Vampyr

Watched Carl Dreyer's Vampyr last night... I can't think of another film that replicates that elusive, intangible feeling that comes with being on the edge of sleep. The weird movement of the actors caused by the under cranked camera, the reverse shots, the milky photography, the strange shadow play, the sudden breaks in continuity all add up to perhaps the most singular vision in Horror Cinema. I've seen the film perhaps 4 or 5 times over the years between the odd TV screening, the UK Redemption video and the Master of Cinema DVD, and still I was looking ahead to the moment in the film where Allan Grey sees dirt shoveled down upon him from the vantage point of inside his own coffin - but of course no such scene exists in the film. I was probably seeing the film thru the prism of later horror films – there are similar moments in The Evil Dead and City of the Living Dead, but it seems oddly appropriate that I would experience this false memory with Dreyer’s dreamlike film…

Burroughs books

Looking thru a fantastic archive of William Burroughs book covers… Fascinating to see how a tricky customer like Burroughs was packaged and sold over the years. Naked Lunch and Soft Machine borrowed Dali paintings for their US Ballantine editions, the first US edition of Cities of the Red Night used Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s apocalyptic painting The Triumph of Death, while a Dutch edition of Naked Lunch, featured Goya’s painting Saturn Devouring His Son. Occasionally publishers would reflect the decadence of Burroughs’ novels – UK paperbacks of Junkie and Dead Fingers Talk featured explicit syringe play, a German edition of Naked Lunch from 1982 came with a fairly explicit still from what looks like a porno, while various naked male torsos were commonly seen on copies of Queer. Burroughs himself was the cover star for many of his books over the years – I particularly like the Chinese film-tie-in edition of Naked Lunch which features Burroughs sitting in the black meat factory set of Cronenberg’s film. All designs mentioned above can be found here

Expensive Records

I mentioned The Beatles' Let It Be a few days ago, and I'm just cruising eBay checking prices for a copy of the album that came with the photo-book - a slightly worn edition will set you back a cool $550.00. I hasten to add I could never afford such treasures, but one should have things in mind in the event of an unexpected windfall... Some other nice items currently up for auction on eBay: a copy of Sticky Fingers, with zipper fencing in Joe Dallesandro's bulge goes from $40 to $250, depending on grading... The all-destroying sandpaper packaged Return of the Durutti Column will destroy your wallet at $480... Depending on the level of rust, copies of Public Image Limited's Metal Box are available starting at $150 and up to $295... Paypal donations will be warmly received.

Let It Be

Watched Let It Be, the Beatles film from 1970… It wasn't quite the scenes-from-a-marriage I was expecting, no doubt the four Beatles had cherry-picked the most appealing footage of their stint at Twickenham Studios rehearsing for the aborted Get Back album. And yet there are painful hints that the band was working towards an inexorable dissolution – one imagines Ringo was wishing he was away on a film set, or George working instead on the songs he had been quietly squirreling away. John simply goes thru the motions (accompanied everywhere by Yoko Ono, wearing a rigid Noh expression throughout her scenes), whilst Paul shows the strain of keeping the fragmenting band together – a shot in the film of a partially devoured green apple on top of McCartney’s piano can help but raise a wry smile. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the film is how ragged The Beatles were sounding - a lot of the music they make in the film dissolves into loose jams, old rock n’ roll standards and comedy routines, but as if by magic, the lethargy is swept away when they convene on the rooftop of Apple HQ on a cold January morning for one last concert, to the delight of lunch-hour shop girls and a few disapproving bobbies who eventually break the whole thing up...

It's a shame that Let It Be can only be seen through unofficial channels, McCartney and Starr have apparently scotched proposed re-issues of the film which is dofficult to fathom considering the final days of The Beatles are well documented. In fact the film is nowhere near as bruising as Peter Doggett's book You Never Give Me Your Money: The Battle For The Soul Of The Beatles but it remains an important, perhaps even essential closing chapter the Fab Four's story.

Movies

Listening to Holger Czukay’s 1979 album Movies… Whenever I dig this album out, it requires a few passes before the weirdness of the album wears off on me. The core of Can appear on this record at various points - Irmin Schmidt, Michael Karoli and Jaki Liebezeit were all drafted in to add a touch of their magic, and it’s probably why the album resembles in places Future Days. But on the whole the album has a far sunnier disposition than Can – there’s none of Tago Mago’s frightening experimentation, in fact the opening track Cool In the Pool could pass for skewed Euro-pop. One significant aspect of the album are the samples peppered throughout – dialogue is lifted from movies (naturally) and there’s a distinct middle eastern texture. Czukay had sampled exotic voices before, on the Canaxis album, but I wonder was the Movies album a more direct influence on Eno and Byrne’s My Life In the Bush of Ghosts (which also pulls dialogue and middle eastern vocals into its mix). Listening to the album, a scene from The Man Who Fell To Earth springs to mind, where Bowie’s character is feverishly channel surfing thru the bank of televisions he has set up – the film’s soundtrack is suddenly swamped by dialogue from old movies, documentaries, adverts, and a Roy Orbison song, creating an extraordinary bricolage of sound…

Book Spotting !

I watched Interstellar over the w/end (and loved it)… Being a book nerd one memorable aspect of the film were the shots of the bookshelf, which completely took me out of the film momentarily, the plot and characters pushed aside as I scrambled to spot as many titles as possible. I’m sure some eagled-eyed blogger has cobbled together a full list of books, but I couldn't fail to spot a copy of The Stand – and I hope it wasn't one of the books that got pushed off the shelf - the copy featured was an original Doubleday first edition (a facsimile I’m sure), a fine copy of this book can fetch up to three to four hundred dollars ! Another book I caught was James Ellroy’s The Big Nowhere (which made me smile!). One book I might have expected to be there was James Blish’s four-volume interstellar saga Cities In Flight, in which scientists and engineers have solved the problem of gravity and whole cites have uprooted and blasted off for the stars. I actually thought Nolan’s film was heading in this direction, so there’s a sequel that’s just asking to be made !

The Amazing Mr. Bickford

Just watched the claymation film The Amazing Mr Bickford... I have a few Frank Zappa things to watch in the next few days and this was top of the list, a 51min compilation of claymation sketches by animator-extraordinaire Bruce Bickford made for Zappa in the late 70's/early 80's. The film is scored with cuts from Zappa'a 1984 orchestral work Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger, and the London Symphony Orchestra Vol 1 album, the thunderous music the perfect accompaniment to Bickford's dizzying, perpetually morphing animation, made in the surrealist tradition. His extraordinarily expressive clay players wander through hallucinatory Max Ernst type landscapes, encountering violence, hatred and degradation, and undergoing radical Dali-esque contortions. It's a technical tour de force of hyper kinetic editing and movement, with Bickford's camera swooping and diving after his characters - I suspect creating this incredible micro-cosmos was a Herculean task. Better to leave this wonderful film do the talking, and despite it being unavailable thru official channels, the entire film is available to watch in good quality over on youtube...

Alan Splet

Listening to Robert Hampson's experimental soundscape project Main… The album I'm currently listening to, Hz, a compilation of limited edition singles comes with a dedication to film sound designer Alan Splet (pictured below with David Lynch and Jack Nance). Splet is perhaps best known for creating with David Lynch, the audio surrealism of Eraserhead. Splet first worked with Lynch on The Grandmother which led to a run of tremendous collaborations – Splet was responsible for the sound of the hissing, clanking machinery in The Elephant Man and Dune, and the extraordinary detailed soundworld of Blue Velvet (whose story begins with the shot of an ear!). Elsewhere Splet's brilliant work can be heard in Days of Heaven, The Black Stallion (which won him a special Academy Award for sound editing), The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Dead Poets Society, and The Mosquito Coast, which incidentally includes another piece of sinister machinery...

Mr. Arkadin

I've just completed (well, almost completed), Criterion's fabulous Mr. Arkadin box, having now watched all three cuts of Welles' brilliant 1955 film(s)... I had pondered on which order to watch the three films in and finally took the pedantic decision to watch them as placed within the Criterion set - Confidential Report first, followed by Mr. Arkadin (Corinth version) and the so-called Comprehensive Version. Of the three cuts, I think the Comprehensive Version is the best - the revisions are sensitive and well-considered, and the re-sequencing of certain scenes is handled with dutiful deference to Welles' own plan for the film. The Comprehensive Version also rescues a few exclusive snippets here and there from Confidential Report - I say "rescue" like Confidential Report was an unforgivable corruption of Welles' vision - far from it, I think producer Louis Dolivet's dispensing of the flashback structure lends the film a bold narrative thrust which makes few concessions to the audience's comprehension of the film. By the way, I fell head over heels in love with Patricia Medina in the film, her drunken scene with Welles on board a perilously swaying yacht is one of my favourite things in the picture. I very much liked Robert Arden as well, and have scribbled a mental note to look out for him in what I suspect are bit parts in Chaplin's A King In New York, and Omen III. All that's left now is to finish off the set by reading Maurice Bessy's novelization, and Video Watchdog's own forensic investigation of the film and its variants (which I might add appeared in issue 10 from 1992, predating the Criterion set by 14 years).

Revisiting Sunset Boulevard

Just watched Sunset Boulevard, a film that looks more astonishing with each passing year... There are moments in the film when Gloria Swanson, not hamming it up as Salome, retains some of that beauty of her younger self seen in the clip of von Stroheim's Queen Kelly - after all, William Holden takes her to bed at one point, and perhaps it's my age, but I think the film generates a palpable frisson of dark eroticism. I love the sequence where Swanson makes her triumphant return to that Paramount lot and there's a lovely moment where C.B. DeMille gently kisses Swanson goodbye on the forehead and Swanson momentarily closes her eyes like a loving daughter. Wonderful stuff. It's a shame the film's original, more macabre opening of Holden beginning his story from a mortuary slab was rejected after unfavorable test screenings, but fortunately the brilliant notion of a dead man narrating the film was kept: in fact, for Holden's last bit of voice-over I half-expected him to sign-off with "Life, which can be strangely merciful, had taken pity on Norma Desmond. The dream she had clung to so desperately had finally enfolded her...in the Twilight Zone." (I was perhaps thinking of the 1959 TZ episode. "The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine" which leans heavily on Sunset Boulevard).

Kosmos - Soundtracks Of Eastern Germany's Adventures In Space

First album of the day... Kosmos - Soundtracks Of Eastern Germany's Adventures In Space, a 2002 compilation which collects together various themes (and dialogue) from a clutch of sci-fi films made at the East German DEFA studio - Der Schweigende Stern (First Spaceship on Venus, 1960), Signale - Ein Weltraumabenteuer (Signals: A Space Adventure, 1970), Im Staub der Sterne (In the Dust of the Stars, 1976), and Eolomea (1972). There's less weird electronics on this than I expected, the music swings in the style of Martin Denny and Les Baxter, with occasional jazz licks, celestial choruses, and the odd burst of prog rock (one track in particular sounds like a cast-off from Tangerine Dream's Cyclone album). Still, it's an enjoyable listen, and it's given me the urge to investigate these Eastern Bloc space operas...

Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon

Earlier this afternoon, I read Stanley Kubrick's screenplay for Napoleon... This particular draft is dated September 29, 1969, and comes with fascinating production notes concerning the film's budget, actors, filming locations, sets, costumes and research material. I'm not sure how advanced this particular draft of the screenplay was but it makes for interesting reading on what might have been, had Kubrick made the film. The screenplay spans Napoleon's entire life, opening with a scene where a 4-year old Napoleon is read a bedtime story, to his rise to power, his triumphant campaigns and battles, his coronation as Emperor of France, through to his fall after a disastrous war with Russia, and his exile and death on the remote Atlantic island St. Helena. And all of it within 3 hours. The screenplay includes copious amounts of narration (which I read with the voice of Michael Hordern in mind) providing expository information and filling in gaps in the narrative. The battle sequences make for the most exciting parts of the screenplay, with shots planned to include men by the thousands, but Kubrick deftly adds some small touches which delight - when the film briefly relocates to Egypt, there's a shot of French soldiers inspecting a tomb, and a young drummer boy scrawling "Long Live the Republic" over some hieroglyphic writing. Elsewhere, a key moment like the French naval defeat at Trafalgar is summed up in one single striking shot of a wrecked French ship at the bottom of the ocean, the body of its drowned captain drifting around the cabin along with his books and papers. But there are problems too. Kubrick's writing is less skillful when the film indulges in court intrigue, Napoleon's womanizing, and tempestuous relationship with Josephine are dull. A scene where Napoleon breaks away from a dinner to conquer the wife of a guest feels clumsily staged. One thing I did struggle with reading the screenplay was whom to visualize in the part of Napoleon. Jack Nicholson has long been associated with the role, but the Napoleon, as Kubrick writes him, seems a little to austere for Nicholson. I was thinking... Dustin Hoffman perhaps ? A copy of the screenplay is available here...

Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera

Following my last post on Philip Glass, I was reaching for my copy of Einstein on the Beach but instead I watched Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera, an excellent 1985 documentary about Robert Wilson and Philip Glass' magnum opus. What's terrific about this 58min film is that it gives a window into the visual aspect of an opera that comparatively few people will experience, with footage of the rehearsals of The Brooklyn Academy of Music production of the opera for the Next Wave Festival in 1984. Good contributions too from Wilson and Glass. The film is available on youtube, and for streaming and download at the Ubu Archive

A Glass Book

Just reading a warm review of Philip Glass' new memoir Words Without Music (Faber, pp416) in The Sunday Times' Culture supplement. "Reading this memoir will not make converts one way or another, but it should at least put paid to the idea that Glass is facile or vacuous, for he explains the aesthetic behind his music interestingly and clearly. And whichever side you sit, there is no denying the intrinsic interest of his story and what it has to say about the cultural politics of our times - and especially those ever shifting categories of avant-garde and mainstream". I remember one time I was on a bus touring around Chicago, and passing the University of Chicago, the tour guide listed some famous former students which included Philip Glass. Asked for a show of hands for those who knew of Philip Glass, I was the sole contributor which was slightly disappointing. My fellow travelers were far more enthusiastic when the conversation turned to the fortunes of the Cubs as we passed Wrigley Field...

Coming Soon from Arrow...

I'm very pleased to see Arrow plans to put out Tobe Hooper's 1977 film Eaten Alive on Blu-Ray. This title has been on DVD for as long as I've been collecting - I've seen numerous editions of the film, good, bad and ugly released on both sides of the Atlantic, from fly-by-night cheapskates like Diamond and VIPCO, to more respectful editions by Elite and later Dark Sky. So, it's very gratifying to see Arrow's enthusiasm for this great, underrated film. I last visited with the film in 2013 and was impressed as ever (see link below). It will be really interesting to see what Arrow's production team will do transfer-wise, the film's visual scheme, all murky browns and thick, soupy reds will prove a formidable challenge for HD. If Arrow follows their tradition of offering alternative cover art, there will a bounty of material to choose from - the film at various points was distributed as Eaten Alive, Death Trap, Horror Hotel, Starlight Slaughter (my favourite!), Legend of the Bayou, and apparently Brutes and Savages, although I've never seen any admats or posters for the film under this title... Arrow's Eaten Alive is due for release in the UK and US in July