红楼梦淫史

　　尼古拉斯·凯奇出演独立制作惊悚片《窥镜》(Looking Glass，暂译)。导演为曾拍摄多部MV及广告的多里·奥斯科维兹，编剧杰里·莱普、马修·怀尔德。一对夫妇在经历生活伤痛后买下了荒郊僻壤一处汽车旅馆，他们此举是为了探秘旅馆一个房间内发生的一系列无法解释的怪事。影片今秋开机。

安妮和托马斯正处于离婚边缘，这时安妮发生了中风，迫使他们不得不继续住在一起，并推迟了告诉孩子们他们即将分开的消息。面对这一新的现实，两人在最意想不到的地方找到了希望。

　　Set in an underground dungeon inhabited by bundled, ragged human beings, after the nuclear holocaust. The story follows the wanderings of a hero through the situations of survival. People wait for the Ark to arrive and rescue them while their habitat falls apart.　　Delving deep into the dusty and long abandonded vaults of b-cinema in search of lost gems always leaves me with a bittersweet taste. On one hand the discovery of unexpected gems where no one would think them possible is a rewarding experience. On the other hand though it makes one wonder how many of these remarkable low-budget oddities, personal love affairs of directors never quite famous and now all but forgotten, have almost forever slipped from memory?　　n any case what we have here is a little post-apocalyptic gem from Poland that is really better than it has any right to. The dystopian near future of O-BI, O-BA finds a group of survivors of the nuclear war that ravaged the Earth inhabiting an underworld concrete bunker and biding their time as they wait for the mysterious Ark, an air ship of some kind that will come and save them. The Ark proves to be an elaborate hoax, carefully designed to give hope to the malnourished and desperate denizens of the bunker, while in the meantime the dome that separates their miserable existence from the nuclear winter outside is slowly caving in.　　What first striked me about the movie is the design of the bunker and the depiction of the survivors. The survivors are gaunt, filthy and terrible-looking penitents, dressed in rags and aimlessly wandering the neon-lit halls of the bunker like automatons. The bunker is a rundown, seedy place, with bright neon lights peering from all sides like the eyes of malignant beasts.　　On one hand it is a slightly 80's depiction of the dystopian future but the movie never stoops down to MAD MAX cheese. Instead it combines biting political satire with the bleak outlook of a world with no future, black comedy with barbs on apathy, religion and power. The survivors, for example, are fed some kind of flour dropping from a tube that hovers in the air - later on we discover the food supervisor uses books and the Bible itself as filler for this meagre meal. There are many such short symbolic touches, perhaps not life-changing or faith-restoring, yet playful, clever and inspired.　　One thing is for sure; O-BI, O-BA is not your run-of-the-mill sci-fi schlock. It overcomes its modest budget with creativity and has genuine artistic aspirations both from a writing and directing perspective. My opinion is that it should have been filmed in black and white instead of colour though. The director uses atmospheric light and shadow to great effect and it would have registered even better in stark black and white. The blue-green neon on the other hand outstays its welcome after a while. Just a minor gripe in an otherwise solid b-movie with its heart set in all the right places.　　Imagine a less bleak THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy) being injected with the satire and humour of DR.STRANGELOVE and you're getting there. See it if you can find it.

　　Sheila Hood is an ex-cop whose marriage is on the rocks. Rather than confronting her husband about an affair, she hides surveillance cameras in her home and watches his transgressions, becoming a voyeur of her own life. Her husband, Tom Kale, is an ornithologist who begins an affair with an ex-girlfriend, Merle James, whose beauty and fragility echoes that of the birds he studies. Ray Starling, the charismatic owner of a boutique hotel, is Merle’s lover, and has dealings with her father, Mr James, a powerful oil baron who operates in the shadows but whose influence touches the whole city. Merle’s younger sister, Hazel, is also drawn to Tom, but trapped in Starling’s web of power. Calvin is an cop whose loyalty to his ex partner, Hood, is tested when mounting evidence from her own surveillance tapes connects her and Tom to Starling’s murder, and perhaps even Merle’s mysterious death.