Article
Icelandic Panorama: The 3rd Annual Reykjavik International Film Festival

By: Todd Burns
2006-10-16



Posted 10/17/2006 - 01:49:22 AM by :
 Euphoria was plagued by sound problems. Euphoria, an utter heady joy, a levitative happiness, a swoon in the heart followed by a glee in the neck with two swanlike arms outstretched to the heavens, was being passively attacked by a field of bubonic mice with grime under their filthy and festering genitalia, their sick mustard teeth glistening with bacteria rabies` babies and they`re all chittering in high pitched squeaks a kind of radio dial static interference and rubbing their hind legs like cicadas, their scree filling the air like a cinema of skronk sax between the ears of your head. That was what it was like at this year`s RIFF. I myself, a lover of both avante-garde AND sports was drawn by Zidane; a 21st Century Portrait. Soccer recocked by the intersection of two hexagonal balls, a FIFA in bas-relief, the sports part of the avante-spirit being decompetitivised by two soccer legs marked for endurance contour, the knees a little skewed against the irregular rectangular of the fibular and the spatula, a curve ball, a moving goal post set against a backdrop of a undrawn curtain of soccer stars, and here was I being drawn, drawn into Zidane and our new century`s portrait painted black and white with it`s socks pulled up. Oh, and the undoubtedness of that inJoycean epic Taxidermia with it`s poetry waned against the page like a burnt script, like a broken tape, meagre and weak, but direct to the very needle tip of it`s synopsis, had me flattened against the cinema floor, against the light booth where the mounted projected splayed its penises of light in shades of crimson and floated the whole ghostly audience into their favourite Hungarian positions warped and armwrapped and armchaired in by the sheer hegemonic remonstrations we were all feeling by the balls of ourbayoneted feet.
 
Posted 10/21/2006 - 08:28:58 AM by hibeside:
 it has been so long since I've been to this stylus site that I forgot how bad of a writer the-disexists is. easy. on. the. adjectives/adverbs/modifiers. maybe? undoubtedness? followed by a 'that' with no antecedent? do you want anyone to understand you? stop making these comment boxes masterbatory?
 
Posted 10/21/2006 - 12:04:57 PM by :
 Shikes you're right. I'll try harder because I'm embarrassing myself with that claptrap above. What I meant to protrude like the fourth prong of a devil's pitchfork tail, wasn't the elixir mix of RIFF, and how Burns stiffed it with his dung-blown middle digit, but he did, no, an unfathomable torpor in the flow of his language, that I shall now mimic thick as thee hedonism that thee claims said antecedent in a perfect withdrawal. Those were the days when the movies mothered us through their linear plots, gutted like fish, wishing it was just Mary Poppins and a coatful of coal coloured candy. Reykjavik or bust. I was trying to treacle you out buddy, break you outta your skull-encrusted prison. The cinema of your misanthropic eyebox, held out and pointed back at your face, the cinema of surprise. I seek astonishment in my reviews. I seek the unwatchable in my use of undoubtedness when I'm pleading for your understanding Hibeside.
 
Posted 10/21/2006 - 02:21:50 PM by hibeside:
 here we go: 'protrude' doesn't work, only used for the sake of your comparison. 'pitchfork' ed maybe. but why tell us it's pitchforked when we know a devil's tail is has four prongs...? Choose one idea, not both. 'Hedonism' seems to be a word you cannot define. 'In a perfect withdrawal' dangles like mistletoe. Merry Christmas. 'Movies mothered us through their linear plots' is good, to compliment, but 'gutted like fish' is pretty obvious. What else gets gutted that might be closer to your simile's object (oh, who uses similes)? 'Treacle' is one of my favorite words, but it is a noun. Cloy is a verb. And treacle means 'noun thing that is cloying'. 'Skull-encrusted' is a nice visual, but nothing more. No sense. The next verbal idea is locked up in your head like a 'skull encrusted prison' (now wasn't that much better?). 'Unwatchable' only makes sense to you because you think substituting a word that pertains to the interpretation of one art can be used interchangeably with other words to interpret other arts. Even in imitiation, you should try to write well. I wish Orwell well, but I say sorry to him every night.
 
Posted 10/21/2006 - 09:01:39 PM by :
 You mostly/only seem to comment on the movie sections. Why not diversify and shuffle it up a little? As for adjectivising from the rafters while nounally circumscribing the arc of your rules of English grammar, we end up whatting the rules to ask no to wherefore what crashes to the floor is a chandelier of blends & elided opinion that forcebears us rethink our skunk-like prepositional mud in crop-circle wilful misdemeanour. By us of course I mean you. And by you I mean I which you will heart in your heart. An image of a word is the superimposed shadow which overlays the everyday meaning and transfuses a fixed response. Whereas my opinion is a labyrinth upon whose walls have all collapsed.