Ken Taylor’s artwork for the cover of the upcoming Quentin Tarantino Blu-ray boxset is a stunner. Will the folks at Austin’s Mondo Gallery (who collaborate with Taylor) print a poster of this? I hope so.
Lionsgate is releasing a Blu-ray boxset of all of Tarantino’s films on November 20th. “Tarantino XX: 8-Film Collection” will include Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Inglourious Basterds, True Romance (screenplay by Quentin) and Death Proof.
Mega-talented Chicago-based artist Gail Potocki is serving up some major awesomeness with her limited—only 100 sets signed and numbered by the artist herself—handmade letterpressed trading cards of “history’s most recognizable sideshow performers.”
The SERIES ONE set titled Freaks “comes with all five cards in a textured, deckled edge envelope with hand stamped details.”
These are truly gorgeous. I can’t wait to see SERIES TWO. Amazing.
Vaughn Bode emerged from the 1960s/70s underground comic scene to become a major influence on New York City’s graffiti artists. His distinctive style (which owed a bit to his friend R. Crumb and Disney Studios) was also the touchstone for his pal Ralph Bakshi’s animated film Wizards.
There’s very little video or film footage of Bode, so this clip from the 1974 Toronto Comic Con is a real treat.
Bode, who died in 1975 at the age of 36, lived a life that became as phantasmagorical as some of the fictions he spun in his comic strips. A biography seems long overdue. I found this short bio I See My Light Come Shining by Bob Levin informative and fascinating.
In 1978, Anger re-cut his landmark 1954 film, Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome by several minutes as well as changing the score of the film he had previous selected, “Glagolitic Mass” by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček. This re-constructed version, offered here today features Anger’s choice of the 1974 Electric Light Orchestra album, ‘Eldorado’ as score. This edition of the film would be labeled by Anger as his “Sacred Mushroom Edition.” Anger successfully screened this E.L.O. version of the film at the 1978 Boston Film Festival. This festival exhibition would be the only time in history this version of Anger’s film had been seen, until now.
ELO’s Eldorado concept album about the fantasy life of a “Walter Mitty”-esque character seems an old choice for a soundtrack to such a beautifully evil film, I must say. Interesting, to be sure, but I can see why Anger orphaned this in favor of the classic version of the film.
This feels a bit like the Giorgio Moroder scored and colorized version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to me. Maybe I’ve just seen the classic Pleasure Dome too many times.
Confidence has nothing to do with David Lynch’s endless supply of ideas. He credits meditation for that. It helps his ‘ideas flow through like these beautiful little fish, and you catch them,’ as he tells Miranda Sawyer, in this interview from The Culture Show in 2011.
The interview is loosely anchored around the release of Lynch’s album Crazy Clown Time, and bobs around various subjects before fading out on Lynch’s flow of ideas.
Going by how long the likable Ms. Sawyer is on screen (compared to Lynch), this interview has been heavily edited. Perhaps because Lynch rambles? Or, is he too intelligent for BBC viewers? Or, more likely he wasn’t giving the Beeb the sound-bites they required - which is always an issue with interview packages like this.
And note also, there are no cutaways of Mr Lynch, or any shots of the great man pottering about the beautiful Idem Studio in Paris, where he was working last year. Still, these are minor quibbles, as Lynch, with his Jack-Nicholson-on-helium voice, and Stan-Laurel-grimace, is always watchable and never less than interesting.
Harold PInter liked Samuel Beckett because he rubbed his nose in the shit. He wasn’t leading him up the garden path. He wasn’t giving him the wink. And he certainly wasn’t fucking him about. No.
Pinter knew Beckett wasn’t selling him anything. But if he was selling him anything, then he would have bought it hook, line and sinker.
Pinter first read Beckett in 1953, while working in Ireland. When he returned home to London, Pinter searched the libraries for any of Beckett’s books. He couldn’t find any, that is until he happened upon a copy of Beckett’s novel Murphy in the Bermondsley Reserve LIbrary. Pinter borrowed it, and as he noted that the book had not been taken out since 1939, he kept it.
This is Pinter’s astounding performance in Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape. Though Patrick Magee was Beckett’s original choice for the role, Pinter brings a dark, bitter irony to the character, as well as a heightened sense of personal mortality. Pinter described the play he sees as being about death, and about love - the impossibility of love and the necessity of love.
In the early-to-late 1980s, British record label 4AD’s visuals had a certain nocturnal, gothic and industrial look and feel that was simple, elegant and occasionally as fragile as moth wings . Most of the covers I recall, used photographs that were black and white or de-saturated color. The fonts were distinctive, the layouts uncluttered. The overall effect was timeless, nothing tied the work to fashion trends of the moment. Which has allowed the label to maintain their “look” throughout the years, even without the contribution of the two guys who were responsible for creating it.
In the 1985 documentary 23 Envelope we are introduced to graphic designer Vaughan Oliver and photographer/filmmaker Nigel Grierson who created the record sleeves for 4AD from 1983-1988. If you’ve seen record jackets for Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil, Pixies or Cocteau Twins, you’ve seen the work of Olivier and Grierson. The film contains music by 4AD bands of the era covered.
Here’s something I never thought I’d see: A HUGE Klaus Kinski head sculpture by German artist Paule Hammer. The title of the piece—made in 2005—is “Niemand weiß, was wir fühlen” (which translates to “Noboby knows what we feel”).
The Philips Pavilion was a World’s Fair pavilion, part of Expo ‘58 in Brussels and was designed by the office of Le Corbusier. Commissioned by the Dutch electronics corporation Philips, the exhibit was a multimedia spectacle that celebrated postwar technological progress. Iannis Xenakis, the famous Greek experimental composer/architect, was responsible for much of the experience.
Le Corbusier said he wanted to present a “poem in a bottle,” so he asked French avant gardist Edgard Varèse to write an electronic score for the installation. Poème électronique was heard on over 350 speakers embedded into the walls of the nine hyperbolic paraboloid of the exhibit and seen on multiple projection screens. Several human operators using telephone dials somehow controlled the sounds.
