upcoming
Review of Inland Empire coming in the next couple of days hopefully. More impressionistic, critical, and longer than was originally intended. It's becoming almost a philosophical disquisition on identity and awareness via the intersection of biographical anecdotes and subjective responses to the film. This may partly be santiago's obssession with Montaigne coming out. The ancient collection of a selection of his essays is a book that is regularly returned to*.
The article on nightmares also promised in the last entry will take a longer time. There's never been a systematic attempt to take notes on them or to come up with any ordered analysis. They mostly seem to derive from thoughts and events in the days preceding, and occur mainly when santiago gets overheated at night. The most frightening nightmares don't derive from anything 'seen' but from a sense of dread almost wholly unrelated to anything that happens in the dream, which may even precede it. As yet the structure of this article hasn't even been considered.
All of which is interfering in a quite comic way with Creeping Man, a full length script that's been coming together for a while. Bits of it need cutting out altogether, other bits need rewriting, and a few new scenes need creating. But every time santiago attempts to tackle the editing another idea for a bit of writing (or two) intrudes, like those above. In fact in addition to these another short (possibly ten-minute) script has been started based around a simple visual idea. Despite this Creeping Man remains the priority, albeit one on a longer timescale than the other bits of writing.
Following on from the failure of Tramp Ahead santiago is nontheless considering making a couple more films, a recently completed ten-minute script about a timeslip relationship**, and if it can be finished and organised the new ten minute script mentioned before could be shot at the same time***. And this time the intention is to have technical assistance from a friend, better quality kit, and some proper actors. Now this could be an interesting process to document here once dates and other requirements start to come together. H'm the wishlist grows.
*Santiago is setting up a myspace page, and lists of influential books, films, music etc will feature over there. Needless to say I'll link that page from here and link dead wasp from there as soon as it's all sorted. It's likely to mean a minor spruce-up over a week or so: a new portrait and a different one there, some new links, maybe a change to the profile and more of that over on the right.
Matt Dalby MySpace page now added. 15/5/8 Although please note that I got bored of lists of inspiring art and artists, which can look a bit show-offy. I've now replaced the lists with made up people, books etc.
Another feature being considered for myspace is an archive of poems, photos and short films. Poems (again possibly), scripts and short stories will be archived on the revived mattdalby website over on Tripod. Both of these will take some time to put together, and MySpace will be the priority. Stuff will still get posted here, but it would be nice to have somewhere a bit more consistently edited and selective. 15/5/8 Oops! Still haven't got round to adding stuff to the Tripod page - I will try to get on to it this summer - honest
**In fact it's a metaphor for the way people communicate and how their relationships change, but it can be read without any of this interpretative mechanism. This seems to be one of the defining obssessions of santiago's scriptwriting, and one of the three distinct modes that seem to occur in my writing. There are the elaborate relationship metaphors, supernatural and otherwise unrealistic elements of the scripts, the domestic minutae, limited scope, scrambled chronology and episodic nature of the short stories, and the assault on structures of language and literature in an attempt to circumvent the concious mind of the poems.
***Another elaborate relationship metaphor as it happens, inspired in equal parts by William Morris' News From Nowhere and by a scene from Inland Empire. You see how it all fits together? It's almost like there's some kind of thought going on.
The article on nightmares also promised in the last entry will take a longer time. There's never been a systematic attempt to take notes on them or to come up with any ordered analysis. They mostly seem to derive from thoughts and events in the days preceding, and occur mainly when santiago gets overheated at night. The most frightening nightmares don't derive from anything 'seen' but from a sense of dread almost wholly unrelated to anything that happens in the dream, which may even precede it. As yet the structure of this article hasn't even been considered.
All of which is interfering in a quite comic way with Creeping Man, a full length script that's been coming together for a while. Bits of it need cutting out altogether, other bits need rewriting, and a few new scenes need creating. But every time santiago attempts to tackle the editing another idea for a bit of writing (or two) intrudes, like those above. In fact in addition to these another short (possibly ten-minute) script has been started based around a simple visual idea. Despite this Creeping Man remains the priority, albeit one on a longer timescale than the other bits of writing.
Following on from the failure of Tramp Ahead santiago is nontheless considering making a couple more films, a recently completed ten-minute script about a timeslip relationship**, and if it can be finished and organised the new ten minute script mentioned before could be shot at the same time***. And this time the intention is to have technical assistance from a friend, better quality kit, and some proper actors. Now this could be an interesting process to document here once dates and other requirements start to come together. H'm the wishlist grows.
*Santiago is setting up a myspace page, and lists of influential books, films, music etc will feature over there. Needless to say I'll link that page from here and link dead wasp from there as soon as it's all sorted. It's likely to mean a minor spruce-up over a week or so: a new portrait and a different one there, some new links, maybe a change to the profile and more of that over on the right.
Matt Dalby MySpace page now added. 15/5/8 Although please note that I got bored of lists of inspiring art and artists, which can look a bit show-offy. I've now replaced the lists with made up people, books etc.
Another feature being considered for myspace is an archive of poems, photos and short films. Poems (again possibly), scripts and short stories will be archived on the revived mattdalby website over on Tripod. Both of these will take some time to put together, and MySpace will be the priority. Stuff will still get posted here, but it would be nice to have somewhere a bit more consistently edited and selective. 15/5/8 Oops! Still haven't got round to adding stuff to the Tripod page - I will try to get on to it this summer - honest
**In fact it's a metaphor for the way people communicate and how their relationships change, but it can be read without any of this interpretative mechanism. This seems to be one of the defining obssessions of santiago's scriptwriting, and one of the three distinct modes that seem to occur in my writing. There are the elaborate relationship metaphors, supernatural and otherwise unrealistic elements of the scripts, the domestic minutae, limited scope, scrambled chronology and episodic nature of the short stories, and the assault on structures of language and literature in an attempt to circumvent the concious mind of the poems.
***Another elaborate relationship metaphor as it happens, inspired in equal parts by William Morris' News From Nowhere and by a scene from Inland Empire. You see how it all fits together? It's almost like there's some kind of thought going on.
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