This morning at the stop

Some sort of shells of nuts spread over a large area at the stop. The four darker spots are furthermore spits. Not the first time this happened, by the way.

M&M: The Hour of the Lynx

A young man arrives in a snowy small town and seemingly without reason brutally kills an elderly couple in a house. The man, by the name of Drengen, is caught and brought to the high security area of a prison. There the young psychologist Lisbet does an experiment by giving the inmates pets. Among them Drengen, who gets a red furred cat. Another inmate gets jealous during yard exercise time and throws the cat over the fence. Surprisingly Drengen has bonded a lot with the cat and ends up killing the other inmate in anger. The cat is found again. But Lisbet has to abandon the experiment. Since it's the last time with the pets, Drengen gets the cat back to say good-bye. But he claims that it's not his cat. He's convinced that god is speaking to him through the cat and pushing him to commit suicide. Lisbet doesn't know what else to do but involving the priest Helen.

Drengen is totally withdrawn and there's nothing they can get out of him that makes much sense. Helen persuades a guard to lock her in with Drengen in his cell over night. In the night Drengen starts talking and things start to make sense when he begins to talk about his past. You've got to watch yourself to find out what he's telling. The original title of this Danish-Swedish movie by the way is I lossens time.

As you can see above, Drengen is a young man, who is not afraid to use brutal force. So this movie isn't a totally easy one. Apart from those two murders however, the movie impresses by being markedly calm and makes one wonder, even well after the closing credits are over, about topics like blame, forgiveness and belief.

By the way, the source material for this movie was a theatre play The Hour of the Lynx (original title: Lodjurets Timma) by the Swedish writer Per Olov Enquist and is a play for five people, which premiered in April 1988 in Stockholm. The premiere for the German version was in 1992 in Ingolstadt. In 1991 the Hessische Rundfunk (Hessian Broadcast) and Sachsen Radio (Saxony Radio) together produced a radio play version of the theatre play.

The sad face

Caution: This entry contains Watchmen spoilers!

In January 2018 a long time and good internet friend of mine (you know who you are) and I came to talk about masks in an online game and consequently also masks more generally. I told her that I have a Scream mask that glows in the dark. (I still owe that friend a picture of that glowing mask. Back then I didn't get a good picture of that, because I keep the mask in the wardrobe in the dark.) I showed her also masks, of which I was thinking of maybe getting version 1 or version 2.They come closest to the moving Rorschach masks given the options available now. The friend wrote to me then that she had just rewatched Rorschach's death. "he looks like one of his masks inkblots on the snow".

I wrote to her under the title "Rorschach mask ink blots" the following text:

Rorschach's mask is not only moving, those blots are linked to his emotions.

This is one of the cards the psychiatrist shows him when he's caught:

This is the vision or memory he gets from seeing it: his mother (a prostitute) kissing the client. The boy sees them, worries about his mother and speaks to her, which makes the client walk away without paying the mother and she slaps her son:

We never see the full body image of them, like we do on the card, but it should be close enough to get the connection.

Rorschach's obviously false answer to what he sees: “Some nice flowers.“

This is the last image that shows on his mask shortly before his death and before he takes it off:

This is what's left of him, after Doctor Manhattan killed him:

If anything, this is his “sad“ face. It just has to be. Of course it's a sad moment in his childhood, but the image it makes on his face makes sense after we see that memory, at least it makes sense to me. He sees them close and kissing and later gets slapped. That is sad for a boy. And later he knows that Doctor Manhattan will kill him. He has to. They both know it. Another sad moment in Rorschach's life. The remains then form the only shape that makes sense.

There are other ink blots both in the book and movie that are related to certain emotions. But the sad face is the most obvious one of them all and gets repeated several times, as you can see. It's fairly obvious once you pay attention. Most people don't notice.

Check ebay for “Rorschach t-shirt” there are some with that very image for sale, too.

At that time I referred to the movie mostly. In the book there are other situations as well, in which more similar shadows are cast from different people and the Knot Tops spray their tag on walls, which is a very similar figure and on watchmen.fandom.com and whitneyblogs.weebly.com is called "The Hiroshima Lovers" following a comment the psychiatrist makes who evaluates Rorschach.

In memory of Walter Joseph Kovacs (March, 21 1940 - November, 2 1985)

M&M: Candyman

Helen Lyle (Virginia Madsen) is a graduate student in Chicago researching urban legends. During her research she comes across a local creature: the Candyman. Candyman was originally the son of slaves, who earned himself quite a bit of money when during the Civil War, he invented a machine to mass produce shoes. He fell in love with a white woman, who got pregnant from him. His father didn't like that at all. So he sent a bunch of people to brutally murder him. The right hand was sawn off and after they poored honey over his body, he got stung by hundreds of bees and eventually died from that. But when you stand in front of a mirror and say is name five times, he'll come back as Candyman and will have a hook for his right hand. He'll then kill the person that called him.

Helen and her friend Bernadette Walsh (Kasi Lemmons) want to try that. But Bernadette hesitates and leaves before saying his name five times. Helen does say it five times. Following that strange things start happening. The police take notice of Helen and it's none other than Candyman himself, who is able to help her out. But Helen has to end this curse.

You'll have to see for yourself to find out if she succeeds and how the story ends.

I became aware of this movie a while ago after I found a set of movie posters. The one of Candyman attracted me most. There's not much to see. Just one eye of a person, but the pupil of the eye has the shape of a person (Candyman) and at the eye itself there is just one single bee to be seen. This combination attracted me so much that I eventually watched the movie. The movie is fairly brutal. The story of the creation of Candyman itself should make that obvious. But there's almost no actual violence to be seen. There is talks and hints of the brutal acts, but not directly shown. But maybe I saw the cut version. There's also an R-rated one. You should in any case not be afraid of bees. Virginia Madsen was reportedly hypnotised to be able to shoot some certain scenes with bees. Who know if this is true or if that itself is another “urban legend”. In any case, towards the end there are lots of bees shown.

The movie is based on the short story “The Forbidden” by Clive Barker and can be found in volume 5 of his “Books of Blood”. Currently I haven't read the story yet, so I can't say anything about to compare it with the movie. Douglas E. Winter however speaks about Clive Barker and “The Forbidden” and the parallels as well as differenes to “Candyman” in a roughly 18 minutes long video Candyman [A Story To Tell: Clive Barker's 'The Forbidden'] (English), positive for the movie and also the changes they made compared to the short story.

Fun fact: Kasi Lemmons, who plays Helen's good friend here also plays a good friend to lead actress Jodie Foster in “The Silence Of The Lambs”.

Miss Marple and the helicopter

Yesterday a police helicopter was flying in the city. It wasn't actually flying a lot. It was more hovering in one position for a long time. Still at work I looked on the internet to find information, but didn't find any on the spot, not even on the pages of the police. In the evening I searched again with a bit different words than previously and eventually found information. Whether it was because of the different words or because of time passing, I am not sure. The helicopter wasn't searching for a person of any kind, like a co-worker and I had suspected, but had done overview shots.

The next day I told the co-worker that I had searched for information again in the evening and found some, too. She then called me "Miss Marple".

M&M: Buried

The plot of Buried from 2010 is simple: Paul (Ryan Reynolds), an American truck driver was in Iraq when he got kidnapped and is now waking up buried in a box. Apart from the clothes he's got on, he only has a lighter and a mobile phone.

Ryan Reynold is most famous in recent times for his portrayal of Wade Wilson/Deadpool. As much as comic fans enjoy seeing Reynolds in this role, he can also be serious and convince with limited possibilities which are given to him in Buried. Those who expect action and much movement should stay away from this movie. A plot in a sense is not existant. A man is trapped in a box. But that's exactly what fascinated me about the story: the huge constriction of possibilities for the actor in this situation.
Apart from voices of other people with whom Paul is talking, Ryan Reynold carries the movie effectively all alone. Reynolds achieves, in my opinion, successfully to create a feeling of suspense and to hold that throughout 90 minutes. I felt with him and was able to feel the anxiety and tightness in the box. In that time Paul as well as the viewer are faced with many questions: How did he end up in the box? Where is he now? Even if he can reach someone on the phone, how are they going to find him? Are they going to reach him in time before either air and/or phone battery run out? As a viewer you'll ask yourself if Paul maybe deserved being stuck in the box.

To find out if or how those questions are answered, you'll have to watch the movie yourself.

Magical blow

Did you ever wonder what's so magical about blowing? As a child we blow out candles on our birthday cake and make a wish. As a child, after we hurt ourselves, mommy blew on the body part that hurt to make the pain go away (or at least lessen it).

Maybe, just maybe, adults would be a bit happier again, if they pursed their lips more often and let all the air out and make a wish. But it's got to be something you really want. Not just something willy-nilly, because I just told you to and you don't really want to. Go on. Make a wish. Inhale. Purse your lips. Exhale.

Let me know in the comments if your wish came true. Also let me know if you've got ideas about what's so magical about blowing.