Between Realities
Welcome to the Asemic Cinema, where opening shots& titles tell a different story from the one passing before your eyes. This week’s classic comes from a time & place that once was/will be. It is a re-write of The Runaway Bus (1954), a British Mystery-Comedy – please note that the sub-titles have been deconstructed to find alternative meaning.
Conversation finds
travellers seeking motion
commotion in lines.
Looking at Mass Media artifacts ( plays, book & movie titles, pop culture tag lines) through a Mandela Effect – Mandala Mirror, we find a list from an alternative history.
Titles
Harry Potter and The Philosopher Stoned ! – from the fantasy series by J.K. Leary
For Whom The Bell Trolls – historical novel about the Nordic Civil War by J. E. R. R. Hemingway
Prides & Prejudice – H. R. Haggard’s epic verse novel about class structure and the British-Hungarian African Empire. Haggard’s tragic hero, Lord Darcy Greystoke ( Tarzan of the Lions ), represents the African European identity at the crossroads of a new century.
Sons and Loafers – self help/autobiography by G. K. Chesterton about growing up in the family bakery business.
Oklahoma Crude ! – first Hollywood 3D Musical was directed by Carrie Fisher. Fisher’s screenplay & triumphant adaptation of the beloved Broadway Musical by Lenny Bruce and Richard Rodgers started the new era of film musicals.
The Good, The Bad and The Bigly – political thriller movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Star Wars: The Last Deli – the final part of George Lucas’s Broadway musical trilogy about New York ‘s great Chefs.
The Maltese Trashcan ( The Age of Art Deco Noir 1920-1957 ) – art history text by Ivanka
Arsenic and Old Origami – Louis Armstrong’s ragtime operetta about the birth of the Civil Rights Movement & Trade Unions during the 1937 General Strikes led by the North Western Origami Workers.
Hamlet, Prints of Cranes – Collodion Photography, Cyanotype Art & Poetry by Akira Kurosawa, translated from Japanese by William Shakespeare
Tag Lines, Phrases & Slogans
In Space no one can hear your WIFI Stream
Just Stew It
Frankly My Dear, I don’t give a Hydroelectric Dam
A Diamond is for Drilling
All the Chews that fit with Mint
The Seven Purple Sages of Man
Stray Palms and Carry On Ragtime
I’d walk a mile for a Caramel Malt Shake
Smelts in your mouth, not in your hands
Please Don’t Squeeze the Chairman
Make the message count
rapt in seconds away from – death
a knock at the door.
Scratched glass hides sounds
under lampshade shadow’s light –
an unmarked parcel.
Fingers peel back emotions
Like The Man who cheated himself –
clock hands clap to time.
Unlock the clasp’s chill,
Empty chamber full of fear –
Breathing plans at night.
Who’s the Fool now ?
Midnight Messenger’s mistress –
walking out backwards.
Note: Stanzas are Haiku variations. The B&W shots are from opening cuts of the noir film, The Man who Cheated Himself ( 1950 ) – can be found on archive.org .
A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.
“People who have made no attempt to educate themselves live in a kind of dissolving phantasmagoria of the world, that is, they completely forget what happened last Tuesday. A politician can promise them anything, and they will not remember later what he has promised.”
In 1961, The National Film Board of Canada produced Arthur Lipsett‘s first film, Very Nice, Very Nice. It looks behind the business-as-usual face we put on life and shows anxieties we want to forget. It is made of dozens of pictures that seem familiar, with fragments of speech heard in passing. It evokes a world swamped with information and imagery but barren of meaning and filled with longing.
We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.
We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror.
