An exhibit opening soon at London’s Drawing Room art gallery displays the materials produced for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s sadly never-produced version of Frank Herbert’s Dune novels:
This exhibition includes production drawings made by Moebius, H.R Giger and Chris Foss alongside commissioned work made in response by three international contemporary artists Steven Claydon, Matthew Day Jackson and Vidya Gastaldon.
Following the release of his mystical Western ?
I first came across Jeff Hoke’s “Museum of Lost Wonder” in zine format; at the time he was doing them out of his house and selling them on stapled manila paper. Basically you could chop up the zines and make your own origami temples, mind-bending devices and other examples of the genius of the ancient world. In the meantime the zines taught you everything you need to know about alchemy, Qabalah, the universe and ways to trip out without drugs. They were practically arts-and-crafts training modules in the Ancient Mysteries. Now it’s all been collected as a hardback. Hm… slightly less tempting to chop up. Buy two! If I knew any smart kids (I don’t) I would buy this for them next time at the next given Present Tax time, and guarantee a life of inward-directed seeking fun.
Meet the stars of Freej, Dubai’s first 3-D animated series. If you’re wondering which of the above four grannies plays the “Cartman,” rest assured these ladies get nowhere near Satan, J-Lo, or even Casa Bonita. The humor here instead “tackles hot topics like wedding traditions and bribery in a distinctly Arab way, sometimes merely hinting at issues.”
But this is not to say series creator, 31-year-old Mohammed Saeed Harib, shies completely away from button-pushing. In Freej’s first season, an episode alluded to Islamic extremism. It was pulled from repeat broadcasts, but managed to later wind up on DVD.
In the NYT: Dubai Superheroes: Little Old Grannies Who Wear Veils
The trailer for Oliver Stone‘s new documentary on Hugo Chavez, South of the Border, just popped up on YouTube. I see Stone co-wrote it with Tariq Ali, the New Left Review editor (and inspiration for the Stones’ Street Fighting Man), so expect the usual shitstorm of controversy. And who’s that behind the camera? How nice—Gimme Shelter‘s Albert Maysles!
In the LAT: Oliver Stone Heads “South Of The Border” To Chat Up Chavez And Others
In reference to Rudy Wurlitzer‘s ‘69 debut, Nog, none other than Thomas Pynchon said: “The novel of bullshit is dead.”” A not bad start for Wurlitzer, the sole member of the piano-making clan who never saw a dime (or not many) from his family name.
Tracing the often-psychedelic wanderlust of its title character who was either insane or drug-addicted (or both), Nog brought Wurlitzer a certain degree of fame as a novelist, but he’s perhaps best known, and celebrated, for his screenwriting. His collaboration with Sam Peckinpah yielded the Bob Dylan-scored Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Two years before that, though, he and Monte Hellman pulled off one of my all-time cinematic favorites, Two-Lane Blacktop.
Starring James Taylor and Dennis Wilson (both looking shockingly boyish) as eternally drifting drivers, Two-Lane featured sparse dialogue and even sparser performances. Visually, though, it’s pure poetry, and, to me, a still-vital piece of American existentialism—especially in its final moment. The trailer for Two-Lane follows below.
And just up at Chuck Palahniuk‘s website, an excellent, yet typically elusive, interview with Wurlitzer where he discusses everything from Dylan to Pynchon. Regarding his new-ish novel, The Drop Edge of Yonder, Wurlitzer also addresses, politely, “l’affaire de Jim Jarmusch.” Apparently, the director “pillaged” from Wurlitzer the raw material he’d later shape into Dead Man. You can read the interview here.
See also in Arthur Magazine: ON THE DRIFT: Rudy Wurlitzer and the Road to Nowhere
More news from the “death from above” front: Boeing just announced the successful testing of their Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL). Not familiar with the ATL? Well, according to Wired‘s David Hambling here’s what it can do:
The Advanced Tactical Laser, weighing twelve thousand pounds and mounted in a Hercules transport plane, is intended to give Special Forces Command ‘ultra-precision strike capability’ against a wide range of ground targets. Its power is somewhere in the hundred-kilowatt range. According to the developers, the accuracy of this weapon is little short of supernatural. They claim that the pinpoint precision can make it lethal or non-lethal at will. For example, they say it can either destroy a vehicle completely, or just damage the tires to immobilize it.
But that’s not even close to what’s got the military so hot and bothered about this baby’s capabilities. Hambling asserts that Boeing’s ATL “will allow Special Forces to strike with maximum precision, from long distances—without being blamed for the attacks. ‘Plausible deniability’ is how the presentation put it.”
Or, in simpler terms, the ATL can carry out covert assassinations with zero accountability. Cause of death, forensically speaking? Struck by lightning.
From The Register: Secret U.S. Spontaneous Human Combustion Beam Tested
Alisa Opar from Audubon Magazine says,
For the first time in nearly 70 years, an Amorphophallus titanum, dubbed the ?
Japan’s next prime minister might have been nicknamed “The Alien” (because of his prominent eyes) but he’s got nuthin’ on his wife who claims to have had a close encounter of the third kind! From Reuters:
“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year.
“It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.”
Yukio Hatoyama is due to be voted in as premier on September 16 following his party’s crushing election victory over the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party Sunday.
Miyuki, 66, described the extraterrestrial experience, which she said took place some 20 years ago, in a book entitled “Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered.”
When she awoke, Japan’s next first lady wrote, she told her now ex-husband that she had just been to Venus. He advised her that it was probably just a dream.
“My current husband has a different way of thinking,” she wrote. “He would surely say ‘Oh, that’s great’.”
Your current husband is obviously a fine politician, Yukio-chan!
Like a bad case of Republican herpes, Sarah Palin is the gift that keeps on giving…
Hopefully Sarah Palin realizes she’s been invited to Hong Kong almost certainly as a practical joke.
CLSA, the Asia-focused broker who invited Mrs. Palin as keynote speaker for an Asian investment conference, is well known for their cheeky takes on investment research.
In the past, they’ve polled Asian fortune tellers for index targets, hired anime cartoonists to draw Japanese research, and generally love to push the boundaries between entertainment and analysis. They are a real research firm, it’s just that they love to sprinkle in some hilarity every now and then as a smart marketing gimmick.
Sarah Palin is this year’s big laugh for them. Her invitation as keynote speaker in Hong Kong is so ridiculous that its absurdity can’t be accidental.
Delia Derbyshire is most famous for the Doctor Who theme. Although she did not actually compose the music, it was her arrangement of the piece that has made it one of the most instantly recognizable TV theme tunes of all time:
In 1963, soon after joining the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Delia Derbyshire was asked to to realize one of the first electronic signature tunes ever used on television. It was Ron Grainer’s score for a new science fiction series, Doctor Who.
Grainer had worked his tune to fit in with the graphics. He used expressions for the noises he wanted - such as wind, bubbles, and clouds. It was a world without synthesizers, samplers and multi-track tape recorders; Delia, assisted by her engineer Dick Mills, had to create each sound from scratch.
She used concrete sources and sine- and square-wave oscillators, tuning the results, filtering and treating, cutting so that the joins were seamless, combining sound on individual tape recorders, re-recording the results, and repeating the process, over and over again. When Grainer heard the result, his response was “Did I really write that?”
“Most of it,” Delia replied.
She was also in an avant garde pop group (using electronic sounds long before Kraftwerk) called Unit Delta Plus:
Perhaps the most famous event that Unit Delta Plus participated in was the 1967 Million Volt Light and Sound Rave at London’s Chalk Farm roundhouse, organised by designers Binder, Edwards and Vaughan (who had previously been hired by Paul McCartney to decorate a piano). The event took place over two nights (January 28th and February 4th 1967) and included a performance of tape music by Unit Delta Plus, as well as a playback of the legendary Carnival of Light, a fourteen minute sound collage assembled by McCartney around the the time of the Beatles’ Penny Lane sessions.
She was in later group called White Noise and they recorded an extremely strange, harsh and very futuristic album in 1969 called An Electric Storm—it’s pretty evil sounding—that’s been embraced by today’s electronic music fans. She also contributed music to the classic British 70s sci-fi series, The Tomorrow People, but by the 70s she was starting to show signs of depression and left the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. She worked in a few other soundtrack factories, then a bookstore, then an art gallery but generally drifted away from her musical career, becoming a severe alcoholic. She died in 2001 as her earlier recordings were were beginning to come out on CD and as her influence on modern electronic music was at last being acknowledged.
Lost tapes of the Dr Who composer includes several audio samples and a proto “dance” track from the 60s
Delia Derbyshire, producer of Doctor Who theme music, has legacy restored
Salvador Dali—or Avida Dollars if you prefer—shilling for Lanvin Chocolate in the early 70s.
