The Sickness Is Coming or, The Blind Man's Television (2009) User Reviews

The Sickness is Coming

[joebarnes-640-62116 · 8/10 · 21 January 2010]

I liked the atmosphere - It was quite despondent, quite tense in places. I loved the general feel of it - the colours and landscapes, lots of greys, the sea, the absence of a real civilization - only a dying one. the concept of the last ever film is nice. The casting was good, Jinx and the Sacheen worked really well together. I have a bit of a thing for the sea, seaside towns and such - the idea of something that was once prosperous and exciting reduced to something desolate and lonely, and the fact that sanding on a British beach, you just look out at a vast expanse of brooding nothingness. There was a feel of resignation about the film, the characters had little enthusiasm for the world they inhabited. A good touch was the occasional inserted animation, gave it a dreamlike feeling, and a sense there is more to the scenes than the obvious. I can't decide which audio narrative I preferred, they both had different effects for sure but both worked in their own way. maybe the Russian one shaded it...

overall i really enjoyed, it seems like a really promising start for future projects and i'm quite excited to see how the next one turns out..

Review; The Sickness Is Coming or The Blind Man's Television A film by Dan Duran / Lalacuna By Sophie Risner

[sophierisner · 8/10 · 21 January 2010]

As a new comer to the work of Dan Duran and Boxer F and their production house Lalacuna, this introduction found itself to be a combination of many different and insightful modes of re-thinking through an idea, expanding away from it, sitting alone with it and digestion, as well as digression. Beautiful screen work and a constructive script leaves a fast pace between an a-typical cinema film and one you might find in a gallery space; personally I can envisage this being shown in a outdoor setting. Coupled with illustration and a maddening use of text-based, almost graphic work, what stands out is the need to subvert the expectations of the average cinema viewers relationship to the moving image. It was the third or maybe fourth time which corrected and re- associated the script and images of this film back into my sub- conscious. Thoughts and decisions drifted around the space between what could first be understood and subsequently how far a written response to such a visual enquiry could maintain the films ethos and narrative. I cannot possibly attach comments which allude to something even half as mundane as applause or congratulations, these in comparison with what I have viewed are out-timed and superficial. The mise en scene of this play / film / text (however one would wish to box or house a moment of creativity) is practiced and played out in a format which reminds me of wistful filmic episodes from my past. Truncated through rose-tinted memories of my first glimpses at Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, alongside the mournful image of Derek Jarman's last resting place in Dungeness, these are not bad things. These timeless dualities and feelings are held as almost retina imprints on the mind. Capturing spaces which are barely inhabited and succumb to the outsider investigation of questioning the deluge of constant-ness and production- ness. Thus, in all of what has already happened and will happen, Dan Duran and Boxer F form the space of Calibration Point. It is here that questions are never simple and neither is this film, it's a web of deceit and clarity, forced abandon and sincerity. Largely an epilog to the time-forgotten investigation or re-association into abstraction, The Sickness Is Coming or The Blind Man's Television, looks beyond regular discourse of what I choose to make-up as utopic film 'theme'-atrics. The fact that Dan Duran and Boxer F keep their practice deeply rooted in a style akin to visual minimalism substantiates the claims that they are possibly more interested in what they are examining, than some high- octane notion of what abstraction, the end of time and space has been previously disguised as throughout other film and television outings. The tightly interwoven connection between the internet-project of the film and the actual visual content is astounding to say the least. The viewer is bounced between real-to-life mementos featured not just on screen through the reality of the film but through Lalacunas complex website. Items such as the magazine Everything, and the journal of Fredrick Boxer, deeply interwoven meta-foundations which serve to build up the mythicism of this world, and infinitely illuminate the countless tangents and well-thought through layers encompassed within this constant kinetic investigation.