Postmodern Idiosyncrasies Presents: The Insomniacs’ Theatre
Insomnia, for all its woes and all the physical and psychological problems it compounds, frees up a lot of extra hours in the day; even on the metrics of a somewhat sedentary psychic itinerant. Unfortunately though, for every occasion on which the internal-censor is eroded away, leaving unfettered thought and unbridled imagination unimpeded, a similar amount of time is spent in a semi-aware state of wearied inaction. But we make hay when the metaphorical sun of the former shines, and when it sets and the kind of exhaustion which makes your bones leaden and immovable comes creeping with the dusk, we watch films instead… The Insomniacs’ Theatre bids you welcome.
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Barbarella
I’m not sure why this is considered a cult classic, given that the pitch document for it was probably a stack of the original Jean-Claude Forest strips with a crusty film of over-stimulated teenaged ejaculate smeared over the cover. It’s a tediously surreal and nonsensical film, a soft-porn Flash Gordon which is also, fatally, about as boring and unfunny as a professed comedy could despair to be.
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Indie Game: The Movie
There’s a certain mentality, generally held by the generations who had passed into adulthood before the dawn of the digital era, that games are a frivolity; entertainment but never art. This is, clearly, bullshit. If art is measured by intent, by the creativity and commitment that the aspirant artist/s pour of their uninhibited selves in an effort to create a piece of work which communicates something tangible human then games can be art. The predominant hunger which drives the creators of Braid, Fez and even Super Meat Boy is this need to speak to their communities, using complex languages to turn ideas or emotions into interactive experiences which are less esoteric than their code and less elusive or nebulous than their originating impulses.
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Altered States
Somehow, and in spite of its premise, Ken Russell and Paddy Chayefsky’s Altered States is less of a body-horror film than its nearest Cronenberg-helmed contemporaries, if you’ll allow an exception for one part of an otherwise quite unsatisfying ending. Nonetheless it has a slow build from tension and its lead’s disconcerting obsessions towards a potentially apocalyptic atavistic threat which manages to maintain a certain mystery and ambiguity of purpose, its horrific bona fides allowed to be proven rather than stated. It’s a fairly languid film, in terms of its pacing, but well worth the time it takes to watch it even if you don’t have the boundless hours of the insomniac.
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Iron Sky
A fairly blunt instrument in terms of its story and script, how much one might enjoy the film can be predicted by how amusing you find the concept of Nazi’s from the moon. The occasionally sharp satire is mixed in with a somewhat unsatisfying slapstick and a tendency to the absurd which undercuts its own purpose. There are a few genuinely hilarious moments, such as when a North Korean diplomat claims that the invading fleet was personally designed and built by his “Dear Leader” and the international community’s response to this ridiculous claim, but the President Palin garbage and the attendant idiocy of a world which would allow such a thing to occur are a bit grating at points.
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Don’t worry that you missed this selection from the week’s programme; The Insomniacs’ Theatre is open fifty-two weeks a year.
