Man in Wood

Man in Wood
chapter - Eva and Ade

Wednesday 14 July 2010


Toothache- A film noir with a social message, 28 December 2006
Author: George_SS from United Kingdom

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Toothache is Ian Simpson's first full feature outing as a Film Director and succeeds in engaging and continuing to draw in the viewer throughout the film.

This comedy which is set in Paris very soon after the completion of the Eurostar, when cross channel activity was at a high. So we are treated to an ensemble of characters Anglo and Gallic; a young talented Ludovine Sagnier,a magnificent Julie Depardieu, the very passionate Englishman Oliver Millburn and the exciting and hilarious Marc Barbe. To say the casting is superb is an understatement. Ian Simpson's choice to cast the very French Marc Barbe as an American Producer in Paris is a master touch and extremely funny.

In essence Toothache centres around this bourgeois quartet and all their personal dramas whilst collectively they maintain some sort of equilibrium or facade. We have the characters displaying emotions of unrequited love,stress of a new pregnancy,failure and loss.

Through out the film Ian Simpson's ,sometimes sardonic, style pervades and his brutal clips of real down and outs in Paris may upset. There is also a social side to this film and a very real message;life's realities for this underclass and how distant it is from our Bourgeois Quartet's masquerades and petty problems.

Getting back to the comedy, of which there is so much,is enhanced by Simpson's clever camera techniques and cuts. The dialogue is brilliantly written; the combination of British humour and Gallic dead pan is a joy to watch and will leave you in hysterics. You really want this film to keep going on, it builds and builds on the humour. The four characters also combine so well...a sitcom could be written around them.

The musical score is interesting and daring and works, especially in a passionate scene on a bridge over the Seine.

If you get a chance to watch this film please do as you are in for a unexpected treat. A Cult Classic.

Monday 5 July 2010

He doesn’t sleep


He doesn’t sleep. Later he has to see his father and he is afraid. He knows the questions that will crop up. ‘Wayne you got a job yet?’ ‘I’m writing Dad’ ‘I mean a real job?’ ‘I work in a bar’ You still drinking?’ ‘Not really’ ‘Drink will be the death of you’
His mother will be sitting in the couch opposite listening to our conversation with the huh-huh and humming from time to time, strange agreeable sounds to his father’s advice, occasionally breaking out to an old gospel number like ‘My father house’ to increase the guilt. His guilt.
Another reason he was afraid of seeing his father. Father was not at all well. He was stricken by tuberculosis caused by chronic bronchitis and in certainty could go any time. The doctors say its ‘touch and go but he should be alright’; whatever the heck that meant. “What exactly does doctors get paid for” he pondered. ‘Bloody doctors’ he says out loud.
He steps out of the bed and leaves his sleeping girlfriend. He sits on the bed edge for a while staring at his feet. His right foot had a lump the size of a golf ball. Cancer he thought.
It is 4.24 am. She mutters his name “Wayne” he remains silent. “What you doing?”
He says nothing. At 4.26 he leaves the room.
There is a half bottle of port in the kitchen cupboard. He contemplates before deciding on coffee. He takes his mug into the living quarters and picks up a couple of sheets of A4 from the desk where an empty glass with a whiff of scotch from the night before remains. He reads what he wrote the on the sheet.
Title- HE DOESN’T SLEEP. Underneath this bold yet inane intro is intangible scribble that he does not quite understand. He sits down at his desk and fishes for a biro in his nearby rucksack. He knew what to write; Wayne have you got a job yet?’ ‘I’m writing Dad’ ‘I mean a real job?’ ‘I work in a bar” “‘You still drinking?’ ‘Not really’ ‘Drink will be the death of you’
A storm a brewing it is a matter of time before the rain falls in buckets. Wayne continues to write. He writes about his mother singing the gospel hymn ‘my father house ’whilst he speaks about employment and alcohol with his father. He writes about the inconsequential comments of doctors and his hatred of them. He then lays his pen to rest. Feeling like a cigarette he creeps into the bedroom where his sleeping girlfriend lays and sneaks into her handbag for a Marlboro light. He rips of the butt of the cigarette, cutting away the light from the Marlboro, as he fires up the cigarette a voice from the corner of the room says “ I’ll have one and a cup of coffee too.”
He turns to find himself facing a man of such magnificent stature he is almost blinded by his presence. The man is soaking wet but shines like the sun.
“You’re an angel,” Wayne declares.
“Yes I’m an angel. A exhausted, overworked, soaking wet, absolutely knackered angel who could murder for a cup of coffee and a Marlboro, but not the light kind…
“I rip the ends off”
“I do the same”
Wayne remains seated diminished with astonishment. The angel sits down on the arm of the sofa.
“An angel who drinks coffee and smokes. Now that’s really something”
“ Nothing wrong with a good cup of coffee and a damn good cigarette” says the angel.
“No of course not” Wayne replies. “ But where’s your wings?”
“Cliché” Says Angel “ the wing idea comes from the notion that we fly but we don’t fly we just appear. Wings… I hate them.
“Right” says Wayne.
They sit in calm for what seems like forever ever.
“Look, you gonna get me this cup of coffee and a cigarette or what?
“Sure thing”
Wayne leaves the room looking back once to check if the angel was still around.

He doesn’t sleep. Later he has to see his father and he is afraid. His phone rings. It is 4.24 am. He leans over his sleeping girlfriend to answer.
“Mother?”
“Hello son”
A long and telling silence follows.

My research to make this film has been thorough and passionate, taking the road through French regions of Alsace, Lorraine, through Moselle, the mountains of the Vosges along the valley of the Rhine, to Germany into the depth of the black forest…. It had seemed never-ending.

Sunday 4 July 2010


… and to Meisenthal where the artist is occasionally based ‘a weird and wonderful place’ according to several of the locals.


My father was a man of wood. For most of his working life he worked with timber. In a timber yard he worked, chopping, sawing, carving, carrying, and selling all types of wood, to all types of customers, for all types of reasons, for types of …

What is human?


A closer look at the work of the artist the intensely chiselled features freeing the human trapped in the wood. From tree to man or in my film interpretation- from man to tree.
What is human? Who is this man in wood?

A Blue Stone

“You’re a cunt you know that?
The ice jiggled against the glass that he held in his hand. The whiskey was the cheap sort so the ice was a necessity. “I said you are a cunt”.
She sat by the dresser removing her makeup with a simple face cleanser.
“You’re just a dumb female with a pigeon brain,” he slurred finding it difficult to stand on his drunken feet. She continues to ignore him applying more face cleanser as he makes his way closer to the dresser.
“Look at me dumb cunt” he says. “Fucking look at me”
She doesn’t face him but talks through the reflecting glass mirror.
“ Go scream at the whore in the bar” she says.
“What cunt”?
“You heard”
Now she turns towards him whilst tugging at the buckle on her high heel boots. “Go and fight with your whore”
“What whore”? What the fuck are you talking about”?
“The skinny slut in the bar who you couldn’t take your eyes off” the anger is now rising, her brilliant eyes are changing. There is fire inside.
“And so” he mutters.
Silence.
“Have you fucked her”? She asks gently as though she was asking if he wanted to have dinner, the calm before the storm.
“Now that’s ridiculous,” he says head facing the bedroom floor. Up she stands from the chair by the dresser with one boot in hand and hobbles a closer to him. A funny sight as though she had been stricken by poliomyelitis.
“You fucked her you bastard”! The boot in her hand is thrown across the room and crashes into his mouth instantly breaking his bottom lip. Hopping with such speed towards him her hands shaped like that of a cat prepared to tear at his eyes. He grabs hold of her wrist directing away the danger.
“Bastard”! She yells.
He grabs hold of a handful of her wonderful hair, shakes her head forcefully before tossing her to the floor. She lands on he arse, staring, breathing with gusto. He sits on the bed opposite and wipes the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. She parts her legs slowly revealing the curls behind the lace of her knickers. She laughs. Her pants are wet, juices or piss. Both probably. Her hair wild and damp and beads of sweat rest on her forehead.
They stay in the position for some time. He on the bed examining his busted lip, she on the carpeted floor legs apart.
She moves her knickers to one side and inserts her middle finger deep inside.
“I love you baby,” she purrs.
She removes the finger and raises it to her mouth. A tiny sticky bubble is delicately poised, the honey from deep inside her well. She smiles at him. The bubble burst. She laughs, a cackle of a laugh, witch-like.
“I love you baby,” says she.

They make out. He lies on his back with her on top knickers in hand. She controls riding ardently in search of that orgasm that will give her the triumph she is desperately seeking. He fights back, fucking as vigorous as she. He feels his juices rising to the tip of his prick like mercury climbing in a thermometer.
“ Don’t you fucking come yet?” she snarls. He tries to speak but words fails him, with the orgasm stuck somewhere between his throat and balls he whispers her name. She tells him to be quiet whilst forcing her clammy knickers into his mouth. He struggles to breathe as they continue to fuck. His head sways from side to side as he pushes deeper inside her towards the door of her womb. He fucks her. She fucks him. Cock fights against cunt. Cunt battles against cock. He hears the sound of his beating heat louder and louder in the centre of his ears. Death seems to be beside him. He cannot breathe. She continues to gallop whilst forcing the knickers further into his mouth to the entrance of his throat. He feels a stirring sensation in his balls, a sharp pain in the centre of his back. He comes in long powerful spurts, again and again. She cries out, a deep mournful cry before falling on his weak frame removing the knickers from his mouth. He takes a huge gasp of air before passing out.

She sleeps curled up beside him, peacefully, like a cat that her has had her feed. He leaves the bed slowly careful not to wake the sleeping beauty. He looks across the room for his boxers then gives up, vision too blurred. The poster on the wall of Jean Harlow stares at him. He stares back. Considerably out of focus. Jean Harlow. Nice face, kinda, but sad eyes. Nice face. Sad eyes. Yeah.
His head is pounding and stomach roars. He needs a drink fast. The early morning light leaks through the slightly open blinds spilling a glorious glow on the sleeping beauty. She still has her knickers in her hand and her dress rolled up to her waist where her moist sex is revealed and a trail of dry sperm glued to an inner thigh. He takes a pillow that has fallen to the floor and places it between her legs. She drearily moves her body and murmurs something, perhaps his name, then encloses her legs around the soft pillow. She falls back to sleep. Mouth slightly open. Tiny little sounds of breathing, so different from the wild beast before. But she is loveliness itself. Her beauty radiates like a precious stone.
A blue stone.

He sits alone and naked in the kitchen with the clean morning light rapidly rising. He pulls on the bottle of beer to satisfy the roaming monster in his stomach. The cool of the beer caresses his insides. ‘Thank you’ it says. The chirping sounds of the birds making play in the garden brings him to smile as he finishes the last pull of the bottle. He returns to the refrigerator searching for more answers. There is a bottle of white, half empty. He pops the cork releasing the wine from its imprisonment and necks a good quarter. He sits back by the kitchen table and takes another gulp from the cool white. He feels his swollen lip and then remembers the night, the fighting the fucking. He smiled then laughed out aloud shattering the tranquillity of the gentle morning. He suddenly realizes his loneliness and it scares him so he takes another hit of the wine. He places the chill of the bottle between his thighs, closer to his sleeping penis. It feels good. A trickle of sperm emerges from the tiny eye. He inspects his penis. Something to do. The head is a rosy coloured red. Purple. No red. Kinda red. A dusky kind of purple.
There is a tap on the window. He spins around to look, penis still in hand. A little bird sits out side on the windowsill. It shuffles its wings a little, turning its beak towards the window and tapping. What did it want?
It was a red breast.
His penis falls back between his thighs as he finishes the last of the wine. He places the empty bottle on the table and the little bird flies away.