"Pumpkins scream in the dead of the night!"

From wikipedia:

The term Halloween, and its older spelling Hallowe'en, is shortened from All-hallow-evening, as it is the evening before "All Hallows' Day"[1] (also known as "All Saints' Day"). The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern European Pagan traditions, until Popes Gregory III and Gregory IV moved the old Christian feast of All Saints Day to November 1. In Ireland, the name was All Hallows' Eve (often shortened to Hallow Eve), and though seldom used today, it is still a well-accepted label.

Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the liminal times of the year when spirits can make contact with the physical world and when magic is most potent (e.g. Catalan mythology about witches, Irish tales of the Sídhe).

[SHADOW]
Boys and girls of every age
Wouldn't you like to see something strange?

[SIAMESE SHADOW]
Come with us and you will see
This, our town of Halloween

[PUMPKIN PATCH CHORUS]
This is Halloween, this is Halloween
Pumpkins scream in the dead of night

[GHOSTS]
This is Halloween, everybody make a scene
Trick or treat till the neighbors gonna die of fright
It's our town, everybody screm
In this town of Halloween

[CREATURE UNDER THE BED]
I am the one hiding under your bed
Teeth ground sharp and eyes glowing red

[MAN UNDER THE STAIRS]
I am the one hiding under yours stairs
Fingers like snakes and spiders in my hair

[CORPSE CHORUS]
This is Halloween, this is Halloween

[VAMPIRES]
Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!
In this town we call home
Everyone hail to the pumpkin song

[MAYOR]
In this town, don't we love it now?
Everybody's waiting for the next surprise

[CORPSE CHORUS]
Round that corner, man hiding in the trash cam
Something's waiting no to pounce, and how you'll...

[HARLEQUIN DEMON, WEREWOLF & MELTING MAN]
Scream! This is Halloween
Red 'n' black, slimy green

[WEREWOLF]
Aren't you scared?

[WITCHES]
Well, that's just fine
Say it once, say it twice
Take a chance and roll the dice
Ride with the moon in the dead of night

[HANGING TREE]
Everybody scream, everbody scream

[HANGED MEN]
In our town of Halloween!

[CLOWN]
I am the clown with the tear-away face
Here in a flash and gone without a trace

[SECOND GHOUL]
I am the "who" when you call, "Who's there?"
I am the wind blowing through your hair

[OOGIE BOOGIE SHADOW]
I am the shadow on the moon at night
Filling your dreams to the brim with fright

[CORPSE CHORUS]
This is Halloween, this is Halloween
Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!
Halloween! Halloween!

[CHILD CORPSE TRIO]
Tender lumplings everywhere
Life's no fun without a good scare

[PARENT CORPSES]
That's our job, but we're not mean
In our town of Halloween

[CORPSE CHORUS]
In this town

[MAYOR]
Don't we love it now?

[CORPSE CHORUS]
Skeleton Jack might catch you in the back
And scream like a banshee
Make you jump out of your skin
This is Halloween, everyone scream
Wont' ya please make way for a very special guy

Our man jack is King of the Pumpkin patch
Everyone hail to the Pumpkin King

[EVERYONE]
This is Halloween, this is Halloween
Halloween! Halloween! Halloween! Halloween!

[CORPSE CHILD TRIO]
In this town we call home
Everyone hail to the pumpkin song

[EVERYONE]
La la-la la, Halloween! Halloween! [Repeat]

[Tim Burton's 'The Nightmare Before Christmas']

Happy Halloween!

moral panic part deux

in response to BlondeButBright's valid question (what is a moral panic? and why is this incident a moral panic as opposed to a panic) i present this morning's local newspaper... conveniently placed in the entrance of a hospital mostly visited by old people and families with kids

people are scared
gas boilers kill
holidays abroad kill
Corfu hoteliers are evil
Greek tourism is destroyed for ever

why is it a *moral* panic and not just a(ny) panic? because it frames the accident not as an accident (or even as a single incident of negligence) but as a myth, as an act of evil by deviants (the builders, the hotel managers, the tour operators, the Greek tourist industry, Greek people in general etc).

and because it exploits people's personal drama to create news reports such as this:

[from the Daily Mirror, 28 Oct]

Shocked engineer Alister Storey, 38, of Manchester, saw Ruth lying unconscious on a stretcher outside her bungalow the day after meeting the family on the beach. He said: "She looked asleep. Then the ambulance took her and her partner. Two hours later they brought the children out in bodybags. It's unbelievable."

Poignant reminders of the dead children remained on view behind a red and white police cordon yesterday.

Pairs of children's shoes lay on the verandah. There was also a fishing net, inflatable dinghy and green rubber ring.

Children's swimming costumes hung from a table. A bouquet of roses was placed against the blue front door, while a pair of women's flip flops lay on the step beneath the french windows.

Yesterday it was disclosed that dance teacher Sharon had decorated her children's bedroom at their Wakefield home as a surprise for their homecoming.

A family friend said: "She can't take in what has happened. They were only going to be gone for a week.

"She decorated the children's bedroom while they were away as a surprise for them when they returned. Now they'll never see it.

"The worst part is that she wasn't with her children when it happened.

"Though she's done absolutely nothing wrong, like any parent in such an awful situation a part of her will feel she somehow failed to protect them.

SHE'S telling herself that she should never have let them out of her sight. Her whole world has just fallen apart."

Outside Sharon's home near Wakefield home four bunches of flowers had been left in sympathy.

A message on one, read: "To Kristy you will be greatly miss but always in our hearts. Sleep well little angel."

Another bunch read: "To Bobby, you were a great fun loving little guy. We will never forget you."

One teenage boy who visited the house, said: "I'm one of Sharon's dance students. We're absolutely devastated.."

A best friend of Christianne's, yesterday visited her dad's home, to leave a bouquet of red roses.

Upset Zoe Jones said: "Christie sat next to me at school. She was really kind and caring. She'd do anything for me.

"If I had no one to play with me she'd always play with me. It's very sad. She was very smiley. I'm sad and I miss her a lot."

In her card she said: "Christianne and Bobby we will never forget you and you will always be in our hearts."

Early yesterday afternoon Neil's brother Ian, who runs a school's music department, and his wife, left Wakefield to fly to Corfu.

His father Howard, who owns a truck parts garage in Horbury, where Neil worked, said yesterday: "We're just completely devastated. Neil and Ruth were perfectly happy when they went on holiday. This is completely unbelievable."

Head teacher of Horbury primary school John Wright, attended by Christianne and Robert, said pupils and teachers were "deeply saddened".

He said: "Our hearts and our love go out to the whole family.

"Christie and Bobby were beautiful children."

Can someone tell me where the 'news' is in all this? And what about the 15,000 other children that die everyday because of preventable diseases - diseases or wars and conflicts authorised or not prevented by politicians voted in by me, you, the Daily Mirror editor and the dead children's father.

Don't get me wrong. What happened is awful and the people responsible should be tried for manslaughter.

But the news coverage has been disproportionate, misleading, inaccurate and has caused panic amongst the elderly and families.

Yes the people responsible for this 'tragedy' have blood on their hands. But so does every person who voted all the right-wing war-mongers in office (or who didn't protest against them). And every person who owns an SUV without needing one, killing species and destroying the natural environment. Their actions are criminal on a much bigger scale but there's no headlines about them.

what is it with children and the British media? moral panic breaks over Corfu accident

Get a life...

Review: The U.S. vs. John Lennon

On Sunday i visited the Times BFI 50th London Film Festival and it was great to be back for the seventh time, having missed last year's festival. I watched David Leaf and John Scheinfeld's documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon. The screening was followed by a very interesting Q&A with John Scheinfeld himself.

+ The documentary is certainly enjoyable, thought-provoking and at times quite moving...

- ...However, it is also a bit of a let down. The promo material creates the expectation that this is an investigative documentary exposing the tactics and paranoia of the Nixon administration. I will have to agree with James Berardinelli who notes that:

Co-directors David Leaf and John Scheinfeld have done an excellent job of accumulating photos, news & concert footage, and archival interviews with Lennon to put together an interesting portrait of aspects of the social turmoil that convulsed this country during the Nixon administration, and the musician's role in it. Where The U.S. Versus John Lennon fails is in taking the next step. We understand that Nixon viewed Lennon as a threat, that the FBI tapped his phones, and that the INS tried to have him deported, but that's all the film offers on the subject. The talking head interviews - which feature names like Yoko Ono, Walter Cronkite, George McGovern, and G. Gordon Liddy - are largely uninformative and uninteresting. One would expect Lennon's widow at least to offer something more insightful than the bland observations provided. And if the assumption is that all of the film's evidence is common knowledge, why bother in the first place?

Scheinfeld was asked about this in the Q&A and said that a film focusing just on the actual material from their investigation would have lasted about 15 minutes.

+ The filmmakers have managed to gather an amazing A-list of talking heads ranging from the most senior broadcaster in the US (Walter Cronkite who amongst other things broke the news of the JFK assassination); senior members of the Nixon administration who were at the eye of the Watergate hurricane; leading thinkers (Gore Vidal) and activists of the left (Angela Davis) and the co-founder of the Black Panthers movement (Bobby Seal); to presidential nominee and ex-Senator McGovern; and obviously Yoko Ono herself.

- However it is only Vidal who, as always, offers any serious political commentary linking those events with today's developments.



+ Leaf and Scheinfeld are good at their job. The film is tightly edited and you certainly won't be bored. This film makes you like John Lennon, even if you didn't like him before (as I didn't).

- However the directors choose to canonize Lennon, barely hinting at his darker side. Again Scheinfeld did not hide from that fact, admitting that they deliberately chose not to cover his tantrums as they did not relate to the subject matter.

Thus, there appears to be a double standard here as the film-makers did use material representing Lennon, Ono and Sean as Joseph, Madonna and Child. They did use post-Beatles material relating to his career and music (arguing that it was necessary as background / context) yet opted to exclude other aspects (mood swings) or choices (abandoning political activism after the mid-1970s) of Lennon's character.

- Finally, please, can someone talk to Yoko Ono about the beret and dark glasses? She really doesn't need to prove anything, and even if she did that wouldn't be the way to do it.

Overall, this is certainly an interesting documentary although much less controversial or revealing than expected. It's still worth watching because there are lessons to be learned about activism, social movements and the mobilisation of a public that all too often prefers to shop its way through difficult times rather than care about life-and-death issues. Sadly, it's up to us to reflect on these issues as the makers of The U.S. vs. John Lennon seem to only scratch the surface.

London Snapshots (3): The Battersea Power Station

This is for sure one of the most awesome buildings / sites I've ever been to. It felt like a James Bond movie set, and that was even more the case when i saw the 3D animation of the masterplan for the new entertainment, cultural, residential, events and commercial space. The magnitude of the project, the almost audacious ambition to regenerate one of London's most important landmarks, the sense of history and the sheer size of the Power Station (which can fit St Paul's Cathedral and is taller than the Statue of Liberty) made me feel like i was visiting Dr No's new residence.

Have a look at the website, check out the regeneration blueprints and visit the New Chinese Art exhibition. It's really worth it.

Greek Elections 2006: a photo essay

1. hard campaigning



millions of glossy leaflets lying on the streets of athens; graffitis, flyers, posters. It's interesting that they are promoting candidates with slogans such as "Athens: Humane City" or "Iraklio: the Day after Tomorrow".

2. the night before the morning after



the ubiquitous cup of coffee for a late last night of campaigning in local campaign headquarters and town squares

3. rock the vote



elections in greece are, above all else, a big party. Everybody's out in the streets, squares and parks talking, laughing, arguing, drinking, eating. A celebration of democracy (?), or more likely just an excuse to get together!

4. the return



12 years after graduation i returned to my school which was my designated polling station

5. the results



PASOK, marginally, won the elections in numbers as it increased its share of regions and got back major municipalities.

New Democracy (the government) won the elections in terms of impressions and headlines, as its losses were not as big as expected and also it handled the media very well in contrast to PASOK, which it up completely and threw away a great opportunity.

Review: In the Mood for Love

October is one of my favourite months of the year [and not just because I get lots of presents on my Name's Day!]. October is the month of the Purbeck Film Festival which always features fantastic art-house films from around the world, giving us a second chance to watch gems of past years.

Yesterday i finally got the chance to watch a Wang Kar-wai film. Hong Kong based Kar-wai is one of the world's most highly acclaimed directors. He is really an artist more than (just) a film director in that he has a distinct visual, aesthetic and narrative style consisting of repetitive references to key themes such as urban alienation and loss, non-linear narratives, elliptical plots, post-modern mix of elements from different eras (especially the 1930s, 60s, 70s), montage of footage shot at various times during his career, elegance and visual beauty, fusion of eastern and western cultural influences especially argentinian tango and latin music.

The other major trait of Kar-wai is that he does not treat each film as an individual stand-alone unit. His films are like chapters from a grand project, a grand narrative on love and loneliness. Fallen Angels [1995] was supposed to be the third act of Chungking Express [1994] (his most popular film at the time), yet he eventually decided to create a stand-alone film. Similarly, Kar-wai himself has said that Days of Being Wild [1991] and In the Mood for Love [2000] are smaller parts of the big, definitive story finally unveiled in 2046 [2004], which is considered by many to be the best film in the history of cinema. Footage originally shot for 2046 was eventually scrapped and used for The Hand instead, which was the first of three segments making up Eros [2004], co-directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and Steven Soderbergh.

Kar-wai is notorious for not using a script, for continuously and endlessly re-shooting scenes and improvising with his actors, for editing and working on his films up to the last moment before a festival screening (he was still editing 2046 the night before the Cannes screening and he only showed a working version of the film), for always wearing dark glasses, and for not conforming to the Hollywood mould of happy endings and easily digested plots.

This is clearly a restless auteur, an artist of cinema whose individual films make up a masteful body of work that needs to be considered as a whole.

In the Mood for Love is a funny, moving, sad, refreshing, nostalgic film that really illustrates all of the points made above. A series of seemingly superficial or geeky details eventually compose a beautiful, subtle, complex film: Maggie Cheung's hair and make-up took 5 hours per day; she wore a different cheongsam (one-piece Chinese dress for women) in every single scene of the film; the number of the hotel room in which the couple meet is 2046. Apparently one day Kar-wai looked at the door number and decided that his next film's title would be 2046, which incidentally marks the end of the 50 year period since the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China (1997). We never get to see the face of the two leads' spouses.

From wikipedia:

"Two novel artistic devices are used in this movie. One is the use of seemingly repetitive scenes and the other is that certain sequences which look like one scene are actually a collage of numerous encounters of the two main characters in the movie. These techniques gave the audience the impression that these two characters were doing the same thing over and over again everyday over a very long period of time. However, paying attention to the dresses (qipao) that Maggie Cheung wears reveals that she wore a different dress in every single shot in those sequences. Obviously they are not the same shot edited over and over again but actually artistic shots with different costume and makeup for each shot."

The dresses, the hair, the gossipy and overkeen neighbours (straight out of an Almodovar film - or, indeed, a Greek village), the couple's dignity, the awesome cinematography by Christopher Doyle [who last year shot James Ivory's final film The White Countess taking place in prewar Shanghai], the tango, the noodles, the biter-sweet unrealised romance.

This is a film to treasure. I'm looking forward to 2046.

EU logo competition: the winner...

...and the 10 finalists here

let me talk about nothing

"But father, I love talking about nothing. It's the only thing I know anything about!" [Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband]

MATK has been silent for the last few days. Yes it's the hectic schedule, the heavy workload, the short trip to Athens etc but it's more than that.

So much is happening and I feel I've got nothing to say or write about - but this, i.e. my lack of content.

Of course many things are happening around the world that I could have blogged about, e.g. the Foley scandal in Washington D.C., the "veil debate" in the UK or - indeed - the local elections in Greece, which I witnessed first hand.

But no, i want to talk about silence.

Silence can be more powerful than speech.
Inaction can be more dangerous than action.
Anti-matter is more destructive and effective than matter.

And, yes, maybe 'nothing' in blog terms is as important as 'something' or 'anything'.

Because, while it can signify a state of crisis, limbo or creative block, silence can also signify a state of void creativity, unpredictable stability or confusing clarity.

going through a Cold War / spy novels phase

"machines, half hidden in the fog, waiting patiently for their masters; the resonant voices and their echoes, the sudden shout and the incongruous clip of a girl's heels on a stone floor; the roar of an engine that might have been at your elbow. Everywhere that air of conspiracy which generates among people who have been up since dawn - of superiority almost, derived from the common experience of having seen the night disappear and the morning come."

John Le Carré, The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, p. 71

Review: Children of Men

On Sunday I watched Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men based on P.D. James' novel.

To cut to the chase, this is a brilliant, brilliant film: original, thought-provoking and very moving - a masterpiece, which I urge you to watch as soon as possible.

+ Don't know where to start from: script? performances? technical stuff? No, it has to be Cuarón's direction. We've seen a lot of great films in recent years but gone are the days of the (many) big directors. We've entered an era when the screenplay can make or break a film. Don't get me wrong; Children of Men is a great story - an important story, and PD James' contribution maybe as important as George Orwell's one. The script is good. But it's Cuarón's directorial masterclass that makes this film more than a sum of its parts.

+ I loved the details - from the worn London 2012 sweatshirt to the blood drops on the camera lense. I loved the balanced and detached representation of the activists. The filmmakers avoid the very dangerous trap of bad guys and good guys. The government, the media, the activists, the citizens, the immigrants, the soldiers are all on a struggle that has blinded them. Ordinary people under desperate conditions (caused by ordinary people). Children of Men combines the forensically perceptive futurism of Minority Report with the agonizing cry for humanity running through Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys.

+ The futuristic context of the film should not distract from its core message, which is about human nature, violence, power. This could easily have been a film about the past - a Schindler's List or a Jesus Christ story. We get so caught up with the packaging of a "text" (whether that's the Bible or a film) that we miss the subtle metaphors and messages it desperately tries to convey to us. There are great lessons about society, control, power and human relationships in Children of Men but unfortunately many people may obsess over the packaging. No, this film is N-O-T science fiction.

There's nothing scientific about Children of Men. Let me say this again. No 'science'. Don't let the 'science fiction / horror' shit put you off. It couldn't get any closer to reality than this.

Ten years ago Children of Men would have been rejected as an Orwellian dystopia.

Today it seems as the natural progression of our world.

Please don't tell me that it's science fiction (1)! The absolutely shocking scenes at the refugee concentration camps are a stone's throw away from what's currently happening in Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), Abu Ghraib (Iraq) and Sangatte (France). They are much milder than the reality of Auswitch-Birkenau (Germany).

Please don't tell me that it's science fiction (2)! The suicide bombings, the separation of London into 'zones' (i.e. ghettos denoting class, ethnicity/race etc) are not THAT far away from today's reality.

Please don't tell me that it's science fiction (3)! Yeah ok, we may not have reached the state of infertility described in PD James' book, but INFERTILITY IS A METAPHOR, HELLO??! We have already reached a stage in which most people think that having an interest in public affairs or politics is CRAZY, while shopping and clubbing your life away is REASONABLE. The US Government has been spending BILLIONS of dollars EVERY SINGLE WEEK over the last 5 years on the war on terror, while 19,000 children die everyday from preventable diseases.

Life can be harsher than reality.

"I think, Dr. Railly, you have given your alarmists a bad name. Surely there is very real and very convincing data that the planet cannot survive the excesses of the human race: proliferation of atomic devices, uncontrolled breeding habits, the rape of the environment, the pollution of land, sea, and air. In this context, isn't it obvious that "Chicken Little" represents the sane vision and that Homo Sapiens' motto, "Let's go shopping!" is the cry of the true lunatic?"

["Twelve Monkeys", written by David Peoples and Janet Peoples, script available here]

Read THIS and THIS.

Final word on the film: Sir Michael Caine ROCKS!

Pew Report: The Future of the Internet II

Main Findings:

"A survey of internet leaders, activists, and analysts shows that a majority agree with predictions that by 2020:

- A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.
- Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
- Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
- Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
- People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.
- English will be a universal language of global communications, but other languages will not be displaced. Indeed, many felt other languages such as Mandarin, would grow in prominence.

At the same time, there was strong dispute about those futuristic scenarios among notable numbers of 742 respondents to survey conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project and Elon University. Those who raised challenges believe that governments and corporations will not necessarily embrace policies that will allow the network to spread to under-served populations; that serious social inequalities will persist; and that “addiction” is an inappropriate notion to attach to people’s interest in virtual environments.

The experts and analysts also split evenly on a central question of whether the world will be a better place in 2020 due to the greater transparency of people and institutions afforded by the internet: 46% agreed that the benefits of greater transparency of organizations and individuals would outweigh the privacy costs and 49% disagreed." (Anderson & Rainie 2006).

The full text of the report is available here (pdf format).