Movies – The Good Funeral Guide

Publishing event of the year!

25 January 2012

Charles

3 Comments

Categories: Academia and death, alternative funerals, Art and death, ashes, Assisted suicide, Atheism, Attitudes to dead bodies, Attitudes to death, bereavement, Books, bureaucracy, burial, burial at sea, burial depth, Care homes, Carla, celebrants, cemeteries, ceremony, Children, Children and funerals, Co-op, Co-operative Funeralcare, coffins, cremation, crematoria, Cryomation, Dead people's rights, death and funerals, Death masks, Death; Good death, Dementia, Digital will, Dignity, direct cremation, Divorce, DIY funeral, Dress codes, dying, Embalming, End-of-life issues, eulogy, euthanasia, Exit, family funeral directors, Formality vs informality, funeral, funeral cost, funeral customs, funeral directors, Funeral flowers, funeral food, funeral music, funeral photography, funeral plans, funeral poetry, funeral pyres, funeral reformers, funeral trends, Funerals for the unborn, funerals in other cultures, Gangster funerals, Ghosts, Good death, green funeral, Grief, Hearses, home funerals, Humanists, Humour, Immortality, independent funeral directors, Jazz funeral, Legal rights, Living funerals, Lonely funerals, Longevity, medical interventions in dying, memento mori, Memorial service, memorialisation, Movies, multimedia, music, National Association of Funeral Directors, natural burial, no service by request, Nokanshi, obituary; epitaph, onlime memorial sites, open-air cremation, Organ donation, Ossuary, Paranormal deathbed experiences, Pauper funerals, perceptions of funeral directors, Personalisation, pet cemeteries; pet and owner burial, Plan your own funeral, Poetry, Post mortem photos, pre-need plans, previous partner, prisons, Probate, Processions, Reasons to go to a funeral, Religious funerals, Requiem Mass, resomation, Ritual, SAIF, scandals, Secular approaches to death, self-deliverance, sex and death, shroud, Social Fund Funeral Payment, spiritualism, suicide, Tahara, Taste, traditional funerals, Transitus, Transparency of ownership, tributes, viking funeral, Virtual funeral, What do we die of and when?, what does dying feel like?

The Natural Death Handbook, Fifth Edition

A thoroughly updated and revised edition of the Natural Death Centre‘s celebrated handbook. Now presented alongside a new collection of essays on death, dying and funeral practices by doctors, historians, authors, poets, theologians and artists including Richard Barnett, David Jay Brown, Dr Sheila Cassidy, Charles Cowling, Bill Drummond, Stephen Grasso, Maggi Hambling, Graham Harvey, Gary Lachman, Nick Reynolds, and Dignity in Dying.

It’s out in May 2012!

Get Low

25 June 2010

Charles

3 Comments

Categories: Movies

Here’s a very interesting looking new film. Synopsis follows. Hat-tip to Liam Roberts for this.

For years, townsfolk have been terrified of the backwoods recluse known as Felix Bush. People say he’s done all manner of unspeakable things — that he’s killed in cold blood; that he’s in league with the Devil; that he has strange powers — and they avoid him like the plague. Then, one day, Felix rides to town with a shotgun and a wad of cash, saying he wants to buy a funeral. It’s not your usual funeral for the dead Felix wants. On the contrary, he wants a ‘living funeral,’ in which anyone who ever had heard a story about him will come to tell it, while he takes it all in. Sensing a big payday in the offing, fast-talking funeral home owner Frank Quinn enlists his gentlemanly young apprentice, Buddy Robinson to win over Felix’s business. Buddy is no stranger to Felix’s dark reputation, but what he discovers is that behind Felix’s surreal plan lies a very real and long-held secret that must get out. As the funeral approaches, the mystery – which involves the widow Maddie Darrow, the only person in town who ever got close to Felix, and the Illinois preacher Charlie Jackson who refuses to speak at his former friend’s funeral – only deepens. But on the big day, Felix is in no mood to listen to other people spinning made-up anecdotes about him. This time, he’s the one who is going to do the telling about why he has been hiding out in the woods.

Nokanshi

24 June 2010

Charles

4 Comments

Categories: Movies, Nokanshi

I had an email today from someone in Atlanta, Georgia USA. Is there any funeral home in this area, she wondered, that practises nokanshi. I explained that I couldn’t help: the GFG is UK-based. Then I googled nokanshi. And discovered that it is the ritual preparation, in Japan, of the body for cremation.

There’s a fuller description of a nokanshi here.

And you can see how it’s done in the opening scene of the film Departures. (I put some trailers for Departures up on this blog a while back.) Now, I see, someone has posted the entire film on YouTube in 10-min chunks. It’s incredibly beautiful. Okay, the nokanshi discovers halfway through the ritual washing that the beautiful dead girl is actually a boy. No matter. You get the point.

There are no subtitles on the (presumably pirated) YouTube version. But it’s easy enough to follow. And it really is a lovely piece of work.