Valhalla Rising

Watched Valhalla Rising, which I liked pretty well. Terribly violent. There was very little dialog and no gags. It came across as sort of pretentious, but there are worse things that being sort of pretentious.

I heard Salman Rushdie on C-Span. He talked about a story he read, a tragic story about the horrible things that happen to family after an earthquake in Chile. He thought it was funny just because it was so fast-paced. The story was very short, just a couple of pages, but it packed so many terrible things into it came across as a joke.

Then there was a spoof I saw somewhere of a Bazooka Joe comic. It was supposed to be from Sweden. We see a slow moving comic strip. The first panel, someone asked Bazøka Ingmar what is black and white and green. We see two or three pictures of Ingmar contemplating this. In the last panel he says, "Two figures of death fighting over a pickle."

Pacing's the key.