I re-watched Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch recently. Like all ‘great’ works of art, you see different things every time you look at it, and it gives the appearance of changing as you do. In part, the film is concerned with ageing.
Continue readingThe Duel
Posted in The Duel with tags Jonathan Hobbes, Krishnamurti, Marcus Aurelius, meditations, Patricio Manuel, Philosophy, Sam Peckinpah, stoicism, The Wild Bunch, Yuval Noah Harari on February 5, 2024 by Jarrod Boyle
The Duel
Posted in The Duel with tags bouncer, Christianity, Feminism, Islam, Karate, Nazism, Sapiens, Victorian Super Heavyweight Champion, Yuval Noah Harari on January 27, 2024 by Jarrod Boyle
I didn’t start playing sport because I was athletic, or because it was part of the school curriculum. I was angry; furiously angry, and I wanted to fight.
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The Duel
Posted in The Duel with tags boarding school, Football, ruckman on January 19, 2024 by Jarrod Boyle
The Antagonist
J- kicked the football towards the sun, leaping into the air as the ball sprang from his extended foot. It continued to climb as he returned to earth, his kicking leg gracefully extended as if it willed the ball forward on its ascent, its slow pendulous flight in sharp contrast to the chaotic spread of the players beneath it.
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The Duel
Posted in The Duel with tags bully, Holotropic Breathwork, sexual assault, shaman, supermarket, The Duellists on January 10, 2024 by Jarrod Boyle
Dragged Backwards – Into The Past – By The Balls
You’re never ready for these sorts of things when they overtake you. It’s probably part of the reason they fester in your mind for so long afterwards.
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Maestro
Posted in Film, Netflix with tags Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Edna St Vincent Millay, Ely Cathedral, Hollywood, Killers of the Flower Moon, Leonard Bernstein, LGBTQI+, Maestro, Mahler, Martin Scorsese, Netflix, Tar on January 1, 2024 by Jarrod Boyle
Watching a narrative film made in Hollywood is a lot like riding a skateboard downhill; you look to find your point of balance and once that’s established, gravity will do the rest. That said, I found Maestro a difficult film to find my balance on.
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‘Keyboard Warrior’: The Loathsome Andrew Tate
Posted in fighting, Kickboxing, Observation, violence against women with tags Andrew Tate, axe kick, BBC News, Gokhan Saki, Golden Glory, Greta Thunberg, human trafficking, International Kickboxer Magazine, John Wayne Parr, Journalism, Kickboxing, misogynist, Nathan Corbett, Peter Graham, Semmy Schilt on November 11, 2023 by Jarrod Boyle
I first became aware of Andrew Tate during a particularly irritating conversation with a friend of mine who knows absolutely nothing whatsoever about kickboxing, beyond the fact that I’m involved with it.
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De Palma Goes For Gold
Posted in Film, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Al Pacino, Alfred Hitchcock, Body Double, Brian De Palma, Drill, Eli Roth, Hostel, Hostel II, Jake Scully, Klute, misogyny, Noah Baumbach, Penis, Rear Window, Scarface, still life, Toorak, Trak Cinema, Vertigo, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema on September 18, 2023 by Jarrod Boyle
I was surprised I’d never seen Brian De Palma’s 1984 film Body Double until I discovered it available for free-to-air viewing on SBS iView last night. My interest was piqued the night before when I watched Noah Baumbach’s doco De Palma, recommended by a friend.
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Better Than the Real Thing? Love in Blade Runner 2049
Posted in Film with tags Blade Runner 2049, Elvis, K, kindness, love, Pornography, Stanley Kubrick, The Shining on April 23, 2023 by Jarrod Boyle
‘…On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth…’
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Milan Kundera.
The protagonist, a blade runner named K, is in love with his AI. She’s essentially a hologram, and in a pivotal scene, she organises a ‘pleasure model’ to come to his apartment so she can merge herself with it in order to make love to him.
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‘The Men Who Came Too Late and Stayed Too Long.’
Posted in Film, Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags Bryan Dorries, David Fincher, Pauline Kael, Peckinpah, Roger Ebert, The Wild Bunch on March 25, 2023 by Jarrod Boyle
2.
What I like about Peckinpah is that you never know what you’re going to get. You’re certainly not there to be ‘entertained’. Like David Fincher says, it’s going to leave a scar.
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‘The Men Who Came Too Late and Stayed Too Long.’
Posted in Film, Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men with tags Apocalypse, Billie Eilish, COVID, hip replacement, Ocean Eyes, Point Break, Sam Peckinpah, Straw Dogs, Surgery, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Wild Bunch on March 19, 2023 by Jarrod Boyle
1.
Surgery is a major life event. I had a hip replacement, which means full derailment; it’s a paradigm shift quite unlike any other. And most of the time, paradigm shifts find you stranded in a world that’s changed and requires that you develop new skills in order to cope. In my case, I return to the world with a certain ability that I had lost, namely, the ability to walk and stand square and strong, without pain.
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Theme Park at its Darkest 