Girls: A Violent and Gorgeous Film by Maureen O’Connell

This film’s writer and director, Maureen O’Connell, is a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. The school doesn’t make a good first impression with all its diction and dialects. But her film does. I’m a bit of a jerk about British drama training. Derek Jacobi once made an offer of employment that I refused while asked for another beer. That’s my general attitude about the Kenneth Branagh tribe. Nobody’s ever produced duller Shakespeare than Mr. I-Am-a-Hard-Working-Shakespearean-Dammit! O’Connell comes from Ireland… usually an ace up an actor’s sleeve… except in Mr. Branagh’s case. If O’Connell can keep RADA off of her back, she might just have something very fine going on as a director. She’s made a great film here. There are some technical issues with sound that annoy me, but they seem easily solvable by simply converting a stereo track to mono and blending a few audio transitions together. Someone could fix that up in a few minutes for her.

The film is about a comfortably middle-class girl who seems disconnected from her family and friends. She takes a sudden turn toward what I can only call suburban violence. The film builds quietly toward a surprising viciousness that seems very real. O’Connell darts around the action like she’s making a documentary. She works well with actors, somehow getting large groups of them to create scenes that are shockingly realistic and disturbing. There’s not a hint of awkwardness in her camera work. In fact, she seems, along with director of photography Arthur Mulhern, to revel in what I call the messy image. It is my belief that only people who seek out messy images can become great filmmakers. I will not explain that too much. It should be obvious to any filmmaker. The film contains a crystallizing and gorgeous image where O’Connell points the camera into the sun and tracks a running group of teenagers after a fight. It’s a great image that violates the norms of video photography. In fact, I notice quite a bit of light leaking into the lens during the film. O’Connell’s violence is shocking but also mesmerizing. She approaches it in a slightly off-kilter manner that I can’t quite get a handle on. Just when you think it’s time for her to calm down and quiet things, someone gets kicked in the face. She just has a natural sense of drama.

Her lead performer, Marilyn Bane, conveys her role brilliantly. She is a cross between likeable innocence and brute savage that I want to hit with a baseball bat. Really fine work. All the actors are terrific and the group of ass-kicking girls is just horrifying.

So this Maureen O’Connell is probably going to be making something very fine for the BBC soon. Get ready for it. Because it won’t be pretty. But it’ll leave a big bruise for a long while.  She’ll most likely have to get over all that RADA stuff.  Although, to contradict myself slightly, she does do this nice little Romeo & Juliet thing that I listened to!

British Riots Indicate Global Revolt Against Corporate Control of Governments

Below is a BBC news video of a man named Darcus Howe trying to explain what he has observed as being the cause of the violent rioting that is burning down parts of London and other cities across Great Britain. The news woman should probably be dismissed as quickly as possible because she is incompetent and obviously has a problem with the answers she’s getting.

Mr. Howe’s honest attempt to communicate his ideas about what has led to these riots should be listened to carefully. It is common knowledge that Great Britain has descended in the past ten years into the western world’s most closely observed police state. Everyone is watched on every street corner everywhere every day. Police routinely suppress free expression and demonstrations. According to Mr. Howe, they are also searching non-whites for no reason. Under such conditions, with the addition of worldwide financial panic and ‘austerity measures’ being put into place that strip services from the poor and middle classes, all it takes is a single flashpoint to ignite massive riots.

In case you had not gotten the picture yet, we are seeing a global explosion of rebellion, demonstration and riot. I firmly believe that all the rioting and revolt in the Middle East is directly connected to the rioting and revolt going on in Europe. People are finally seeing a broad general picture of a world and its governments, whether they be democratic or authoritarian, being controlled and dominated by a handful of powerful global corporations. Under such control, governments lean their decisions in favor of these corporate entities and the very wealthy people behind them.

The UK riots have broken out very shortly after the expanding news story of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporations committing crimes in partnership with the police as part of what they represent as ‘journalism.’ That is basically a tip of the iceberg example of corporate control of a nation.

To call the riots simple acts of vandalism by thugs is a gross simplification of the situation. All riots start from some cause which comes at the end of a long resentment and building desperation. When the riots actually break out they include all sorts of people, many of whom are simple thugs and criminals. But those thugs don’t normally break into riots that burn cities down. They are normally robbing convenience stores and shooting each other. Something much larger than them brings them out into open battle on the streets.

Widespread unemployment, idleness and the easy access to video information from all over the world builds anger and resentment toward governments that seem locked into corporate bonds. People begin to realize that it doesn’t matter who they elect. All the candidates are run by the corporations. The defining signal to the world, much to everyone’s surprise, was the election of Barack Obama. He won his office by seeming to promise something new – something independent and free. But as soon as he took office the world saw that he was just another corporate middle man. The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are simply at the behest of the corporations that insist upon such a course which includes the very profitable activity of ‘nation building.’ That Obama signal – that horrific disappointment – has led directly to this global explosion of rage. Obama, by not being who he should have been, lit the fuse. The bomb is now going off.

Here’s a man explaining the riots to a journalist in London:

The ongoing worldwide explosion of violence is the beginning of a global war against corporate control of nations.

We are watching the beginnings of a worldwide effort to break government away from this corporate control. It mirrors the efforts of prior centuries to break away from the control of the Church.

It’s going to get worse and it’s going to spread virulently. The fact that London has exploded should indicate to everyone that it is leaping past all predictability.

Thank you to Dangerous Minds for the videos.

Facebook Appears to Delete Photos and Pages Related to Gay Men Kissing

If this photo upsets you or offends you, then kiss my ass.  Facebook appears to have deleted a page set up to organize a protest over two gay men who were thrown out of a British pub for kissing at their table.  (Update: It turns out that the protest organizer made the page private.  But it still looks as though Facebook removed some other posts and pics related to this issue.)  Over the course of my life I have observed many men and women kissing in restaurants, bars, taxis, airplanes, streets, theaters, Ferris wheels, boats, beaches and on television.  It’s a simple act of affection that is practiced by all cultures worldwide.

If a man and a woman feel something for one another, they kiss.  If two men feel something for one another, they kiss.  If two women feel something for one another, they kiss.

Facebook doesn’t seem to see it that way.  They appear to consider it offensive.  Objectionable.  Perverse.

This is what’s wrong behind the scenes with corporate control of major communications tools.  You get some unevolved, intellectually limited, vapid, sexually repressed jackasses running the show and suddenly no one is really allowed to communicate freely anymore.  This is a sure indicator that we need to move off of services like Facebook and into fully open-source social networking tools.

Mark Zuckerberg may be one of these mental midgets (Don’t be fooled by the movie.  It doesn’t take much to code Facebook really.  It’s just MySpace with a white background.) with problems in the sexual arena.  Those dull watery eyes might be a dead giveaway.  At any rate, he presides over a company that is apparently banning photos of men kissing while fully clothed.

Candlelight Stories supports the rights of all gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual persons.  Those rights include the right to kiss and the right to marry and the right to carry on in any way they see fit.

It does not escape me that some of Candlelight’s slower readers will find this post surprising and perhaps offensive.  To those readers I say, get the hell out of here, take your kids with you and don’t let the door hit your expanding ass on the way out.  I don’t publish for you.  Never have.  Never will.  I consider you monkey people.  Unattractive, limp, unschooled, unappealing and quite frankly disgusting.  If you were to read another word of my writing, I think I would vomit.

For those others of you who understand that we all have the same right to kiss, go onto Facebook and share this photo.

Animation: The Scared Ladybird

Ok, do these kids have any idea how good this work is? I think they probably do, because they are a total crack-up. ‘People say I’m spotty, but I say I’m dotty.’ Lots of laughs and excellent dialog from these kids who are going to turn their school (Oxley Park Primary School) into an animation studio very quickly. This is the result of another animation camp from Quirky Pictures.

Film by Children: The Sword in the Stone

Children at West Lea School made this animated version of the King Arthur legend in their Quirky Pictures animation workshop.  It’s a marvelous telling of the tale of how Arthur is able to pull the sword from the stone and become king.  These kids have created a wonderful film that tells its story fearlessly and with great imagination.  I will find many more of these animations to post here.

Great Britain Releases Pan Am Lockerbie Bomber on ‘Campassionate’ Grounds

Great Britain, the most anti-terrorism and surveillance-oriented nation in the world, has released from prison the mass-murderer terrorist, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, who carried out the bombing of the Pan Am passenger jet over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988 which killed 270 people.  It would appear that the decision to release one of the worst terrorists in history was made by Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill.  Apparently, the terrorist is suffering from terminal prostate cancer and the authorities in Great Britain saw fit to release him on ‘compassionate’ grounds.  Compassion.  Great Britain feels compelled to alleviate the suffering of a man who bombed 270 men women and children out of the skies over Scotland.  One of those children actually grew up next door to my former wife.

This absolute debacle has the potential to collapse the current government in Great Britain because worldwide outrage is so extreme.  British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is refusing to openly criticize the decision to release made by Scotland’s semi-autonomous justice system.  In fact, there are increasing reports that the release is due to trade agreements between Great Britain and Libya.  The released terrorist was given a hero’s welcome in Libya, with the Scottish flag being waved as part of the revolting celebration.  The nation of Libya employed the terrorists and directed the carrying out of the bombing in 1988.  Libya’s leader, Colonel Gaddafi, actually thanked Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Queen of England, saying:

To my friends in Scotland, the Scottish National Party, and Scottish prime minister, and the foreign secretary, I praise their courage for having proved their independence in decision making despite the unacceptable and unreasonable measures that they faced. Nevertheless they took this courageously right and humanitarian decision.

And I say to my friend Brown, the Prime Minister of Britain, his Government, the Queen of Britain, Elizabeth, and Prince Andrew, who all contributed to encouraging the Scottish government to take this historic and courageous decision, despite the obstacles.

In Great Britain you are on security video surveillance almost everywhere you go.  There are more closed circuit television cameras watching the population there than anywhere else on earth.  The police are hyper-vigilant about anyone so much as lifting a camera in a train station.  Civil liberties are under constant assault in the name of security.  But when a convicted mass-murderer and international terrorist gets prostate cancer he is apparently free to return home to his terrorist boss and have a parade in honor of his accomplishments as a terrorist.

I think the faster the leadership in Great Britain is asked to leave, the better.