Schizopolis

The _________ had made the Stanley Cup Finals again and people throughout the country were pumped. I was hoping they would pick up the underdog win and heavily cheered in their traditional favour. A friend texted one day with a question about their chances, but before I could answer I saw a turtle on the road. I picked the turtle up and helped him or her cross to the other side. But upon reaching the safe embankment, it turned around and scampered back whence he had come. I couldn't text my friend and state that this sign likely meant that ___________ was going to lose the series, I could only hope and pray I was wrong. Fortunately, I never told anyone about the prophetic turtle. It made things much easier when __________ lost and people were fuming mad.

My dad was really sick and mom and I had never really thought he would pass away, we figured the doctors would help him out and he'd recover soon posthaste. But on my daily walk when he was in the hospital over a dozen turkey vultures suddenly appeared chillin' in the trees. I hardly ever see them in that wooded area. I hoped and prayed it wasn't a sign (it was).

A month before that, I went for a walk to a convenience store to buy some things, when I saw a bad car accident that an ambulance had already reached. I was hoping it wasn't a sign that dad was really sick, but 5 days later we had to admit him to a hospital. 

The last time the Broncos won the Super Bowl I saw horses wherever I went. Plus Montréal's métro shared the Broncos colours. The colours had given me hope a couple of years before after the Broncos lost in the Super Bowl. I tried not to take them too seriously but still totally felt hopeful.

Sunlight passing through tree branches makes interesting patterns on the ground. Did ancient spiritual leaders use them to make wild predictions? 

When you visit the same location each time it snows the snow accumulates in a different pattern. Did ancient shaman note divine sculpted difference within and look to the future nimbly and confidently?

Who knows?

The spiritual age before science and reason must have been tumultuous nevertheless.

So many people earning a living doing such things.

The voodoo mysticism at times even governing. 

With the internet's lack of critical oversight this kind of thing seems to be reemerging, as groups fed up with hearing they're wrong wildly pursue irrational agendas. 

And people who never thoroughly embraced scientific reasoning remain immersed in magical realism. 

Logic and reason hovering undetected.

In lucid heartfelt agile wonder.

Soleil Ô

It's important to play an active role, to take part, to add your voice, racial discrimination is an unsettling reality that consistently frustrates able bodied workers.

It's wonderful to see when citizens engage and write books or direct films to help struggling minorities, a lot of genuine sympathy and sincere care diligently goes into their compassionate construction.

Soleil Ô follows the plight of African migrants who move to France in the post-colonial period, but it wasn't made by concerned French citizens, it was created by Africans themselves.

According to the colonialist dogma they had been brought up with, they were equal citizens in France, and were surprised to find a lack and housing and employment after they picked up one day and moved there.

The film experiments with narrative techniques as it explores various aspects of racist tensions, which still pop up with alarming regularity there's still so much work to be critically done.

Back in Africa for instance, the abundance of languages is thoughtfully presented, before the colonized citizens have to fight one another in English and French with crosses turned into swords.

A grouchy bigot cantankerously complains about immigration in a relaxed restaurant, before a black singer inspires the patrons and he suddenly changes his stubborn mind.

A mixed-race individual who looks white has to suddenly walk away, from an angry man who just can't help his instinctual hatred and knee-jerk prejudice.

As a white woman and a black man playfully flirt with one another on the street, passers by look on in shock and offer multiple awkward different takes.

Even though black people possess requisite skills they're still forced to work in specific sectors, many of which demand no education and involve industrial cleaning.

I would argue that Soleil Ô's multiple exploratory scenarios, present pioneering mockumentary techniques decades before they became conventional (they may have also been popular at the time but were referred to by a different term).

The comedy is instructive without being violent and there is one character who keeps showing up, the events loosely tailored around his experience as he tries to make coherent sense of things.

It effectively uses humour and logic to rationally comment on distressing realities, hopefully convincing hard-hearted peeps that there are less drastic solutions to economic problems (people shouldn't be assigned specific jobs solely based on the colour of their skin for instance).

First rate experimental cinema perhaps decades ahead of its time, courageously created by the actual citizens whom the racist attitudes affected, Soleil Ô is worth checking out by concerned multicultural citizens, especially because the same attitudes still persist, and need to be fought by the next generation. 

What We Do in the Shadows

Heightened rationalized improbability permeates What We Do in the Shadows, productively enlivening the confines of the undead, with shattered/rebuilt staggering susceptibility.

Incinerator.

4 vampires have been living together for some time in Wellington, New Zealand, tediously, nonchalantly, constructively, and impetuously approaching eternity, sort of learning and growing together as one, individuality integratively asserted, within their infernal domestic.

A camera crew is granted access and follows them around as they socially interact.

Debating, observing, feasting.

The film successfully works its way into the mockumentary cleavage, adding a bizarre sense of feisty unrealistic yet applicably pertinent ironic existential banality to its hemorrhage, asinine arteries and viscous veins wickedly yet lovingly distributing its worn permanence, like the genre itself is transformatively expired.

A skulking pantheon.

As they explore the external world and attend festive gatherings, favourite representatives of various divergencies emerge, their conversations occasionally fraught with bitterness and decay, a clash with the lycans, everything held together by Stu (Stuart Rutherford).

Stu is the human friend of recently converted vampire Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer), and he aloofly yet essentially stylizes the film.

Nick builds Deacon's (Jonathan Brugh) character by contrasting his youthful rebelliousness with rash exuberance, the two growing ensemble, clueless direct un/concerned advice intact.

Some of the jokes don't work, like swearwolves/swerewolves.

More could have been done with the vampire hunter and the Unholy Masquerade.

Still, as far as people awkwardly placed within a time period they neither understand nor care to get to know goes, taking the time to formulate opinions and conclusions which both validate and empower them regardless, even if they subconsciously recognize their inherent weaknesses, What We Do in the Shadows serves to obscure while lucidly contemplating, as discoveries are made, and friendships develop.

It would be nice to see what Clement and Waititi could pull off with a larger budget and more time.

What We Do in the Shadows could make a funny show, there's plenty of material to work with.

Vampires (Fantasia Fest 2010)

Presenting documentary evidence regarding the life and times of a community of nosferatu, Vincent Lannoo's Vampires comedically chronicles the social, familial, educational, and political practices of the Belgian undead. Focusing on one specific family and their peculiar dissatisfied neighbours, we meet George (Carlo Ferrante), an aristocratic disaffected patriarch, his eccentric wife (Vera van Dooren), their son Samson (Pierre Lognay), whose laissez-faire ways cause them to be exiled, and daughter Grace (Fleur Lise Heuet), who likes to play suicide and wishes she was human. These vampires can be serious: they have their own school, leader, and legal code, all of which coalesce to provide them with a particularized sense of communal individuality. But their concerns are generally care free, and apart from sticklers who meticulously follow the rules, their lives are blissfully discharged at a carnivalesque pace. The film's really funny, using vampires to lightheartedly satirize and elevate Belgian cultural codes, while the larger-than-life cast apathetically yet energetically discusses the quirks of their daily lives. Internal questions persist concerning the ease with which these vampires conduct their activities, different vampire communities live remarkably divergent lifestyles, and it's high times for the coffin business. The most creative and dynamic vampire film I've seen in a while, Lannoo's offbeat mockumentary will have you consistently laughing and cringing while you try to relax and suck back that slushy.