Music: Low-fi Satanism, New Romantic retro garage black magic, and the finest man-boobs in Asgard.

Here's some DIY love for you all you Screamers and Screamettes.

First we serve up Mixel Pixel's Rosemary's Baby inspired video for their low-fi dance seven-incher "The Faker."



The next helping of fuzzy sounds and blurry images comes by way of the Magic Wands, with their tune "Black Magic."



And now for something completely different. To steal a phrase from a certain pop cult blogger: "Thor should be at least this metal."

Art: Still life.

Music fans who counted themselves members of the industro-goth phalanx of the early '90s indie scene may already be familiar with some of Jeffrey Silverthorne's photographic work and just not know it. The work of the American artist graced the liner notes of Nine Inch Nail's debut LP Pretty Hate Machine. Pictured below, it hard to imagine a photographer who looks less like the man Reznor would tap to decorate his first long player.

His kindly small-town mailman look aside, what may have caught Reznor's attention was Silverthorne's famous series documenting the flow of ex-humanity through a morgue. Stemming from a conversation he had with his once-teacher Diane Arbus, Silverthorne's photos are stark, creepy, and touching. The odd formality gives the images a rigidly mannered look, but the matter-of-fact titles and crisp resolution of detail gives them a loose documentary feel (note the shots in which one can make out the leg and foot of the photographer in the pic).

Here's some pics from the morgue series:

Young Boy Hit By Car

Woman Who Died in Her Sleep, 1972

Couple Killed by Carbon Monoxide Poisioning

All thanks to that postmodern wonder cabinet, Quigley's Cabinet, for reminding me about Mr. Silverthorne's work.

Movies: Master of (near) disaster.

Director Ma Wu's 1993 Exorcist Master, a kung fu action horror slapstick comedy mystery blowout, has no right to be as entertaining as it is. The sense of impending cinematic disaster hovers over every broad joke, every not so special effect, and every music motif that is rendered by the synthesized sound of dogs barking. And yet, somehow, when the last shot freeze-frames and the credits roll, you weigh the demands the movie made of you against the entertainment-value it returned and you have to conclude that you, lucky viewer, have actually come out in the black.

As small scale, goofy, and sometimes downright embarrassing as Exorcist Master (for the language title purists, that's Kui moh do jeung in Cantonese, Qu mo dao zhang in Mandarin, Exorcist Meester in Dutch and racist impersonations of Mexicans, Mestre do Exorcist em português, and Orcistexa Asterma in Pig Latin) can be, it boasts a clever plot, some deftly breakneck tonal changes, and an almost desperate determination to please any audience member that might stumble into the way of its non-stop spray of gags, kung fu stunts, plot twists, and pratfalls.

The plot breaks down thusly: The small Chinese town of Wine Spring, in the early half of the Twentieth Century, is home to "Uncle," a humorless Taoist monk and kung fu master who is the titular master at exorcism. Put out of your mind the relentlessly dour and ostentatiously semireligious witch-doctory of American exorcism films. As it is practiced in this flick, exorcism is a contact sport that's part spiritual ceremony, part kung fu showdown, part stage magic performance, and part Three Stooges routine. The movie opens with Uncle's two apprentices botching a routine exorcism. Uncle has to come in and put the boot to some ghost butt. Because the Internet is good and does truly love us, you can find a fine example of ghostbusting à la chinois on Youtube. It has to be seen to be believed:



Unfortunately, that short clip doesn't include the few seconds leading up to that slap fu battle, as the first appearance of the she-ghost is actually quite effective in building up some tension and producing some genuinely nice light-horror moments. If you had that added to the front, you'd basically get the film's entire MO in a single clip. With nearly manic speed, the film can shift from low humor to surreal absurdity to impressive action and well-handled horror several times a scene. Used extensively, these wild shifts would be more exhausting than exhilarating, but Wu saves his energy for a handful of key scenes. These rest he handles with a fairly heavy comedic touch. Even when restraining himself, there nothing subtle about Wu's sense of humor.

After this initial exorcism, akin to a Bond pre-title sequence, the plot proper begins. We learn that a Christian missionary is coming to re-open a long since boarded up church at that heart of Wine Spring. Uncle is against this, and not just because he lacks the proper ecumenical attitude. Uncle believes that a great evil is contained within the church and re-opening it will free this malevolent force on the whole town.

In one of the more clever twists of the plot, the missionary – a well-meaning but clueless bumbler – is supported by several prominent local townspeople. Not because they're Christian, mind you. Rather, this cabal runs the local cathouses, opium dens, and gambling joints. Uncle, previously the only religious authority in town, was putting the kibosh on their ventures. With a successful rival church in town, Uncle's authority will diminish. Furthermore, the missionary's total linguistic and cultural ineptitude means that the head of the new church will basically be ignorant of their activities. By showing how different factions of the population resist or exploit the Western newcomers, the flick puts a nice spin on what might otherwise be a tired East = Good, West = Bad exercise.

Supported by the corrupt elite, the missionary pushes past Uncle's objectives and opens the church. Things go well for a while, but the lid comes off when Uncle's assistants uncover a drug smuggling pipeline that operates under the guise of a vampire herding operation.

I kid you not.

In Chinese mythology, you can control vampires by attaching strips of paper bearing the correct magical words to their foreheads. A vampire shepherd is a guy who goes around from town to town gathering up the pacified vampires. He then takes them to the nearest church and destroys them. It's quite a sight. Chinese vampires don't walk but rather fly or bound about through a series of standing broad jumps. (I read once that this is because their bodies are supposed to be stiff with rigor mortis, though this explanation sounds apocryphal to me.) The vampire shepherd stands at the front of a long line of jumping guys, ringing a bell to warn travelers that he's coming through with a string of fresh vampires and throwing magic strips of paper over his shoulders to keep all the bloodsuckers sedated. It one of the film's neatest images.

However, the vampire shepherd and his flock are actually drug mules. Knowing that everybody will stay the heck away from a line of leaping undead, they use the bit as a cover for opium smuggling. Uncle goes to put the hurt on this scofflaws when the previously mentioned evil from the church – a vampire with abilities and costuming that will be familiar to Western viewers, but throw Uncle for a loop – makes himself known in a spectacular manner.

Which leads to all manner of kung fu exorcism wackiness. Flying crucified vampires, neon crosses used as weapons, ass-biting undead, and more. You won't be disappointed.

Not that there isn't plenty to be disappointed in. There's a lot of crap in Exorcist Master that viewers could do without. When Wu's firing on all cylinders, his broad humor has an almost Raimi-ish quality to it. And that's great, for the 60 percent of the time that Wu's firing on all cylinders. The rest of the time, the humor is more energetic than talented, more noisy than funny. The comedic strategy behind Exorcist Master is quantity over quality. A ton of wasted effort is the predictable result.

Worse than the dud gags is the soundtrack. Consisting almost entirely of songs that sound suspiciously like pre-programmed demo routines from a civilian-grade keyboard, the film's music is distractingly monotonous and pointlessly anachronistic. Occasionally it does lapse into unintentional humor – such as an extended bit that I think is synth-only version of Tone Lōc's "Funky Cold Medina" and something that we ended up called the Canine Love Theme, a repeated motif that is played with the synth's "dog bark" sound effect on – but these moments are too few and far between to redeem the film's score.

Finally, Wu is capable of producing some great shots that reveal a real sense of style and narrative technique. Unfortunately, he's also prone to underlighting his sets, losing the flow of action, or just flubbing his compositions.

These are real flaws and the pleasures of the movie aren't strong enough to make the viewer just forget them. However, the film's aims are so modest that stakes feel low and it makes you feel generous. It works hard to land every joke, slam home every punch. It wears its goal – to keep you smiling along for an hour and a half – on its sleeve and there's something infectious about its freewheeling spirit. I don't know if it is quite gonzo enough for the post-Psychotronic set of so-bad-it's-good fanciers, but for folks who have the necessary goofiness tolerance threshold to enjoy, say, Santo vs. [something that is about to get its butt whipped] films, this isn't a bad way to spend 90 minutes.

Stuff: Get on the scene, like a sex machine.

By way of the Mind Hacks blog, New Scientist presents the story of Elektro, "one of the world's first celebrity robots."

From the article:

Elektro was one of the world's first celebrity robots. Built by electrical manufacturer Westinghouse, and with electrical controls that were remarkably advanced for the time, he drew huge crowds at the 1939 New York World's Fair. During the Second World War, the robot was stored in the basement of the Weeks's family home in Ohio, where he became 8-year-old Jack's playmate. After the war, Elektro went back on the road, touring the US to adoring crowds, but his star soon began to wane. Shortly after 1960 and the release of Sex Kittens - in which Elektro starred alongside blonde bombshell Mamie Van Doren and a chimp called Voltaire - the robot's career hit a low. Not long after that, Elektro disappeared entirely.

A CAREER LOW?!?!? I think not.

Here's the trailer for Elektro's one and only feature film: Sex Kitten's Go to College. The following clip is not safe for workplaces from the late 1950s.

Music: He's only got one eye!

The lucha-tastic video for Noah and the Whale's "Shape of My Heart" features a wrestler in a Santo mask dubbed El Corazon going up against a colorful rouges gallery of unlikely foes, including Killer Robot ("He's programmed . . . to kill") and Frank ("Just call him, 'Sir!'").

Enjoy.

Stuff: Another dispatch from the Department of Crazy Crap You Didn't Even Know You Had to Fear.

Here at ANTSS, the Department of Crazy Crap You Didn't Even Know You Had to Fear vigilantly surfs the Internet, day and night, even on weekends, barring major holidays and the second Sunday of every month, to bring you the latest in unlikely misery so you can rest a little less easily.

Last time, it was brain worms.

What's the new hotness in unlikely fear? Vampire moths.

Quit laughing. I'm serious. They're moths and they drink human blood.

The following clip has several images of the little beasties feeding. Enjoy.

Movies: Revenge is a dish best served competently.

German-born Austrian director Michael Haneke makes political films that are great films full of weak politics. Watching something like Funny Games (either the 1997 or 2007 version) or Caché, you get the weird sense of two different people at work. First there's the genre-subverting, meticulous, unsentimental, and rigorous artist. This Haneke does all the work. Then, throughout his flicks and somewhat at random, a second Haneke – a ham-fisted, ingenuous, and simple-minded – drops in awkward political asides that are so egregiously thoughtless that many otherwise sympathetic and astute viewers assume that they're being insulted. It's even become something of a critical cliché to assume that all of Haneke's flicks are little more than elaborately constructed insults directed that the audience members and the only two positions one can take towards his work is to either side with him, taking up arms against a sea of philistines and by opposing offend them, or hate the director right back, declaring him just another insufferable hipster doofus pandering to the intellectual prejudices of those across the pond (and those domestic doofi who deserve them).

In the U. S. of A., this was more true with Funny Games (which I hope to get to later this week or early next) than with today's film, Caché. Not because Caché's political content is any more or less goofy, but because Funny Games hits us were we live (especially horror fans, some of whom – in a truly heroic gesture of genre-provincialist egotism – suggested that it was specifically constructed to insult the beloved мать ужаса). Games's target was media violence, our favorite luxury good and, for some of us, our livelihoods. Caché, on the other hand, involves European racism and the legacy of French colonialism in Algiers. Not having any dog in this particular fight, American audiences seem much more content to allow Haneke to jumble together all manner of haphazard moral equivalences and serve up a half-baked Buergenlandisches Erdbeerkoch of liberal white guilt, generic left-leaning isolationism, with a tart hint of class warfare.

In fact, the most strenuous objection anybody seems to have put forth to question the painfully simplistic platitudes of Second Haneke is the actual movie made by First Haneke, a flick more complex and morally ambiguous than Haneke 2 will allow.

We're going to talk specifics now, but I feel it fair to warn you that I'm going to uncharacteristically spoil the crap out of this flick. If you want to see it without me tramping my dirty footie prints all over it, this is where you should check out.

Georges and Anne are a model of bobo coupling. Georges, played with seething self-righteousness by the excellent Daniel Auteuil, is minor television celeb that hosts a critically well-received and mildly popular literary talkshow. Imagine a nation where a literary talkshow could survive on the tube – and people say that only supernatural horror can break the shackles of the mundane everyday world! Anne, ably handled by a Juliette Binoche who is given way too little to do, is an editor of pop poli-sci tomes on evergreen lefty topics such as anti-globalization. They live in a modernist two-floor townhouse in an upmarket section of Paris. They have a single child: Pierrot.

The film opens with the discovery of a videocassette that has been left on their doorstep. Somebody videotaped Georges and Anne's house for several hours. The tape comes with no threatening note. There's no hint of violent intent. The camera work isn't even that invasive. It is a static, almost stately establishing shot that more resembles the early work of the Brothers Lumière than it does the work of a voyeur or snoop.

The tape is the first of many. Again and again, there are shots of the family's Paris home or the country estate Georges grew up on. However, the subsequent tapes include child-like drawings depicting a boy vomiting blood or a rooster with blood spurting from its neck. Georges and Anne go to the police, but – as all police are in any movie that isn't a cop actioner – they are useless. After receiving the video of his childhood home, Georges claims he knows who is sending them, but he refuses to tell his wife on the grounds that he doesn't want to finger the guilty party until he's sure.

In truth, Georges is hiding the fact that the culprit is most like a young Algerian boy he wronged when they were younger. Much later in the film we learn that when Georges was still a boy, an Algerian couple helped his parents work the estate lands. They had a son named Majid. In 1961, Majid's parents went to Paris to take part in protest march. That march, an actual incident in from France's tempestuous 1960s, ended in the slaughter of an estimated 200 French-Algerian civilians, many of whom were herded into the Seine by the police and drowned. Majid's parents were among those killed. Back on the farm, Georges's parents decided that they would adopt Majid as their own. Georges, in a fit of juvenile jealousy, claimed that he'd seen Majid cough up blood. A doctor was called and Majid was given a clean bill of health. The still ragingly jealous Georges told Majid that Georges's parents wanted the rooster in the barnyard butchered. In a flashback scene that includes actual footage of a rooster being beheaded and, literally, running around with its head cut off, we see Majid believed Georges. Georges later told his parents that Majid, angered the Georges had the doctor summoned on false premises, had slaughtered the chicken in front of Georges and then threatened him with the same hatchet. As a consequence, Majid was sent to an orphanage.

Following hints left in one of the videos, Georges manages to confront Majid. Majid claims that he has not sent any tapes. Unconvinced, Georges threatens to do Majid harm if any more tapes arrive. Still wanting to keep his role in this secret, Georges tells his wife that he followed the clues, but there was nobody home.

Shortly thereafter, a tape of Georges and Majid's confrontation, including Georges's clear threat, arrives at the home. Faced with clear evidence that Georges has been keeping her in the dark, Anne demands to know the whole story, but Georges once again refuses to confide in her. The same tape showing Georges threatening Majid – or, as those unfamiliar with the backstory would see it: a tape showing a well-off white Parisian hassling and threatening a lower income Algerian man – arrives at Georges's television station. Georges's boss tells him that they've destroyed the tape and that he's not interested in Georges's personal problems, but, hey, by the way, we're still reviewing next season's line up and I'll let you know if you're picked up or not.

In what appears to be retaliation for the threat, Pierrot vanishes on his way home from school. The police, previous uninterested in the tapes, immediately set upon Majid and his son, a well-spoken and tightly-wound man in his early twenties. Both men are held through the night, but released because the police have got no hard evidence that links them to Pierrot's disappearance. That's because Pierrot was not actually kidnapped. He was hiding out at the home of a schoolie. When Pierrot returns to his home, his mother asks him to explain himself and he answers with vague accusations that suggest Anne is cheating on Georges with a coworker. In keeping with the theme of violated trust, Haneke violates the viewers' by never revealing whether Anne is or is not pursuing exo-domestic knookie. We have no proof, but doth she protest too much? Hmmmm.

In the meanwhile, Georges's gets a call from Majid. Come over, Majid says, and I'll explain everything. Georges goes and prepares to argue with Majid again. Instead, Majid cryptically states that he wanted Georges to be present and then, using a small razor or knife, opens up his own throat. Blood sprays and Majid falls dead. Georges leaves the scene.

Georges comes home and tells Anne the whole story. He confesses about what happened when he was six and Majid was just a boy. He tells her what happened at Majid's apartment. Anne tells him that he must go to the police.

Cut to the next day. Georges is headed into his office where he is confronted by Majid's son. Georges accuses the son of working up the video scheme, claiming Majid was too crazy and feeble to have pulled such a scam. The son denies that he had anything to do with the tapes. Majid asks Georges what it feels like to have a man's life weigh on his conscience and Georges responds that he feels no guilt. Majid's son replies that Georges's answer was what he expected. Is he confirming that he thinks Georges is a dickhead? Or is he making a veiled threat on the basis that he thinks a man's life wouldn't weigh on his conscience either?

That night, Georges dreams of the day Majid was dragged from the farm and shipped off to the orphanage.

The film ends on one of Haneke's trademark long, stable shots of Pierrot's school steps. Kids are leaving for the day. We don't see Pierrot among them, but the screen fades to black before all the kids finished leaving the building. Are we supposed to understand that Pierrot is missing? Was this what Majid's son was threatening to do? Has Pierrot run off again? Maybe he just didn't walk out of the school yet?

[Update: Eagle-eyed reader Sue points out that I missed not only Pierrot in this final shot, but I somehow didn't notice that he appears in the final shot with Majid's son! D'oh! While this raises a whole new set of questions, at the same time it makes my set of questions invalid. Read the comments for Sue's take on the flick.]

Visually, Haneke is an acquired taste. Either you'll find his affection for the extended, immobile shot a soporific affectation or you'll see how it converts even the most mundane of scenes into a sort of landscape painting. Similarly, his rejection of film scores and needle-drops – if I recall, no Haneke film includes any musical soundtrack (odd for a man who has also directed operas) – is either going to strike you as the obvious choice of somebody who meticulously creates soundscapes of everyday noise to accompany his living landscapes or it will simply add to the feeling that nothing is happening in this film. The only defense I can offer is that Haneke is very aware of his own style. In fact, the videos the Georges and Anne get are so similar to what Haneke might shoot anyway that a running visual gag throughout the film is deciding whether the shot you've been watching is going to be revealed to be another cassette or is "in action," so to speak. Still, having an artist intentionally do something you think is stupid doesn't make it less stupid, just intentionally stupid. While watching Caché, I thought, "This is pretty neat, but if I was even slightly in a different mood, I'd be asleep already." So forewarned is forearmed; you know what you like.

As to the politics, here's how Haneke 2 wants you to read this whole weird story. Georges is guilty of a great wrong. In this, he parallels the injustices France visited upon the Algerians during the colonial period. His behavior specifically parallels France's national attitude to the 1961 massacre that was, for years, unmentionable in the public sphere. Instead of enshrining the image a couple hundred French Algerian corpses clogging up the Seine, France chose to elevate the self-serving and heroically liberal image of the student uprisings as paradigmatic of the 1960s. In this, the nation parallels the easy liberality of Georges and Anne. Majid's revenge on them is just. Their union is based on a false sense of self and though Majid cannot ultimately harm them (he instead dies rather pointlessly), his campaign of terror can reveal the rotten core lies they've built their house upon. In this, Haneke 2 comes about one short hair's width away from outright endorsing terrorism as a weapon of oppressed people.

But Haneke 1's film doesn't actually jibe with this reading. First, is there any real parallel one can draw between the emotional life of a six-year-old child and the foreign policies of one of Europe's longest lasting nation-states. Is it valid, or even remotely useful, to understand the 1961 massacre through the metaphor of a child worried that a new child might steal his parents' affections? The link is arbitrary and forced. Even within the world of filmic morality, where it makes sense to spend a vast fortune and absurd amounts of time on obsessively revenging incidents from one's childhood (a considerable chunk of Argento's giallo-work and the popular Oldboy sell this premise without blinking), the actions of Majid seem asymmetrical. He's no avenging angel. He's just a stalker. The clumsiness of his plan is more tragic than his backstory – one almost feels bad for him when its revealed that the police saw right away that his suicide in the presence of Georges was just that, a suicide. Majid worked so hard, but it was just more than his quite limited mentality could pull off. Haneke 1 made Majid a born loser. He's no avatar of oppressed people everywhere. Instead, he's a guy who caught a spectacularly bad break and could never let it go. It ceased to be a moral issue because, long ago, the sin committed left the realm of violation and forgiveness and, instead, took on the force of a creation myth. Georges offers apologies, but apologies are no good here because to accept an apology would be to invalidate all those years of suffering and pain that made him who he is. Majid managed to get on with life, but it poisoned him. He passed this poison on to his son. And then one or both of them began terrorizing not only the presumably guilty party, but two innocents as well. Where Haneke 2 comes close to becoming a terror apologist, Haneke 1 creates a picture of the mentality that produces terrorism and it is irrational, pathetic, immoral, ineffectual, and ultimately self-destructive.

And, finally, Haneke 1 puts forth a more interesting moral quandary than Haneke 2 does: What is our moral obligation to those who want to destroy us? Especially if that hate is at the very center of their identity and displaces whatever moral framework of reconciliation might be used to close the chasm between us. Do we kill them? Is that any different then letting them destroy themselves in their mad effort to get us? Do our moral obligations to other people vanish the second we perceive a threat from them? Or should we hold ourselves to ethical standards even when doing so may pose an existential threat?

This moral thicket, the impossible imperative to love our enemies, is the genuinely provocative idea hidden inside Caché.

Books: Girls who are boys who like boys to be girls who . . .

'Tis the season for end of the year lists, which presents an interesting problem for us here at ANTSS.

On one hand, we hate to be followers.

On the other hand, we're way too cowardly and lazy to do something that might push us beyond the pale and get us ostracized by the horror blog community.

What's the solution? Do a list, but do it on trangendered sexual weirdness with everybody's favorite moody daughter of Dario Argento (pictured in the typically reserved and humble portrait above). We get in on the whole traditional listy goodness, but we roll a little weird and try to keep our thin alibi of individuality.

Let's begin.

There comes a time in the life of every Asia Argento fan when you wonder to yourself, "Self, I wonder what it would be like to make love to Asia Argento as a girl who had fooled Asia Argento into thinking she was actually a boy who had extensive sexual reassignment surgery done and was now pretty much a girl."

Well, wonder no longer. Savannah Knoop has lived the dream.

In 1999, Savannah Knoop did a solid for her sister-in-law, Laura Albert.

Since 1996, Albert had been writing short stories, musical reviews, and other bits under the penname Jeremiah "J. T." Leroy. Over the course of those three years, Albert had given Leroy a baroque Southern Gothic backstory involving child prostitution, religious fanaticism, drug abuse, truckers, and a titanic Evil Mother figure identified only as Sarah. In 1999, Albert – as Leroy – had produced two novels. The first, titled Sarah, was a dark magical-realist take on the subculture of "lot lizards," prostitutes that haunt the truck stops of America's highways. The second novel, The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, was actually an interlinked series of short stories. The novel tossed out the magical-realist angle and went for a more spare, relentless, and grim approach.

The good news for Albert was that both books had become cult hits.

The bad news was that people wanted to meet J. T. Leroy.

The issue was further complicated by the fact that a considerable amount of the buzz regarding Albert's novels came from the fact that people assumed they were largely autobiographical. Part of the attraction of Leroy and his works was this bizarre and horrifying life story he supposedly had. Albert rightly understood that revealing there was no J. T. Leroy would drive a stake right into the heart of her success. Consequently, when Interview requested a photo of Leroy, Savannah was pressed into service. She was dressed up as a young man, photographed, and thanked for her part in keeping the hoax going.

It was meant to be a one-time deal, but for the next seven years Knoop became the public face of the J. T. Leroy literary conspiracy. She was interviewed, wooed, given awards, praised by everybody from Dennis Cooper to Bono, and even managed to sleep with Asia Argento while still disguised. To figure out how she pulled that off, you'll have to read Knoop's new memoir of the hoax, Girl Boy Girl: How I Became J. T. Leroy.

I can, however, share some of the things readers will learn about the tempestuous Italian actress and director from the not-a-man who knew her so intimately.

Without further ado, ANTSS proudly presents the official "And Now the Screaming Starts List of Nine Things You Would Know About Asia Argento If You Made Love to Asia Argento as a Girl Who Had Fooled Asia Argento into Thinking You Were Actually a Boy Who Had Extensive Sexual Reassignment Surgery":

1. When Asia Argento sees a sheep, she makes a flicking gesture with her fingers. It's a motion like trying to flick something sticky off your fingers. Asia believes that doing this will bring her good fortune.

2. In the sack, Asia Argento is "kind of a toppy-bottom." And, somewhat inexplicably, right before getting down to the nasty, she may announce that she wishes she had a penis.

3. When Asia Argento gives a toast, she stares directly into her dinner companion's eyes. She believes that doing so will allow her to detect betrayal. Of course, Asia seems to have never seen through Knoop's disguise, so you could be forgiven for doubting the efficacy of this lie-detection method.

4. Detecting treachery is apparently a major concern with Asia Argento as she seems to react to stressful situations by throwing paranoid fits. When she was directing The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, Argento repeatedly announced that her crew was purposefully undermining her. She also stated they resented her authority because she was a woman. She also claimed that they made fun of her accent.

5. If Asia Argento spills wine, she dips her finger in it and dabs it behind her ears like perfume. Why? Who knows?

6. Asia Argento smokes like a freakin' chimney. It is alleged that she smoked through her pregnancy. Agrento helped give this allegation legs by allowing her preggers self to be photographed naked in the bathtub with a lit coffin nail in hand.

7. For formal media-event occasions, Asia Argento always wears Fendi. In fact, she's contractually obligated to. Even though she feels that Fendi designs "conventional" and "prissy" clothes, she likes the money that comes from being their red carpet dummy. In less formal contexts, she prefers jeans, which she covers in ballpoint pen doodles.

8. Asia Argento does not like Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain album.

9. Ask Asia Argento and she will tell you that, despite what people think of her, she's actually quite shy.