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| Daybreakers: And Now, Junkie Vampires! Let Twilight warm teen girls' dreams: Daybreakers is a creature for your very best nightmares feedproxy.google.com |
YouTube movies: the diamonds among the debris You haven't seen Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale? Then you haven't dipped a toe into the motliest crew on recordThe other day I finally got a chance to see Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale, a documentary I'd been meaning to get to for some time. Chronicling the adventures of assorted young Iranians who sell their kidneys to buy a taxi, or finance their Âeducation, or pay off debts, Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale is not the kind of movie that is readily available at most local video stores. But it is available – free – in the movie section at YouTube. So is a lot of other stuff.Mostly when I visit YouTube it is to watch cats falling off chairs, parodies of Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker or sportscasters being tormented by stalking sock puppets. But it was recently pointed out to me that YouTube also has a section that is not of the domain of rank amateurs – you can watch actual films there, by reasonably professional film-makers. It seemed to be a good idea to work my way through this cutting-edge movie melting pot, and that's where I found Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale, a serious documentary that is anything but amateurish.The movies in the YouTube collection are a motley crew. There are a handful of classic old films such as His Girl Friday and One-Eyed Jacks, where Marlon Brando gets whupped by Karl Malden, the man with the largest proboscis in motion Âpicture history. There are also old films that are not classics such as Texas to Bataan, With the Marines at Tarawa and Pardon My Pups. There are a few dozen direct-to-video comedies of recent vintage. And then there are riveting documentaries such as Iranian Kidney Bargain Sale and Sex and Lies On Videotape, a documentary about east European women ensnared in the South African sex trade.Taking a somewhat less explicitly feminist view is Extreme Chickfighting, a cheesy handheld film about women who slug it out with one another in the ring. And then there are tons of schlock, cult films, trash, direct-to-video overstock, and tongue-in-cheek vanity projects. The cult films often star Christopher Lee. So do the schlock films. There are also a couple of obscure Italian westerns directed by obscure Italians, and obscure monster films also directed by obscure Italians. A lot of the really bad monster films feature movie stars before they were famous, or after. In some cases – Stacy Keach – it's hard to decide which.The very nature of YouTube encourages visitors to flit from one film to the next. The films are frequently Âinterrupted by promos for upcoming movies or television shows, which is often the cue to try another Âfeature, as the ads are annoying, repetitive and cannot be skipped. There is no theme to the site's pudding; the whole thing is like an online jumble sale, where the contents of various attics were lumped together, and the person in charge of sorting things was drunk.There is no rhyme or reason to any of it that I can see. Some might call it a hodgepodge. Others might call it a dustbin. Or maybe it's more like this: an apartment house that burned to the ground, and all the occupants died, and the landlord has just thrown all of the tenants' video collections into the trash but doesn't mind if you sort through them. The tenants included a disturbed loner, several unemployed boys in their 20s, a few tots, some folks from out of town, an ageing spinster and a film-studies major whose sex has not yet been determined. There also might be a closet sadist in the mix. As a result, the section showcasing the most popular films includes Phat Beach, The Secret Life of Adolf Hitler, Bad Girls from Mars, The Best of the Three Stooges, The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas, Sex Slaves, Guatemala's Gangland, Meer Baap Pehle Aap, Satan's School for Girls, Hot Boyz, at least one Charlie Sheen movie, North Korean Camps, and The Hunt for Gollum, a non-official prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy made by JRR Tolkein/Peter Jackson buffs. Verily, a Âbanquet fit for a king!Despite their impeccably sleazy credentials, many of the trashier films fall into the category of motion pictures whose titles have written a cheque the cast cannot cash. On the surface, Sisters of Death, The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism, Escape from Gilligan's Island, Slave of the Cannibal God and Cheerleader Ninja all sound great. But they are not great. Not, not, not. Actually, it might be a bit of a stretch to suggest that a film called Escape from Gilligan's Island could ever have been rewarding. But at least one might expect it to be fun. This is not the case here. Most of the full-length features available on YouTube are precisely the kinds of motion pictures you would leave off your Desert Island list. Gilligan himself might refrain.All that said, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent cruising YouTube. For one, it immediately induced a very peaceful state I like to think of as retroactive Âconsumer schadenfreude, which is the wonderfully reassuring feeling you get when you watch something for free that less fortunate people had to pay for. This was certainly true when I stumbled upon a short documentary called Everybody Loves the Tinklers. This is an earnest little number about a Baltimore musical duo, founded in 1979, who had built a cult following of sorts, despite the fact – no, because of the fact – that they had no Âdiscernible talent. The Tinklers were Âruthlessly non-harmonious, Âpractising something insiders call "outsider art". This deliberately avoids elegance or Âsophistication or competence, either because the artist is mentally ill, or in the case of the Tinklers, because they suck. The documentary had the faux-ironic look and feel that is de rigueur for this genre: lots of interviews with middle-aged fans who love the Tinklers, because the Tinklers pride themselves on not being any more gifted than the people in their audiences. This is what separates them from, say, Beyoncé – who, in all fairness, does charge more for her tickets. Actually, this cultural levelling process was also evident in Extreme Chickfights, where the klutzy amateurs were even less talented than the people filming their bouts, practising something best described as Outsider Pugilism or Fisticuffs of the Inept.The endearing notion of interactive Âcultural democracy has always been a major selling-point of the internet: what I say is as valid as what you say, even if you can spell the word "pajama" better than me. Indeed, my favourite thing about the documentary section on YouTube is that it encourages interaction between viewers and moviemakers – by leaving comments about the film – and even goes beyond that to encouraging contact between the ordinary people visiting YouTube and the ordinary people who are in the documentary. For example, in Everybody Loves the Tinklers, one of their fans offers $100 to anyone who can listen to the Tinklers, "honestly listen to the Tinklers", and still say that he does not like them. I will be in Baltimore sometime this spring to pick up my hundred smackers.Much like my local video store, which occasionally files films such as The Passion of the Christ in the Action section, the YouTube website has a loose, informal categorising system. Everybody Loves the Tinklers, for example, is listed in the Mysteries & Suspense category.Still, it pays to remember that just as Âdifferent generations use the same highways but have very different attitudes toward the speed limits, all sorts of age groups are using the same internet but organise it in different ways. YouTube was not made for me or for people like me. But The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism and Teenage Zombies were. They are indeed the cultural touchstones of my youth.People today will look at these things through the prism of irony. When I was a kid, we didn't have irony. Philadelphia is working class, and in working-class Âcommunities, irony is neither countenanced nor understood. And it is certainly not subsidised. We also didn't have that many movies. So whatever got released that week was what we went to see. It didn't bother us that the films were Âterrible; they made for cheap outings. The only thing that would have bothered us was if the films stopped coming or if they stopped being cheap. So seeing trash like this after so many years provided me with a lovely pretext to take a jaunt down memory lane. Provided I didn't have to pay for it.My daughter, who is 26, once told me that the difference between her Âgeneration and mine is that people past the age of 50 expect protocols and hierarchies and portals and rankings, whereas young people look at the world and say: "Here's something cool. And here's another thing that's cool." The connective tissue between genres is neither required nor expected; it is enough that they exist. This, I believe, is the driving principle behind the YouTube movie collection: it's here because it's not there. What the YouTube site says, more than anything, is that the world is filled with interesting things, but most of them will not remain interesting for more than three minutes and none of them are worth paying for.Almost everything on the site – except the classic movies – falls into the broad general category of Things You Get the General Idea about Pretty Quick. But this casual juxtaposition of the immortal with the ignoble has the unintended effect of reminding you that there is no substitute for talent. None of the recent comedies are funny or clever or well shot in the way His Girl Friday is. And the silent film version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, made in 1923, is more visually interesting than anything else on the site. Including Extreme Chickfights.Luckily, somebody was smart enough to stick a lot of classy Âdocumentaries and short films on to YouTube. That's because people who make shorts and documentaries aren't terribly finicky about who watches their films: any portal in a storm. Particularly memorable is Mozart of the Pickpockets, a wry French comedy about two dud con men who befriend a mute north-African tyke, who then morphs into an expert pickpocket. It won the Academy award for best live action short film in 2007. Also of note was A Working Mom, a heartbreaking Israeli documentary about a Bolivian cleaning lady who returns home to see her children, having spent 15 years in Tel Aviv earning the money that will enable them to have a better life.Stumbling upon a jewel such as A Working Mom amid so much flotsam and jetsam drove home the point that the internet's most enticing feature may be its randomness. Stupidity comes at you from every direction. Vulgarity, too. And fascism. But every so often, without your actually looking for it, something true and beautiful can arrive on your doorstep. A Working Mom was just such a film. There was one other. In the lineup for the most popular current offerings was a 10-minute documentary called Happy Nazis. It was about the mysterious album filled with photographs of exuberant Auschwitz personnel that surfaced in Washington DC a few years ago. Here are throngs of Nazi officers – including the murderous Dr Mengele – jubilantly belting out some of those trusty old brauhaus favorites. There are carefree secretaries and bookkeepers carousing and mugging for the cameras just a few hundred yards from the infamous death camp where hundreds of thousands of Jewish children were going up in flames. Directly to the right of the promo for Happy Nazis were the jewel box covers from Cheerleader Ninjas and Bad Girls from Mars. Underneath, amid the usual prescient You Tube user comments were the words, "hitler come back please!!!"That's the internet for you.The must-see films tucked away in YouTube's movie sectionHomeThis Koyaanisqatsi-style eco-documentary by French aerial photographer Yann Arthus Bertrand is a celebrated standard-bearer for the global green movement; it's been shown on TV practically everywhere – except the UK. So YouTube has scored a coup.Animal FarmOrwell's anti-Soviet parable was memorably translated into Britain's first internationally successful full length cartoon by husband and wife team Halas and Batchelor in 1954. It's still great, even if it's now generally suspected that the CIA funded it, and influenced the new ending.Reefer Madness The stoner generation's object of kitsch worship – an anti-drug "warning" film shot in 1936 and subsequently unearthed in the 1970s, where it was screened to audiences hooting with laughter.SlackerOne of the legendary micro-budget efforts of the early 90s, and the place where it all began for Richard Linklater (Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, Me and Orson Welles). It's a scrappy, rambling affair, painfully hip for its time, and nailing the concept of the excitable but unengaged time-waster.The Boy in the Plastic Bubble John Travolta no doubt would rather you didn't watch this 1976 TV movie, in which he hammed it up as a kid with no immune system who falls in love with the girl next door. But it's rather moving in its shamelessly idiotic way. (The director was Randal Kleiser, who would pilot Travolta to bigger things in Grease.)Dementia 13 Back in the day, the Movie Brat generation cut their teeth working for the exploitation market, and Francis Ford Coppola got his chance via this Roger Corman production in 1963. Intended as a Psycho ripoff, this bizarre horror film was set in Ireland (where Coppola had been working for Corman on The Young Racers). It began Coppola's long tradition of arguing with producers, after Corman demanded more violence.DOA Forget the lame Dennis Quaid remake; this is one of the greats of film noir, which fell out of copyright in the late 70s. Edmond O'Brien is the man who has a few days to find out who poisoned him before he dies; director Rudolph Maté stitches it together in style.Andrew PulverYouTubeJoe Queenanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Erich Segal obituary Classics scholar whose multi-faceted career was dominated by his 1970 novel Love StoryThe American writer Erich Segal, who has died of a heart attack aged 72, will be best, and most misleadingly, remembered as the author of Love Story (1970). The success he earned from his first novel and its Hollywood film adaptation would be accolade enough for most authors. But while it made him rich, the skewed fame that it brought him shouldered aside a litany of other accomplishments: as classics scholar and teacher, literary critic and sports commentator, essayist and scriptwriter, historian and practitioner of comedy.When Erich wrote the book that changed his life, he was 32. He was a classics professor at Yale University, having earned his master's and PhD from Harvard four years earlier. He left Harvard as class poet and "Latin salutary orator", a twin honour equalled only by one other student, TS Eliot. In his academic career, Erich taught Latin and Greek literature not only at Yale, but at Harvard and Princeton and, upon moving to London with his British wife in the 1980s, at Wolfson College, Oxford.But he had always wanted to write. At Harvard, he co-authored the annual Hasty Pudding theatrical production. Alongside his teaching, he had notched up several Hollywood screenwriting credits, including on the Beatles' Yellow Submarine (1968) – where the imprint of the rabbi's son was particularly evident in his mischievously inserted line: "Funny, you don't look blue-ish". The Fab Four didn't get it. But Erich insisted: "Trust me, they'll laugh." And they did.He wrote Love Story over his Christmas break in 1969. By the end of the following year, his bestselling book and box-office-topping film about love and bereavement had made him a celebrity. Its most famous line, "love means never having to say you're sorry", instantly entered popular culture. He not only became a regular on TV chatshows but, as an accomplished marathon runner and all-round sports fan, was enlisted by the ABC network to join its commentary team for a string of Olympic Games.He went on to write more than half a dozen other novels. All were as deftly woven around love stories as the first. But all dealt with other themes, too: class and family, academic infighting and, inevitably, religion.neErich was not only the son of a prominent New York rabbi. He was the grandson of an august rabbinical figure from Vilnius, a city so steeped in religious tradition and disputation that it was known as the "Jerusalem" of Lithuania. Erich was born in Brooklyn. He attended a Jewish religious school, or yeshiva. His father had always hoped, and no doubt expected, that Erich would become a rabbi. But when he was a teenager, they came to a deal. He would be allowed to attend the excellent local state school, as long as he agreed to spend evenings studying the Bible at the city's Jewish Theological Seminary.His father was a Conservative rabbi, part of a religious movement that combined emphasis on Jewish learning and tradition, and a wider engagement with modern society and culture than in Orthodox Judaism. Erich, whose mastery of Hebrew equalled his command of Latin and Greek, never lost his interest and joy in Judaism. The annual Passover Seder meals in his London home were not only unfailingly moving – a gathering of family and of a diverse circle of friends united in shared enjoyment of Erich's warmth, humour and generosity. They represented, with a mix of references ranging from Hebraic to Shakespearean, an astonishing, though always self-deprecating, display of erudition.For the final quarter-century of his life, he suffered from Parkinson's disease, which limited his movement in his last few years, though never his remarkable mind – exercised not only in his literary life, but in a continued engagement in wider cultural, and political, issues.During the US presidential election of 2000, he had the bizarre experience of watching two of his former students, Al Gore and George W Bush, vie for the Oval Office. Gore had been the slightly better student, he recalled, though neither of them was exactly a scholar-in-waiting. Despite inevitable phone calls from American journalists, he tried heroically to stay out of the fray – especially after Gore hinted publicly that he and his wife Tipper had been the models for Love Story. In fact, if any of his students had helped him model the characters, it was a Gore classmate, the actor Tommy Lee Jones. But Erich decided that not commenting would mean never having to say he was sorry.He continued to write as well. A few years back, he teamed up with his friend Jack Rosenthal to produce a new English translation of the opening Friday-night Hebrew prayer for the West London Reform Synagogue.His last major book was not a novel but a scholarly work. Its genesis lay in his Harvard PhD thesis four decades earlier. Called The Death of Comedy (2001), it traced the history of laugh-making, and of dirty jokes, from the ancient Greeks through to Stanley Kubrick's Dr Strangelove. The thesis was that the 20th century had killed off comedy. It was a tantalising argument. But Erich never really believed it. "These things go in cycles," he remarked after the book was published. Comedy was only sleeping. And, he would add, with artists like Rosenthal, it never dozed off at all.It never left Erich either. It was present in his family, with friends, and perhaps most of all, in the gentle fun with which he saw himself. He was proud of his novels. But when asked by one interviewer to describe his literary life, he quipped: "I always had artistic aspirations, although not literary pretensions." Writing was what he did, what he was. But the novels were only part of it. "Remember," he added, the academic in him suddenly resurfacing, "even Machiavelli wrote three comedies."He is survived by his wife and editorial collaborator, Karen, and two daughters, Francesca and Miranda.• Erich Segal, writer and classics scholar, born 16 June 1937; died 17 January 2010United StatesJudaismClassicsNed Temkoguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
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