Haynesville

Haynesville Movie Trailer from Gregory Kallenberg on Vimeo.

I may have mentioned it a few times here, but my employer is a natural gas E&P company. We primarily produce gas from shale formations. This type of gas production is a relatively recent development in the history of oil and gas exploration. It has been made possible by the combination and gradual improvement of two technologies--directional drilling (the ability to curve the path of the drill bit) and hydraulic fracturing. This is needed because unlike other kind of rock where gas (and oil) are found, like sandstone, shale is basically impermeable. So we drill horizontally through a shale formation, then pump down water at super-high pressures to open tiny fractures in the shale, releasing the trapped gas.

It turns out that there are big, gas-bearing shale formations all over the USA (and probably all over the world). They are being produced right now in North Texas, north Louisana, northern Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. In the next year or so, we might see production come on line in New York State and even Poland.

Now think about this. All the big oil and gas finds for the past few decades have been found either in distant foreign countries or in remote areas like the North Slope of Alaska or in the Gulf of Mexico. The old Jed Clampett story of farmers sitting atop a sea of oil or gas has mostly passed into folklore--part of the great American myth.

Until now.

That's what Haynesville is about--in part. The Haynesville Shale is a large gas-bearing shale formation laying under northern Louisiana extending a bit into east Texas and southern Arkansas. It lies under lots of rural towns and farms and the small city of Shreveport. The filmmakers follow three people, each affected by the "gold rush" for acreage. The movie follows three people whose lives are changed by the coming of big gas companies writing big checks for lease agreements. I don't want to spoil it, but there is a degree of overnight wealth displayed in the movie, and it deals with what happens to people who get it. You definitely get a glimpse into small-town and rural Louisiana life--the pine forests and wetlands, the rundown semi-suburban houses on huge lots. I grew up playing in places like this, and the lives of these people rang pretty true to me.

In addition to the Haynesville folks, the movie talks to geologists and energy experts, including environmentalists and heavy-duty advocates of alternative energies. These guys, far from being against this gas boom, felt it was the best chance to transition into a clean energy future. They all admitted that America's energy needs could not be met by alternative energies. There are still obvious technical hurdles, not the least of which is the unreliability of alternate energy sources (the sun doesn't shine all day, and the wind sometimes doesn't blow). They spoke of the need to develop energy storage technology, as well as of the need to ramp alternate energy technologies up. But they were looking at a long time horizon.

In the meantime, they wanted gas as our main electrical generation fuel. They saw it as cleaner than coal (which it is, of course) and as producing more energy per ton of carbon dioxide produced. And a few mentioned American energy security, which domestic sources of natural gas help to provide.

The brilliant part was that the filmmakers quoted people from the alternative energy and environmental communities--but no one from energy companies. I happen to agree with the experts in Haynesville, but if you hear it from me (or T. Boone Pickens or some guy from the A.P.I.), it sounds totally self-interested. But the experts in Haynesville had no vested interest in gas, which makes them more credible.

The ironic part about the huge gas leases mentioned in the movie (up to $25,000 an acre plus royalties) is that they were the product of a boom mentality. It's felt that gas companies overpaid. Although the Haynesville Shale wells produce amazing quantities of gas, their decline rate is unusually steep. But these leases were made before the decline curve was known and while gas prices were skyrocketing. So if you were a Louisianan who was able to sign one of these monster leases, you were lucky!

I am really glad that this documentary was made. It's nice to see a feature film about one's own profession.

Things the World Does Not Need

One of them is a remake of Yellow Submarine.

Disney have officially announced their motion-capture CGI 3D remake of the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. [...] The official announcement was made over the weekend, and the accompanying press release quotes Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook as saying,

This is truly an inspired collaboration, and a wonderful opportunity to revisit one of the most imaginative and memorable musical fantasies of all time. To be working with the amazing folks at Apple Corps, and to have Bob [Zemeckis] helming the sub is truly as good as it gets. With all those incredible Beatles songs and imagery, the spectacular vision of Bob and his pioneering team at ImageMovers Digital, and a classic adventure full of wit and action, we're sure that moviegoers are going to have a great time on this latest trip to Pepperland. (Io9)

Io9 goes on to make the point that the original Yellow Submarine movie didn't exactly have a very memorable story, and it mainly recalled for its animation and design (by Heinz Edelmann)  "and ability to capture the then-zeitgeist." And at the very least, when the original came out, you got to hear some new Beatles songs.

Of course I'll go see it, just like I did with Across the Universe, a ridiculous farrago of 60s cliches and mostly irrelevant Beatles songs (but starring a guy, Jim Sturgess, who looks as if they somehow managed to mix the genetic material of Steve Winwood and several of the Small Faces to create the perfect psychedelic English mod). I'll see Yellow Submarine, but I still think remaking it is a dumb idea. (All this said, the only place I have heard about this is on Io9--could someone be hoaxing them? Or could Io9 be hoaxing us?)

Frenetic Fringe Festival -- Weekend 2 Bullets

Last week I complained about the Fringe Festival not being quite "fringe" enough. This week was an improvement on that score, and over-all a more interesting and pleasurable evening. You can still see it tonight (Saturday, August 15) or tomorrow. Again to be brief, I'm going to use bullets.

There's a Tsunami at Your Door

• A short play by Mary Ellen Whitworth.
• A woman about to commit suicide is interrupted by a desperate cable salesman.
• Similar to "Velocity" from last week it its use of a tragedy that happened in the past as the cause of what's happening now.
• But it is a straight-forward narrative, not fractured like "Velocity."
• The acting was slightly raw.
• The play had funny moments despite its grim subject.

Dancing Diana

• This struck me as fairly innovative.
  
• Instead of a musical score, there were three short, personal stories by Diana Weeks.
• They were recorded by her and played over loudspeakers.
• She sat stage (she's an older woman, perhaps in her 60s or 70s) while the dancers danced.
• The dancers "interpreted" her story through dance.
• The connection was tenuous, but--
• Both aspects--the story and the dance--were enjoyable.
• It was like, say, riding your bike while listening to your Ipod. You get simultaneous pleasure from both activities.

Spelling Bee Sluts

• A short play by Paul Locklear.
• Slight, farcical story about a hillbilly who comes to L.A. to make it big on the spelling bee circuit.
• He ends up working as a male prostitute.
• A pretty minor piece of work, I'd have to say.

G.I. Joe PSAs

• These were cartoon public service announcements from the 1980s, featuring the G.I. Joe characters telling kids about safety.
• Eric Fensler has recorded new dialogue for them.
• This had the potential to be funny but predictable.
• But Fensler's dialogue (often sounds or made-up foreign languages) was absurd and bizarre.
• It wass still really funny--but not in an easy or obvious way.

Thurmond, W. Va.

• A documentary by Laura Harrison about a soon-to-be ghost town.
• 18 people still live there.
• The National Park Service has bought out most of the folks in town. The intent is to turn this coal mining town into a park along the lines of Mystic Seaport.
• It felt like a typical documentary, one that had neither the power of the old-school documentaries of, say, the Maysles brothers.
• Nor did it use the innovations of Errol Morris or Michael Moore.
• Not that it was bad, just not all that exciting...

Three dance pieces choreographed by Toni Leago Valle

• These were the best things I saw all night, indeed the best out of both nights.
• Three solo dances, three solo dancers. They were highly controlled athletes, but each with a kind of way about her that marked them as artists.

"Silent Victim"

• Catalina Molnari is stranded on unsteady looking rectangular boxes. She barely moves as she grips them and attempts to balance.

"Interview for a Date/I Take My Clothes Off"

• Mechelle Fleming is the dancer in this strangely sexual piece.
• In the first part, there is a film of a girl (Valle) being questioned, job-interview style, about why she would be a good girlfriend for the unseen male interviewer.
  
• The interview itself is forced and calculating, dealing with the value she brings to him as a girlfriend. She is desperate.
• When the interview seems to go wrong, she remembers something.
• She tells him, "Oh, I forgot! I'm good at sex!"
• The whole time, Fleming is sitting on a chair, facing away from the audience.
• She twitches and makes small moves, as if she is constrained and ready to move.
• The movie ends and she starts dancing.
• Her dance struck me as almost tortured. I can hardly describe it in a way that makes sense.
  
• She seem struck by things outside herself, while engaging with a negotiation with herself.
• She seemed buffeted, struck by forces.
• (But, it should be said, it was clear she was fully in control as a dancer.)
• Finally, she took off her dress.
• And it ended with her standing there in her underwear.
• It it appropriate to mention that she is an astonishingly beautiful woman?
• I regret not having photos of the Fringe Festival, especially for the three dances that Valle choreographed.

"I Am Mother"

• The dancer was Valle.
• Her skin was covered with white, pasty makeup except for her eyes, which were kind of a red racoon mask.
• The dance was done seated, under a soft, dim red spotlight.
• Weirdly enough, I was reminded of the installation by Carlos Runcie-Tanaka called "Tiempo Detenido/No Olvidar." The atmosphere was similar.
• Her movements were constrained by her seated posture.
• But the effect was nonetheless electrifying.

I haven't seen enough dance to have a vocabulary to describe what I was seeing. But Toni Leago Valle's three dance pieces were undeniably moving; thrilling even.

General vibe.

• I sat under a fan, so the lack of AC wasn't too horrible.
• They have us fill out an audience poll that includes demographic info.
  
• Apparently collecting this info will help them get grants.
• With which they can, say, buy central air-conditioning.
• The seats at Frenetic are only slightly more comfortable than airline seats.
• It seems like a lot of folks are there just to see their friends or family's performance.
• Consequently, a lot of people leave at the intermission.
• Maybe it's not so bad on Saturday and Sunday.
• But one would certainly wish for more support from people who have no personal connection with the performers.
• (Of course, I could be wrong about the audience...)
• I wish I could photograph some of the performances and put them up here.
• That said, there were two photographers with serious-looking photo set-ups in the audience.
• So perhaps if you search the web, you can find some images.

I thought the show was well-worth the modest ticket price, so catch it tonight or tomorrow if you can.

Frenetic Fringe Festival Week 1 bullets

Friday night I attended day one of the Frenetic Fringe Festival at the Frenetic Theater out on Navigation. This was the first night of a month-long series that combines theater, dance, and film/video pieces. My expectations were for some really avant garde stuff. But what counts as avant garde today, after a 20th century full of it? I imagined the theater would be Samuel Beckett or Charles Ludlam-type things, or maybe pieces related to modern performance art, or Antonin Artaud-Alfred Jarry-like provocations. For the film, I imagined Bruce Conner-like assemblages, Stan Brackhage-ish abstraction, or even Andy Warhol-esque minimalism. And I know nothing about dance, so I didn't have much in the way of expectations there--or so I thought.

The Festival was not as radical (so far) as what I expected. The pieces were all pretty approachable. I was hoping to be challenged a bit more.

Nearing Velocity

• A short play by Liz Gilbert.
• In fragments, we see all the people who were involved in a car accident at Richmond and Montrose.
• One driver Mallory is now paralyzed, a man, Boyd [sic], in the other car paralyzed with guilt.
• It was a strong opener, with good actors and a play that unfolded in an interesting way.
• I now realize that they bookended the opening night of festival with their two best pieces (of the night).
• It might be my old age, but I sometimes had to strain to hear what the cast members were saying.

Beyond the Sphere

• Three women dancing.
• Supposedly about life after death. Music combined with a tape of someone relating a after death experience.
• I have a preconceived notion that all dancers are perfect physical specimens, strong but elegant and beautiful women.
• (See Olga Khokhlova and Lydia Lopokova of the Ballets Russes, for example.)
• But one of these women was a bit on the chunky side.
• People in glass houses should not throw stones, yet this slightly disturbed me!
• The piece was long (it seemed) and by the end, I was in a pleasantly hypnotic state.
• Despite having not understood it at all.

Nevel Is the Devil

• This short film was mildly amusing, but not particularly "fringe."
  
• Office Space was a better movie on a similar theme.

Bruna Bunny and Baby Girl

• The second play of the evening had a tepidly surreal premise.
• A former circus performer's 12-year-old daughter has hair on her chest.
• The girl, Baby Girl, was actually played by a little girl, who did a hell of a job.
• But the play's point was lost on me--it seemed silly without being all that entertaining.

Access Pending

• This dance piece seemed a little more what I would expect from a dance piece than "Beyond the Sphere."
• At least, so it seemed to my dance-virgin eyes.
• I was impressed but the dancer's skills, but not particularly engaged by them.
• But again, maybe that's just me.
  
• I don't know what to look for really.

Kuliman mixes YouTube--ThruYou

• This was a rather astonishing piece of appropriation.
• Kuliman took bits and pieces of solo music uploaded to YouTube.
• (Often these were music lessons, sometimes they were musicians showing off some of their skills.)
• Out of all these disparate bits of music, he created coherent, multi-instrumental songs.
• The lyrics were often based on spoken-word YouTube videos auto-tuned.
• I recall Thomas McEvilley discussing Hellenistic poetry that consisted of appropriating different poets lines into a single poem.
• McEvilley was making the point that post-modernism's practices of appropriation was an ancient practice.
  
• But this piece reminded me very specifically of those ancient Greek poems.
• The skill shown in finding and mixing these fragments is astonishing.
• But the results, while perfectly good, are not great.
• This is a complaint that can be made about much OuLiPo-style art.
• i.e., art that puts a really complex, limiting constraint on the artist with the intent of fostering new, creative ways of making art.
• It's amazing, for example, that A Void was written at all.
• The fact that it is also a great novel is a fucking miracle.
• Kuliman's mixtures are totally listenable--but won't stick in my mind.

So the Fringe Festival's first night was a mixed bag. I would have been surprised if it hadn't been. I will be there for the subsequent shows. My hope is that someone in Houston will amaze me.

(There is an art show along-side the Fringe Festival. The artworks are for sale. Stephanie Toppin, for some insane reason, is selling her drawings for $25 apiece. I personally think this is a bargain. I encourage anyone who liked her work at Diverse Works and Box 13 to pick up a drawing or four, before Toppin comes to her senses.) (Toppin, not "Tobbin"--corrected now.)

Frenetic Fringe Festival Starts Tomorrow

I plan to be there for it and possibly to blog it, in my ongoing project of educating myself about the Houston art scene. The Frenetic Fringe Festival runs every weekend for the rest of August. If you miss the program tomorrow, you can see the same program Saturday and Sunday.

In addition to the the theater, dance and film presentations, there will be an art exhibit. Among the artists is Stephanie Tobbin, who I have blogged about here and here. Here's one of the drawings she will be showing.

Adieu, Frankenstein, Adieu

How to Stamp Out Film Production in Texas

Are these dudes portraying Texans in a negative light?

If you are going to give tax-breaks for people doing business in Texas, how should you do it? It shouldn't be for businesses that don't bring money into Texas, or businesses that depend mostly on low-paid, unskilled labor. (In other words, there should never be tax breaks for retailers like Walmart or Cabela's.) Tax breaks, if you are going to offer them, it should be for businesses that are bringing money into Texas, and second it should be for businesses that hire skilled labor and/or professionals. Tax breaks for film production in Texas fit the bill perfectly--the films are almost always financed elsewhere, but when a production sets up in Texas, skilled Texas workers like camera operators and "gaffers" and "best boys" (not to mention accountants and office assistants, etc.) get hired.

So there's a producer making a film called Waco about the Branch Davidians. A perfect place to film Waco would be Texas! But no! As the Chronicle reports in an editorial this morning:

We’re all for granting tax incentives to lure filmmakers to Texas. But in 2007, state Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, added an annoying proviso to a bill intended to do that. To qualify for our tax incentives, a movie can’t portray “Texas or Texans in a negative light.”

Producer Emilio Ferrari has no intention of going there. His current project, Waco, is based on David Koresh and the Branch Davidians — a story with a combustible, highly marketable mix of sex, religion and armed standoff. The $30 million project, which Ferrari planned to film near Houston, would be one of the biggest Texas-made movies in years.

But citing Ogden’s proviso, the Texas Film Commission refuses to grant Waco a tax incentive. The movie, the commission says, portrays Texas or Texans in a negative light.

Amazing! You can get a tax break if you film a movie in Texas, but only if it is pro-Texas propaganda!

To please Sen. Ogden, would cowboys have to stop brawling, drinking and canoodling with women of questionable moral character? Would the next JFK skip the assassination? Would characters from a future Dazed and Confused sign abstinence pledges? Would the next Texas Chainsaw Massacre show neighbors helping neighbors remove wayward trees?

Now the producer is scouting locations in friendlier states. Waco may go to Louisiana.

That hurts a Texan’s pride. And so do the questions raised by the affair. Since when do we worry what people think of us? What happened to Texans’ confidence, our swagger? Are we really that defensive? That priggish? That … boring?

Way to shoot ourselves in the foot. Oh well, maybe we can make up for it by giving more tax breaks to retail stores, which take money from some Texans, give a sliver of it to other poorly-paid Texans, and send the retained earnings back to Bentonville, Arkansas.

I Loved the Spirit Comics...

(cover of Spirit Archives vol. 22 by Will Eisner)

...But I'm going to pass on the movie. However, I am happy to report that it has inspired some very clever snark. Defamer begs us to handicap it in our reactions to its reputed terribleness:

Hating this movie would be like booing at the Special Olympics.

You're Gonna Miss Me

You're Gonna Miss Me is an excellent documentary about Roky Erickson, and specifically how his brother Sumner gained custody of him over the objections of their mom. The film is powerful and painful, seeing this brilliant but mentally ill and isolated man tugged over by his protective but slightly addled mom and his accomplished but damaged brother--all three of whom are talented musicians, Roky and Sumner especially so. At the time of the film, Sumner is the principal tuba player for the Pittsburgh Symphony. (Since then, he has apparently moved to Austin and started playing in his own rock band.)

Here's an image from the movie that sticks with me--Sumner's incredibly cool-looking house in Pittsburgh:


Of course if the film just whets your appetite, read the band bio of the 13th Floor Elevators, Eye Mind. But most important, listen to Roky's music, both with the 13th Floor Elevators and subsequently. As Byron Coley says in the movie, Roky is one of the few rockers whose post-60s work is just as great as his 60s music.

Movies with Humanity

Thought of the day: Be Kind Rewind is to movies what Tampopo was to food.

Persepolis is not Sin City

I started reading "All Your Movie Are Belong to Us" in this month's Texas Monthly nodding in agreement. Fort Worth Star Telegram film critic Christopher Kelly asks:

How is it that fanboys—a pimply-faced, pasty-skinned set that in previous generations would have been kicked into the dirt by the bullies on the playground—emerged as the arbiters of twenty-first-century film culture?

His Texas-centric answer (always required in any Texas Monthly culture article) is that guys from Austin like Robert Rodriguez and Harry Knowles and the founders of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema decided to get involved with filmmaking and criticism, but that their tastes never evolved from their teenage fanboy comic-book loves. He rails against the soulessness of all CGI, comic-booky movies like Sin City and 300.


But then he also writes this:

It suddenly seemed as if just about every story—be it a political thriller like Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), a literary adaptation like Beowulf (2007), or even a coming-of-age memoir like Perseopolis [sic] (2007)—had to first be filtered through a graphic novelist’s sensibility before it could hit a movie screen.

Huh? Persepolis comes from a graphic novel, true, but what does "graphic novel sensibility" mean? In other words, how is Persepolis similar to Sin City or Hellboy or Spider-Man? It's simply not at all similar to those movies or their source materials. This is frankly a case of a lazy critic making a casually bigoted comment to unnecessarily bolster his case. To see how stupid what he said is, imagine it rewritten like this:

It suddenly seemed as if just about every story—be it a political thriller like The Bourne Ultimatum (2006), a literary adaptation like Atonement (2007), or even a historical drama like There Might Be Blood (2007)—had to first be filtered through a prose novelist’s sensibility before it could hit a movie screen.

The fact that these movies were adapted from novels wouldn't cause any thinking person to lump them together, because 1) the novels were all very, very different, and 2) the films made from the novels were very different as well. The casual lumping together of all graphic novels as having a similar "sensibility" (which then has a malign effect on cinema) is simply lazy and wrong.

Remembering Gillo Pontecorvo

Gillo Pontecorvo just died. He was the filmmaker who made The Battle of Algiers. This is a good opportunity to think about the film. When I first watched the film, I didn’t really understand it. It didn’t show exactly that terrorism works (the terror cells are eventually destroyed by the French). It likewise doesn’t exactly endorse the brutal counter-terror methods of the French because in the end, they lose, too.

Now that we are living through an age of terrorism, I think I understand The Battle of Algiers better. Terrorism and torture are mirror images—acts that make monsters of their perpetrators. They are, tragically, tactics that encourage each other. We Americans—like the French in Algiers—have fallen into a moral trap by responding to terror with torture. Al Zawahiri also fell into a trap of responding to torture with terror years earlier.

I recoil from moral equivalency—it is a technique always used by the guilty to basically say “Everybody does it!” And the 9-11 terrorists were monstrous and evil, almost beyond my ability to conceive. But America’s response has been to become a torture state…

See The Battle of Algiers—it’s a powerful and timely work. Also read Lawrence Wenchler’s A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts With Torturers.