Malcolm McLaren, the promoter and manager responsible for assembling the world’s first boy band — The Sex Pistols — has died at age 64. We at Verbicide tip our hats in salute to the man who, in one fell swoop, set in motion both the commoditization of punk rock and the marketability of talentless young boys based on image and fashion (no matter how insulting or plain fucking baffling). Everyone from Good Charlotte to N’Sync owes this man a debt of gratitude.

Verbicide’s Agent Automatic had this to say:

“Today a Svengali, swindler, and possible musical genius has died. The great Malcolm McLaren is no more. Some thought McLaren would die as the result of an assassin’s bullet, others said he’d be the victim of some sick sex crime at the hands of his fans. However, it was cancer which killed him in New York City earlier today. He’s best remembered for destroying some good bands (the New York Dolls in particular) and inventing one brilliant one, The Sex Pistols.

McLaren is survived by his son, Joseph Corré. He will be buried in England at Highgate Cemetery.”

I like to take my time when gnawing on skulls, but there are those who break them open, eager to consume only a portion or a portion of a portion in order to get their specific high. They bash their skulls against the concrete floor in order to release the eye sockets or bust the molars free after disarticulating their jaws. They’re doing what they do best, destroying the brain case in order to get the perfect buzz. It’s true, you can get there from here, but you have to work at it. Some have deep scars about their face and neck from where jagged shards were consumed without caution, digging deep channels in their skin, each telling its own story, revealing a specific truth from which is impossible to hide. A birth defect would be easier to conceal.

Of course these skulls are purchased and consumed as standardized products, but like the lottery, they occasionally have a lucky winner; a special skull with the potential to deliver biochemical nirvana which is better than the most vile and forbidden sex. Chew on that skull and you’ll never need another.

Each tooth has a property which is distinct from the rest. For example, canines prompt an activation of the senses, an increased heart rate, and dilation of the pupils and bronchia so that more light and air can enter the body. In this sense it’s like the normal reaction to adrenaline. However, the skull eater may simultaneously experience feelings of peace and well being. It’s hard to say. It depends on the individual.

In one of the booths a patron is using a water pipe he’s rigged with a nitrous oxide shotgun. After hitting the bong, he triggers the nitrous and a cloud of it follows the smoke up the chamber and into his lungs. Unfortunately he hits the shotgun too early and the gas ignites from buds still glowing in the bowl.

There’s a flash which splits his ribs open. The man’s chest cavity is splayed like an overcooked Thanksgiving turkey. His ribs are ripped apart, with shards of skin hanging off of them. The lungs are blown out like shopping bags caught on a chain-link fence.

Everyone pauses for a moment before scrambling to the body, helping themselves to the contents of his chest cavity. I tear resin from his lungs, then reach into my pocket and stuff a bowl full of the tar encrusted sponge into my homemade pipe.

Swinging my Zippo open, I strike its flint then inhale the monstrously harsh smoke of man and hash, opium and salvia. His cancer fills my mouth and I force it down deep, and hold it.

The room swells for a moment before everything (the tables, lights and paintings) arc toward me. I am the center of the world. My gravity is so great that if I were to leave I’d pull the contents of the room with me. Its interior would be drawn in my wake like a page torn from a book.

My skull is temporarily abandoned. So I sit, beatific.

Timecrimes (Los Cronocrímenes) is a Spanish science fiction film which operates on an unthinkably low budget, relying instead on a tight script rather than flashy effects. Like all good sci-fi, Timecrimes puts its main character in tough ethical situations. Hector (played by Karra Elejalde) will go to any length in order to correct the glitches he creates in his own time line, thus making his crimes almost justifiable in the context of correcting various events in his recent past. Thanks to writer/director Nacho Viglondo, Timecrimes manages to tie up the loose plot ends which often trouble the time travel sub-genre.

Much like Dorian Gray, evidence of Hector’s crimes are “written” on his face as he moves through time, trying to correct the damage of his previous chronological digressions. Technology is the principal accomplice to and scourge of his criminal endeavors. However, the greatest threat to the time-traveler and all those around him comes from other versions of himself.

Although Timecrimes was made in 2007, it has recently been screened in art houses around the country. Like many successful and provocative foreign films, Timecrimes is destined for an American remake. Fortunately, the director who is slated for this endeavor is none other than the master of expressionist cinema, David Cronenberg.
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For more from Agent Automatic, visit agentautomatic.com.

As an Oscar contender, The Reader couldn’t have been more of a long-shot. It tells the tale of a young man (played by David Kross in his youth and Ralph Fiennes in middle age) who becomes involved with a mysterious older woman in post-war Germany. Many years after their romance has ended the young man discovers that his former lover, Hannah Schmitz (played by Kate Winslet, who won an Oscar for this role), has been avoiding prosecution for her role as a guard at Auschwitz. The Reader follows the usual trope of the Holocaust genre by illustrating how genocide dehumanizes the villains as well as the victims.

Perhaps most surprising about The Reader is that its first half undulates with a sexual intensity which few contemporary American filmmakers would willingly endeavor upon. Unfortunately The Reader’s pedantic conclusion undermines the subtleties which characterize this otherwise powerful film. It’s also of interest to note that Hannah’s life as a Nazi guard was begun as a byproduct of her illiteracy. Thus, The Reader advocates for literacy while examining what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil” (in reference to Eichmann and the Nuremberg Trials). Curiously Arendt, who Schmitz appears to be named after, had a similarly romantic relationship with the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who was himself a notorious Nazi sympathizer.
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For more from Agent Automatic, visit agentautomatic.com.

Originally published in Verbicide issue #22

Kevin O’Rourke is part of a new generation of Motor City artists. This low-key powerhouse fuses elements of graphic design and advertising verve into frenetic rock art that’s cool as liquid nitrogen. He recently produced both the movie poster and onscreen credits for It Came From Detroit, a film about the reincarnation of Detroit’s garage scene by bands like The Detroit Cobras, Bantam Rooster, and The Dirtbombs. Being a rock artist, graphic designer, and illustrator makes Kevin one of the hardest working artists in the Motor City, and his ball-busting work ethic means that he always has multiple projects going. However, despite the long hours, he admits, “I like getting feedback from other artists and music fans. Fine art keeps me sane.”

During his short but prolific career, Kevin has produced concert posters for everybody from Lucinda Williams and Flogging Molly to Sonic Youth and Ween. His scrappy Irish countenance reveals a tendency to forgo artistic arrogance and move between the realm of fine art and more commercially accessible graphic design. Despite his ascending stature in the world of pop art, you’ll never see Kevin wearing a paint-splattered smock or resale store beret. Instead, Kevin looks more like an extra from Martin Scorcese’s The Departed.

Before moving to Detroit, Kevin cut his artistic teeth doing graphic design in Chicago. These days, he’s trying his hand at tattooing and has produced more poster art for the nationally ranked Detroit Roller Derby League than any other artist. But Kevin’s love for Detroit doesn’t stop there — his block art prints of classic Detroit buildings embody his passion for the city.

“I like character, and Detroit has a lot of it. Its buildings are graphically vibrant. Detroit’s one of the coolest cities I’ve ever lived in. Other leagues ask me to do art for them, but I don’t have the time. [The Detroit Derby league] are my girls, and I love ‘em.”

Kevin brings art into every facet of his life, including living in a building designed by the great Dutch Modernist Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe. The complex, called Lafayette Plaza, “is like an Oasis,” states O’Rourke. “There’s nothing like it in the rest of Detroit. It’s a self-contained community. It has a lot of character overall, but each unit is identical. Everything is minimal. Miles van der Rohe even coined the phrase less is more.” However, O’Rourke’s style — if he can be said to have a single style — uses elements of commercial advertising to create a current of bold colors, explosive shapes, and clearly defined messages. Much like a club DJ, Kevin samples influences from disparate sources to create something new, a reconfiguration in which the base elements are powerfully redefined in proximity to one another. Kevin’s art can be seen at www.crownvicproductions.com.

Renaissance is a French animated film, set in Paris, 2054. It follows the efforts of a police captain named Barthélémy Karas (Daniel Craig; all voice credits are from the English version) as he tries to locate a missing 22-year-old genetic engineer named Ilona Tasuiev (Romola Garai). Her sister, Bislane (Catherine McCormack), assists Karas in the hunt while simultaneously providing the film’s romantic interest. Ilona works for The Avalon Corporation, which is primarily focused on reversing the effects of aging and ultimately the cessation of aging altogether. As one of Avalon’s researchers, Dr. Jonas Muller (Ian Holm), states late in the film “Without death, life is meaningless.” Aside from being an engaging (if overly complicated) detective thriller, this film is concerned with issues of identity (and its theft), genetic engineering, and corporate control. Thus, like all films about the future, Renaissance is ultimately about the present.

Renaissance is a noir thriller, but it’s also easily the most stylized science fiction film to come along since The Matrix. Renaissance has many core elements of noir detective fiction (a cop on the edge, damsels in distress, a hard-ass supervisor, and so on). As a result, comparisons to Sin City and Blade Runner are unavoidable. Many intentionally non-anthropomorphic scenes make Renaissance’s characters appear wildly out of scale and diminished in their world. Glass floors, walls, and ceilings occasionally give the impression of a level chess board, but symbolically they illustrate that the characters are never unwatched. Sound effectively conveys mood in this film; i.e. a nightclub’s deafening pulse. Also, there are splashes of the machine aesthetic along with Art Deco images throughout Renaissance that make it seem more authentically noir. These modernist touches are complimented, rather counter-intuitively, by a Gothic aesthetic, evidenced by moody lighting and nearly constant precipitation. The attention to detail in the design of the year 2054 makes this film difficult to take your eyes off of.

Other recent sci-fi productions such as 2046 are more stylish, but not nearly as stylized as Renaissance. At its best, Renaissance is noir film taken to its absolute conclusion; an impressionist contrast level rivaling Kabuki masks. At its worst the film is over-stylized and resembles animated Patrick Nagel paintings. Either way, this film has a style which no doubt will be imitated. For those enamored with beauty and experimentation in film then Renaissance is for you. So you should go to this film if you are, A) artsy (it’s chic), B) a geek (think “comic book”), C) a filmmaker (style baby), or D) a paranoiac (yes, they’re after you).

Factotum (based on the novel by Charles Bukowski) tells the story of a man who can’t find a job he likes, but lives instead for his true ambitions of drinking and writing. The film opens with Henry Chinaski (Matt Dillon) working in an ice factory. He’s busy cutting blocks with a jackhammer when his boss tells him to take a truck and deliver some ice. However, since his first stop is at a bar, that’s as far as he goes. Not surprisingly, Chinaski’s boss discovers him getting drunk and fires him on the spot. The film’s action is encapsulated by this sort of dysfunctional cycle from which the characters seem unable or unwilling to break. Among his many jobs, Chinaski works in a bicycle warehouse, at a pickle factory and in a museum where his job is to clean dust from the nose of a giant statue. However, the time he spends writing and submitting his work for publication is ultimately more important to him than the gigs he blows. One of the crowning achievements of this film is how it juxtaposes the painful slowness of unemployment with the pathos of Bukowski’s prose. Factotum is a tragedy with occasional comedic elements that mercifully save the viewer from the moralizing that characterizes other less-sophisticated films.

As a corollary to his drinking, Chinaski proves more than adequate at picking up women at dive bars. The first, and by far most important, tryst is with Jan (performed by the underrated Lili Taylor). He moves in with her right away and they spend most of their time drinking, having sex, and throwing up (although not always in that order). Their co-dependence becomes glaringly obvious when she grows jealous of his ability to pick winning racehorses (which, for a time, is their sole source of income). The chemistry between Dillon and Taylor is intentionally mismatched, making their paring seem desperate rather than affectionate. Ultimately Henry and Jan break up, get back together again, and then split for good when she tries to better herself with a millionaire she loathes sleeping with.

Never to be kept celibate for very long, Chinaski immediately picks up Laura (Marisa Tomei) by ordering her a drink and saying, “That drink is my last. I’m broke.” Those who scoffed at Tomei’s Oscar for best actress will find this performance redeeming. She appears nearly a decade older then she actually is and while Laura does come off jaded and opportunistic, Tomei nonetheless retains the charm that’s generally associated with her.

Factotum is a more honest interpretation of Bukowski’s work than earlier films such as Barfly (1987). Because Chinaski is the autobiographic persona of Bukowski, Matt Dillon has to fight his own charisma in order to effectively portray Chinaski’s often despicable behavior. While it’s true that Dillon is too good looking to play Chinaski, he does a nice job of mirroring Bukowski’s mannerisms without going over the top. All in all, I recommend this film not just because it’s entertaining, but also because director Bent Hamer is bright enough to addresses the issues of Chinaski’s pathological depression, rather than just glamorizing drunkenness as an artistic catalyst.

(Friendly Fire Recordings, PMB #79, 202 Bedford Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11211)