There have been few films as truthful about the state of MerryEngland as Derek Jarman’s Jubilee. Here is a world bought by bankers, sold by politicians, all with public money. A world where everything has its price, and liberty is defined by our Right to Shop. A world best described in the film by the wonderful creation, Borgia Ginz:

“You wanna know my story babe. It’s easy. This is the generation that grew up and forgot to lead their lives. They were so busy watching my endless movie. It’s power babe, power. I don’t create it, I own it. I sucked and sucked and I sucked. The media became their only reality and I owned their world of flickering shadows. BBC. TUC. ITV. ABC. ATV. MGM. KGB. C of E. You name it, I bought them all and rearranged the alphabet. Without me, they don’t exist.”

After its release in 1978, Jubilee was denounced by some of the people who should have supported it, but were horrified by its nihilism. Jarman explained his motivation to the Guardian‘s Nicholas de Jongh:

“We have now seen all established authority, all political systems, fail to provide any solution - they no longer ring true.”

As true today, as it was then.

Here is Jordan as Amyl Nitrite, giving it laldy with her rendition of “Rule Britannia”.
 

 
I read John Boorman and Bill Stair’s novelization of Zardoz when I was about 12. It was—to be frank—a defining moment in my childhood. The story chimed with many of my half-baked thoughts about those usual tropes—the control of religion, the division of class, society’s inequalities and its endemic violence. In a way you could say it was the start of my adult education. The book held extra significance as I had walked home from school for a week to save the money on bus fares to buy it. After reading it—nothing was ever the same. How could it be? When within its opening pages a flying godhead Zardoz has descended form the heavens and announced to its murderous followers:

“You have been raised up from Brutality, to kill the Brutals who multiply, and are legion. To this end, Zardoz your God gave you the gift of the Gun. The Gun is good!

“The Penis is evil! The Penis shoots Seeds, and makes new Life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the Gun shoots Death and purifies the Earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth, and kill! Zardoz has spoken.”

 

 
When Sean Connery was sent the script, he was “absolutely caught by its originality”, as he told Gordon Gow from Films and Filming in 1974:

“It was one of the best ideas I’d come across for ages…So by the following weekend I was over in Ireland to prepare for filming.

“What gripped me especially was the direction the people in [the script] were taking in the future existence, as opposed to space ships and rockets and all that…[..]...What does interest me is the possible development of society in centuries to come. The way different levels and types evolve in the script is intriguing and refreshing, and could well be true. The fact that people are not going to die, for example.

“Many things are changed by the knowledge you’re not going to die. There’s no need to procreate, therefore it takes away the sexual drives. Today we live in the age of analysis: we can give answers as to why people do things, whether it’s ambition or fighting for power or because they hated their father or their mother - their hangups become a kind of blueprint to their behavior. But if you take that away you get an entirely different concept of human beings.’

Connery hadn’t been Boorman’s first choice, that had been Burt Reynolds, with whom Boorman had scored the major hit Deliverance. Somehow I can’t imagine Reynolds carrying off the thigh high boots or red loin cloth, or exuding the necessary untrammeled masculinity. With the success of Deliverancve, Boorman was given a carte blanche to make what he wanted. He started working on a science fiction script, Zardoz, in 1972, and brought in Bill Stair to “...help rationalize the visions that threatened to engulf me.”

Zardoz is certainly rich with ideas, some better developed than others, but all have their own merits. That’s one thing about the best of seventies’ films, they had intelligence behind them, ideas at play, rather than today’s reliance on CGI and anodyne stories.

Set in the 23rd century, where Exterminators trade grain with their god - Zardoz - for guns to exploit and kill. Enter Zed (Connery) who questions why a god would require grain, and sneaks on board the flying godhead to uncover the secret of Zardoz and life beyond the Outlands in the Vortex.

The Outlands: once it was called the good Earth. Now it is the desolate, exhausted, polluted wasteland all the world has become, except for the lush Vortex.

The Eternals: members of the Vortex. Highly privileged scientists and intellectuals, eternally young, who have learned all the Secrets of Life - except one.

The Exterminators: a privileged and physically superior group permitted to breed under strict control to fight the Brutals and support the Vortex.

The Brutals: the last survivors of the dying world outside the Vortex, who live at subsistence level.

The Apathetics: victims of the pursuit of perfection, they are Eternals who have found the strain of immortality too great and live only for the one thing their society denies them.

The Renegades: malicious, embittered offenders in the Vortex who would defy and destroy the establishment - if they could only find it.

Connery explained the film to Gow:

“Then society, a sit always does, starts to fragment into different strata. There are the Apathetics and the Renegades. They are all Eternals, these people, who are going to live forever. The base of all the great learning that the world has accumulated by that stage becomes a Tabernacle, which gives people information as to how to act, like a major computer, a great feed-tank put together by the best minds of the world. But the human condition is such that it still retains anger and other emotions.

“There are areas like oases: each is known as a Vortex. They exist throughout the world on a system of highly democratic rule with guidelines supplied from the Tabernacle. But the Renegades abhor the system and fight it…[..]...On the other hand, the Apathetics are reluctant to do anything at all..the Renegades they’d really like to die, to get out.

“Beyond the Vortex areas, there are the Outlands: very barren. The inhabitants there are called the Brutals, they’re rather like our present society, not very civilized. The god Zardoz gives the Brutals something to worship, the gun. the penis is evil, the gun is good. The Brutals are necessary to each Vortex, because they’ve been taught to provide wheat and other food substances…[..]...This is where the character I play comes in. I hide in the head…[..]...and set about destroying the society.”

For your delectation, here is the original photo preview for Zardoz, which appeared in Films and Filming in March 1974.
 

 
More pics from ‘zardoz’, after the jump…
 

 
Well sort of, anyways. The late great Don Van Vliet does a brief, throaty, whistled rendition with organ accompaniment of the Beatles’ standard which is about as random a moment as anything I can imagine. It’s the cherry on top of this amusing and good natured 1974 Dutch TV appearance which also features a mime-tastic version of “Upon The My-Oh-My.”
 

 
Thanks to Ace Farren Ford !

 
The day after the first leg of the Wisconsin recall elections, I thought the number of “We won!” emails coming from the various lefty and labor organizations I support seemed a little odd. Did we win? It sure didn’t look that way to me. If “we” would have won, the tallies would have been different, right?

Maybe they were half right. Wisconsin Democrats did, after all, oust two Republican senators in two of the very, very few successful recall races ever held in American history. Pity the other two races didn’t fall their way, but it’s certain that what happened in Wisconsin awakened an awful lot of people to what was going on in their state, the role of the Koch brothers in rightwing AstroTurf politics there and just how aggressive and vicious the GOP can get when they are in the majority in a legislative body.

The Republican majority now hinges on one vote in Wisconsin. Personally, I’d rate the glass more than half-full considering the power math of less than a year ago. There is little doubt that Democrats will retake the legislature next year.

The collective bargaining rights issue highlighted by the recall election in Wisconsin, as I’ve maintained here, has never been merely a statewide matter. It’s a national issue of great importance to the future of this country’s middle-class families. Wisconsin was the flash point. The first battle in a longer war.

When I stopped and thought about it, I realized what HAD been gained in Wisconsin and this is now coming much better into focus as Ohio Governor John Kasich and the Republican party seek to back-walk the deeply unpopular anti-labor bill SB 5—it’s not a law yet despite the GOP’s best efforts—and are asking Ohio Democrats and labor unions to withdraw a November referendum on it. The public opinion is decidedly against the Republicans and polling just a little over two months from the November 8 vote shows an overwhelming 54% to 36% gulf in favor of rejecting the bill.

With this much Republican blood in the water, why would Ohio Democrats be stupid enough to withdraw the referendum? AS IF the Republicans would ever pay them the same courtesy! It’s hilarious to watch Kasich say this shit! So craven! So… Republican.

So ridiculous!

I love watching a Republican grovel, don’t you?

Kasich and the Ohio Republicans have been knee-capped and they damn well know it. Working families across Ohio owe Wisconsin progressives their gratitude. We all do.

Good people of Wisconsin: You lit what might be a long fuse, as Rachel Maddow eloquently pointed out on her show last night:
 

 
Melody, a friend of mine here in Texas, sent me this photo.  A Facebook friend of hers took it in Fort Worth the other day and it’s a sign that not all Texans are buying into the Perry as Saviour myth. And Fort Worth is ostensibly Perry country.

Perry’s gonna have a rough ride, even in the Lone Star state.

 
Meet Kanon Tipton, pint-sized preacher. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this short video clip from last night’s National Geographic special is worth a million.

Still only a pre-schooler, Kanon Tipton takes the pulpit at his family’s church and like a seasoned evangelist fervently preaches the gospel, mopping his forehead, shouting, waving his arms, the congregation hanging on his every word. But he’s just 4-years-old. NGC’s Pint-Sized Preachers goes inside the controversial world of child evangelists to follow two rising-stars and one established child minister as they spread God’s word and bring congregations to their feet.

Obviously this kid is just parroting religious gibberish—he’s not really saying anything particular here. It’s just Southern-fried pulpit word-salad. I have no idea why these people seem to think they’re getting something out of it.

Then again, it’s the same shit adult Pentecostals preach. Pretty much EXACTLY the same thing.
 

Thank you, Kevin Smith!

 
In a 1965 letter, Andy Warhol’s landlord asks him to “keep it down.” This image came from Johan Kugelberg’s VU coffee table book, The Velvet Underground: New York Art (Rizzoli).

Via Letters of Note

 
“Turns out there was this Senator at the Capital, causing a ruckus.”

Meet “Jimmy Valiant,” the Christian James Bond. Jimmy Valiant: Scions of Danger is a new Christian action flick funded via Kickstarter and produced in San Antonio, Texas. This totally looks like shit:

WHY JIMMY VALIANT?

For too long, Christian films have been stereotyped because of clichéd stories, bad acting, and shoddy production values. The idea for Jimmy Valiant: Scions of Danger grew out of a desire to challenge these stereotypes, and to raise the bar for independent Christian filmmaking by creating an action-packed, thrilling, and visually compelling film that honors God in both the process as well as the final product.

Second, we wanted to utilize the project as a training and discipleship opportunity for young men and women interested in filmmaking — without compromising the quality or the integrity of the project in the process.

Finally, we desired to tackle a genre that has been largely overlooked by Christian filmmakers: the action/thriller film.

WHY AN ACTION/THRILLER FILM?

For over half a century, the action/thriller genre has discipled generations of young men, who have found their role models in such notable action series as James Bond, Rambo, Terminator, Mission Impossible, and the Jason Bourne films. Like many young boys, the action/thriller genre was a favorite of ours growing up (and still is, to tell the truth). Regretfully, however, this important genre has been largely overlooked by independent Christian filmmakers.

We believe that independent Christian filmmaking can take advantage of some of the unique archetypes and themes associated with the thriller genre to communicate powerful biblical truths. Truths like responsibility, loyalty, courage, obedience, proper jurisdictional roles, family unity, justice, and forgiveness — without all of the negative elements often associated with the typical Hollywood thriller film.

Here’s the trailer for Jimmy Valiant: Scions of Danger. THIS is acting. Love the regional accents!
 

 
Via Showing Christ’s Love

 
This election cycle doesn’t seem like it’s going to disappoint!

Via Salon

 
House music has gotten a bit of a bad rep over the last ten to fifteen years, and it’s not difficult to hear why. Between the overbearing repetitiveness of trance, the none-more-overdriven sound homogenisation of French “electro” and the simply boring minimalism of, yes, minimal, it’s very easy to forget that house was once a marginal art form that dripped pure funk.

The new album by Azari & III looks set to dress that balance, taking the sound back to its underground roots in the black, gay dance scenes of Chicago. Back in the mid 80s the original house-heads would congregate and wig out at Frankie Knuckles’ Warehouse club and Ron Hardy’s Music Box, to a soundtrack of European disco and proto-techno mixed up with American funk and electro and augmented by drum machine loops. Some of those kids went on to release seminal records on the legendary Trax imprint, among them Marshall Jefferson, Larry Heard, Jamie Principle and even Knuckles himself.

Azari & III are the next logical progression of House music, as it inevitably gives up the gloss and returns to its rawer starting points. The synths and drum machines are raw and dirty, the vocals are ambiguous and androgynous but full to the brim with soul, and the songs are druggy, sleazy, and catchy as hell. The Toronto based four piece have just released their self-titled debut album, and the buzz built by their earlier singles is beginning to pay off with glowing critical reviews and a growing cult status. If you’re a fan of Hercules & Love Affair, then I can’t recommend this band and album highly enough. This is music designed to make you sweat, to jack your body, to vogue.
 
This is the video for Azari & III’s debut single, the highly catchy “Hungry For The Power”, featuring coke snorting yuppies, S&M vixens, murder and cannibal voguing zombies (NSFW):
 

 
Azari & III - “Manic”
 

 
You can buy Azari & III’s debut album here.
 
More Azari & III videos after the jump.