A Wet Dream

I had a dream last night that I was watching the sinking of the Titanic on SKY News, live as the catastrophe was unfolding. I think my subconscious was channeling two events that have been splashed across the news lately - the centenary of the sinking of the Lusitania and the media hype surrounding the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight - disaster drama for the pay-for-view audience. Ray Bradbury explored the idea of time-travel-as-entertainment in his 1952 short story, A Sound of Thunder, about safari trips back to the dinosaur epoch, but in this age of media saturation, it's an intriguing notion that cynical TV corporations would sell cataclysmic events from the past (say the eruption of Vesuvius) to the high-def reality TV audience...

Riverman

Sunday morning listening - Way to Blue: An Introduction to Nick Drake... I picked up this compilation in the mid-90's and it remains a favourite album of mine. Usually compilations fall by the way side, as you get to grips with a discography, but I still love this Joe Boyd-curated primer, the song selection and sequencing is just superb. As I'm typing this the Five Leaves Left song Riverman has just passed and this song still has the power to stop me in my tracks - the string arrangement by Harry Robertson is astonishing beautiful. I'm just looking into Robertson's career and to my delight he had scored a number of Horror films including The Oblong Box, and some late era Hammers. If you haven't heard the music of Nick Drake, find a quiet space and take a listen to this...

Decasia

I'm currently exploring the BFI's new Bill Morrison Anthology and have just watched Morrison's extraordinary 2002 film Decasia, an 80min montage of decaying and distressed b/w nitrate film footage that Morrison had photographed onto 35mm. If David Cronenberg introduced the notion of body horror, Decasia concerns itself with celluloid horror, the fragments of film - everything from home movies, medical footage, costumed melodramas appear to have succumbed to some terrible disease eroding the very chemistry of the film. But what a transformative experience Decasia is. Landscapes erupt, buildings and bridges buckle and bend, faces warp into strange grotesque contortions. Celluloid damage engulfs a city street scene like a blazing inferno. A fragment of film shows miners being salvaged from a collapsed shaft and one hopes they are rescued not before the mine collapses but before the film finally disintegrates into oblivion. In another extraordinary moment, a boxer is seen throwing punches at a damaged part of the film as if fighting off infection that will inevitably rub out his existence. Intrinsically tied to the visuals is Michael Gordon's magnificent, urgent score, a swirling experimental orchestral work that lends the images a vitality despite their terminal decline. In a word, stunning.

Je t'aime: The Story of French Song

Just watched the latest of BBC4's Friday night music documentaries, one that was slightly outside my comfort zone but was no less interesting for it - Je t'aime: The Story of French Song, a very good 60min primer on the Chanson Française, the uniquely French style of popular song made famous by Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel and Serge Gainsbourg. What's interesting about the classic chanson française, what differentiates it from the Anglo-American tradition of song, is the emphasis on lyrics, which in many cases was introspective and confessional, sometimes scatological funny, and occasionally transgressive, like Serge Gainsbourg's orgasmic duet with Jane Birkin, "Je t'aime… moi non plus". The best stuff in the documentary are the years covering what one might call the Belle Époque of the Chanson Française, with fantastic archive footage of the aforementioned singers and musicians as well as Juliette Greco, Anna Karina, and Jane Birkin (all of whom are interviewed specifically for the film), although I wished there was more on Françoise Hardy (who receives only a fleeting mention) and the mysterious Barbara, whose harrowing 1968 song "L'Aigle Noir" ("The Black Eagle") was written about her memories of sexual abuse she suffered in her pre-teens by her father ("De son bec, il a touché ma joue" / "With his beak, he touched my cheek"). If you missed the initial screening last night, check the listings over the next few days for a rerun, or if you're in the UK, the documentary is available for a limited time on the BBC iplayer:  (or here)

The Magician

Just watched Rex Ingram's 1926 film The Magician... I should have prefaced this screening with a reading of W. Somerset Maugham's 1908 novel but time wouldn't allow. The chief interest in the novel and film nowadays is the character of Oliver Haddo the sinister magician, based on Aleister Crowley, an acquaintance of Maugham when they both lived in Paris. Crowley hated* the novel of course and I presume Ingram's film, but I found it a delight from start to finish, well directed and mounted (including excellent location shooting in Paris and the south of France) and less theatrical than one might expect from a melodrama of this era. The best sequence in the film is when Paul Wegener's magus (pictured below) whisks the heroine off to a tinted garden of unearthly delights (with shades of Häxan) and there's a rousing climax in the Magician's castle as he attempts to harness life from his diabolical laboratory - watching the film one gets the sense that The Magician bridges the gap between the German Expressionism and James Whale's Frankenstein. Interestingly, the film comes with a short bit of comic business by none other than Michael Powell, playing a man who misplaces his hat. Powell actually provides some good information about the film in his autobiography A Life In Movies, and offers a fascinating slant on the film when he opines: "If Crowley himself had played the part it might have been more entertaining".

* Postscript: I presumed wrongly when I claimed Crowley hated the novel. According to Martin Booth's excellent biography A Magick Life, Crowley was pleased that the book played up the sinister aspects of his personality and Crowley, ever the self-promoter bemoaned the fact that Maugham wasn't at the time a widely read author such that Crowley's infamous reputation would be better known.

200 Motels

As I'm approaching my 40's I sometimes worry my love for weird Cinema is starting to wane, like earlier when I sat down to watch Zappa's 1971 film 200 Motels, a film I've long had great affection for - I once stayed up past 3am to catch a screening of the film on the MGM HD channel, but this evening I lasted 50mins before I put my foot thru the TV - figuratively speaking of course. Despite my fondness for Jimmy Carl Black (my favourite Mother), weird just wasn't doing it for me today. Incidentally, the Voiceprint DVD can be picked up quite cheaply on AmazonUK but that's not a recommendation - the transfer feels little better than VHS, and having seen the MGM HD broadcast, the film looks far better and fresher than this pitiful DVD. Hopefully the Zappa estate will put out a superior edition of the film someday.

The Sheening

I mentioned Stephen King in my previous post and reading thru an early issue of Fangoria last night, King interviewed about the yet to be released film of The Shining, expressed reservations about the casting Jack Nicholson "I always saw Jack Torrance as a tall, dark haired man, not the Nicholson type at all; not flamboyant, almost withdrawn. I had someone like Martin Sheen in mind" It's near impossible to imagine anyone but Jack Nicholson in The Shining but I do like the idea of Martin Sheen in the role. I'm thinking of his portrayal of the disturbed Kit in Badlands, and the cold callous assassin Capt. Willard in Apocalypse Now. I think it might have worked. I expect King was pleased some years later when Sheen was cast as the sinister Greg Stillson in The Dead Zone.

Long Live the New Flesh: The Films of David Cronenberg

Just watched the excellent 1986 documentary Long Live the New Flesh: The Films of David Cronenberg… I was hoping this would turn up Arrow’s forthcoming BR of Videodrome, but not so (far), perhaps due to the presence of clips of Scanners, The Dead Zone and The Fly (and at one point Peeping Tom). Fortunately, this 50min documentary is still available on youtube (in 7 parts) and is well worth catching to see a relatively fresh-faced Cronenberg discuss his work in his usual erudite and thought-provoking style (“Most diseases would be very shocked to be considered diseases at all...it's a very negative connotation. For them it’s very positive. When they take over your body and destroy you, it’s a triumph"). Also contributing to the documentary are Martin Scorsese and Stephen King (both admirers) and there’s some dissenting opinion of Cronenberg’s work by critic Robin Wood and reactionary commentary by the British and Canadian censor on the kind of Cinema Cronenberg works in. James Ferman seems particularly pleased with himself when he claims what follows in Videodrome is exactly what his office protects against. Part 1 of Long Live the New Flesh is available here with the remaining 6 parts following on from this page.

Skies of America

I had a cluster of Cluster albums to listen to today - that was the plan at least, but following my last post, I wound up at Skyscraper City, an online community engaged in all things urban - architecture, urban planning, transport and so on. Well worth a visit. And as I was poring over fantastic pictures of the Chicago and the Manhattan skylines, I had the idea to dig out Ornette Coleman's 1972 third stream orchestral work Skies of America. The album has long been considered something of a misfire, or at best an oddity - the story goes that Ornette had to make some compromises to the work due to the involvement the London Symphony Orchestra, but I find that neither here nor there - I like the work for what it is, and it moves with a tidal force of power. Some passages remind me of Peter Maxwell Davies' feverish music for The Devils and Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother suite. This was a particularly hot period for Ornette - he had previously cut the Science Fiction record and had done some arrangements on Alice Coltrane's brilliant Universal Consciousness. If you haven't heard this one, be sure to check it out...

50 Years from Now !

I've just discovered a complete copy of the 1930 sci-fi comedy musical Just Imagine, set in the futuristic (and pre-code!) New York City of 1980. (“50 Years from Now” the posters marveled.) I've long wanted to see this film which has languished in relative obscurity compared with Metropolis and Things To Come. As far as I know the film is not available on home video so this youtube upload, which features decent picture and sound quality is something to celebrate. I very much like speculative science fiction, and Just Imagine is wildly speculative, with New Yorkers of 1980 flying around the vast Art-Deco style skyscrapers in their own little airplanes, but interesting nonetheless to compare the cityscape of Just Imagine with a photograph of Manhattan taken in 1983...