Auteur archieven: Jeppe Kleijngeld

The Verdict: Nightmare Alley

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Guillermo del Toro is a terrific filmmaker, but Nightmare Alley is ultimately disappointing. It starts off well with a grifter (Bradley Cooper) who joins a traveling carnival in the 1940s. Here, he learns a mentalist act that he uses to independently become a successful psychic. Then he meets a psychiatrist (Cate Blanchet) who is out to expose him as a fraud. The atmosphere is a mix between a dreamlike David Lynch movie and a film noir. The cinematography and production design are obviously top notch and so is the cast. Where it goes wrong is the screenplay that Del Toro wrote with Kim Morgan based on a novel by William Lindsay. All the time (150 minutes!), you are waiting for a big reveal, but it never comes. This type of noir storytelling has programmed our brains to already know for certain that the main character is doomed, but how it eventually comes to pass in this movie is predictable and unsatisfying. Alas, Nightmare Alley may be a visual treat, but in terms of storytelling it fails to move the viewer.

Nightmare Alley is now available on Disney Plus

The verdict: to stream or not to stream? Not to stream

10 New Beatles Insights Through Peter Jackson’s ‘Get Back’

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

‘It would be fair to say that today ‘Let It Be’ symbolizes the breaking-up of the Beatles. That’s the mythology, the truth is somewhat different. The real story of ‘Let It Be’ has been locked in the vaults of Apple Corps for the last 50 years.’

So says director Peter Jackson in the ‘Get Back’ book that accompanied his eight hour lasting documentary on Disney Plus.

Jackson’s film fills in a lot of missing puzzle pieces in the story of the world’s most discussed band. Not for nothing are basically all Beatles Wikipedia-pages re-edited with new information from the previously unseen footage. For me personally, the documentary was a real eye opener. It gave me the following new insights into the legendary group and my favorite musicians of all time. The order of the insights is completely arbitrary.

1. George spontaneously quit the band
After George leaves, which for me seemed to happen completely out of the blue, John considers replacing him with Eric Clapton who had just left Cream. Was he serious? Maybe. Of course they really wanted George back…

2. There was little conflict
Despite George leaving, there was little conflict. At least nothing dramatic. Of course they had frequent discussions and they were obviously uncertain about how they should proceed and evolve from that stage on, but major fights and arguments? There weren’t any.

3. Yoko is just a wallflower
A persistent rumor about this period of The Beatles was that John constantly bringing Yoko to the studio was a major source of tension within the group. This doesn’t appear to be the case. She is always there, but she hardly speaks. Just once in a while she plays some experimental music. Besides, the other guys bring their girlfriends along as well constantly, especially Paul, but it doesn’t distract from the creative process at all.

4. Many of the later songs were already being written here
During the ‘Get Back’ sessions, they played many early versions of songs that would later appear on ‘Abbey Road’ (their final album) and solo albums. These songs include: I want you (she’s so heavy), Polythene Pam, Teddy Boy, Her Majesty, Hot As Son, Isn’t It a Pity, Something, Octopus’ Garden, Jealous Guy, Sitting in the Backseat of my Car, Gimme Some Truth, She Came in Through My Bedroom Window, Another Day, All Things Must Pass, Oh Darling, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, Every Day, Carry That Weight and Sun King.

5. Much of the creative process is just goofing around
By this time, their full time job was just coming to the studio and composing amazing music. They did so by fooling around much of the time. They know literally hundreds of songs and played them constantly. The documentary also shows the almost telepathic connection between Lennon and McCartney. And an observation by Jackson is that Lennon found a new partner in Yoko Ono and this is visibly painful for McCartney. But he accepts it and deals with it.

6. Jealous Guy had a different title and different lyrics first
Jealous Guy – one of Lennon’s great solo songs (B-side of Imagine) – was first called On the Road to Marrakesh. Apparently, John wrote this in India, then it was rejected for ‘The White Album’ and here he plays it during the sessions at Twickenham Studios.

7. Paul is a great manager as John takes a back seat
In the early days of The Beatles, John was sort of the bandleader. During the ‘Get Back’ sessions, it is Paul. He does so in an inspiring way. He wants to go for the best possible results and doesn’t get pushy or annoying. He is just trying to keep the band going and eventually, they get really going.

8. The album ‘Let It Be Naked’ is much better than the original
‘Let It Be’ was up until now my least favorite album by The Beatles. This changed when I heard the Naked-version which was released in 2003. This made me realize what a messed up job Phil Spector did with the material on the 1970 original version. And why did he exclude Don’t Let Me Down? A fucked up decision. The Naked-version is true to the original vision of the group to strip their music down. All of the twelve songs sound amazing. This is an album truly worthy of this brilliant band.

9. One After 909 is one of their early songs
I never appreciated this song much, but thanks to the documentary I started loving it and I now play it constantly. It is an early song which John wrote while he was just 15. Paul is very pleased with it as well. The lyrics are about nothing, but what does it matter? It just sounds really really good.

10. There were ideas for a different ‘The End’
During the film and in the many transcribed conversations in the books, the boys and original documentary maker, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, were constantly trying to come up with an idea for a live performance to conclude the ‘Get Back’ project. Of course this ends up being the famous rooftop concert – The Beatles last live gig ever – but there were many ideas before that. The best one was Paul’s. He proposed a live show with news men in between songs bringing the latest news. And at the end of the show, the final bulletin is… ‘The Beatles have broken up!’

The Metaphysics of X-Men

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

In what type of universe do the X-Men live? I would argue it’s a mental one, since that is the only way we can explain some of their super powers. Most notably professor X (telepathy), Magneto (manipulating metal, a form of telekinesis) and Jean Grey (both telepathy and telekinesis).

These powers wouldn’t work in a material universe, in which each person has a personal mind created by the brain. How would professor X be able to enter every mind on earth using his super computer Cerebro if all minds were separate entities that were closed off from one another? Same for the powers of Jean Grey and Magneto. Since they are able to move objects with their minds, that must mean that in their universe there is a fundamental connection on a deep level between their mentality and objects made of both organic and non-organic matter. Only a field of mind underlying reality would make these abilities possible.

The metaphysics of most scientists today is materialism or physicalism, in which the mental powers applied by these mutants would be impossible to explain. But why have this discussion at all? There is no proof of telepathy and telekinesis whatsoever right? Not quite. Psi-researcher Dean Radin and others in this field have provided a lot of proof for the existence of these powers. However, they are not exactly in the same league as Magneto who, in one of the X-Men movies, is able to lift an entire football stadium with his mind alone and carry it across the sky.

Parapsychologist Radin supports the mental universe worldview and has undertaken some interesting experiments to support it using a random-number generator. A random-number generator converts random events of radioactive decay into random arrays of zeros and ones with the aid of a computer. Radin took these random-number generators to locations where people were meditating. He found that, in the presence of meditators, the behavior of random number generators became significantly more non-random than was statistically expected.

Radin suggested that the random-number generator should deviate maximally from randomness in the presence of coherent intentions. And he verified this idea, not only with people in meditation setting, but also with people watching the Super Bowl. In those situations, Radin found that intention indeed caused deviation from randomness. In situations where people were scatterbrained and not particularly intending anything, the random-number generators behaved normally. For example, in the corporate boardroom or at a university faculty meeting, random-number generators really generated random arrays of zeros and ones. In the meditation halls, they didn’t. This supports the new view of quantum physics that conscious intention affects outcomes(*1).

Radin also confirmed the existence of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, ESP (Extra Sensory Perception) and psychokinesis. He combined the lab results of countless studies on these parapsychological phenomena and showed in the end that the results were far too strong (up to millions to one) to be coincidence. These studies were designed very carefully so that there was no doubt that the effects would have come about in a different way. Tests that were in doubt have been removed from the results and the results were still very convincing(*2).

In short, many experiments in psi-research and also in quantum mechanics confirm that we are living in a X-Men universe. Fictional are the mutations and the extreme level of the mental abilities, but in principle these abilities are not impossible if indeed the universe is entirely mental and matter is secondary to mind. The question then becomes: what feature or function (in our brains) stops us from being great telepaths? I have to ask professor X next time I mentally connect with him.

The X-Men Films From Worst To Best
10. X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)
09. The Wolverine (2013)
08. X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)
07. X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
06. X-Men 3: The Last Stand (2006)
05. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
04. X-Men (2000)
03. X-Men: First Class (2011)
02. X2 (2003)
01. Logan (2017)

 

 


Sources
*1 Goswami, A. The Everything Answer Book: How Quantum Science Explains Love, Death, and the Meaning of Life. Newburyport, Massachusetts: Hampton Roads Publishing, 2017

*2 Radin, D. The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena. San Francisco: HarperOne, 1997