The Tory Party

The Last Exorcism

SPOILERS ALL OUT OF CONTROL.

I enjoyed The Last Exorcism. Up until the last three minutes it was packed with good conflict, good ideas, good acting and good suspense.

The last three minutes were… um… NONSENSE. And nonsense stark in contrast to the pretty sophisticated, faux-documentary story that preceded it. There’s no way the current ending was the one originally scripted. NO WAY, MAN. But there was so much other good stuff that I’m still satisfied with the movie.

The power of linen compels you!

GOOD THINGS:

- Deeeeep back story for protagonist Cotton Marcus (Southern!), which made him relatable but not sympathetic — like every character on Mad Men. This is pretty much exactly what you want in your horror movie main dude. Thus he can dig himself deeper with morally ambiguous choices, and you’re unsure whether the story developments will save him or kill him.

- Really good acting. Patrick Fabian as Cotton is damn good, and Ashley Bell as demonically-troubled Nell Sweetzer is FREAKIN’ PERFECT. Like SO PERFECT. Like so cute and charming in her pure normal state and so SPOOKY TIMES in her possessed one. I mean, she’s Academy Award good, if the Academy didn’t frown on movies with turble, turble endings.

- Effective suspense/twistiness/curiosity derived from offering alternate explanations for the same behavior. (Is it real, or is it Demonex?)

- Effective exploration of classic exorcism movie themes, like

• Whether someone is really possessed or mentally ill, they’re still damn dangerous
• Well-meaning strangers can’t fix family problems
• Reality is subjective (if a fake exorcism triggers psychosis/possession, it’s hardly fake)
• When you stare into the abyss, the abyss also stares back and whatnot

and kisses on some new themes I’d like to see explored further like

• Evil plays to the camera (Sentient evil recognizes technology as a new vector to spread itself — also touched on by theatrical ending of Paranormal Activity)
• Family contending with demon as allegory for family contending with addiction
• Documentary filmmakers embodying Heisenberg uncertainty principle — they are unable to measure their subject without changing it (symbolized by the Doc Martens the producer gives Nell)

Let she who has not woken up covered in cat blood cast the first stone

.

BAD THINGS

- Social services might have been called at some point — perhaps they would refuse to respond, but still. Maybe when they found Nell chained to her bed. Just saying.

- At one point, one of our three heroes suggests they all take a nap at the same time. And they do. Perhaps they could have slept in shifts, with one nodding off inopportunely. Or one could sleep while the two others stole off to argue. But all three honk-shuing at once? Bad documentarians. Bad.

- The climactic exorcism scene is cut weird. It’s cool to show only glimpses of the spooky stuff, and Lord knows this movie’s not afraid of racking focus or obscuring frame. But the choppy editing interfered with the tension at a moment when a steady single shot would have been hella effective.

- The actual ending, for those who dare to read it: with new assurance of wrongdoing, the filmmakers return to the Sweetzer house. There — after offering many possible reasonable explanations (delusion, psychotic break, actual possession) — they find a Satanic cult in the back yard that delivers Nell’s demon baby. Yup. Yuppppers. Bit disappoint-O.

Satanic cult, eh? Then why does Nell’s brother tell the crew “don’t leave her alone with him” — meaning Nell and her dad. Is he just sowing confusion? Why does Nell tell a story so easily disproven? How did the cult get access to her when she’s been homebound for two years?

Thank the Lord for Settlers of Catan

So for your moviegoing enjoyment I provide this

ALTERNATE ENDING:

If you must watch this movie, STOP as our three heroes are back in the truck, heading back to the Sweetzer house at sunset with threatening clouds in the sky. They have just learned that the tidy conclusion they came to is not true. They must bring this knowledge back to Daddy Sweetzer and figure out what the hell is going on.

Nightfall. The three arrive at the house. No lights. No signs of life. Camera man guides their path with the camera light.

They climb the porch. Front door open. Let themselves in.

Searching the house. Producer woman calls 911.

A sound upstairs. Cotton insists they check it out. The other two refuse, so he goes alone.

They wait at the bottom of the stairs. And wait. “Cotton?”

Eventually Cotton returns, calling out, “Nothing! There’s no one.”

Then, from the ceiling falls a SEVERED ARM! Screamytimes! There’s the wedding ring (foreshadowed!) — it’s Mr. Sweetzer. Wherever the rest of him is, he’s hella dead.

The three run screaming from the house.

Once the three are safely outside, the house bursts into flames! Why not? It’s an exorcism movie! Wooo! Burny explodey house!

Camera man spots Nell’s body in the woods. They go to her. She is covered in blood, but looks peaceful and fully human. She has her mom’s crucifix (foreshadowed!!1!) around her neck.

Says she: “I got it out. I got it out of me.”

Got what out? What?

“But now I don’t know where it is.”

OH NOES. There’s a terrible, Evil Deadular sound in the woods. And the camera, which heretofore has been very shaky and spazzy, becomes quite steady.

More questions from Cotton and the producer: What do you mean? What happened to your father?

Now the camera weaves from side to side. Camera man’s breathing labors.

Nell glances up at the camera and SCREAMS! Cotton and producer SCREAM!

Camera hurtles down. BLACK.

.

OR

.

The demon leaves Nell to possess Cotton, because an evangelical pastor with a camera crew is the most primo habitat a demon could hope to find. He goes home to his lovely family and his lovely town and is evil incarnate and no one notices but us.

Pretty moishe any other ending would have worked better.

Aaaaaand spent.

PIL on Snow Leopard: _jpeg_resync_to_restart error

Oh man I just got this working so I’m gonna write it all down in case I have to do this again later.

CONTEXT:

Using:

- jpeg-7
- PyQt 4.6
- PIL (aka Imaging) 1.1.6
- reportlab 2.3
- Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.4)

I use PIL and reportlab so my PyQt applications can make PDFs and print nicely. Rad. I like reportlab and it does what I need. I really like PyQt 4.6 especially now that Pixmaps have native jpeg support so I don’t need to do a song and dance to show a jpeg in my applications.

But in upgrading to Snow Leopard something in my PIL installation got a little borked. Executing this code:


imageFilePath = somePathToAJpeg
pixmapImage = QtGui.QPixmap(imageFilePath)

pilImage.save(stringIO, format='png')
pixmapImage = QtGui.QPixmap()
pixmapImage.loadFromData(stringIO.getvalue())


Got this error:


Traceback (most recent call last):
File "test/ui/AssetPrinterTest.py", line 89, in testCreatePDF
pdfCreatorObj.createPDF(desiredFilePath, True)
File "/homes/tory/workspace/spLib/ui/AssetPrinter.py", line 183, in createPDF
doc.build(elements)
File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/reportlab/platypus/doctemplate.py", line 1010, in build
BaseDocTemplate.build(self,flowables, canvasmaker=canvasmaker)
...
...
...
File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 532, in tostring
self.load()
File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/PIL/ImageFile.py", line 164, in load
self.load_prepare()
File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/PIL/PngImagePlugin.py", line 381, in load_prepare
ImageFile.ImageFile.load_prepare(self)
File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/PIL/ImageFile.py", line 231, in load_prepare
self.im = Image.core.new(self.mode, self.size)
File "/Library/Python/2.6/site-packages/PIL/Image.py", line 37, in __getattr__
raise ImportError("The _imaging C module is not installed")
ImportError: The _imaging C module is not installed


PyQt 4.6’s native jpeg support meant I could just rip out this code (that I had needed way back in 4.4.3) and my jpegs loaded fine and I could deal with my PIL malfunctions another day.

Today is the day I have to deal with my PIL malfunctions.

PROBLEM:

There’s a problem with my _imaging C library, you say? Let’s find out some more about it.

Stop. Google time.

Google this error, there are many links and many suggestions. I searched and searched for the “click your heels three times” option, but apparently I was going to need to clean house and reinstall.

The good news is it hella worked. Some of my steps might not be strictly necessary, but here’s what I did that worked:

SOLUTION:

1) Force the gcc and gcov paths to 4.2:


sudo rm /usr/bin/gcc
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gcc-4.2 /usr/bin/gcc
sudo rm /usr/bin/gcov
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gcov-4.2 /usr/bin/gcov


(Suggested by Remi in comments here.)

gcc 4.2 is the latest at the time of this writing. gcc 4.0 is required for successful MySQLdb installation, and that’s probably what got borked.

[Also, per Bram Braakman's advice, I checked my .profile file. (Turns out I didn't have the explicit "export CC" line he warned about in my .profile file, but I may have the last time I was messing with my PIL install.)]

Now I know I’m using the right version of gcc.

.

2) In my .profile, commented out these lines I had kicking around:


#ARCHFLAGS="-arch x86_64"
#export ARCHFLAGS


Did I need to do this? I dunno.

.

3) Picked through my system to delete EVERYTHING called anything like “libjpeg,” “PIL” or “Imaging.”

Over time I’d tried so many different ways to fix this install that I had libjpeg and PIL files everywhere from /usr/local to /opt/local to /sw/lib. It looks like my PIL was only ever referencing the installation at /Library/Python/2.6/site-packages, which is good, but better safe than re-installing.

.

4) Followed these installation instructions, starting with downloading libjpeg afresh.

.

RESULT:

YESSSSSSS. Now my PDFs have images!

In our cube we have a gong so that those who have accomplished coding tasks may celebrate their fleeting victories.

I hella gonged the gong out of that gong.

Na na na na na na na na na CAT DANCE

I found you a present:

Well, Justin found you a present, but I’m taking credit.

Government and Private Enterprise

The Zappos ads in the airport security bins trouble me.

Growing up on Marine Corps bases, I learned that separation of commerce and state is healthy for both — a lot like, ya know, separation of church and state. It isn’t fair for a body as massive as the federal government to endorse one private enterprise above another. That’s why the Stars and Stripes doesn’t have ads, and AFRTS shows public service announcements instead of commercials.

Just for funsies, here are some of those:

(OH MAH GAW. I remember the one at 1:40 so well I am crying with giggles. “Not right now, Jim! I’m trying to drive!”)

(Ads start at 6:35, and I can recite these by heart, too. Oh, YouTube. YouTube, YouTube, YouTube.)

—————–

OKAY FULL STOP.

STOP EVERYTHING.

STOP.

Now that you have experienced the above, see that this is what PSAs are like in Okinawa today:

If you think I will not spend the next week going “BAAAAM, I’M A STYROFOAM CUP, YO!” you are SORELY MISTAKE.

AND MORE! With Towelie influence!

Mr. Soapy — contemporary Okinawa PSA

Anyway. Back on track.

——————-

Of course, there are areas where separation is trickier:

- Is it OK Burger King won the hamburger bidding war, so I grew up on BK at Camp Lejeune and not McDonald’s? (Answer: Yes. BK is delicious and I am not brainwashed at all in this regard.)

- Is it OK for a court to legally mandate God-conscious twelve-step programs? (Answer: No.)

- In our capitalism-driven culture, isn’t it impossible to fully pry apart state and commerce, especially in areas like health care? (Answer: Yes — but it seems to me state-driven approaches to public health [including our own Medicare and Medicaid] work pretty well, whereas our current money-driven approach in general is BORKED, and I dunno what the solution is but I know it is definitely not more privatization.)

But health care in America is definitely a topic for another day.

Related: how well the military managed its institutions (hospitals, schools, housing, etc.), and what could be applied to the rest of the public, is also a topic for another day.

Also related: I totally forgot about the Stars and Stripes. I will hella put this paper in my RSS feed.

Also additionally related: how America is the frippin’ BEST at propaganda, and I wanna see it come back, is also a topic for another day. Where my crash test dummies at? Where my brain on drugs at? You think we couldn’t drum up some physical fitness or energy conservation with some sweet 30 second spots? This is America! WE RULE AT CONVINCING.

But I digress.

The point is the separation is always a good thing to strive for.

You stand in line at the airport and take your shoes off because the government says you have to in order to get on a plane. Advertising to you as you perform this federally-enforced task seems… shady.

Highly related but differently opinioned article (courtesy Random_Tangent) explaining how Zappos got the gig: Zappos Sizes Up Airport Security Bin Marketing

Target: Loud Sigh

Ah, Target. Ahhhh, Target.

Usually you are so nice and fair and responsible in general that when you do stuff like support pharmacist decisions not to provide Plan B or donate to a Republican PAC that supports an anti-gay candidate, it feels personal. I expect this kind of behavior out of a Wal-Mart or a Best Buy. I just thought you would be… different.

My question is — what is the most helpful thing for me to do? Boycott you? Buy less crap from you? Write you a strongly-worded letter?

Today Jezebel offered some interesting suggestions and some even more interesting discussion.

It seems like the consensus is:

- You are not totally evil
- No other store is totally good (though CostCo pretty great)
- Probably best to buy less crap in general

I’m hatching a plan to put together an earthquake kit this weekend (for various reasons), and there was a time I would have bought crap at you, Target. Seems like I should buy my crap elsewhere — and take a hard look at how much new crap I need to accomplish this goal, and how much can be assembled/repurposed from old crap.

What do you other shopping people think?