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ANTICHRIST TRAILER

“To work a little freer with the medium…” –Lars Von Trier

“A spectacularly violent film.”— Chris Alexander (Fangoria Magazine)

Lars Von Trier has always been a controversial figure in modern cinema. Known for films that break conventional form, both in plot and in his eye-popping visual style, he has already worked with such actresses as Bjork and Catherine Deneuve in his Oscar nominated film Dancer in the Dark. He developed a film movement and manifesto with a few other filmmakers, such as Harmony Korine (Kids, Gummo), called Dogma 95. The Dogma rules were anarchic and free- all digital and hand-held shots, nothing fake, no props, no special effects, no credits, and often improvisation. The man used rules for almost all his films, an esoteric code he’d created that freed cinema from its usual formula.

There are no rules in Antichrist. It is its own monster. As a psychological film, it is without parallel in intensity and its power to unsettle. As a horror film, it is perhaps the most profoundly disturbing and unconventional piece since, “The Shining.”

Antichrist stars only two actors- Willem Defoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It begins with a beautifully shot introduction of the two characters copulating intensely, while unbeknownst to them their toddler accidentally falls to his death from an open window. The film is divided into three chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue: Grief, Pain, Despair, and Gynocide. Willem Defoe plays the psychiatrist husband trying to help his wife out of her almost psychotic state of bereavement. In an effort to heal her, he suggests she confront her greatest fear: their small cabin in the woods named “Eden.” What transpires in that place will shake you for the rest of your life. Horror film journalist Chris Alexander (writer for Fangoria Magazine) describes his experience watching the film: “Even as someone who grew up on horror films, I was shocked. This goes above and beyond any kind of torture porn {sexploitation] horror film. This is a spectacularly violent film.” Despite the hyped violence, don’t expect some slasher flick. This is a surreal masterpiece, a nightmarish vision that concentrates on nature. “Nature is Satan’s church,” says Gainsbourg’s disturbed character in the film. But whether it is the physical nature of the forest or the nature of man, this film is an exploration of the nature of evil. Begun as a means of dealing with a crippling depression, Von Trier has said of the film, [sic]“It has no rules. There are things in the film that I cannot explain, it cannot be expected to make perfect sense.”

My own experience while watching it was one of mixed terror and intrigue. The incongruent images are hallucinatory; the entire film’s shots are either stark images of the bleak forest and the actors’ faces, or unbelievable, eerily surreal visuals reminiscent of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. The violence was so controversial at Cannes that it caused some people to walk out. It was a gore-fest of genital mutilation, torture, and extreme emotions, though they dominate only the last part of the film. It has been criticized as misogynistic, and it is true that the primitive and violent acts stem mostly from Gainsbourg’s character. However, I think these allegations miss the true point of the film. The violent nature is quite present in both characters. It is especially embodied in the dark forest and the strange animals around them. At one point, a fox is shown eating its own intestines, before looking up at Defoe’s character and saying in a deep and guttural voice, “Chaos reigns.” In the bizarre world that Lars Von Trier has fashioned for us, foxes, crows, and falling acorns are symbols of death, torture, and destruction. The couple is constantly accosted by visions of their tragedy at the start of the film, the child’s death, which shook the couple into their instability. All of this is suddenly brought back by the falling and dying acorns raining down from the trees, a dead fawn, a baby bird falling out of its nest. The magic of the film is Von Trier’s ability to make the benign seem horrifying, imbuing everything around us with a potential for malice.

“Who are you?”

“I am nature.”

“What do you want?”

“To hurt you as much as I possibly can.”

Themes of emotional as well as physical violence and masochism are repeated throughout the film and done with such dream-like grace that one cannot help but feel caught within a nightmare from which they cannot awake. The end product is a deeply unsettling experience; my heart was beating in my chest. I was physically affected by the film. It was sensational, at times even painful, but it was all worth the experience. It is something like a David Lynch film combined with the Marquis de Sade. Something like falling off a cliff and thinking you will die, only to wake up and realize it was a dream.

If by now you haven’t already guessed, this film is NOT for the weak of stomach. There are scenes of explicit sexual violence, but they are not gratuitous- not simply meant to shock. For the open-minded, it is not only a terrifying movie experience, but also an opportunity to enter an intellectual maze, a puzzle of psychosis and almost occult evil.  It’s a step in a direction that few dare to go. But if it’s been a while since a film scared the shit out of you, and your feeling brave…Antichrist is an hour and fifty minutes of your life that will haunt you forever.

In a good way. I hope.

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Transmission DUB: A little history and theory on the world of Dubstep music, along with some of the scene’s hot-spots here in the south of The United States…

By Christopher Flakus

I know the Lone Star State may appear like an odd home for alternative music and lifestyles. For many living out of state and the country, this may seem like an odd home for a bourgeoning electro-dance movement. I have been asked by out of state friends why I, of all people, choose to live and write here?

I always answer by saying, “I take it you haven’t been to Austin?”

This is Austin, Texas: the proud home for all things strange. Austin has built itself a reputation on weirdness; the local motto: “Keep Austin Weird” is a creative and unique way of allowing alternative culture to thrive. It is known also as ‘The Live Music Capitol of The World.’ This last term is an exaggeration of course, but I am hard-pressed to think of any other place where on any given night you can venture downtown and hear live bands of every imaginable genre. Whatever your music, whatever you do for kicks, it’s happening every night in downtown Austin. Punk Rock, Reggae, Indie Rock, and Country and Blues bands do nightly gigs all over the cities clubs and bars. Recently, more of these Texas night-freaks have been flocking to Sixth Street bars like Barcelona, Plush, and Flamingo Cantina for DJ-hosted ‘Dubstep nights.’

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By Christopher Miguel Flakus

Generation Y, one of many terms used to describe our generation, along with “Millennial” (My personal favorite). We are also known as the Post-Baby Boomer Generation as well as“Echo Boomers.” This last being a reference on our birthrates being similar in some ways to the so-called “baby-boomers.” For sake of continuity, let’s just refer to this generation not as “Generation Y” just because the guys before us, those disenchanted, angst-ridden guys in their Jane’s Addiction T-Shirts, listening to Guns N Roses…. those guys were called Gen X. They are so close to us, still Millenials, but not quite children of the online world like we are.  Not to talk shit about the eighties and early nineties, everything can look bad in retrospect. Llooking back now, it all seems like regretting having worn those torn Jinco pants and a backwards baseball cap, well it must have seemed cool at the time.

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A bit of gameplay preview at E3.

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During the recent E3 appearance of microsoft, project natal was revealed. A revolutionary new way of interacting with the console, no controller! It’s about life experience.

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Try as hard as you like to learn about the world through books, education or any conventional means, there will still be a wealth of knowledge outside your grasp. That is, if you’re just like me, a normal citizen trying to make it in this world.

There is a whole realm above ours, one that is above even the rich. That realm belongs to the tiny percentage of elites that own a disproportionate slice of the pie who have the ability to make sure they will always have the greatest share. People below that level will probably never get a full grasp of what these elites do and what their intentions are. At best you can get a glimmer. We can always speculate though, can’t we?

All sorts of malevolent deeds have been attributed to the elites; JFK’s assassinations, the 9/11 attack or whatever incident that has unanswered questions. Conspiracies dealing with events such as those will never be solved unless “they” want them solved, but some conspiracies are right before your eyes. These conspiracies can hardly be called that, they are more like the way the world is headed and the elites don’t have to meet behind closed doors to get it them in motion. These plans are the result of the discussions of elite organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations or think tanks that usher in new ideas.

The North American Union is a good example of the plan right before the public’s eye. Free trade has been the prerogative of almost every nation since the end of World War Two and the NAU is a manifestation of these policies. The core tenets of the North American Union are an extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement; meaning the further widening of the flow of capital, products and labor between the three member nations. Other propositions that come along with the union include a common transit and communication system, and more importantly, a common currency.

At first glance this does not sound like an evil plan being thrown upon us, the ignorant populace, and it may not be. The union does have the potential to improve the lives of every citizen in the US, Canada and Mexico, but more than likely it will produce what free trade has done wherever it is implemented: the rich get richer and the poor are marginalized even further.

The European Union is the only economic union to have existed, and is certainly not seen as an evil plan foisted by a cabal of billionaires. The difference between the EU and the potential NAU is the equality among its member nations. No nation is allowed to be a member of the EU if they do not meet the economic and social standards and every nation that is a member is relatively on the same economic level. The difference between the US & Canada’s economies and Mexico’s are grand in comparison. The US and Canada have a majority of mid to upper echelon jobs that require education higher than high school or an undergraduate degree, while Mexico has mostly laborers with little to no schooling.

If these three nations’ economies were allowed to progress naturally, their standards would eventually reach a point where an economic union would be beneficial to the rich and poor of all three nations. The US is not producing as many engineers or scientists and the size of the uneducated lower class are swelling. Mexico is slowly but surely improving. However, right now and in the next decade or so, a North American Union would only serve to increase the wealth of multinational corporations that have no regard for the nations they operate in.

Mexico still has a vast amount of natural resources that are yet to be harvested. There are several oil fields in the desert and off the coast ready to be tapped, but require sophisticated drilling technology that the state run oil company does not have. There are minerals yet to be mined, and agricultural fields that could be improved with modern techniques. Multinational corporations are dying to get their hands around these resources, but are prevented by regulations. These regulations would be eliminated in a heartbeat if an economic union were implemented. Although this sounds favorable toward Mexico, it is doubtful it would reap the full benefits of its resources if they are harvested in this fashion. A slower economic buildup and an easing of trade restrictions would be the better option if these hard to reach resources are to profit the people who live on the land in which they are located.

There are several reasons why a union between the three North American nations would be a detriment to the majority of the populace in each country, but let’s not get bogged down on the specifics. It is sufficient to say that at this time, a union is not something the average American/Mexican/Canadian wants. The union is something that will probably happened down the road, but most likely will happen in your children’s lifetime(if you’re my age, 24). If there is a conspiracy involved with the North American Union, it would be the hasty realization of the union. At this moment, only the uber rich and shareholders in multinational corporations would reap the benefits, and those people are the elites mentioned at the beginning.

In order to speed up the process of creating a union, a raison d’etre needs to happen, or be produced. There must be a reason for the US and/or Canada to get involved with the workings of Mexican government. It is less than likely that Mexico would have any sort of reason to interfere with the US or Canada. Something must happen that would necessitate the international community, with the US spearheading the operation, to inject itself into Mexico; a reason for a quasi-nation building.

The past year or so, the word ‘failed state’ has been bandied around in the media and by some US politicians to describe the Mexican government. The basis for such a bold accusation is the escalating drug war being waged in Mexico, and occasionally spilling over onto the US side of the border. Using the trusty tool of fear, sentiment about Mexico’s situation and its possible international repercussions have put Mexico in the spotlight. The world, or more importantly the US, looks at Mexico to see what they are doing to remedy their problems. Problems that are so ‘terrible’, that it could collapse as a government, wreaking havoc that could interfere with the US and Canada.

There is your rationale for the US to step into Mexico: a problem that Mexico can’t solve by itself and requires foreign assistance. Foreign assistance that will probably make huge institutional changes that may or may not have to do with the problem at hand. Institutional changes that become permanent, that will make the country more receptive to the free trade aspects of an economic union.

Luckily, it seems that the drug war has not escalated enough to become an impetus for US involvement on the Mexican side of the war. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be one tomorrow or next year. There could be another influenza outbreak, a natural disaster that wreaks the population and economy. Anything could pop up, and if there is a cabal of elites pulling the strings of globalism, you know they’ll be there as soon as it’s feasible.

Globalism is the open conspiracy before your eyes. It is a policy that all but ensures that the elites stay at the top. How it get’s executed is the conspiracy. Just pay attention and it becomes clear.

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Enjoi.

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Cat Dreams by mxp is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at jcapelo.com.