ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

dReW-id Ah Pook, the eternal pessimist, is here! A review of Philip Hunt's Animated Film Ah Pook is here, by Drew Black.A mass scattering of hand drawn stars shimmer on a background of pitch to a heartbeat rhythm that imposes a feeling of impending doom. As this mood sets in, words appear from the emptiness as the reassuring, insipid, pensioner drawl of William Burroughs intones "When I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow!" The Mood is set, the audience is involved and the tale begins. Thus we enter creator Philip Hunt's dismal, apocalyptically engaging, stop motion animated interpretation of William Burroughs recorded 1990 album "Dead City Radio." Philip Hunt, now the Creative Director of Studio AKA. Mr Hunt originally wanted to sculpt, found himself studying Graphic Design at Saint Martin's School Of Art, then returned to "making" through studying stop motion animation at The Royal College of Art. His defining year was spent at the Filmakademie Baden Wurttemberg in Germany where he made the award winning short film AH POOK IS HERE. Ah Pook Is Here brings its audience into the absurdity of its underlying reference to the inferred hegemonic world of bleak, numbing, mind and thought control that Burroughs beat culture classic, originally titled The Unspeakable Mr Hart, delved into. It faithfully incorporates many of the icons and morbid, grossly malevolent character of the original work through the wonderfully detailed and articulated puppets, rendered in colour, to the stark contrast of the monochrome hand drawn post-apocalyptic background and stage they are set in. Hunt utilises this use of negative/positive space and colour to not only draw the focus to his characters, separating Hunts malignant turkey representation of the last God, bringer of destruction, from the dead world of these so called humans, but as Ah Pook retires down into his final place in this world, resigned to the pointless helplessness of his own ramblings, Ah Pook is seen in black and white. This use of colour/black and white compositing amalgamates the characters physical and emotional placement within the story and the viewer's perception, defining it on a multitude of levels and communication techniques. I mentioned 'characters', Pook is seen discussing control and death with another character similar to himself except that he/it has less flesh and is very pale. After researching Ah Pook I discovered that he is, according to Burroughs, a renaming of the Olmec Mayan deity of death Ah Puch (Wild, 2008), 'the destroyer' and is described in history as comprising of two beings incorporated into one. This solidifies the use of these techniques as a valid and powerful form of nonverbal communication within film. Another film that exemplifies this is the 2005 Rodriguez/Miller/Tarantino Crime /Thriller Sin City). I must relate at this point that even though much of what is prevalent in this films story comes from Burroughs it is very much Hunts creation and interpretation. It incorporates his use of the original works meanings from Hunt's vantage point. The film is a mash up of hitherto unconnected excerpts from Dead City Radio (Vanduijnhoven, 2010), skilfully reinterpreted to fit Hunt's format. Hunt said in an interview with Design Week, "Burroughs' fondness for modifying his own text when performing his material live led me to combine a set of recordings that were not previously connected to create a new narrative. I took liberties, but only those I could imagine each author also taking - and that's the key, to remain inspired by that original voice and not lose the way (Centaur Communications Ltd. and licensors 2011, Design Week, 2011)". For me Ah Pook Is Here is a wonderfully dark, introspective work from the opening title through to its disregarding suicidal end. The wonderful and appropriately engaging score from John Cale sets a harmonious mood and tempo that is both leading and emotive. Hunt's grossly likeable characters capture the vision and relay it through creative thought provoking movement that speaks as eloquently as the lilting drawl of Burroughs, whose narrative defines the emotive power in the words and imbues a likeability to Ah Pook that may well have been lost if they came from another. Yes its dark, its diminutive and horribly horribly a great romp through its twisted, decimated world. In the final words of Ah Pook as, after death, he becomes one with the ether..... Falling in love again Never wanted to What am I to do?

Ham_and_Egger It's maddeningly difficult to represent the work of William Burroughs in any visual medium, though animation definitely has advantages over regular film in this respect, but 'Ah Pook is Here' succeeds to a greater degree than most.The short is mostly taken up by a grotesque creature, with Burroughs's voice, philosophizing while smoking a hookah. The audio seems to have been cut together from various sources subjects include Ah Pook (the Mayan god of death), Control, politics, and "stupid, greedy, Ugly American deathsuckers." This line, taken from 'No More Stalins, No More Hitlers' on Dead City Radio, is Burroughs at his prophetical best, "...the rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident. Inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push." Now imagine it being said by a demented little creature that looks like a cross between a chicken and your spleen.

barlowenberg I've got a few requests for that time when friends and family come to celebrate my transition to lands unimagined: play Jim Morrison's farewell paean "The End", and watch "Ah, Pook Is Here" as many times as it takes to absorb Philip Hunt's brilliant rendering of the animated genius of William Burroughs translating love into death. And it may take a few times through to pick up the pieces as Burroughs cuts and pastes on the fly. The title is that of a longer Burroughs piece published in 1979 - briefly excerpted for the film. Hunt takes us on a short dark journey with philosophical Pook the Destroyer, weaving the haunted narration into a whimsically nightmarish cosmos, then descending within to the inevitable conclusion.

alice liddell Possibly only for William Burroughs completists - the writer narrates a despairing tirade against mainstream American ills framed in a sci-fi apocalyptic context, an organic planet in a symmetrical, monochrome universe. The reassuring, lilting, pensioner's voice, the cool despair and horror of the words, Pook the turkey, Burroughs' representative, suicide as response to compromised life. The theorem-like clarity of the animation makes it watchable.