Oregon Daily Emerald
PULSE
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Ryan Nyburg
Budget rack
The art
of great
monster
cinema
I'm a culture junkie. Books, films,
music, art and theater. I lell, I even ad
mire good architectural design. 1 low
many people do you know who would
go stare at a building for a few hours be
cause nothing good was showing at the
local multiplex? It's all the same to me.
If you live with this constant cultur
al input like I do, you'll begin seeing
parallels between different art forms.
What is the musical equivalent of
"The Battleship Potemkin"? Who is
the literary counterpart to the De Stijl
movement? Which director is most
like Faulkner? Is there a musical
movement that parallels the Bauhaus
school? And so on and so forth.
A few things stand out in this mess.
Horror cinema for example. I have a
deep-rooted love for honor movies
that goes back to the first time I saw
"Godzilla: King of the Monsters" at
the tender age of nine. I grew up on
Universal monsters: Boris Karloff,
Vincent Price, Bela Lugosi, giant in
sects, space invaders and indestructi
ble mass murderers. It taught me that
the world is hill of unstoppable enti
ties that will eventually destroy you.
This turned out to be a valu
able lesson.
Because of all of this, my percep
tion of certain areas of cinematic qual
ity tends to be a bit skewed. I often
rank films on how they compare to
"Psycho." 1 would be bored to tears by
a superbly acted and well-produced
four-hour melodrama, yet would be
entertained to no end by a shoddy,
low-budget film about vampires from
outer space.
And no matter how many times I
see undeniably excellent films, such
as "Citizen Kane" or "The Seventh
Seal," I will still contend that a movie
about giant ants attacking Los Ange
les ("Them!", 1954) is one of the
greatest in the history of cinema.
Why this obsession with horror?
Why this fixation on one aspect of the
vast array of cinematic styles? To an
extent it's a budgetary matter. Crappy
horror movies are cheap. A DVD of
"Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl
O-Rama" — yes, that is a real movie,
and yes, I do own it — will run you
about ten bucks, compared to $20 to
$25 for a decent Oscar winner.
But that makes the whole thing
sound like a merely financial matter,
and the truth is it goes much deeper.
Catharsis plays a part, I'm sure. There
is a certain visceral joy in watching to
tal idiots be slaughtered in highly
imaginative ways. What better way to
release some built up frustration than
to see a character you truly dislike
killed with a belt?
Turn to Nyburg, page 10
Destination: Vacation inspiration
Oregon’s diverse environments
offer countless adventures,
from the urban to the coastal
By Ryan Nyburg
Freelance Reporter
With summer comes an abun
dance of free time and a nearly
compulsive need to travel. Many
traditional summer getaways are
too far or too expensive, howev
er, for the average student to af
ford. Here are a few nearby des
tinations where students
can go and escape the tedium
of home.
One possible escape is to the
Oregon coast. With an almost
constant ocean breeze coming
off the Pacific and temperatures
averaging 10 to 20 degrees cooler
than in the Willamette Valley, the
coast is one of the best locations
to escape the heat. A few of the
highlights can also be found
along Highway 101, which hugs
the coastline.
Florence, on the central Ore
gon coast, is home to Sea Lion
Caves, the Old Town shopping
district and, of course, the dunes.
Dune buggy riding is a highlight
in the area, as are camping, crab
bing and golfing. Travel time
from Eugene to Florence is about
an hour.
Newport, one of the coast's
largest cities, is home to the Ore
gon Coast Aquarium, a Ripley's
Believe It or Not, the Yaquina
Head Lighthouse and a large
commercial fishing fleet. It also is
home to Nye Beach, one of the
most popular stretches of sand
on the coast. With its historic
bayfront, the city is a good place
for shopping, dinning or watch
ing sea lions bask in the sun.
Traveling to Newport takes a lit
tle less than two hours.
Other coastal towns to visit
include Bandon, with its beau
tiful beaches; Depoe Bay, the
whale-watching capital of the
coast, according its chamber of
commerce; and Cannon Beach,
long considered one of the most
beautiful patches of oceanfront
in America. Traveling to Depoe
Bay takes about two-and-a-half
Peter Utsey for the Emerald
hours, while trips to Baqdon
and Cannon Beach are viable
for those planning to spend
the night.
An alternative to sand and surf
can be found in Portland, Ore
gon's largest city. With more the
aters and restaurants per capita
than any other place in the coun
try, Portland is a great town for
visitors. It's also just a a two-hour
drive on Interstate 5 northbound.
Portland highlights include:
• Powell's Books, one of the
largest and most successful inde
pendent bookstores in the world,
has seven locations in the Port
land metropolitan area. The cen
tral store, Powell's City of Books,
is on West Burnside Street, takes
up a full city block and has over
a million titles. It is, according to
the Web site, the largest new and
used bookstore in the world.
• The Portland Art Museum
has a wide variety of exhibitions,
including The Oregon Biennial,
which features Oregon art; "The
Shape of Color," an exhibition of
painted sculpture by the late Joan
Miro and a collection of works by
Norman Rockwell.
Other Portland cultural desti
nations are I'he Portland Center
for the Performing Arts, The Port
land Center Stage and the Arlene
Schnitzer Concert Hall — " The
Schnitz" — which is home to the
Oregon Symphony.
Also up north are The Dalles
and the Columbia Gorge. This
part of the Columbia River is
widely considered to be one of
the best wind surfing spots in the
country.
If you are looking for a small
er community to visit, Jack
sonville might be the place. Lay
ing in the foothills of the
Siskiyou Mountains, Jack
sonville is the one of Oregon's
oldest cities. One of the high
lights in the town during the
summer is the Britt Music
Festival, which runs through
September. Jacksonville is just
west of Medford, putting travel
time at more than two-and-a
half hours.
Other places of interest in that
area include: The Oregon Vortex,
a weird little spot that hosts a va
riety of interesting natural phe
nomena; and Crater Lake, one of
America's first national parks
and one of the purest lakes in
the world.
Ashland, a beautiful town in
the Rogue Valley, is another des
tination down south worth
checking out. 1 lome of Southern
Oregon University, the city hosts
the Oregon Shakespeare
Festival, which runs until Nov. 2.
The town offers plenty of restau
rants and shopping opportuni
ties, too.
These are only a few of
the choices available within
the state, and plenty more
are out there awaiting visitors.
Happy traveling.
Ryan Nyburg is a freelance reporter
for the Emerald.
Bunuel's 'Phantom7 boldly rejects values
By Ryan Nyburg
Freelance Reporter
There has never been a filmmaker
like Luis Bunuel. That is a simple, ir
refutable fact. He is the father of cine
matic surre
alism and
one of the
most icono
clastic artists
of the 20th
FORGOTTEN
FILMS
century. If you truly love the art of cin
ema, you will eventually come across
his wide body of work.
All of that said, his films are pretty
damn funny. One of the funniest, "Le
Fantome de la Liberte" ('The Phantom
of Liberty"), is also one of the most
thought-provoking. It contains no plot
and only a slim thread connecting the
characters as the film meanders along
an ill-defined path full of repression,
self-loathing, hypocrisy and cynicism.
The film begins by following one
character, then follows a seemingly
minor character, then another and so
on into oblivion. If this sounds famil
iar, Richard Linklater used the same
technique in his "Slacker."
On a whole, the film is a difficult
pill to swallow. Bunuel was just com
ing from the success of "Le Charme
Discret de la Bourgeoisie" ('The Dis
creet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"),
which had won international success
and an Oscar for Best Foreign Film.
Bunuel, always the anarchist, found
the success morally repugnant and
apparently decided to make a broader
attack. Where "Charm" was an attack
on bourgeois values, "Phantom" goes
after basic cultural assumptions.
Without any story to hold the nar
rative together, the film exists entirely
on its individual sequences. Bunuel
seems to use the film as a way to em
ploy all the spare ideas he couldn't fit
into other films, and screenwriter
Jean-Claude Carriere weaves them to
gether in such a way that common
themes begin to appear.
One of the most famous sequences
involves a group of people arriving to
a dinner party where people speak of
excrement and use toilets in the open,
but slink off with embarrassment into
private rooms to eat. The reversal of
roles is a classic surrealist tactic, and
Bunuel seems to take some delight in
suggesting that these two activities are
merely different sides of the same
coin. Hence, the absurdity of being
embarrassed over one and flaunting
the other is clearly shown.
Another scene involves a sniper
who kills dozens of people at random
from a high-rise office building. He is
eventually captured, tried and sen
tenced to capital punishment. After
being convicted, his handcuffs are re
moved and he is allowed to walk out
of the courtroom, where an excited
crowd asks him for autographs.
Andre Breton, founder of the surre
alist movement, once said that the ul
timate surrealist art would be to fire a
pistol randomly into a crowd.
Turn to Films, page 10