in me spending a lot more time with books. I read Salena Godden’s Mrs Death Misses Death, and long to hear that as an audiobook. David Mitchell’s Slade House was light but fun; Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera was an effective book on a lot of current debates; Derek Jarman’s At Your Own Risk was a powerful depiction of gay life in the 90’s. Patricia Lockwood’s No-one is Talking About This was an impressive novel about being Extremely Online and very inspiring.

I watched a pile of movies last month: Wheel of Time, Kill List, The Wailing, Quatermass and the Pit and Apostle. Glitch In the Matrix was interesting, but the interview with killer Joshua Cooke unbalanced it somewhat. I also watched Bill & Ted Face the Music which was exactly the positive film I needed at the time. TV included more Wandavision, Rupaul’s Drag Race US, and the Mandalorian. It was great to see Joe Black brought back to Drag Race UK, even if he failed to make it through to the next episode.

Onward into March!

The Beginning of the End (Day 344)

I was surprised at how relieved and excited I was by last night’s government announcements. This morning I feel lighter and calmer than I have in weeks. All social restrictions might be gone by June 21st (day 462 of my personal lockdown). The end is in sight.

I’ve been fraying during this third lockdown, and I’ve seen some friends responding similarly. We’ve already been doing this lockdown for 50 days and it’s been hard, particularly for those living alone. A few days ago, the Zoe App said they were amending the symptom list, “adding fatigue, sore throat, headache and diarrhoea to the ‘classic triad’ of cough, fever and loss of smell“. Headaches and fatigue are pretty much constants for me and a lot of people I know – the ‘lockdown hangover’. We are sleeping badly and waking up to repeat the same day we’ve had for weeks.

At least now we have something to look forward to. I imagine everyone has now seen the four-stage plan (although it wouldn’t be this government without some daft complexity, and stage 1 is actiually split into two parts). 8th March, two people can meet socially outdoors. 29th March sees the ‘rule of six’ and outdoor social gatherings. 12th April, shops and holiday accommodation open. 17th May, the rule of six allows indoor gatherings again. And, if all goes to plan, the nightclubs reopen on June 21st, and all social restrictions are lifted.

It’s still a long time, but the weather is improving and the vaccine seems to be working. Even the gamble about delaying second doses appears to have paid off. There still needs to be a reckoning with the appalling errors and waste by the government but, for now, I just want to look forward to June.

First thoughts on Adam Curtis’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head

Last weekend, I watched all six episodes of the new Adam Curtis show, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, which comes in at about eight hours. I’m still thinking about the show, but my initial thoughts are somewhat critical.

  • First off, I loved that the first mention of Discordianism was approximately 23 minutes in. Beautiful attention to detail.
  • In many ways, this felt like a direct continuation of Curtis’s other documentaries, with the same mix of B-roll footage, out of context archive shots and tasteful music.
  • In a show that talks about power and narrative, Curtis’s use of his voice as a patrician BBC voiceover is suspect. This should be parodic, but he seems to be playing it straight.
  • Many of the ideas Curtis uses are quite simple, and thrown out of linear order just to create patterns and juxtapositions.
  • Some of these juxtapositions begin to seem trite. ‘Saudi Arabia is a fairyland, just like Tupac Shakur’s version of LA!’ ‘The KKK are like Isis, who are just like English folk dances before world war two!’
  • There is a loss of context to the images, which is sometimes problematic. We’re lulled into not questioning the origin of footage and ideas. At one point, shocking footage is shown of what looks like preparations for a mass execution, the victim’s faces blurred. Were they blurred by the BBC or by the people who shot and edited the original footage?
  • Curtis often talks about how the world had gone “badly wrong” for the middle classes, sometimes supporting this by proximity to appalling outrages on less-privileged groups. I think that someone like Curtis could always show the middle classes being unhappy and unsettled with whatever the mainstream ideology was.
  • Towards the end, Curtis talks about use of neural networks on the web, and how patterns in the data are analysed without context or meaning. The implicit self-critique is palpable.
  • But, at the same time, there is a fascinating twist, which comes too late to be followed up. Having spoken about manipulation through social media, Curtis questions the idea of this through the replication crisis.
  • After talking for hours about the growth in bureaucratic power, Curtis briefly moves to discussing Brexit. He questions the idea that Brexit was a manipulation of Leavers by outside forces, implying that Brexit might even be a positive way of reclaiming the collective power has been undermined over years. It’s a disturbing and fascinating moment.
  • It feels like the next Curtis documentary could be very interesting.

What fascinates me about this show, and makes it worth discussing, is that Curtis seems to be making a provocative, inspiring narrative, but one that is almost drowned by his tropes. That positive story is about the limits of individuality, and the need for collective stories to change the world. Rather than focus on the anxiety and confusion, he could have focussed on people gathering together. It’s that show that has excited me, rather than the one discussed above.

Curtis deals in hidden narratives, but the film begins and ends with David Graeber’s inspiring quote: “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make. And could just as easily make different”.

Reading Poems on Twitch (7/2/21 at 6pm)

On Sunday evening I’ll be live-streaming on twitch, reading some of my favourite poems. I’ll start at 6pm GMT, and will go for about an hour.

I don’t expect me reading poetry over the internet to be a huge draw, but one of the things I love about twitch is the intimacy of tiny audiences, the feeling of presence. And it’s been fun digging through my shelves, handling the books, and realising how many memories are attached to them.

My sudden twitch obsession comes via DJ Kate St Shields. Kate has been looking at different places to host her DJ sets and has recently settled on Twitch. The service has been about for around 9 years, but I’d only heard of it as a video-game streaming service. There is so much more. I can watch a dog called Leyla on her walks. I watched sea-otters, swimming in the rain, near to Canada – Great! Watching cars move through an anonymous intersection in Russia might have been one of the most moving things I have seen.

It’s like something from a sci-fi novel. There are all these little interactive TV stations, whose graphics are almost as good as some of the little stations on cable in the late-90s Essex. I can watch a ship docking, or someone sewing. I can watch a self-proclaimed redneck and ex-con doing a delivery round, the chat questions repeated to him by a gadget as he drives. It’s like the few times I caught a pirate radio station when living in Essex – the chat between the tracks was the most interesting thing.

Poetry, for me, has always been about the capture of little moments (which is a poor, reductive definition for poetry, but it’s what I like about it). I love how the particular way this art captures moments, and the ephemerality of twitch seems the perfect place for such moments.

Monthnotes: January 2021

Total January

They say time gets faster as you get older, but January has managed to be the slowest month I’ve ever experienced. There has been no travel anywhere, few events, and I’ve been waiting out the time. I don’t know how other people are coping with this, particularly those in cramped accommodation, or unstable shared houses, or with no opportunity for income. We’re hearing promises from the government about a great summer, but it’s hard to put much stock in those. Life is just work, screens and staying safe.

Inspired by my friend Justin, I’ve been keeping a diary to help tell the days apart. It’s just a few lines for each day, noting what was remarkable about it. It’s helped to distinguish the days from each other, and has made life a little more vivid.

Work feels particularly strange at the moment – I’ve not seen my colleagues for almost a year, and I was only about five months into the job before this begun. The advantages of being in a permanent role are pretty much obliterated and I long to go contracting.

I’ve continued my maintenance dose of walking, with a target 11,000 steps a day. My total for January was a healthy 415,784, which is an average of over 13,000. I feel like I’ve been wasting my daily steps by not doing more interesting things with them. But some days it’s hard to summon the energy just to pace without trying to feel inspired too. I’ve considered starting running again, despite the bad hip, just to see if I can make my exercise more interesting.

After a long pause, I restarted Not for the Faint-Hearted, my now-online writing group. I feel like I’ve relaxed into this year’s sessions and have been enjoying them a great deal. At the end of the session, we each discuss a piece of culture we’ve enjoyed the past week, and the question has unearthed some fascinating passions.

I finished reading a good brace of books. Wintering by Katherine May has a strong book-of-the-year vibe to it. I also read Gideon the Ninth, and I’m still trying to work out if I liked it enough to invest time in the series. I loved Gideon’s smirking and inappropriate humour, and would be up for more of that. I’m going to wait for a while and see if I’m drawn back.

I’m still listening to audiobooks through an Audible subscription, although it seems to be mostly there as a fallback for when I run out of podcasts. The first audiobook I listened to was the stunning Beastie Boys book, and the others are having a hard time living up to that.

On the PS4, I’ve been playing Horizon: Zero Dawn a little, but that feels compulsive rather than fun. TV has included Wandavision, Rupaul’s Drag Race and the Mandalorian. I also managed a couple of movies: Pixar’s Soul had its message undermined by its provenance, and Chris Morris’s The Day Shall Come felt weirdly slight.

Via Kate, I’ve been getting into twitch. Listening to someone chatting over a video game is a good ambient experience. And, you know, the fact it’s streamed makes it a little better than me just being an old person who has the TV on for company.

While January has been grim, I’ve felt less lonely than I did in the previous lockdown. I’m making more effort to socialise on zoom and it is definitely helping. Being in a bubble, along with the simple act of sharing food, is also doing a great deal to keep me sane.

According to the almanac, we gain about 100 minutes of daylight through the course of February. We also have the start of Lent on February 17th. I’ve been trying to make use of festivals as calendar markers wherever I can. On that basis, Lent is a good thing. But do I need to follow a festival around giving things up, when we have already giving up so much?

Imbolc (Day 322)

Today is Imbolc, the first festival of the Celtic Calendar, which brings a promise of spring. Wikipedia tells me that Celts associated the time with ewes beginning lactation, preparing the way for their lambs. Or, as Katharine May describes it in her book Wintering, “It marks the end of winter, a time when the snow would traditionally melt, and its debris could be cleared away”. This is a time for spring cleaning, for dusting away cobwebs.

Imbolc also comes close to Candlemas, and to Groundhog Day. According to wikipedia again, this year marks the 135th Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney and this year Phil the Groundhog will wear a mask, with the ceremony held behind closed doors.

I’d wanted to mark the Celtic Festivals as we dragged ourselves through the pandemic, but January is such a low ebb that it is hard to muster up any feeling of celebration. Gathering with other people is illegal anyway. At least now the incredibly long January is over and it is time for renewal. And I legit completed my todo list yesterday, which feels even better than a spring clean.

Judy Mazonowicz’s article on Celebrating the Goddess at Imbolc in Bodge Issue 1 notes the connection of the day with St Brigid/Bridies, and the making of a traditional Bridie’s Cross. The article suggests visiting a Spring and the photo above is from my dawn visit to St. Anne’s Well gardens.

A year ago today, I visited the Long Man of Wilmington with The Door, in a very different world. It’s hard to believe all the time that has happened since. The days have passed slowly, but the weeks have flown by, with so many different periods to this – the three lockdowns, the long summer, the mess of Christmas. I keep thinking back to the early days, where I thought the economic effects of preventing the virus would outweigh the effect of the virus itself.

The next Celtic festival is the Spring Equinox, on March 20th. By this point, the schools should have reopened (and, I think, shut for the holidays?), so things will be a little less restricted. It’s a Saturday too, so I should think about how to mark the day.

Today also promises an announcement from David Lynch, which I assume is about the new Netflix series. I’m hoping for something that strengthens the connections between Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive. But I have faith that Lynch will produce something I need rather than something I want.