Laibach’s nightmarish new short film, ‘So Long, Farewell’: a Dangerous Minds premiere
Photo by Ciril Jazbec The Sound of Music ends with the von Trapp family’s escape from the Nazis through the Alps, crossing from annexed Austria…
Politics
A short film on the making of Mark Stewart’s ‘Learning to Cope with Cowardice’ (a DM premiere!)
Mark Stewart and the Maffia live in Kentish Town, 1986 (Photo by Beezer) Last month, when Mute brought out a double-LP reissue of Mark Stewart’s…
Test Dept returns with the new video ‘Landlord’ (a DM premiere)
Test Dept’s new album, ‘Disturbance’ Next week, the London-based activist industrial group Test Dept, forgers of the “Stakhanovite sound,” will release their first new album…
Oliver Reed as a prototype Alex from ‘A Clockwork Orange’ in ‘These are the Damned’
At one point Ken Russell was the favored director for a movie version of A Clockwork Orange supposedly starring the Rolling Stones. What Russell would…
‘Qaeda, Quality, Question, Quickly, Quickly, Quiet’: Learning the alphabet with George W. Bush
I remember watching George W. Bush deliver the State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, on the TV of a tiny barroom in…
Thomas Jefferson on buggery, sodomy and bestiality
‘Thomas Jefferson’ by N. C. Wyeth “Ideas of justice are as timeless as fashions in hats,” the philosopher John Gray writes. Consider a bill submitted…
Cholera sucks: The beautiful, brutal honesty of vintage Chinese public health propaganda
Out of all the “things” that have developed over the last few centuries, public health and hygiene propaganda is probably one of the most fascinating.…
Boy George presents Captain Sensible and Lene Lovich in grossout animal rights film ‘Meathead’
The bad news first: the episode of Boy George’s nineties talk show Blue Radio on which Poly Styrene appeared, though she said she almost didn’t…
Jello Biafra and his father interviewed at the ‘Frankenchrist’ obscenity trial
Jello Biafra in court, 1987 (via Heather Harris Photography) In December 1985, a Southern Californian teenager named Tammy Scharwath bought the Dead Kennedys’ latest album,…
‘How the World Went Mad’: A diagnosis of the confusing, topsy-turvy world of President Donald Trump
I could start with a nod to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis by writing: “Rupert Russell awoke one morning from unsettling dreams to find the world had…