Fair enough, I have been promoting this series of blog posts, with nothing yet to back it up. That said, I am in the process of the first one which should be up shortly. In the mean time, Carpenter’s The Thing is without question a part of this list. Does this buy me a little time?

What an awesome comment. And I couldn’t be more jealous that you saw Slavoj Zizek talk. I have been deeply interested in just about anything he says about film, and his commentary on Children of Men is nothing short of masterful, and so accessible. A nice combination.

More than that, his notion of anamorphosis is something I find useful to think about Carpenter’s Escape from New York, with a very different kind of understanding of obliqueness however. Well, at least you know one of your two guesses was right, and I am pretty sure you nailed the other as well, for we have too much film history in common to miss it

Funny that you mention Carpenter. Just the other day, I went to hear Slavoj Zizek speak at the Grad Center; in the middle of his talk, he went off on a riff about Carpenter’s “They Live” — a film that, as I’m sure you’ll remember, showcased the thespian skills of the venerable “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. (Zizek remarked that the glasses in that film, which the human characters put on to see the “real” messages being directed at them by aliens who have infiltrated the planet, modeled the operation of ideology in the world). And, hey, it’s been a while since I’ve seen “They Live,” but check out this note from the wikipedia article:

When John later dons the glasses for the first time, the world appears in shades of grey, with significant differences. He notices that a billboard now simply displays the word “Obey”; without them it displays the ad that Control Data is “creating a transparent computing environment”.

Dude! All of this open-source stuff is just a sham! I knew it!

Anyway, the ice-cream truck scene above is amazing (love the shot of the gun barrel slowly emerging from the car window), and I eagerly away this series.