A CUP OF JOE

My close-knit network of family and friends has expanded to include Joe Pera, a man I’ve never met who lives over 3,600 miles away, yet who I feel a very warm affinity to. 

Joe lives in Michigan, and is a choir teacher, although he can’t sing. Brought up by his grandparents, he appears old before his time: he moves slowly and tentatively, like someone afraid of slipping on ice (Michigan is very cold). His voice is low, hesitant and cracked, like someone recounting a deathbed memoir. A single man with mainly elderly friends, Joe is both part of and apart from the community. Quietly eccentric in almost every regard, he is also sweet and kind and trusted, although he has a tendency to focus much too hard on his singular obsessions (the perfect Christmas tree; Canadian rats; The Who song ‘Baba O’Riley’). Small town mid-western life suits him perfectly. Indeed, it is hard to imagine him surviving in any other environment. He likes trees and barns and rocks, and he fantasises about sharing these enthusiasms with a wife and family.

Each episode of Joe Pera Speaks With You is just over ten minutes long, and centres around a specific topic that Joe wants to tell us about. Life fills the gaps in the monologue, and we get to meet Joe’s friends and his Basset Hound, Gus, see some amazing scenery and follow his delicately poised romance with a survivalist band teacher called Sarah Conner. It’s a warm, wonderful and often moving programme, in which little things mean a lot. Small gestures and moments have a resonance that would be lost in most dramas, but then this seems like life rather than art, despite the fact that Joe Pera is really a comedian from Buffalo, New York.

The second series is winding to a close, and has included some major events, but these are handled gently and sensitively. Joe the choir teacher is a disconnected person whose life has been shaped by loss, but saved by love, and he grows with every episode, taking slow, measured steps towards becoming the community elder he already resembles in looks, manner and voice.

I wish they’d make an episode every day for the rest of my days: each ten minute visit is like an hour of transcendental meditation.

PURPLE PATCH

The Color Out Of Space, d. Richard Stanley (2019)

Richard Stanley hasn't directed a feature film since he was unceremoniously dumped from 1996's famously appalling Island of Doctor Moreau (which he also wrote the screenplay for) and, for much of this eagerly awaited production (H.P Lovecraft + Nicolas Cage = yes, please) he seems to have forgotten the fundamentals, like narrative, characterisation and things being in focus. Ponderous, both arch and mundane, the film plods and pooters along, frittering away time on irrelevancies, like the main characters obsession with alpacas and a poorly performing broadband connection. Even star Nicolas Cage seems uncertain, his Cageometer swinging randomly between 30 and 150%. 

When the supernatural, other worldy threat (delivered by a smelly purple meteorite) finally starts to make itself at home on Earth, however, things begin to pick up, and the last twenty five minutes or so is an unrelenting and slightly nerve shredding study in psychedelic hysteria, aided and abetted by striking visuals and a great deal of high volume screaming. It's good, but it's too much too late, only serving to highlight the deficiency of what has come before.

AGNETHA

As Agnetha Faltskog perhaps knew most of all, it wasn't easy being in ABBA. Perfection is an extremely tough standard to try and maintain.

BRAIN WARS

Blood Beat, d. Fabrice A. Zaphiratos (1983)

Rural Wisconsin is an odd place for the murderous spirit of a long dead Samurai to hang out, but I've watched so many horror films my disbelief has not just been suspended, it's been rescinded from lack of use. Blood Beat is low key and cheap (hurrah!), and trundles along on angry psychic energy as hung on the coat hook of the avenging samurai theme is the story of a dysfunctional extended family who all seem to have latent extrasensory powers, some more latent than others. 

It gets a billion bonus points for its primitive synth soundtrack and panoply of felt tipped on visual effects, including the classic mind laser jazz hands. Seriously, it's like they made this film just for me. I thank the film makers for their thoughtfulness and the awesome Hellfire Video Club for drawing this to my attention. 

OH, SANTO!

DAUGHTERS OF FIRE

Duelle, d. Jacques Rivette (1976)

This is a curious, compelling film in which the glamorous Queen of the Night and the elegant Queen of the Sun search for a magical diamond, possession of which will allow them to stay on Earth indefinitely. Lest you think it all sounds a bit Harry Potter, it's actually much more like a film noir, in which the almost exclusively female characters traipse about an after hours Paris like sleepwalkers, having enigmatic conversations in cheap motels and seedy dance halls, or in front of a horrified looking turtle in a deserted aquarium. 

Director Jacques Rivette avoids the easy at every turn, eschewing both realism and fantasy and instead allowing the actors to improvise and the bones of the script to expand and contract at will, giving the film a sometimes stilted, sometimes exciting meta-theatricality that both draws attention to and obscures its purpose. His visual style recalls silent movies, consisting mainly of long take tableau shots that sometimes feels like a test of endurance, especially as they are often accompanied by loud and annoying ragtime piano. Now and again, something mystical and unexpected happens, and the film sparks and spikes wildly into vibrant life . 

Duelle was originally part of a much bigger concept: Filles De Feu, a quadrilogy of  films that would be made together and released simultaneously, each linked by a loose overarching narrative but of a different genre. Two films into the project, however, Rivette was overcome by the magnitude of his ambition, and had a nervous breakdown. When the still fragile director tentatively returned to work over a year later, Filles de Feu had been shelved, and Duelle slunk out to a very limited release and even less acclaim. 

Before ending, it's worth noting that the only other completed film in the sequence, Noroit, didn't get a contemporary release at all, although it is now available on various modern formats. For your information, it's a pirate revenge drama starring Geraldine Chaplin and Bernadette Lafont. We'll come back to that, as it quite obviously deserves its own entry. 

DON'T POINT THAT THING AT ME

THE FUTURE, 1985

 I like everything about this video, apart from the fact that it isn't two hours long.

REPLACE IN THIS ENVELOPE IMMEDIATELY AFTER USE

Maybe it's age, maybe it's depression, maybe it's the realisation than real life never measures up to facsimile but, these days, I'd rather listen to a record of Foreign Traffic than actually go out into the world, and hear it for myself. These 45 rpm records are so beautifully utilitarian, but also genuinely beautiful, The blank verse of the titles is literally one of my favourite things and, yes, I do know what 'literally' means.

These records will outlive us all so rejoice that they exist. Without them, how would whoever discovers our bones at the wheels of our rusty cars in weed infested supermarket car parks know what cash registers, atomic power stations and 450 Budgerigars & Canaries in a show (not pictured) once sounded like? The sinister wind will still be audible, no doubt.

NO, I'LL DIE WITH YOU!

From Triumph of the Champions of Justice (1974) AKA Blue Demon Straight Up Murders Two Alien Dwarves Who Tried To Take Over The World Whilst Masquerading As Circus Performers.