Supermarket Books - The Return

In the past I've been known to talk about a serious concern in the world today... The Supermarket book. Today I let my inner kindness get the best of me as I finally decided I have to read the last one I was given.

The book is Wicked Prey by John Sandford, and you will be thrilled to see on the cover that it's presented for the "FIRST TIME IN PAPER BACK".

If you are wondering why I am writing yet another post about this subject, it's because it's easy. Hell, this book is writing it for me. I haven't even started reading it yet but how could it be bad?

The St. Louis Dispatch calls it, "A...wham-bam tale" and Publishers Weekly exclaims that the book is "Amped up, Ultra-Violent... [and] slam-bang." Honestly, let's see Ian McEwan or Kazuo Ishiguro get a review like that!

Don't believe this book is gonna be great still? Well how about I tell you what else the author has written?

Oh wow, he wrote Phantom Prey and Invisible Prey! Those were great! Other classics include Broken Prey, Hidden Prey, Naked Prey, Mortal Prey, Chosen Prey, Easy Prey, Certain Prey, Secret Prey, Winter Prey, Shadow Prey and The Man Who Thought He Owned The World. Ok I made one of those up, can you guess which?

On the back cover it says John Sandford is a pseudonym for Pulitzer Prize winner John Camp. Weird, why does he use a pseudonym for the books he's putting out so quickly?

I'm sure you've already stopped reading this due to the impulse to order this on amazon immediately but for those of you still here, I present my review below.

Bliz-O-Vision says "This is one helluva snog-flog thriller!!"

The Welfare of a Nation.

There are many who live their comfortable lives with no grasp of the problems that are still actually out there. For example, I have lived my entire life living in a relatively small city that always seemed clean, quiet and safe. I had no idea that there were so many mentally unstable and homeless in the downtown area until recently. The system is set up in a way to keep them there. They aren't given any incentive to try to make changes for themselves and depressingly enough, a lot of them are using their monthly welfare cheques, paid for by our tax dollars to buy drugs. In that respect the government is funding addiction and homelessness with our tax dollars. Wouldn't that money be better spent on some sort of home care service to try and put these people back on track? I know this could be done as it's a similar idea to how our system helps the disabled. I would even go as far as to argue that many of these people are disabled people who fell through the cracks.

My real issue here is not with the people who can't help themselves, as they really need something in place to keep them on the straight and narrow, so much as the people who don't want to help themselves. I personally know a few people who are more or less living off the system as a free ride. They sleep in shelters for only a small portion of their welfare cheque and try to convince others to buy them drugs and other things when they are low on funds.

This is why I feel to clean up the streets we need some form of social care system to help those who want to be helped, as I know they exist, and let those who don't want to be helped sleep in the bed they've made. I can't justify giving 30% of my paycheck to a government who helps people buy drugs and Listerine. We are taxed hard here in Canada and we smile and brag about our badass healthcare system, but maybe it's time to reexamine how that money is being spent. I'm cool with being taxed if it's in the name of making this beautiful country a better place.

I need to clarify though, obviously we can't just leave those who don't want to be helped out in the cold, as much as I believe in a certain degree of tough love. I just feel, that if you want free money, maybe you should be showing that you actually want to do well with it.

This system does not and is never gonna work as long as the policy makers have their heads up in the clouds. Unfortunately, I'm just some naive lower mid-class person who doesn't like what he sees, and maybe I'm bitter because I haven't given up and won a prize as so many do.

I'm frustrated, and maybe it's time for something new. I bet I get some hate for this one, but I'm standing by it.

The Enter the Void experience

Enter the void is a 2009 arthouse film by Gaspar Noé who, in the past, made the disturbing film Irreversible. In this day and age the term "visionary director" is thrown around way too much, but trust me when I say Gaspar Noé is a true "visionary director". That said though, I say he specializes in movies you absolutely do not want to watch more than once. Irreversible made you the witness of a nightmarish event and the follow through. As shocking as that was, Enter the Void actually makes you experience it yourself. How? The entire movie is first person, usually with pure silence. It is you yourself and your "avatar" Oscar floating around experiencing twisted events around every corner.

The set up is simple. Oscar talking about how he's reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead and doing lots of DMT. The DMT of course leads to him massively tripping out and seeing bizarre hallucinations. Then some of the longest most strategic shots I've ever seen, likely with cuts, but I really couldn't tell when they were happening. He walks over to a place called The Void to make a drug deal, but it turns out it's a bust and he runs into a water closet (did I mention it happens in Tokyo?) and flushes the drugs. The police shoot him through the door and he falls dead. Suddenly the eyeline starts to move up to the ceiling and when it turns around and looks down to see his own dead body. The movie all goes from that with various bizarre flashbacks as well as checking on certain people in the moments following his death.

I planned to write a review of this movie before watching it but after watching it I didn't really know how. This is a hard movie to talk about. It is literally entirely muffled sounds and bizarre bright colors jammed into disturbing memories and scenes. The plot isn't terribly important either, this movie is in essence, an experience.

It's easy to dismiss this movie as a drug trip movie, and I feel bad that the main thing this movie will be used for is getting baked and watching it, but what I love about it are the various plausible interpretations. It really makes you think. Is the whole thing a drug trip or is it his life flashing before his eyes, or is it actually happening?

Overall, this is one of the most visually beautiful movies I've seen and I wish I had it on Bluray. It was a really amazing experience for the first 90 minutes or so, but the last 70 minutes (yeah, it's 161 minutes) just tend to get old. At that point, the novelty of floating through shocking images, just isn't shocking anymore and if they would have maybe cut out about 30 minutes of the hour of trippy images the movie would have worked better. Oh, by the way, there is a camera inside a vagina... just thought I'd throw that out there. Also I challenge you to find a better opening credits sequence than this...

Below is my spoilerified interpretation of the movie. Only read this if you don't plan to watch it or have already.

As a forward, DMT is released from the human brain during deep REM sleep and when the body dies. It gives VERY realistic hallucinations and some even say that alien abductions are actually DMT caused.

To me the second he is shot, the DMT starts releasing, and right away he starts having visions to help him sort out his thoughts (that is what DMT is mostly used for, very interesting drug). Ultimately, I would go as far as to say that the whole movie from the point of him getting shot on is all in his head, taking place in seconds but feeling like a very long time. First off the fundamental idea for the hallucination really meshes with the Tibetan Book of the Dead, in which the basic idea is to have experiences and then be reborn. Of course him having been reading the book it was fresh in his mind and thus influenced his experience psychologically, ultimately leading to him being reborn inside of his sister (hence the vagina cam I was talking about) and connecting to a sperm that enters the egg.

Ultimately I feel that it didn't actually happen and thus this movie is a bleak and cynical experience for me. Thankfully it remains open to interpretation, and that's why I feel so good about this movie.
Give it a watch if you are cool with prostitution, drugs and really special film making. If you are a casual movie watcher, or looking for something fun, just move along.