Reviews, mostly of movies, by Jonathan Zap

Paul Atreides, also known as Muad’dib, is a messianic figure from the Dune books who manages to throw off the balance of power in a galactic imperium. Paul’s prescient visions begin to emerge when he’s fourteen years old. As an adolescent, Paul survives a rite that involves imbibing the “Water of Life,” a frequently lethal hallucinogen variant of what’s called “the Spice” or “mélange.” Paul emerges from the nearly fatal rite as the “Kwisatz Haderach,” which in the Fremen language means “the one who can be many places at once.” According to Wikipedia, the phrase, “…bears close resembles to the Hebrew phrase ‘Kefitzat Haderach’ (literally ‘Contraction of the Way’) a Kabbalic term related to teleportation.” Paul’s prescient vision has become godlike, and, like all others who have survived the Water of Life, he is now aware of the psyches of all others, living or dead, who have similarly survived this rite. Paul is a personification of what I have termed “the Singularity Archetype” and the networked telepathic awareness of other psyches is a frequent aspect of this archetype which I call “Homo gestalt.” Paul deserves some special sympathy as a fiction demi-god because he was unfairly despised by his own creator—Frank Herbert. I discussed [...]

Thijme Termaat is a young, visionary Dutch artist who spent three years meticulously crafting one three-minute video:  I Paint . Thijme is a self-taught artist who lives in a very small, rural town in Northern Holland. The video was constructed using simple, stop-motion and time-lapse techniques and no digital effects. It could have been made, as Thijme points out, a century ago. It would sometimes take him several days to construct a single frame and his output averaged one minute per year. Once it was complete, he posted it on Youtube and within three days it was being seen in almost every country on earth and soon had over a million views.  Careful What You Fish For, acrylics on panel, 40X50cm        I Paint, and a number of Thijime’s paintings,  seem to brilliantly capture that sense of vision as a seamless, shimmering, superimposition of ocular and imaginative layers in a way that allows the viewer’s eye to spiral into a portal rather than be stopped by any definite horizon line. Thijime’s intention is not so much to focus the viewer’s attention on his images, but to help stimulate the viewer’s own imaginative process. As Thijme put in my interview with him:     My [...]

copyright Jonathan Zap, 2013 (A review of the Lance Armstrong/Oprah Winfrey interview. Watch excerpts on the: OWN network website) There are liars, damned liars and then there is Lance Armstrong, who was, literally, a liar on steroids. Lance was a brazen, defiant, bullying and litigious liar. For example, here’s what he said in his victory speech on the podium after his seventh and last Tour de France win, “Finally, the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling —the cynics and the skeptics, I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry you can’t dream big. And I’m sorry you don’t believe in miracles. But this is one hell of a race and this is a great sporting event and you should stand around and believe, believe in these athletes and you should believe in these people. I’m a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live and there are no secrets. This is a hard sport and hard work wins it.” Lance was an abusive, destructive liar who called one of his whistleblowers “crazy” and a “bitch” and implied that another one was a whore. He threatened several of them with extreme physical violence, [...]

This overview of the artwork of Alex Grey (also published as a multi-part series on Reality Sandwich) looks at problems the art world has with spiritually themed art, Alex’s transforming relationship to darkness and shadow material, what his art says about sexuality, and the public roles Alex plays versus his studio work.

Review Copyright 2012, Jonathan Zap I’ve tried reading some of the reviews, but really don’t follow the people who don’t like The Hobbit that I found to be much better than expected.  Perhaps these are the same imaginatively challenged folks who didn’t like the recent masterpiece, Cloud Atlas (<<click for my review). Objections to the frame rate, however, are partly warranted.  It was often a distraction that took me out of the story as I was forced to evaluate how it was affecting me.  This would be an interesting subject for a neuroscientist, but my subjective impression is that it was making my brain work too hard, or harder than expected. The effect was stupendous in landscape flyovers where there were staggering amounts of visual detail to take in.  Where the frame rate was much worse was in close ups and ensemble shots where it had the odd effect of causing me to feel like I was watching a live stage play.  So the effect was extremely uneven, at times providing a high degree of welcome visual novelty and at other times throwing me into the uncanny valley of hyperrealism. Perhaps people who didn’t like this movie are insufficiently appreciative [...]

Review copyright 2012 by Jonathan Zap           Everyone whose soul is not completely eaten away by cynicism should see this superb film. First, a few sentences of conventional movie review: An inspired and inspiring performance by Daniel Day-Lewis as Lincoln and a great supporting cast. Attention to period detail and authenticity that incarnates the gritty world of 1865 America so well, that at times you feel you can smell the damp wool, cedar planks, fountain pen ink, Kentucky bourbon and muddy streets filled with horse manure. Spielberg got permission from the Kentucky Historic Society to record the ticking of Lincoln’s actual pocket watch, so that when you hear Lincoln pensively listening to the sound of his watch, you are hearing the same sound that Lincoln heard.  The choice of Tony Kushner to write the screenplay shows a commitment to create a soulful experience—a commitment that this inspired collaboration of talented people fulfills. Besides its success on every level of cinema, this film also succeeds in the conjuration, the incarnation, of what I call a “talismanic personality.” A talismanic personality is one that is numinous and inspiring, an exemplar of wholeness that reminds us of what Lincoln [...]

  Cloud Atlas is the best film I’ve seen in many weary months of multiplex disappointment. The only thing wrong with this movie is the trailers that don’t begin to do it justice.  Cloud Atlas is a visionary masterpiece that is not getting the appreciation it deserves. It is easily the finest work by the Wachowski siblings (once brothers, they are now brother and sister) since the first Matrix film. Tom Tykwer is the third director, and the sequences he directed are equally brilliant, so for the purposes of brevity I will make him an honorary Wachowski sibling and hereafter refer to all three directors as the Wachowskis. Some people apparently found the movie confusing and assumed it was confused. It is not confused; it is brilliantly and precisely complex and surreal.  Cloud Atlas is based on a novel by David Mitchell that involves six complexly interlocking storylines that expand into multiple incarnations. The sextet of stories interlock with the precision one might expect of the inner workings of one of Salvador Dalí’s finest melted clocks.  Every story line is a version of a single theme: eros/love versus the power principle, false hierarchies and divisive constructs of the patriarchy. This theme, [...]

Review copyright Jonathan Zap, 2012 Here’s what I thought of the new Spiderman movie: Snow globes. I like snow globes as much as the next guy, maybe even a little bit more than the next guy. The best quality of snow globes have quite a polish and a pretty, ornamental quality that could keep me staring into a good one for seconds. At about the ten second mark the sentimentality and corniness typical of those of the snow globe persuasion starts to get to me.  In the case of a 220 million dollar snow globe, with lots of CGI polish, seconds can turn into minutes and it still holds my attention. If minutes turns into two hours and 17 minutes, however, I’m starting to get pretty snow globed out.  So, overall, I like snow globes, but I don’t want my super hero movies to happen inside of them. They’re just too corny and sentimental for science fiction. The Spiderman Snow Globe has lots of polish, but way too much of the Spiderman meets Twilight formula going on for my taste. Whether you want to get caught in its sugary web for 2 hours and 17 minutes is up to you.

Vigo Mortensen as Freud, and Michael Fassbender as Jung, in A Dangerous Method text copyright 2012, Jonathan Zap edited by Austin Iredale   “…he made on me personally the impression of a man obsessed with fixed ideas. I can make nothing in my own case with his dream theories, and obviously “symbolism” is a most dangerous method.” —William James, referring to Sigmund Freud, in a letter to  Geneva psychologist Theodor Flournoy David Cronenberg, who in the 80s was making movies like Scanners about mutants whose telepathic boundary dissolution made them so painfully aware of the chaotic mundanity in people’s minds that they lived at the margins of society and, if sufficiently enraged, employed psionic powers that could make someone’s head explode into a flying shrapnel of skull shards and brain tissue, has made a subtly restrained film about the tense relationship between  Jung and Freud. Sorry, but the urge to work the plot of Scanners into a surrealistically run-on sentence related to the history of  psychoanalysis was a disruptive urge I found impossible to repress. A Dangerous Method is still (late January, 2012) playing on some independent screens  including The Mayan in Denver, where I just saw it.       A Dangerous [...]

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Decaf Also Jarhead Copyright 2005 Jonathan Zap Have you ever wondered what a day in middle school would be like—-a very, very, very, very long day in middle school—–if it were dressed up in a $100 million dollars worth  of CGI ?  This movie successfully answers that question. The HP movies labor under two enormous weaknesses, either of which would be enough to sink them, and whatever buoyancy they do have comes from the cinematic sparkle that gigantic sums of money can purchase and a guaranteed fan base of loyal readers of the HP series, who are about as sympathetic an audience as you can get, given that they have been able to endure volumes of really thin, light weight fantasy over the years and keep queing up for more.  It’s almost as if the cast of orphans from Oliver Twist were reincarnated in more prosperous times and now line up with big hungry eyes for this thin sugary gruel and say, “Please Miss Rowling, we’d like some more!”  And in this society if you like crappy stuff, and have the money to pay for it, you are bound to get exactly what you [...]