This is indescribably surreal. Just watch.

Film footage from 1970 Czech film Na Komete (On The Comet). Moog music by Jean Pierre Decerf and Marc Saclays from the album Pulsations (1980).

 
Don Letts made a documentary about the great Sun Ra? Yup, apparently so. I know what we’ll be watching tonight! How did this one slip past me???

Born in perhaps the most segregated place on Earth – early 20th-century Alabama – Herman Poole Blount rejected his name, his origins and the conventions of the time (or any other, for that matter), re-creating himself as Sun Ra, emissary from Saturn (“planet of discipline”) and musical genius. Blending Egyptology and Space Age imagery, he projected a philosophy of radical empowerment for the entire cosmos; keeping a big band on the road for decades through independence and communal living, he became a patriarch of jazz and an avatar of freewheeling space music. Turning from the punk and reggae with which he’s most closely associated to one of the key figures in 20th-century sound, famed DJ/filmmaker Letts presents the Sun Ra story in all its glory, combining powerful footage of Ra and his legendary Arkestra, interviews with band members shot at their famous group house in Philadelphia and testimonies from sax great Archie Shepp, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and other admirers.

-Keith Jones/musicfilmweb

Via Pathway To Unknown Worlds. Note that there is a download link.
 

 
Thanks William Meehan!

 
Those Damn Birds by Alvaro Arteaga Sabaini.

(via Super Punch)

 
Here are some delightful handmade Harold and Maude paper dolls by Etsy seller littlegreygoose. I like these. I totally think they’re worth the $24.00 price.  

 
Since we at Dangerous Minds have previously found ourselves marveling at his film Performance, it only makes sense to salute the wonderful English filmmaker Nicolas Roeg on this, his 81st birthday.

Check out Steve Rose’s great interview in the Guardian with the oft-aloof and prickly director (from which I paraphrase this post’s title), and for heaven’s sake check out the man’s films. He’s currently working on a screen adaptation of Martin Amis’s book Night Train.

Here’s a cool overview, with five themes spotlighted, by the excellent film video-essayist Hugo Redrose.
 

 
Freakonmics The Movie

 
A Beatles and Peter Sellers double bill.

During a 1968 promo shoot for Apple Records, Peter Sellers visited The Beatles in the studio and some impromptu drug talk ensued. Lennon reminds Sellers of the time “when I gave you that grass in Piccadilly.” Sellers response: “it really stoned me out of my mind.”

Listen for Yoko’s remark about “shooting as exercise,” a none too subtle reference to her and John’s heroin use.

The second video is Sellers performing ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ in the style of Laurence Olivier’s Richard the Third on the Granada TV special The Music of Lennon & McCartney. Sellers goofy take on The Beatles’ tune was actually released as a single and made the pop charts.

 
Sellers performs ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ after the jump…

 
“They were born to wander aimlessly.”

 
Dangerous Minds couldn’t think of a better 111th birthday salute to the Hitch than to review his far-too-short dream-sequence collaboration in Spellbound with the clown-prince of surrealism, Salvador Dali.

Rachel Campbell-Johnson wrote in detail about the team-up for the Times Online, and Joel Gunz at Alfred Hitchcock Geek went into Hitch’s affinity with surrealism.

 
Get: Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound [DVD]

Soothe me with your caress
Sweet marijuana… marijuana…
Help me in my distress
Sweet marijuana… please do…

You alone can bring my lover back to me
Even though I know it’s all a fantasy

And then put me to sleep
Sweet marijuana… marijuana…

Sweet Marijuana from the 1934 film ‘Murder At The Vanites’, pre-Hays code.