September 16, 2011
The Morphail Effect
So, this happened. Just one fleck of fallout from the interminable process of wrapping up the PhD. There have been plenty of others that needn't distract us here. As far as I am concerned the thing is pretty much done, but there are doubtless a few more false dawns to weather yet. It will take truculence, triage and probably some grudging concessions before the fucking thing finally gets consigned to the dustbin of scientific history in which it clearly belongs.
In any case, an IonView page was needed, and there it is. Eventually I may get around to reorganising things around here so that it is easier to find stuff like software and photos and so on, but there doesn't seem any particular hurry.
All sorts of outings probably merit fuller mentions, but since that doesn't seem to be happening here are some capsules. I enjoyed Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's TeZukA a lot, although it didn't seem quite finished -- should lose 15 minutes, at least one fight sequence and (especially) the interval. Amanda Palmer's Heaven show was one of the best gigs I've seen in years, packed with guests and randomness and just enormous fun from beginning to end, despite one or two joyless emo caricatures in the audience pouting because everyone was having too much of a good time. Kill List was gobsmackingly unpleasant, and sort of interesting in its shifting Brit pastichery, but packed less punch than it should because the characters were impossible to give a toss about and the final slide into Wicker Man territory was just plain silly. Last night Kym took me to see a cappella lad-band The Magnets, who were enjoyable and technically accomplished but it was a bit hard to see who their audience was meant to be.
In Michael Moorcock's sf&f multiverse, time travel into the past is (in some defiantly non-mechanistic way) possible, but it is made difficult by a kind of chronological inertia that resists paradox. Any hint of anachronism can lead to unceremonious eviction from the time stream. Successful chrononauts, of whom there are few, avoid this fate by immersing themselves in the visited period to such an extent that they more or less forget they were ever anyone anywhere anywhen else. One such traveller, at least in some of his very many manifestations, is Jerry Cornelius.
There is an extended, slightly unfocused, film festival in town at the moment to celebrate the Scala, the notorious art-cum-grindhouse repertory fleapit at which I used to work. The only festival event I've caught so far was a double of John Boorman's Zardoz with the film version of Moorcock's first Cornelius novel, The Final Programme. Suffice to say that both films are so profoundly of their time that they would have nothing to fear from the Morphail Effect.
Posted by matt at September 16, 2011 4:21 PM