bafflegab.org

Mr. “Richard Bentley” (I assume this to be a nom de plume) has been kind enough to send me a copy of his latest work “From Portugal & Urgent Reply Needed“.

Bentley’s decision to publish his text exclusively in a plain-text electronic format is interesting in itself - flying as it does in the face of a traditional conception of publication. Furthermore, his preparedness to mass-mail his tale to an unsuspecting audience also adds a welcome element of suprise to this boundary-shifting short work.

We are brought into the story by a frank depiction of our protagonist, Bentley himself. Here we quickly learn that he has a terminal form of cancer, and that his focus on money has led him to mistreat many on his rise to success. The tone quickly changes though, as we learn of Bentley’s Scrooge-like change of heart, and he comes to realise that “…there is more to life than just wanting to have or make all the money in the world.”¹

At this point, a religious theme enters the work and the piquant juxtaposition of the divinely inspired morality that Bentley now comes to adopt with the telling earlier descriptions of his previous wrongdoings is artfully rendered. Returning again to the subtext of the corrupting influence of money, Bentley here introduces us the remainder of the dramatis personnae in the form of his family members. As Bentley’s disease progresses, he is forced to rely on others to carry out his good works, but his family refuse to do so, preferring to try to force an increase in their own share of his wealth.

Here Bentley’s changes his narrative style again to take the novel route of being written primarily in the 2nd person. (There is sufficient foreshadowing of this earlier in the piece to preserve continuity, but the shift is still largely unexpected.) It is the reader him/herself who is now petitioned for assistance. Bentley speaks of a “…huge cash deposit…” and tasks the reader to “…help [him] collect this deposit and dispatch it to charity organizations”² with an incentive of 5% for the reader him/herself.

The story is left quite open ended, the final plea for assistance will stay with readers for some time. I expect to see more work from Bentley in the near future, and hope he will stick with his unusual electronic format. The piece was very short, however, and although the twists and turns of the plot were satisfying, I would like to see this prodigious writer tackle a more plausible subject.

1 - Bentley, R. From Portugal & Urgent Reply Needed, 2005, Unsolicited email, pp. 1

2 - ibid

–
_{Posted by BonusWavePilot}

Click-Lash: Noun - The state of dismay experienced on realising the on-screen button you have just hurriedly pressed will result in unwanted, or irreperable results.

–
_{Posted by BonusWavePilot}

Title: Strings

Actors: (Voices of) James McAvoy, Katherine McCormack, Julian Glover, Derek Jacobi, Ian Hart

Director: Anders Rønnow-Klarlund

Year: 2004

Rating: 7/10

OK, this is a puppet movie. Like, real puppets; not animatronics, not CG, just puppets. (Well, maybe a bit of the others, but only when they’re cheating, which isn’t often.) It has a fairly straightforward fantasy plot (son of the king goes questing & finds that all is not as black & white as it seemed, and that maybe his people have been the bad guys throughout the years of war: betrayal, intrigue, love-interest vs. leader of the enemy sexual tension) with some good dark bits and pieces, but the odd conceit is that the strings controlling the puppets are an integral part of the plot instead of being ignored or concealed.

The puppets themselves are awesomely well made, and the ‘acting’ (I s’pose I should say puppetry) is likewise excellent. Good voice actors in the English version, too (I can’t speak for the Danish one.)

Title: House of 1000 Corpses

Actors: Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Robert Allen Mukes, Chris Hardwick, Erin Daniels, Jennifer Jostyn, Rainn Williams

Director: Rob Zombie

Year: 2003

Rating: 6/10

Grisly and bizarre horror film. Visually quite well put together; well shot, (some slightly unneccesary quick-cuts) and with a carnival theme which proves appropriately chilling (everyone is scared of clowns, right?). Falls down a bit in that the protagonists are clearly going to die from the beginning. They’re just a smidge too hapless.

The whole thing is somewhat fragmented, too, and there’s a lot of stuff that just isn’t explained. OK, you want mysterious bad-guys in a film like this, but there again, I want to know WHY the mud-zombies only take one of their potential victims before disappearing again.

So yeah, pretty to look at, rather grotesque, fondly formulaic, but unsatisfyingly arbitrary in parts.

(It gets an extra rating point for the scene where one of the bad guys is tormenting an intended victim while wearing the flayed skin of her father, and his off-siders are chanting “Who’s your daddy?”)

Title: How to Get Ahead in Advertising

Actors: Richard E Grant, Rachel Ward, Richard Wilson, Jacqueline Tong

Director: Bruce Robinson

Year: 1989

Rating: 8/10

A rather strange film about an ad-exec who can’t come to terms with an ad for pimple-cream, which eventually leads him to a breakdown of sorts and a bitter examination of the industry as a whole… Oh, and a really nasty boil he can’t get rid of, which gradually turns into another head which tries to take over and return him to slick bastardry…

Good acting by Grant, nicely weird concept, gratifyingly unhappy ending. Its all a bit 80’s, but that’s allowable now and again.