Greatest Written Films - Disgrace

Disgrace (2008)

Let’s get it straight. Disgrace is not a pleasurable experience. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth watching. More the contrary. The screenplay is based on the novel by J.M. Coetzee about the new South Africa (as it was when the novel was released in 1999) and how many, particularly white people were adapting to the changes after apartheid. And yet, it's not a political film. Its overtones are subtle. It’s easy to miss them, as the personal story of its characters draws you in. Its protagonist is David Laurie (John Malcovich) and his daughter Lucy (Jessica Haines). One represents the way things were and the other, his daughter, is trying her best to fit into the new mould.

David is a university professor whose brief affair with one of his students goes terribly wrong. He is exposed. And yet he makes no attempt to save himself, a sacrificial lamb to the greed of his own desires. He retreats to the Eastern Cape to spend time with his daughter, who is making the best of a changing political climate. it's filtering down to grass roots level. Perhaps it affects them the most. South Africa is still fraught with violence and few can escape its impact.

It's a rich film, with conflicting nuances. Sometimes right and wrong is all mixed up and it’s easy to get lost in the grey. Director Steve Jacobs and his writing/producing partner, Anna Maria Monticelli stay wide of the obvious, capturing the essence of the novel.

This film has been largely overlooked, a terrible mistake, perhaps because some of its themes aren’t so obvious, and daresay due in part to some of its disturbing scenes. John Malcovich gives one of his best performances, and that's saying something. We are used to seeing delicious tantrums from him, but here he is forced to hold back more than even his character wishes. He is forced to come to terms with his own failings and wonders how he can adapt and yet still live with himself. Not an easy film to endure but a must see.


For more on the novel and it’s author visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_(novel)


Disgrace at Rotten Tomatoes.


Coming next,
July is Novel Month,

A rundown on my six completed novels in reverse order.
The Sixth, Tru Luv Kills.

Hope to see you then.

Drop City - Fools Rush In

Drop City were a Sydney outfit that existed from 1993 until 2000.
In 1996, Fools Rush In was released as a single from their forthcoming album, This Heavenly Machine. They didnt have a filmclip for it, so I recorded them playing at a Festival in Glebe and shot extra footage and made this clip. I gave it to them and they liked it and it became the video. It played extensively on ABC's RAGE and Foxtel's Channel V (Known as RED at the time). Though I never got to meet the band or get a signed cd etc, I'm still glad I did it.
If you look closely, I managed to sneak in a couple of shots of myself and yes, I was going through my grunge/hippy phase.

The album, This Heavenly Machine.

It was a shame to see them split up. Like many Australian bands, had they been American or European, they would have had a lot more success than they had. *Our population is just too small, and the opportunities few.) The album before this one, Magic Transitor Radio was one of my favourite albums of the 1990's.

Years later, I came across lead singer Matthew Tow who has a new band, The Lovetones, working in a Sydney record store. He served me but I didn't tell him that we had a connection.


My Books

Next week,
July is Novel month.
A synopsis and first page from each of my six completed novels.
(In reverse order).

Hope to see you then.

Poem - Alone Not Home

Alone not Home

I want to go home
Except I don’t know where home is
I live in a place I do not like
With people I do not know
Who think they know me.
No.
I fumble my way through a job I have no interest in
And a relationship that’s not interesting.
I thought I had a chance at something
But I have missed everything.
I am no good at pretence
With no desire to try and impress
All I seek is the Truth
In a world I perceive to be false.
I wish people could be more honest
And yet knowing that a wish is mere fantasy
I must be deceiving myself.
If truth is at the heart of the every matter
And home is where the heart is
Why is home so elusive?

(The top painting is by William Adolphe Bouguereau - The Broken Pitcher - 1891. Photograph-unknown.)




Coming in July,
It's all about the novels.
Next week, a music Video I made for a band in the 90's.

Until then,

=]

Story - The Purger

The Purger was my first published story in 2007 and again in 2008. It is presented here for the first time.

The Purger

Yakob³ was a traditional flesh chemist. He was proficient, but not because he enjoyed helping others. He didn’t care about flesh people. They could not afford biomechanical enhancements and were therefore, sub-standard. Flesh disgusted him.
What he treasured was the purification of the individual. It was his prescriptions which purged patients of their impurities. Converts came to him every day to cleanse the tiny evils that dot the interior, like specks of old cancer. It was Yakob³'s dream to purge the entire Starbase. He was no fool. Nearly half of the population were without biomech aides. It would take him a lifetime, but with every case, he garnered new pleasures.
He had discovered that with so many flesh vermin passing through his confined business, impurities would find their way into the circulation. Minimising his oxygen intake had proven to be unsuccessful. By the end of each day, his thought processes had begun to decay. He would rush home and seal himself into his pristine cublica, circulating a purifying concoction of his own design. From there he began the ritual of cleansing. He would follow it with a dose of proto-pellets and in most cases, this would see him true until rejuvenation.
Nevertheless, he would dream of extraordinary filth. Transported to a dark world, stumbling naked and dirty through mountains of rubbish; toothless flesh people slithered on piles of effluent and decaying tissue. Toxic rain sizzled on his skin. Jets of vomit fell from his stinking orifice. He sank into the slush until he was submerged where multitudes of hungry parasites sucked the meat from his bones...

When Yakob³ woke before First Call, he was trembling, withdrawing. He sprang into action. He barely arrived at the sanitiser before the structo-organisms could drain his glands. Afterwards came extraordinary relief — a euphoria, almost sexual — a throwback to sapien days. He cleansed his smooth and hairless body for an hour. He dressed, ate, and with the greatest relief, once again felt purged.
Everyone should feel this way. He'd purge them all. And he had only just begun.
He opened the business, fantasising about new conquests for the day.
Minutes later, a clownish figure strolled in, targeting him. It beamed a toothy, decaying scrawl: ‘Death to biomechs!’
Yakob³ was more confused than alarmed.
The clown raised a handmade tool, jagged, and slammed it into the sinews between Yakob³’s shoulder and neck. As it withdrew, blood and bio fluid gushed.
Yakob³ staggered. The tool came down into his body again, and again.
‘Release the flesh!’ The clown scrambled for freedom.
Yakob³ stumbled to Central Terminal. He sat. He vomited.
Onlookers converged.
His body liquids ran — murky and multitudinous. He defecated. He urinated. He had become the flesh mountain of his nightmares. His head swam. Colours seeped into luminous white. It was oddly soothing. He felt almost…tranquil. Almost.
An inner voice, a throwback sapien voice, spoke truths. He had been wrong. Bioenhancements were the stuff of pollution. The flesh was meant to be free.
At last, he was truly purged.

the end.

My Books

Video Poem - Sun Drenched Rosy Days

2008 Christian Ethan Mosconi

Sun Drenched Rosy Days

I hope you liked it. Even if you didn't leave a comment anyway.


I have a new Author Page on Facebook. Feel free to join. It's an Open Group so people can discuss all these related to writing; Authors, Books, Blogs, Screenplays, Poetry etc.

Until Next Week,

My Books

Greatest Written Films - The Grapes of Wrath

Celebrating the written word in film.
Character, Dialouge and Subtext over traditional plot.

The Grapes of Wrath

1940


The Grapes of Wrath covers the period of the American Great Depression. Henry Fonda in one of his penultimate roles returns from a stint in prison to find his family have been evicted from their farm. He is forced to pack up all his belongings on the back of a truck and along with his family move into one of the ‘Dustbowl camps’ in California is search of work. But there are many others in the same situation. Life is cheap here. There is much corruption and crime. Every day is a battle. With it’s realistic portrayal, there is a pseudo-documentary feel here, (despite the dated trailer). This is powerful drama.









The screenplay by Nunally Johnson was based on the novel by John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men) which was published a year earlier and had caused an uproar. It was accused of being communist propaganda and Steinbeck of being a socialist. The Farmers Federation protested the loudest as they had been shown to treat the mainly migrant families depicted in the book poorly. Some said that Steinbeck had exaggerated that conditions to prove a point, but in fact, he had underplayed them. The film was also controversial for the same political reasons.
Naturally, the controversy caused the book to be widely read and was soon considered a classic. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Interestingly, Lenin banned the film in Russia as it showed that even the poorest of Americans could afford a car.

The picture was directed by John Ford with a sense of reality rare for its time. Its stunning black and white cinematography by Gregg Toland, who would go on to shoot Citizen Kane the following year, contributes to the ambience. The Grapes of Wrath earned many Oscar nominations, and Ford won for direction.

The film is still poignant, historically relevant, beautifully written and one of the greatest films ever to come out of America.

More Greatest Written Films

Coming in July, an insight into my six completed novels.
Next week, a new, original video poem, Sun Drenched Rosy Days.

My Books

Poem - What’s in her Name?

What’s in her Name?


Her name was Sarah.
Not her real name.
And I didn’t know it
Before she died.
But I knew her face,
Her form...
As I passed her in the hallways.

I soon began to smile
Developing into a Hello
Gestating into the smallest of small talk
By the coffee machine.
I did not know her name
She was a face
A persona
That I had created
Based on snippets of conversation
And the way she dressed
The way she moved
Her poise by the coffee machine.
In order to find position for her
Inside my realm
I had to create one for her.
Without comprehending it,
She was catalogued.
Later,
After her sudden death,
I began to learn more about her
Starting with her name.
I had never asked her what it was.
I collected snippets
From other conversations
And a more complete portrait emerged.
The way she dressed
And moved
Did not represent what I thought I knew
My realm was false.
I know her name
Her name was Sarah
Not her real name,
But I did not know her at all.

Next week, an entry from the Greatest Written Films.
Soon, A new Video Poem, Sun Drenched Rosy Days.


My Books

'Once she was slim.' - A Tribute to the Victims of the U.S. Tornados, April 2011.

Once she was slim.


A short fiction.


Thinking about the phone conversation with her daughter she’d had not twenty minutes before, wondering if her advice had been taken onboard, even though she already knew the answer, there came a sound like a reversing truck.
A moving ‘disintegration’ if such a thing were possible. A noise that had no comparison in her seventy six years, though enough to charge her veins with adrenalin.
Before she could cross to the stream of daylight through the front window in search of answers and possible escape, she was rising from the floor and the roof twisted and the wall crumbled.
Gravity shifted and she was carried sideways and something hit her so hard that she almost didn’t feel it, an overwhelming numbness that left her with the knowledge that the right side of her body was now useless.
The light was shut out and she felt wet, soaking, as though having emerged from a pool, though she had not been in one for over a dozen years because of a child who had stared at her in her hair cap and goggles and at the lumps in her costume from her age and the reminders of her four children that had been left on her body and the boy’s stare was intrusive as though she were not a real person and just a thing of curiosity and more than likely repulsion but it was not his fault really as he was just a little one but it was enough to guarantee that she never went back to that pool or any other one as it was not a pleasant thing to have your body betray you even though you know it’s inevitable for all and was one of the more disappointing things in life as it’s the same body that was once universally adored and doesn’t that feel like a lifetime ago. Yet she knows that it’s not water that swirls around her but the debris of her shattered home and the wetness must be coming from her and it can only be the fluid of her life and she closes her mouth and her eyes to protect them and that’s all that she can do even though this is not real, cannot be real, and if it is, then perhaps this is what death feels like. A pain like piercing blades shoots through her chest and surely something has hit her in the dark and the reality of being so vulnerable scares her coupled with the noise like a jet plane hovering above and perhaps one has crashed into her home or more likely it’s the worst of nature or the finger of God as her punishment for having left her children’s father years before despite his consistent emotional cruelty and this is a mistake of sorts, a fatal one and she coughs and splutters and is rolling or flying and if that be true then whatever may come in the next few seconds will surely be the end.

As of May 3, 2011, 354 people were killed as a result of the tornado outbreak in the southern states of the U.S. in particular Alabama, from April 25 - 28. Many people are still missing.


Donate or help here:

http://www.redcross.org/


My Books

Next week,

A Poem, What's in Her Name.

Followed by one of the Greatest Written Films.

Soon, A Video Poem - Sun Drenched Rosy Days.


Until Then,

Count your blessings and enjoy life.
I know I will be.

=]