“Now you’re looking for the secret. But you won’t find it because of course, you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to work it out. You want to be fooled.” The Prestige
1st of May was a good day. A huge peaceful sense-of-community-raising demonstration (2500-3500 people), a nice afternoon at the street party in Gostenhof. (It was scary to hear that in Dortmund a DGB demo was attacked by 300 violent neo-Nazis. Especially scary because that’s no left-extremist demo but you could say it’s the more mainstream working class demonstration.) Later that afternoon I spend a few hours at home preparing stuff for Kill The Poor and due to a sudden semi-creative attack making a mix with the “DIY” vocals of the Nuremberg Antifa-HipHop-Crew Kurzer Prozess and the Zodiac Cartel Remix of Fukkk Offf’s “Rave is King” (I’ve uploaded it to soundcloud now: http://soundcloud.com/eve-massacre/kurzer-raveprozess).
The Kill The Poor party took a while to get started but then it was big fun.
Maybe in the future we shouldn’t open the doors before 1AM?
What was a bit annoying was how some people just expect every party to be just about electronic beats and the latest dance stuff. We have written it all over our flyers and mysp that Kill The Poor plays that stuff too but we also play punk and hiphop and really old stuff too. You can expect to hear Devo as well as Jesse Rose, The Shangri-Las as well as Loefah, etc. If you can’t deal with that, if you’re not broadminded enough to get fun out of that why not simply leave and go to some 100%-sure-shot-straight-4/4-bore-bounce-club night instead of coming behind the dj desk, stand in our way while we’re trying to dj around you. Worst one was telling us to ‘do our job’ (it is no job, we do it for fun and get NO money at all from this night, it all goes to the musikverein for putting up shows). And even if it was our job: a dj’s job is to get people dancing and don’t you just feel like an idiot telling us to play dance music in front of a crowded bouncing dancefloor? I know all djs get this but I was a bit touchy last Friday. There only were a few such moments but sometimes they are enough to take the drive out of a dj set, make you feel unsure and what’s even worse: it can make you feel as if you were just there to fulfill expectations instead of making it a living breathing self-developping fun night with surprises and the possibility to just let go. Which luckily the night turned out to be but somehow some few spoiler-moments get stuck on my mind just as much as the prevailing feel good moments.
Thanks to all the smiling dancers / cd-wrecking-actionists / banner-bringers, and pigflu to the haterzzz!
When we left the K4 and took a taxi home the driver raced it straight into a building site barrier although it was plain to see that due to a misparked car the street was far too narrow for him to pass. It was strange cause the taxi driver didn’t seem to hesitate a moment but rather seemed to even hit the gas pedal harder when he drove into it. Nothing was harmed but the barrier and the car but it was a weird incident to end a happy night. We got into another cab and got home. It woke me up a bit though, and I couldn’t sleep for another hour with the birds twittering all loudly. That kind of stole my Saturday: I only got up after 4 in the afternoon, had a long late breakfast and then felt all anti-social and my sofa turned into a magnet and I rather stayed at home watching movies than going to a friend’s birthday party. Now I’ve got a bad conscience but still think it was the right choice.
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While everyone is out watching WOLVERINE (which I sure won’t miss too) the slow me enjoyed an older Hugh Jackman movie today: THE PRESTIGE. The trick-magician subject had put me off first. Of course like many of you I had a cheap kid-magician’s toy set when I was a child and it kept me entertained for a while but I’ve never really been fascinated by illusionists. I’m not sure why. Maybe because those tricks make me feel obliged to feel challenged to figure out how they work. That seems to be the real thrill behind them. You know what I mean? Most magic tricks in itself are not very entertaining. The most entertaining thing about them is to figure out how they work. For many people that is thrilling and raises curiosity, it’s the same with watching ‘Making Of’ movie documentaries. I don’t like watching that. I want the movie to work its magic but not know how it works on a technical level. I’m more curious about how it works on a ‘semiotic’ level, that’s where I can get all curious and explorative. But there’s not much of that to be found in magic tricks. The other thing that first had kept me off watching THE PRESTIGE is that I still can’t stand Christian Bale. He reminds me of Tom Cruise but like a version that multiplies all the things I don’t like about Cruise: always glib and sterile and the always-the-same-type-acting, ach, I don’t know. Jackman and Michel Caine make up for that though. Johansson sadly doesn’t. Not much room for good female acting in this movie.
Anyway: PRESTIGE turned out to be less of a magician and costume movie but more of a suspense movie about obsessons and crimes and romance and revenge and trickery on all levels of life. Being full of nice twists it manages to keep the tension up till the end. Which is a cool twist in itself.
Ha, and it took me a bit to recognize David Bowie playing Tesla. Blame the moustache.
I like how the plot contrasts what you could see as two ‘approaches to art’: One of the magicians is ready for sacrifice in social/family life and to live for his art but lacking the talent for show effects and the techniques to promote his art to the audience. The other one being really good in presenting himself and fascinated by finding the perfect technique to thrill his audience somehow lacks the creative fever and dedication. When the movie ended and I realised my sympathies had been with the latter while ‘IRL’ I’d always prefer the first I felt tricked. Thus the movie worked just as it was supposed to be. I guess.
Yesterday I finally watched LOST IN TRANSLATION, just like THE PRESTIGE with Scarlett Johansson. Luckily in a much more thankful role. Murray and Johansson both are wonderful, and their ace performance makes you feel as if the movie would also make a fine intimate play. The often picturesque ‘mute’ scenes in contrast with the loud fast dialogue scenes are carefully woven into each other, the play with distance and closeness between people, the failures of communication, with all this the movie nicely explores multiple levels of loneliness and the feeling of being lost. There’s more melancholy than actual outbreaks sadness. In a few scenes the culture clash is dealt with gimmicky but those comedy moments are given space to sink and thus they somehow transform from a cheap joke to a little deepness and they just add fluently to the feeling of longing for something we can’t really define or put in words, to the vague feeling of being lost that the movie deals with so fine.