Jake Horsley

Jake Horsley (born 1967) is a London-based film critic and author.

Background

Jake (birth name Jason) Horsley is an independent scholar and world traveler, the younger son of Nicholas Horsley, the millionaire chairman of Northern Foods, which had been founded by Nicholas's father, Alec. He has an older sister, Ashley, and an older brother, Sebastian.

Horsley has traveled for most of his life, living at various times in New York, Mexico, New Mexico, Paris, Spain, Guatemala, and Portugal. In 1991 he disinherited his personal fortune and traveled to Morocco to live on the streets. ["I gave up my £500,000 inheritance" [http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329419179-103425,00.html] by Jake Horsley
The Guardian, Saturday February 25, 2006] In 2003, Horsley published "Matrix Warrior: Being the One", in which he combined the plot of the 1999 movie The Matrix with the teachings of Carlos Castaneda, and argued that reality is an illusory construct designed to enslave humans and drain their life-force as food for "inorganic beings." According to Horsley "the first step to unplugging is an overwhelming sense of disgust, despair, and contempt with life, the world, and everything. For many it begins at the home, with family members, possibly via 'romantic' relationships, in which we begin to feel the terrible suffocating influence of other people's thoughts and expectations." ["Enter the Real Matrix: An Interview with Jake Horsley" [http://www.sfsite.com/06b/sajh202.htm] 2005 by Sandy Auden] Horsley also claimed during this period to be "the One," or at least in the running. When asked how he would know for sure, he replied, "book sales." ["Jake Horsley Unplugged: A Neo-Gnostic Takes on the Matrix" [http://www.divinevirus.com/neognostic.html] 2003 By Elizabeth Wu] "Matrix Warrior" sold around 12,000 copies. Horsley has since declared his resignation as "the One" ["Matrix Warrior Revisited: Putting a Personal Myth to Rest" [http://www.divinevirus.com/2yearslater.html] by Jake Horsley, May 2004] but continues to publish. He is also an independent filmmaker and has made the feature film "Beauty Fool" and six documentary shorts, "The God Game: An Investigation Into the Illusory Nature of Reality", none of which have yet been released.

Writing

Horsley's film analyses have appeared in various publications, including "New Dawn" magazine, "Film Festival Magazine", and The Guardian. He worked as a contributing editor and film reviewer for "Oaxaca Times" in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2004, and currently writes film reviews for The List (magazine), an Edinburgh-based publication.

His first work was published in 1999 and called "The Blood Poets: A Cinema of Savagery 1958-1999", from University Press of America, in two volumes. It was well reviewed by Salon ["Good Blood," by Charles Taylor, Dec 11 2000 [http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2000/12/11/violence/] ] and New Yorker critic Pauline Kael, who called Horsley "a marvelous critic." ["Jake Horsley seems to arrive from out of nowhere, yet here he is - an almost fully-developed and only slightly stoned sensibility. This hothead fantasist offers the excitement of a wild, paranoid style. He lives in the movies, explodes them from the inside, and shares his fevered trance with us. But he doesn't lose his analytic good sense. He's not just a hothead, he's a hardhead, too. Maybe he could use more humor, but couldn't we all? (Intelligent movie criticism is being swamped in seriousness.) He's a marvelous critic. Tackling a new movie, he'll hang in there until he's balanced and sound. It's always a surprise." Pauline Kael, 2001, in correspondence with Charles Taylor] In 2005, Horsley published "Dogville Vs. Hollywood: the War Between Mainstream Movies and Independent Cinema", from Marion Boyars, UK (who also published Kael's work). In the book, Horsley argued that the Hollywood system, like all organized businesses, develops a will of its own that runs counter to its supposed public function (in this case, to entertain). Horsley compares Hollywood to the medical industry which thrives on keeping people in poor health and thereby dependent on it, and to political institutions which create social problems in order to then provide ready-made "solutions." Horsley argues how, in its bid for self-preservation, Hollywood slowly squeezes out the elements that run counter to its agenda (ie, artists with visionary goals), its aim to make money by making movies that leave audiences frustrated and unsatisfied. This way, like sick patients, they keep coming back for more. He also compared the film industry to a wine press that gets the best out of filmmakers, "but crushes them in the process." [Back cover blurb, Dogville Vs. Hollywood]

Opinions

Though little known, Horsley has garnered a certain amount of notoriety (and perhaps the beginnings of a cult following) for his scathing, "take no prisoners" style of film criticism, such as for example when he described Woody Allen as "a former artist," ["Woody Allen, Misanthropy, and Match Point, Or How Death Got the Last Laugh," Bright Lights Film Journal, August 2006 [http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/53/woody.htm] ] or George Lucas as "the most inept filmmaker ever to attain the status of movie giant ... a prince with the sensibilities of a toad, so utterly out of touch with anything beyond his masturbatory fantasy world that he can no longer be considered human in the usual sense." [Dogville Vs. Hollywood, pg. 293] As well as shooting down movie giants, Horsley has a tendency to champion little-known, underrated or overlooked films and filmmakers, such as when he called Keith Gordon "one of the dozen or so most gifted and challenging filmmakers working in America," [Dogville Vs. Hollywood, pg. 298] or more recently, reviewing Ethan Hawke's (unreleased) The Hottest State: "Hawke imbues the film with the wisdom and acceptance of a broken heart made stronger and freer by the breakage." ["Ethan Hawke's Confessional: The Hottest State," Movie Blues, Dec 9, 2007 [http://movieblues.blogspot.com/2007/12/ethan-hawkes-confessional-hottest-state.html] ]

References

External links

* [http://movieblues.blogspot.com Jake Horsley's Blog]
* [http://divinevirus.com Official Website]