LED TVs: hyper-real simulacra

Last six weeks have been a whirlwind. Along with the arrival of my baby boy there has been all the effort that goes into outfitting a new cave. Couches, cribs, cutting utensils ... the entire range of modern equipment. Maybe I didn't get my hairy paws on the very the best in each case but the best I could do for my burgeoning family. After all that I decided to reward myself with a shiny new flatscreen TV. I'm very late to this game, as for years I've gotten by on my old 27" tube set. I don't watch a ton besides fights and an occasional film or HBO series. Still now that I finally had a place of my own I wanted a proper TV to invite the gang over for UFCs and boxing.

I searched high and low (meaning in upper and lower Manhattan) and saw some wondrously clear screens. Bear in mind as a caveman I don't have the weakened, over-assaulted city dweller eyesight most of you suffer from, and am blessed with the very acute vision. Well what my vision discerned astonished and frightened me; these new gigantic, LED TVs are so clear they kill the illusion of movies! In other words movies no longer look or feel like movies; the movie looks like a bunch of actors in costume performing on a digitally enhanced set. The small details and imperfections are too perceptible . It becomes more like watching a play on Broadway than a Hollywood production, except without the same warmth that proximity to the players gives on the stage. This doesn't matter for dramas or comedies, but it ruins any movie that relies on visuals or action. What was previously fantastic to my eyes becomes in a way fraudulent.

In the end I went with something reasonably priced and reasonably sharp for it's intended purpose of watching grown men bash each other in rings or cages. Super resolutions can't make combat any less real, however I value being swept up in the latest popcorn flick or sci-fi thriller. These crystal clear LED sets just make our fantasies look so real they feel fake!

The Holy Mountain

Recently I posted briefly about my trip through Philip K. Dick's gnostic psychosis. Being a book the insanity on offer there could only do something for the reader if he brings his own dose of insanity to the table (for one, committing to finishing it). Well last weekend I was exposed to something exponentially more irrational (trans-rational?) in the form of a film. Most people are well trained to sit through a movie, making this also more effective.





A friend brought over The Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowsky. I really can't describe it beyond saying it is hyper-surreal, sacrilegious, graphic and fairly repulsive in parts, and on the whole soul disturbing. It's full to brim with symbols from various mystical systems (Christianity, tarot, etc.) in strange scene after strange scene, all loosely tied together by a figure on a spiritual quest. This sort of thing may have been common back in the sixties and seventies, but it's alien and quite fresh to me. I followed up on the auteur behind it and he is as colorful and bizarre as the film. Jodorowsky is a Chilean of Ukrainian descent, was run out of Mexico for heretical film-making, and is now a comic book artist of some renown in France. I ended up ordering some of his graphic novels and the box set of his other films. I'm sure I'll have to post once again after seeing those.



You should see this, if only because someone actually was able to pull it off. But if possible you should do it at some point when you are at least marginally curious and informed about mysticism. And why should you ever be? Well I came across a related quote today post which seems as good a reason as any:

"Nonsense is nonsense, but the study of nonsense is scholarship."