# Ghosts of the Civil Dead (1988)

[edsonjnovaes]

Os Infratores (+16) 1.2

Os Infratores (Dublado) [HD] – Pคтภเcк. 2018 26 de ago LAWLESS | 2012 | Estados Unidos. Belas Artes À La Carte Direção: John Hillcoat Elenco: Tom Hardy, Shia LaBeouf, Jessica Chastain, Guy Pearce Classificação indicativa: 16 anos Contém: nudez, violência extrema, drogas lícitas Os irmãos Bondurant produzem e contrabandeiam uísque ilegalmente durante a época da Lei Seca e pagam propinas para…

[mogkiompmovieguide]

Ghosts … of the Civil Dead

John Hillcoat, Australie, 1988, 93 min

Central Industrial est une prison à sécurité maximale de ‘nouvelle génération’, entourée de fil de rasoir et d'une clôture électrifiée, située au milieu du désert australien. Personne n’en sort. Au début du film, l’enceinte est verrouillé - les prisonniers sont confinés dans leurs cellules – puis nous revenons peu à peu sur la série d'événements qui ont conduit à cela. Le transfert de quelques criminels plus violents dans la prison n’a fait qu’empirer la condition mentale dans laquelle vivent détenus et gardiens. Livrés à eux-mêmes, les appels aux autorités sont ignorés.

Ghosts… of the Civil Dead n'est pas un film divertissant, ni particulièrement agréable à regarder, mais il est fascinant, ce n'est pas un film facile à oublier non plus. Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead a beaucoup à dire sur un système carcéral qui brutalise les détenus et les gardiens. À sa manière, il a un message similaire à Scum, mais est par ailleurs très différent. Le réalisateur John Hillcoat incorpore des légendes de type documentaire entre les scènes et utilise un style narratif délibérément distancié, presque minimaliste.

Premier film en duo de l’excellent réalisateur Aussie John Hillcoat avec la participation de Nick Cave à l’écriture. En pleine période charnière pour le Poète, écrivain, acteur et bien entendu chanteur enragé de Birthday Party ; peu de temps avant les Bad Seeds, et juste à la sortie de son premier roman, le superbe western cauchemardesque et mystique, « Et l’âne vit l’ange ». L’univers de Nick Cave est sombre, violent et peuplé d’allumés mystiques. Au côté de John Hillcoat comme réalisateur de la plupart de ces clips. Ils produisent avec Ghosts of the Civil Dead, un monument de la Ozploitation. Trop peu connu, bien que le tout dans ce film soit fait pour en faire une œuvre culte. Sur une bande originale presque plus connu que le film lui-même, bien évidement signée par Nick Cave en compagnie de Mick Harvey et son acolyte, équivalent allemand, génie fondateur du groupe conceptuel et magistrale qu’est Einstürzende Neubauten, futur membre des Bad Seeds pour quelques albums, le hurleur dans Stagger Lee, Blixa Bargeld.

Le film se déroule dans une prison futuriste appelée Central Industrial, située dans une partie isolée de l’outback australien. Il présente une vision brutale, surréaliste et délétère de la vie en prison, de l’impact de l’incarcération sur les prisonniers. Il explore les questions de la réforme des prisons telles qu'on ne les connaient pas ; la violence dans les établissements pénitentiaire d’une manière froide, cruelle, plus que réaliste, explicite. Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead veut nous montrer que les problèmes qui existent en prison sont créés au niveau central par le système carcéral lui-même.

Ainsi ce semi-documentaire fiction nous donne une vue d’ensemble de la vie, du côté des prisonniers comme du côté des gardes. Il retrace les événements qui ont conduit à l’état d’urgence où tous les prisonniers sont enfermés dans leurs cellules et privés de tous leurs privilèges. Il commence avec Wenzil, (David Field) debout nu contre un mur blanc, posant pour ses photos d’identification de prisonnier. Immédiatement, le film s’enfonce dans le vif du sujet, ne prenant pas la peine de ménager le spectateur, projeté dans ce cauchemar opressant, dans un style tout à fait identifiable du cinéma australien, si rugueux et particulier. Nous voyons alors le processus d’introduction de Wenzil dans la prison, ses premiers pas dans la zone ouverte vers laquelle toutes les cellules font face, il s’assied et observe les prisonniers et son environnement. De ces débuts, nous supposons que Wenzil est le personnage principal, mais Ghosts ... of the Civil Dead n’a vraiment pas de personnage principal, au lieu de cela, il choisit de donner au spectateur une idée générale de ce qui se passe à l’intérieur de la prison sans se concentrer sur une seule personne, nous observons le sort des prisonniers, et des gardes dans leur ensemble plutôt que les conflits internes des individus. Le film prend son temps, nous donnant un bref aperçu des différents protagonistes qui habitent entre les murs. Est exposé à toutes les sortes de trafics et de comportements illégales de la prison, de la contrebande de drogues et d’armes dans la prison, à ce que les prisonniers font pour les cacher. Nous voyons aussi comment les détenus choisissent de s’amuser, avec la pornographie, l’automutilation ou en commettant des actes de violence les uns contre les autres. Ce qui est présenté, est une vision très réaliste et farouchement crue de la vie en prison. Nous allons voir Wenzil assommer quelqu’un et voler sa radio pour qu’il puisse l’échanger contre un tatouage fait à la main d’un autre détenu, bien sûr ses actions sont suivies d’une réaction brutale. Wenzil est pris en embuscade dans la cellule tatouée, battu et violé par les amis du propriétaire de la radio et laissé dans un désordre sanglant, à peine capable de marcher avec un mot de quatre lettres extrêmement explicite tatoué grossièrement sur son front.

Des événements comme celui-ci continuent d’accroître la tension entre les gardiens de prison et les prisonniers, entre les prisonniers et eux-mêmes. Les abus se produisent crescendo entre les détenus, un travesti est battu à mort sans raison réelle, sans doute pour ses préférences sexuelles, et donc les autorités répriment, en leur ôtant tous biens matériels et les soumettant à des actes de brutalité inhumains et voyeurs. Dans cette ambiance lourde de volcan prêt à exploser, ou plutôt de prison prête à imploser, commence alors une sombre descente dans la folie, les prisonniers sont poussés à la démence par l’ennui, les actes d’automutilation deviennent un événement régulier et les détenus n’osent plus quitter leurs cellules puisque beaucoup d’entre eux, ne reviennent pas. Vous pourriez couper l’air avec un couteau, la tension est si épaisse. Les gardiens délirent secrètement pendant qu’ils regardent les prisonniers devenir de plus en plus en colère, ils peuvent sentir une sorte de révolte. Bien que nous ne voyions pas tous les incidents qui se produisent dans les émeutes, nous voyons l’acte le plus violent et c’est beaucoup, un prisonnier poignarde un gardien à mort, le poignardant plus de 50 fois bien qu’il soit déjà mort. Tout cela est à l’horreur de deux autres gardes qui se sont enfermés dans une cage de prisonniers. Le meurtre est encouragé par des encouragements et des rires psychotiques s'échappant du chaos dans lequel vivent ces pauvres fous.

Lorsque les cinéastes s’inspirent d’autres formes d’art pour influencer leur travail et que, dans ce cas, l’expérience des équipes de réalisateurs/producteurs dans l’industrie du vidéoclip rend le contenu du film beaucoup plus puissant. Au moment de sa sortie, Ghosts of the Civil Dead a eu un impact énorme sur le public qui emballe le public dans tout le pays, dans la société d’aujourd’hui, le film reste toujours pertinent. Le problème de la réforme des prisons fait toujours l’objet de débats dans la société d’aujourd’hui, et les problèmes sociaux causés par nos systèmes carcéraux sont aussi réels qu’ils l’étaient dans les années 80. Ghosts of the Civil Dead fait une déclaration audacieuse, sa bande originale obsédante, c’est un film que vous êtes peu susceptible d’oublier.

Le film ICI

Bonne séance

[thatrickmcginnis]

FERNANDO SOLANAS, EVAN ENGLISH & JOHN HILLCOAT, FERNANDO BIRRI, Toronto film festival 1988

We all talked about South America a lot in the 1980s, where decades of political tumult had produced no shortage of movies - like Sur, directed by Argentine filmmaker, writer, musician (and very soon, politician) Fernando Solanas, who presented the film at the 1988 Toronto film festival. Solanas co-wrote the manifesto "Toward a Third Cinema", which became very influential in filmmaking on the continent, and he had fled his country in 1976 for Paris after his life was threatened by the new military regime in Argentina.

Solanas came off very much as an elder statesman when I photographed him in one of the clean, well-lit rooms in the old Four Seasons hotel in Yorkville. He had palpable charisma (and great hair), and in hindsight it's easy to see how he would make a great impression when either running for office or presenting his films at Cannes, Venice or Berlin

Sur was a film about life after the military coup d'etat, but it wouldn't be the end of Solanas' troubles with his country's government; he was a critic of Argentina's president, Carlos Menem, and was shot six times in May of 1991, which propelled him to start a political career as a member of several different parties, and he even ran for president in the 2007 general election. Solanas died in 2020 in France during the COVID pandemic.

Writer/producer Evan English and director John Hillcoat arrived at the 1988 film festival with a "buzz" film - their grim prison drama Ghosts of the Civil Dead. It was partially based on the story of Jack Henry Abbott, the criminal who was paroled after a campaign led by writer Norman Mailer, only to murder a man six weeks after being released from prison. The script was co-written by singer Nick Cave, who also starred in the film and wrote the soundtrack, and Cave's participation accounted for a lot of the buzz around the picture.

English and Hillcoat presented themselves for interviews (and photo shoots) as a unified front, and my memory of them is a lot of laconic humour and dry sarcasm. Looking back I photographed them like musicians for a story that might have run in the NME or Melody Maker. The film seems to have been the high point of English' movie career, but Hillcoat (an Australian who spent much of his youth in Hamilton, Ontario) went on to direct movies such as The Road (2009) and Lawless (2012), as well as the HBO biopic miniseries George & Tammy (2022).

Vera historia de la primera fundación de Buenos Aires como también de varias navegaciones de muchas partes desconocidas, islas de reinos, también de muchos peligros, peleas y escaramuzas, tanto por tierra como por mar, que nunca han sido descriptos en otras historias o crónicas, extraídos del libro 'Viajes al río de La Plata', original del soldado alemán Ulrico Schmidl, miembro de la expedición capitaneada por don Pedro de Mendoza, quien publicó por primera vez estas memorias, bien anotadas para utilidad pública en la ciudad de Francfort el año 1567.

That's the full title of an early short film by Argentine director Fernando Birri, but it would usually be referred to as La primera fundación de Buenos Aires. Birri was at the 1988 Toronto film festival with his film A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Un señor muy viejo con unas alas enormes in Spanish), based on a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Like many South American filmmakers he was a major ally of the Cuban regime and made two films about Che Guevara, and his first feature Los inundados (1961) won the award for best first film at the Venice Film Festival.

Birri had a playful public image and his films were full of comedy and "magic realism", but I have to admit that many of my photos of him were inspired by the cover of a recent book of photographs by Roman Vishniac, of life in the Jewish communities of the Baltic and Eastern Europe before the genocides of World War Two. One of these shots has ended up being used (uncredited) on academic websites and in obituaries for Birri after he died in 2017. I've noticed that Netflix is about to air a miniseries based on Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude; maybe we'll start talking about South America and "magic realism" again.

[memorableconcerts]

Nick Cave The Bad Seeds - "From Her To Eternity" - Live 1989

Live 1988

Nicholas Edward Cave AO FRSL (born 22 September 1957) is an Australian singer, songwriter, poet, lyricist, author, screenwriter, composer and occasional actor. Known for his baritone voice and for fronting the rock band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Cave's music is characterised by emotional intensity, a wide variety of influences and lyrical obsessions with death, religion, love and violence.

Born and raised in rural Victoria, Cave studied art in Melbourne before fronting the Birthday Party, one of the city's leading post-punk bands, in the late 1970s. In 1980 they evolved towards a darker and more challenging sound that helped inspire gothic rock, and acquired a reputation as "the most violent live band in the world". Cave became recognised for his confrontational performances, his shock of black hair and pale, emaciated look. The band broke up soon after moving to Berlin in 1982, and Cave formed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds the year after, later described as one of rock's "most redoubtable, enduring" bands. Much of their early material is set in a mythic American Deep South, drawing on spirituals and Delta blues, while Cave's preoccupation with Old Testament notions of good versus evil culminated in what has been called his signature song, "The Mercy Seat" (1988), and in his debut novel, And the Ass Saw the Angel (1989). In 1988, he appeared in Ghosts... of the Civil Dead, an Australian prison film which he both co-wrote and scored.

The 1990s saw Cave move between São Paulo and England, and find inspiration in the New Testament. He went on to achieve mainstream success with quieter, piano-driven ballads, notably the Kylie Minogue duet "Where the Wild Roses Grow" (1996), and "Into My Arms" (1997). Turning increasingly to film in the 2000s, Cave wrote the Australian Western The Proposition (2005), also composing its soundtrack with frequent collaborator Warren Ellis. The pair's film score credits include The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), The Road (2009) and Lawless (2012). Their garage rock side project Grinderman has released two albums since 2006. In 2009, he released his second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, and starred in the semi-fictional "day in the life" film 20,000 Days on Earth (2014). His more recent musical work features ambient and electronic elements, as well as increasingly abstract lyrics, informed in part by grief over his son Arthur's 2015 death, which is explored in the documentary One More Time with Feeling (2016) and the Bad Seeds' 17th and latest album, Ghosteen (2019).

Cave maintains The Red Hand Files, a newsletter he uses to respond to questions from fans. He has collaborated with the likes of Shane MacGowan and ex-partner PJ Harvey, and his songs have been covered by a wide range of artists, including Johnny Cash ("The Mercy Seat"), Metallica ("Loverman") and Snoop Dogg ("Red Right Hand"). He was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2007, and named an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2017.

Live 1988

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (1984–present)

The band with Cave as their leader and frontman has released seventeen studio albums. Pitchfork Media calls the group one of rock's "most enduring, redoubtable" bands, with an accomplished discography. Though their sound tends to change considerably from one album to another, the one constant of the band is an unpolished blending of disparate genres, and song structures which provide a vehicle for Cave's virtuosic, frequently histrionic theatrics. Critics Stephen Thomas Erlewine and Steve Huey wrote: "With the Bad Seeds, Cave continued to explore his obsessions with religion, death, love, America, and violence with a bizarre, sometimes self-consciously eclectic hybrid of blues, gospel, rock, and arty post-punk."

Reviewing 2008's Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! album, NME used the phrase "gothic psycho-sexual apocalypse" to describe the "menace" present in the lyrics of the title track.[23] Their most recent work, Ghosteen, was released in October 2019.

In mid-August 2013, Cave was a 'First Longlist' finalist for the 9th Coopers AMP, alongside artists such as Kevin Mitchell and the Drones. The Australian music prize is worth A$30,000. The prize ultimately went to Big Scary. In a September 2013 interview, Cave explained that he returned to using a typewriter for songwriting after his experience with the Nocturama album, as he "could walk in on a bad day and hit 'delete' and that was the end of it". Cave believes that he lost valuable work due to a "bad day".

Live 1986

[hgghgfd]

Blissed Out: The Raptures Of Rock

(New Zealand)

by Simon Reynolds Sent by Nick White

This essay/interview was taken from the book "Blissed Out: The Raptures Of Rock" by Simon Reynolds (Serpent's Tail, 1990). The interview was conducted in 1988. It can be a bit too earnest and academic (in another chapter, on Sonic Youth, Reynolds applies the theories of Roland Barthes to the music of My Bloody Valentine- gulp!), and occasionally it covers familiar ground. Nevertheless, I think it's very illuminating, and furthermore, it proves that Nick Cave and his work can quite easily absorb and reward academic analysis.

Discipline and Punish

Nick Cave looks the part. Deep gashes of black under the eyes, skin the colour of ashes, a slight wobbliness to his movements. His speech is fastidious, precise in a way that would seem pompous if he were at all ebullient; but with his small, grave voice- sometimes withering, always withered- the impression is of a wary distrust of words and the way they can be misconstrued. But he's much more forthcoming than in an earlier, abortive encounter. Almost affable.

Pardon the ignorance, but what exactly is The Mercy Seat?

"It's the throne of God, in the Bible, where he sits and throws his lightning bolts and so forth. But it's also about this guy sitting on Death Row, waiting to be electrocuted or whatever. It's juxtaposing those two things. A person in his final days, thinking about good and evil and all the usual fare."

So the fallibility and the arogance of human justice is something that obsesses you?

"It's something that interests me a lot. My social conscience is fairly limited in a lot of ways; there's not much I'm angry about that doesn't affect me quite directly. But the prison system- not particularly capital punishment- but the penal system as it is, and the whole apparatus of judgement, people deciding on other people's fates...that does irritate, and upset me quite a lot."

Is that why you got involved in the film about prison life, Ghosts of the Civil Dead?

"It's a two-way thing: I had those feelings long before I wrote the drafts for the script, but the process of writing and research inflamed them. It should be clear to anybody that the basic idea behind the prison system is corrupt and unjust, but the more I worked on the film, the more I understood how extreme the injustice was. This particular film has quite a strong political statement to make, which is something I'm not really known for.

"I was involved in writing the first two drafts of the film, but by the sixth draft there weren't that many of my ideas left. I also had a small part: I play a kind of known provocateur, who is brought into the prison- one of the new hi-tech ones- in order to disrupt the equilibrium. He's a psychotic with some kind of death wish...spends his whole time screaming abuse.

"What angers me about the system goes beyond the unreliability of "proof"... it's that the way criminals are dealt with has nothing to do with rehabilitation and readjusting people who've stepped outside society's norms. The same goes for mental institutions and so forth. But it's also the very idea of someone being judged "criminal" or "insane" because they're unable to fit into what a basically corrupt society considers "social" or "sociable"".

So you take issue both with the very idea of the "the normal" and "normalisation", and with the fact that the authorities don't even bother to fulfill their professed project of "rehabilitation"?

"Yeah, something like that. I did a lot of homework when I started working on the script. The initial plan was to use the prison world to create a certain kind of ready-made atmosphere. But over the eight drafts, what emerged was a particular vision of the whole penal system as almost a plot by the higher powers to perpetuate the whole system of crime, keep it rolling, keep criminals on the streets..."

In order to terrify the population into accepting the existence of the police. All this reminds me of the ideas of Michel Foucault. He looked back to an era (pre-industrialism) before the things we consider "natural"- prisons, asylums, hospitals- had been devised, in order to trace the "genealogy" of pseudo-sciences like penology, criminology, psychiatry and sexology. What he discovered is that these "disciplines" were not really about uncovering truth for its own sake; the "knowledge" they generated was inseparable from and instrumental in "techniques of domination". Later, he shifted his focus from social hygiene (segregation /surveillance /normalization) to study mental hygiene: the ways in which each individual is involved in self-policing. We define ourselves as "normal" by repressing our own capacity for violence or the visionary- just as we suppress and marginalize those people in the body politic who've gone over limits.

Looking back, it's clear that Cave has always been obsessed with this latent other within each individual, that can be catalysed by an extreme predicament. See how he describes his novel And the Ass Saw the Angel:

"It's set in a small valley in a remote region somewhere in the world. A sugarcane-growing valley. It's the story of the people who live there. The fascination of these closed communities and hemmed-in lives, that recur in my work, is that they breed a certain ignorance, can be the breeding ground for very extreme, absurd emotional releases."

In Cave's work, most of the characters are in a sense prisoners- of an obsession, or a claustrophobic environment. But maybe this sounds glib when set against the specific and extreme misery of imprisonment.

"I've been writing songs about prison ever since I started writing songs. But I have a less romantic conception than when I started. The film is in two sections- the population section and the maximum security section. When the film-makers were in America, going from penitentiary to penitentiary, looking in libraries, interviewing people, they stumbled on this amazing story about Marin.

"Over six months, the inmates were subjected to these totally unfair changes of routine, from small things like not getting coffee one day, to next day having their cells raided and all their possessions confiscated. The whole balance between guards and inmates was totally disrupted. The convicts became more and more upset, the guards were afraid, but they kept getting orders from above telling them to maintain these random violations of the equilibrium.

"Until eventually it broke- and a prisoner stabbed two guards to death. This was leaked to the media, who began to clamour for stricter control. Marin was put onto immediate lockdown- which is where no one is allowed out of their cell and all privileges are removed. Twenty-one months later it was still in lockdown.

"The point is that two guards were sacrificed by the authorities in order to achieve this control situation. That's the kind of system you're dealing with.

"The Mercy Seat is about this person in solitary confinement, becoming more sensitive to inanimate objects, and as he sits thinking about human and Divine Justice, finding himself judging these things as Good or Evil."

Some say that The Mercy Seat is the best thing Cave has done for five years, since Mutiny in Heaven. I wouldn't go this far (that would be to devalue all the peaks in the interim)- but the single is stupendous. It's a gigantic, near illegible swirl-surge, a horizontal, disciplined avalanche. With its maddened strings, echo-chamber vocal and the odd filigree of lonesome country whistling, it is vaguely suggestive of the sixties pop-melodrama of Wichita Lineman or Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart. But a sense of the epic driven to such histrionic pitch that it verges on Velvet's white noise and viola hysteria.

"Dignity" is not a word that figures in my lexicon of praise (too redolent of the prattle of soulboys) but with Cave's work since Kicking Against the Pricks, it's unavoidable. A ruined dignity, the courage of someone staring into the abyss with "nothing left to lose".

Here it's the condemned man waiting to "go shuffling out of life/just to hide in death a while". Eventually, the song becomes a real-time simulation of a locked groove, an out of control roller-coaster of dread but also of resilience: "And the Mercy Seat is waiting/And I think my head is burning/And in a way I'm yearning/To be done with all this measuring of proof/An eye for an eye /And a tooth for a tooth/And anyway I told the truth/And I'm not afraid to die." Over and over and over, 'til you think your cranium is set to bust.

From Her To Eternity

Nick Cave surfaced at a time when post-punk's handle on the workings of desire was diagrammatic and programmatic. Punk had bequeathed the idea that demystification was the route to enlightenment. "Personal politics" was the buzzword: the acknowledgment of the "dark side" was always grounded in progressive humanism, the belief that what was twisted could be straightened out, that the shadows could be banished by the spotlight of analysis. The idea was that through deconditioning, unblocking, a ventilation of the soul ("airing your problems"), it was possible to achieve some kind of frank and freeflowing exchange.

Against this view of love as contract, Cave, in The Birthday Party, was almost alone in reinvoking love as malady, monologue, abject dependence, whose ultimate expression could only be violence: the recurrent theme of girl-murder, or at the opposite pole of the paroxysm of desire in Zoo Music Girl, "Oh! God! Please let me die beneath her fists!" Cave was the first writer, in a post-punk climate of positivism, to start using Biblical imagery (sin, retribution, curses, bad seed, revenge)...

"Perhaps I'm kind of emotionally retarded...but basically I've just written about things how I've felt about them, myself, emotionally. Things like revenge, which you talk about as almost an Old Testament feeling, I see as completely now. It's just one of those things this society has repressed, along with any other strong or extreme outburst of emotion. I think there's a certain numbness in the world today...that accepts certain kinds of violence, but is against other kinds of violence."

So you have a kind of ethics of violence? Certain kinds of violence- the crime of passion- have a kind of aesthetic integrity?

"That's one way of putting it...There's something more noble in revenge, than in...sadism, or violence through greed. Maybe there's something more aesthetically pleasing about it, I don't know...I just find those subjects the easiest to deal with: on the one hand, they're the most tangible feelings I have to pull out of myself; on the other, they make me want to make a stronger statement when I ultimately do that.

"I don't deny any feelings of happiness just because I don't write about them. For me, there's just something more powerful in Man's ultimate punishments- whether they're on a humanist level or a more mystical level- than in his ultimate rewards. The rewards of happiness and contentment and security, I see as mostly drawn out of a routine of things. And they have no aesthetic interest for me, or much lasting value.

"But then again, my favourite song in the world is Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. If any song really chokes me up, it's that one. If there's a song that I would like to do, but would never attempt because I wouldn't know how to begin, that's the one. If I could produce the same effect on other people as Louis Armstrong does with that song, then I'd be really happy. But there's something so unintentionally tragic about that song. Although I'm sure that has a lot to do with the way I listen, Louis Armstrong being this all-time winner and happy guy."

Do you resent the arbitrary power that beautiful people have? Something shallow, unearned, but capable of putting you in thrall. Revenge would seem to originate in this feeling of powerlessness.

"You're asking me if I'm some sort of embittered, wounded animal, who only wants to reach out and break things because he can't be happy or possess them?"

No, more generally than that: the idea of beauty as terrorism. Of possession as the delusion we all run aground on. It seems like there's a negativity at the heart of romantic love, because love is nothing if not the always already doomed fantasy of possession. Doomed because of the flux (growth or decay) that is the loved one. You were talking about life's punishments just now, and maybe the fact that love is doomed from the off is one of them.

"There's lots of different angles you can look at things from. I accept all that. Although I don't think it's impossible that it can't be the other way, that two people can't grow toward each other. I don't particularly believe all love is doomed. But I guess, one is usually kinda suffering from some aborted love affair or association, rather than being a the peak of one. I think it's fairly obvious that a lot more suffering goes on in the name of love than the little happiness you can squeeze out of it. But I wouldn't like to dwell on it. Perhaps you could lighten up a bit."

Condescendingly, like an agony aunt or something, he adds: "There are plenty more fish in the sea."

The Singer

Since the death of The Birthday Party, Nick Cave has steadily made a transition from exhibitionist, incendiary live performer to something more stately and, yes, dignified. The fireball has become an ember. Kicking Against the Pricks, an album of cover versions, marked the key shift from poet visionary of sex-and-death to interpretive balladeer, from torched singer to a croon the colour of cinders, from Dionysiac excess to a ruined classicism.

And on Your Funeral... My Trial, Cave and the Bad Seeds were staging their own dilapidated equivalents to By the Time I get To Phoenix and Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart, in the gently obliterating, slowly gathering, morose grandeur of Sad Waters and Stranger Than Kindness. Cave has influenced other kindred spirits to leave behind self-immolation in favour of The Song.

When did he start getting into what he calls "entertainment music, although some might call it corn"?

"I've just found myself usually more affected by the cliches in pop, in art, in life, than I have by the..."

Wilful difference?

"Yeah. I find that wilfulness in itself is enough to make me turn away from something. When people are attempting to be different for the sake of it, I find it incredibly irritating."

Do you have different influences now than when you started?

"I think I've been through being influenced by people. I don't think that could happen to me now, in the way that it did in my formative years. My ideas are self-generating now, they spring from what I've done before. It's all very inward-looking, and a lot of the time I find myself- it may sound unforgiveable- ignorant of what's going on outside me and the influences that are going around. I don't think I'm fully formed or ever will be, but my basic creative journey is now self-perpetuating."

But musically at least, you've moved from Stooges-meets-Beefheart conflagration to something more classically structured: the songs are like the charred and gutted husks of magnificent pop architecture. And figures like Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Tim Rose have become important to you...

"But not as a matter of influence as such. I only look towards someone like Dylan because I see the things that have happened in his career and the conclusions he's come to and the way he's responded to outside forces, the audience, the press...and I recognize a similarity to how I feel in my career.

I have a vague inkling of why Dylan has progressed the way he has, which I don't have about other people. The particular songs of his which affect me have helped me to understand what I ultimately want to make of my music, and what I'm failing to make of my music. What I've found to be the most inspiring of his work have been the songs which are ultimately almost meaningless in their simplicity."

"Take Nashville Skyline. I found the fact that he made that record much more affecting than, say, Highway 61 Revisited. Nashville Skyline was one of the albums he put out after his motorcycle accident, from which the critics concluded that he must have somehow injured his brain...

All the complexities of his lyrics were ironed out...He made some very basic country records. It's these songs, or albums like Slow Train Coming, which affected me more than Blonde On Blonde. The simplicity of the statement, and the bravery...in a way, it requires more courage than making something more 'experimental'."

So you feel the same enlightenment that happened to Dylan has also befallen you? You no longer want to be marginal or difficult?

"I am still waiting for what happened to Dylan to happen to me. I'd be a lot happier if I could disentangle myself from what I've already done and create songs from a completely fresh perspective."

The Bad Seed

When did you first feel different or destined? At school? Later?

"I assumed everybody felt they were different from anybody else...it would be a pretty sad individual who didn't feel that they were unique."

But such an individual usually defines him or herself against a body of people who are meant to be homogeneous and standard-issue.

"I didn't have any great coming out. Perhaps my basic thoughts were externalized by reading Crime and Punishment by Dostoievsky, and realizing that I had a basic Napoleonic complex. That was quite a revelation in those years of juvenilia. That book is all about the idea that the world is divided into the ordinary and the extraordinary, and that the extraordinary shouldn't have to live by the dictates of the mediocre majority. As an adolescent, this made sense to me."

Do you think everybody has the potential to be extraordinary, if pushed over a limit?

"No, I don't, actually. I think everybody probably does feel they do. But I think they're probably deluded. I don't believe that we're all born equal, as lumps of dough that are later shaped by our peers and parents and so forth...I believe in innate inequality."

Did you have an unusual childhood? Was there something to colour your worldview with its tragic perspective?

"I'm sure there was...but I'm not about to start psychoanalysing myself..."

You see it as a bogus science?

"Yeah. Anyway, rather than attributing it to my childhood, I prefer to believe that I was born into the world with greater or lesser faculties than other people and that I can take full responsibility for them. I wouldn't put it down to the way I was manipulated as a child."

Doesn't that mean you have even less responsibility? Wouldn't that make you even angrier with the world?

"I think people get even angrier if they think about this precise thing that was done in their so-called formative years that made them the way they are. I just feel that I can take credit, or blame, for what I do or have done. That it came from within me, not from without.

"I'd rather see what makes me different as something almost congenital. And I have these inklings that what you commit or endure in this world, relates to some kind of justice or balance. Maybe if you get a bad deal in this world, it is because of something you did, or were, in a previous life. Which is why I don't feel sorry for the poor."

Cave's departure from progressive humanism, with its belief in individual and social transformation, is so extreme that his worldview verges on the Mediaeval: the language of curses, bad seed, the worm in the bud. The world is a vale of tears, a giant ball of dung. Even more than Morrisey and his bad memories, Cave's vision is the antithesis of the idea of pop as a remaking of yourself. For Cave, the sole possibility for heroism is in fatalism, a stoic dignity in the face of your plight, the blight that is your negative birthright.

[stuartamcintyre]

Ghosts... of the Civil Dead (1988) trailer

[blairwitchbaby]

Ghosts... Of the Civil Dead (1988) dir. John Hillcoat dop: Paul Goldman & Graeme Wood

[beebleboosuwu]

Alright.

There are a lot of conflicting emotions about having The Music Man kicking out Beetlejuice from the Winter Garden. Although I am bitter that one of my favourite musicals is being replaced in favour of money and two big names is just.. not sitting right, but I am open to everything and trying to look at everything with open eyes and an unbiased opinion.

Did Will Blum’s influence this a little? Yes.

Was the post a little unsound and unprofessional? I think so but it brought up some great points.

Yes, I agree. The fact that you are selling a name instead of a GREAT show is disrespect to the source material. Hugh Jackman is an awesome guy and his tenure as the Boy From Oz is forever embedded into Broadway his(her)story as being a stepping stone for Hugh’s career. Also you have Broadway star, Sutton Foster, another big name who, if you are a theatre lover, can’t help but fawn and scream in excitement.

We all know and love Hugh Jackman as the Wolverine/James Howlett/ Logan, that’s what people associate him as such. Fun fact he played that role from 2000-2018. Wolverine is known to be big, all muscle and raw strength, but in the theatre world we know him as a musical theatre actor. Jackman first claim to  international's fame was in 1999 when he played the leading man, Curly McLain, in the film adaptation of Oklahoma! He played the titular character Peter Allen in Boy from Oz in 2004 which he won a Tony for and Jean Valjean in the film adaptation of Les Miserables in 2012 while that wasn't the best adaptation of that musical, they did include Broadway and West End actors which was awesome! And lastly the most recent entry musical/film role was P.T Barnum in The Greatest Showman, Jackman went on tour last year singing songs from The Greatest Showman and some other songs from other musicals he previously worked in. He is an amazing vocalist, actor and dancer. His performance in Boy From Oz says as such in a review by Charles Isherwood: praising Jackman but panned the show: "Jackman is giving a vital and engaging performance in this pitifully flimsy musical almost in spite of the material he’s been handed. It’s a sad waste of an exciting talent." I’m pumped.

Sutton Foster is a Broadway actress that is well known for her two-time Tony award winning performance as Millie in Thoroughly Modern Millie. She has also roles from other shows such as: Chess, Funny Girl, Les Miserables, Anything Goes, Grease and MANY more. I knew her best as Reno Sweeney from Anything Goes, her vocals are nothing but extraordinary and her acting is nothing to sleep on, she is an excellent dancer and I cannot help to try and recreate in my bedroom when I’m alone. You can say all you want about her, but she is one of the Broadway actresses I know from the top of my head, alongside Patti LuPone, Sierra Boggess and Liza Minelli. She is also the younger sister of Hunter Foster of Little Shop of Horrors and Urinetown fame. Foster is going to be amazing as Jackman's partner in the upcoming production and honestly as a fan, I am so excited! 

They are both triple threats but.. no one knows a lot about the Music Man. It is a classic and has been around since the late 50′s.

Broadway, coming into the new decade of 2020, is becoming more MODERN. All these new musicals that have come out during this past decade might not have made it to Broadway but they are more aligned with the changing times and modern settings. Though there are musicals based on films from the 80′s that reach out to that generation and reintroduce them into that mind space they were in back in the day.

American Idiot, great musical, angsty music but has that throwback niche to that rebellious stage some, or not most, of us went through in the 2000′s.

Elf, that also starred Will Blum at one point, is fan service to those who love the holiday season and those who loved the film that came out in 2003. I haven't listened to it yet BUT I WILL EVENTUALLY.

Heathers, we all love the Heathers. Also Winona Ryder, who played Lydia Deetz in the 1988 Beetlejuice film, starred as Veronica Sawyer. Like Elf, IT BRINGS INTEREST TO THAT GENERATION SO THEY COULD BUY TICKETS TO THIS SHOW THAT WAS BASED ON A FILM THEY WATCHED AS TEENS. Also can we just forget about the horrible rendition of Candy Store done by the cast of Riverdale? That never happened. NEVER. HAPPENED.

Beetlejuice, Come From Away, Ghost, Once, Book of Mormon, Finding Neverland, Newsies, Kinky Boots, Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, Big Fish, 21 Chump Street, Amélie, Be More Chill, Hamilton, Head Over Heels, Lazarus, School of Rock, Something Rotten!, Tuck Everlasting, Waitress, Anastasia, Hadestown, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Prom, Ain’t Too Proud, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, Frozen, Mean Girls, Six, Summer: The Donna Summer Musical, The Lightning Thief, Jagged Little Pill, Moulin Rouge!, The Cher Show, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, & Juliet, Mrs. Doubtfire.

These are SOME of the MANY shows that came out this decade!

Some musicals are entirely satirical so that was a niche for audiences who love the weird and messed up humour, some musicals are named after the films or shows they were based off of. So old audiences can take interest into coming to Broadway, okay I get that because again, nostalgia, some are entirely original or had little to no source material! Some are based around history, some about civil rights issues and some of them are jukebox musicals that appeal to people who like those artists.

Broadway has always been conservative and prefers to play it safe when it comes to opening a new productions and the dominant audiences have been older and more traditional. So that stereotypical Broadway show people think of is just that, the lead character getting their “want song” in, a lot of dancing, internal or external conflict that ultimately gets resolved with cheerful songs and set pieces. Although newer audiences want those boundary pushing shows so CAN get introduced to musicals like the Music Man, it means nothing if they were never introduced to the strange and unusual first. Everyone wants to advance to find that next big thing but they can’t do that when it is all safe but we did get some of them with Cats, Beetlejuice, Carrie, Matilda The Addams Family and more.

I totally get the interest of bringing back a musical that hasn’t been on Broadway for 20 years (last performance was in 2000) and it is a great way to reintroduce an old piece back into the world again, but it was at the expense of new artists making their Broadway dream a reality. The decision to evict, not close, evict Beetlejuice from the Winter Garden was a big mistake by the Schubert Organization. The Schubert Organization is one of the biggest landlord of theatres in New York, they at least own 17 Broadway theatres. Here’s the reason why they’re so successful:

They don’t keep shows that don't bring the cold hard cash. It’s show business, it has always been about the business and never about the show. As much as we could scream and shout to keep Beetlejuice in the Winter Garden all we want, it is unfortunately their decision to keep them or boot them out. We all know that productions have to be approved by a theatre organization so that production can be leant one of their many theatres, they show also had to keep up a total of sales from tickets above that number per week. As all of you know, that’s what happened with Beetlejuice. Ticket sales dried up and fell way below the amount. There was talk around the theatre community that a production of the Music Man was in the works with Hugh Jackman as the lead. So... they saw Beetlejuice as dead weight and sought out to cash in on Hugh Jackman’s name and fame.

There was a lot of problems from the show but most of their problems came from the critics. Mixed reviews was all the show got but the biggest blows came from the New York Times and Ben Brantley saying that the show never came to that same conclusion of home and belonging like other Broadway shows. This killed their ticket sales cause everyone goes through those reviews before they see a show. However that’s the thing, Beetlejuice never wanted that. The entire creative team and the cast knew that what they had was entirely unconventional, like it was their way sticking of the middle finger at the word conventional.

There's no doubt that the Music Man, Hugh Jackman, Sutton Foster and the cast and creative team will be amazing at the Winter Garden and it is highly unfortunate that the eviction of Beetlejuice was done for the sake of financial greed. I’m glad they were only evicted and not closed, the show IS still on and the public demand for the show is high. I know a lot of us hate the decision but what could you do? It’s all about the business aspect of Broadway and never the show.

Even though Beetlejuice had its problems with its opening following the Harvey Weinstein controversy, having the Music Man revival during this time of political conflict is a little awkward. Let’s trade a sexual, murderous demon for a eulogized conman.. that seems right.

I’m sure the show will be fantastic but the circumstances leading up to the opening is shady and not shining a good light for the Schubert Organization but lets not hate the actors and the creative team of the Music Man, they didn't do anything wrong. Instead, point that dislike to corporate greed, but is okay. The show is not closed and is only evicted from the theatre. Eventually they will find a new theatre on or off Broadway for everyone’s enjoyment again! Also that National Tour is coming up in Fall 2021 I believe, I personally can’t just fly to New York but I will be watching the National Tour if it does roll by where I live.

Keep safe my friends 💚🤍🖤

[makingqueerhistory]

Queer Fiction Books

We Are Okay Marin hasn’t spoken to anyone from her old life since the day she left everything behind. No one knows the truth about those final weeks. Not even her best friend, Mabel. But even thousands of miles away from the California coast, at college in New York, Marin still feels the pull of the life and tragedy she’s tried to outrun. Now, months later, alone in an emptied dorm for winter break, Marin waits. Mabel is coming to visit, and Marin will be forced to face everything that’s been left unsaid and finally confront the loneliness that has made a home in her heart.

Into the Drowning Deep Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a “mockumentary” bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy. Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they’re not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life’s work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost. Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves. But the secrets of the deep come with a price. 

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue Henry “Monty” Montague was born and bred to be a gentleman, but he was never one to be tamed. The finest boarding schools in England and the constant disapproval of his father haven’t been able to curb any of his roguish passions—not for gambling halls, late nights spent with a bottle of spirits or waking up in the arms of women or men. But as Monty embarks on his Grand Tour of Europe, his quest for a life filled with pleasure and vice is in danger of coming to an end. Not only does his father expect him to take over the family’s estate upon his return, but Monty is also nursing an impossible crush on his best friend and travelling companion, Percy.

Ghost Wall In the north of England, far from the intrusions of cities but not far from civilization, Silvie and her family are living as if they are ancient Britons, surviving by the tools and knowledge of the Iron Age. For two weeks, the length of her father's vacation, they join an anthropology course set to reenact life in simpler times. They are surrounded by forests of birch and rowan; they make stew from foraged roots and hunted rabbit. The students are fulfilling their coursework; Silvie's father is fulfilling his lifelong obsession.

Carry On Simon Snow is the worst Chosen One who's ever been chosen. That's what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he's probably right. Half the time, Simon can't even make his wand work, and the other half, he starts something on fire. His mentor's avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there's a magic-eating monster running around, wearing Simon's face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here — it's their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon's infuriating nemesis didn't even bother to show up.

Sadie Sadie hasn't had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she's been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water. But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie's entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister's killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him. When West McCray―a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America―overhears Sadie's story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie's journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it's too late.

The Girl with the Red Balloon When sixteen-year-old Ellie Baum accidentally time-travels via red balloon to 1988 East Berlin, she’s caught up in a conspiracy of history and magic. She meets members of an underground guild in East Berlin who use balloons and magic to help people escape over the Wall—but even to the balloon makers, Ellie’s time travel is a mystery. When it becomes clear that someone is using dark magic to change history, Ellie must risk everything—including her only way home—to stop the process.

Jane Steele Like the heroine of the novel she adores, Jane Steele suffers cruelly at the hands of her aunt and schoolmaster. And like Jane Eyre, they call her wicked - but in her case, she fears the accusation is true. When she flees, she leaves behind the corpses of her tormentors. A fugitive navigating London's underbelly, Jane rights wrongs on behalf of the have-nots whilst avoiding the noose. Until an advertisement catches her eye. Her aunt has died and the new master at Highgate House, Mr Thornfield, seeks a governess. Anxious to know if she is Highgate's true heir, Jane takes the position and is soon caught up in the household's strange spell. When she falls in love with the mysterious Charles Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him - body, soul and secrets - and what if he discovers her murderous past?

[sleepydrummer]

Nick Cave, 1973. (b. 1957), singer, songwriter and author, was born in Warracknabeal, Vic., and went to Caulfield Grammar School, where he formed his first band, The Boys Next Door.
National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

[gravecinema]

Why Beetlejuice is the Best Tim Burton Movie - 05/06/2020

Beetlejuice is the best Tim Burton movie ever made. Many directors can be said to have developed their own style over the course of their careers, and there is no other director that has a more distinct style than Tim Burton. In only his second feature film, Beetlejuice, which was released in 1988, exhibits and expresses a macabre, grim, and whimsical style that would since become synonymous with Tim Burton. It sets the tone for much of his later work yet to come, such as Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, and Corpse Bride.

The main plot revolves around the couple of Adam and Barbara Maitland, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, who within the first 10 minutes of the movie get killed in an auto accident heading over a bridge into a creek and drowning. The newly dead couple soon discover that they now have become ghostly spirits that are forever trapped within their house. When a new couple with a daughter move into their house, they attempt to haunt and scare away the new family. However, the new daughter who is a curious, gothic, and depressive teenager name Lydia, played by Winona Ryder, is the only person able to see the two ghosts. When Adam and Barbara are unable to successfully scare away the family, the plot takes a turn when they seek the help of a ghostly demon: the titular Beetlejuice, played wonderfully by Michael Keaton.

Throughout the course of the movie, we are treated to a visual and creative feast of set design, stop-motion effects, and Oscar-winning make-up. For a movie with macabre subject matter, you would think it would be a mostly dark and grim affair, but it’s the vivid colors used that really stand out to me. Tim Burton would later become known for having a much darker and gothic looking color pallet in his films, but the Director actually has his cinematographer make wonderful use of color in a number of his films, and Beetlejuice is one of the best examples of this. Most notably when Adam and Barbara take a trip to the afterlife waiting room, in which a comparison and contrast to the real-world DMV is ever present. It’s nothing but endless waiting, but in a much more colorful and vibrant setting. This similar color technique to establish setting would also later be used in Corpse Bride, where the afterlife is shown to be much more colorful and vibrant than the dreary normal life on Earth.

The Oscar-winning make-up of Beetlejuice shines its brightest in the afterlife, with the various deceased characters making up the waiting room. The man with the bone stuck in his neck must be one of my personal favorites. I also really appreciate the visual gag of having dead versions of the audience staring back at themselves in Juno’s office in the background, while Adam and Barbara are in the foreground of the shot. The exact make-up work I really believe won Beetlejuice the Oscar though is the stunning creature design of Adam and Barbara when in the film they later don their monstrous visages in order to better scare the family out of their house. They are two looks you certainly won’t forget after having seen this movie and are truly inspired.

One of the most distinct elements of the film has also got to be the engaging and creative score by Danny Elfman, who would go on to become a longtime collaborator with Tim Burton. Tim Burton would make it a habit of reworking with people that he has a great professional relationship with, most notably with Johnny Depp. The initial theme playing over the opening credits really sets the mood for the rollercoaster of a movie you are about to watch. Individual eerie elements are also added into to score to help set the mood for certain scenes, and they do a great job of transitioning the mood and tone for each subsequent scene.

It also cannot go without mentioning the brilliant use of the Banana Boat (Day-O) song, by Harry Belafonte, in the truly out of left-field and amazingly iconic scene where the two ghosts possess Lydia’s parents and dinner guests in another failed effort to scare everyone out of the house. The use of the song is even teased in the opening production company logo of the film. Adam is also seen to be listening to Harry Belafonte music in the attic just after the opening credits. It cannot be overstated just how much the music of Beetlejuice truly breathes life into the film.

The costume design is also inspired, and Beetlejuice himself is eventually adorned in his most iconic look, that of the black and white striped suit that he can be seen in on any poster of the film. Oddly enough, the character only wears the famous suit for just over 3 and a half minutes of screen time throughout the entire movie. In fact, the titular character of Beetlejuice only has about 17 and a half minutes of total screen time throughout the movie, not even making his first appearance until just over halfway through the film. However, when Beetlejuice does make his first appearance, does he ever own the screen and movie.

You can tell that Michael Keaton had an absolute blast playing Beetlejuice, and his fun and enthusiasm shines throughout his performance. It’s reported that he even adlibbed a great deal of his lines, and you can tell that helps increase the flawless comedic elements to his character. The voice Michael Keaton has given to the character is such a great affectation, and it does a perfect job of having Michael Keaton really own the role and make it his own. You cannot show a picture of Beetlejuice to someone, and then not have them instantly think of Michael Keaton and the voice he gives to the character.

The movie also possesses an excellent script by Michael McDowell and has some nice and interesting bits littered about. The character of Otho, played by Glenn Shadix, is shown to have an expert knowledge of the supernatural, even correctly knowing about the souls of those in the afterlife becoming civil servants after committing suicide, as the audience has previously seen when Adam and Barbara took their trip to the afterlife waiting room. The character of Delia, played exquisitely by Catherine O’Hara, also exclaims, “Do you think I want to die like this?!,” after having one of her sculptures encompassing and trapping her earlier in the film, which is a nice bit of foreshadowing towards the climax of the film.

What really sets Beetlejuice apart from other Tim Burton films is its originality, and the screenplay is a truly unique piece of scriptwriting showcasing what it means for two characters to die, and to have their afterlife get harder and not easier than when they were alive. It has its own unique vision and story, which is something that is lacking in most major Hollywood films that are made today. Many of Tim Burton’s later works would be adaptations from preexisting properties, but Beetlejuice was a completely original concept from script to screen, and as such, Tim Burton would have more of a say and representation of his own vision towards the overall final product.

If you look at the career of many directors, you will find that some of their best and most unique work are the early films that they make during a time when they are more driven by creativity and having a message that they need to say and represent through their art. Tim Burton is no exception to this, having what I consider to be his best films made during this period. Among them are Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, and of course, Beetlejuice. If you include The Nightmare Before Christmas, which was directed by Henry Selick and not Tim Burton himself, but completely his story and characters, then there is no doubt that this period was the best creative output of his career.

Later works of Burton would mostly be adaptations of previous works, but with studios just wanting to add that Tim Burton style that was so well done in his early work. This was done successfully in the very first Batman films that were directed by Burton. The character of Batman and the setting of the dark and gritty city of Gotham created a perfect marriage of a preexisting creative property and Tim Burton’s style. It was only with the turn of the Millennium that this method of having Tim Burton add his own flair to a property would become hit or miss.

Tim Burton adaptations of Planet of the Apes and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory would prove to be critical and creative misses for Burton. Other films such as Big Fish, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and the underrated Dark Shadows film adaptation would prove to be films that produced better results of adding that particular Tim Burton style to a film. However, it is mostly a rare occasion when we get to see a new and mostly original Tim Burton film, and that is a shame, because that’s when he is truly capable of creating some absolutely memorable pieces of cinematic beauty.

The legacy of Tim Burton will always be mostly defined by those early and unique films of his. The most defining of which will always be Beetlejuice. It will always be the film most people will think of first when you mention the name of Tim Burton. While it may not be the best technically made and acted movie by Tim Burton, it will always be the best “Tim Burton” movie, since Tim Burton has become a movie genre all unto himself, and Beetlejuice is the defining movie of that genre.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

20 years of blogging at Boing Boing

Twenty years ago today, Boing Boing became a blog. Mark Frauenfelder's first post linked to Street Tech, a now-dormant gadget blog. Now there are 160,000 more posts just like it and the impossible task of summarizing the best of them in yet another.

Founded as a print zine in 1988 by Mark and Carla Sinclair, Mark's personal retrospective posted earlier today is a must-read; following are a few of our greatest hits, proudest accomplishments, clickiest traffic monsters, and best features of all time.

Despite the tens of millions of words in our database – mostly wonderful things – it's oftentimes the shortest posts that get the most attention.

So it was with Xeni Jardin's Ralph Lauren opens new outlet store in the Uncanny Valley, a single-sentence reblog of a now-vanished post at another site highlighting the incompetently dysmorphic photomanipulations in one of the fashion house's ads.

Ralph Lauren tried to force us to remove the post, to no avail.

That wasn't our first rodeo, either. In 2008, were were sued by MagicJack, makers of a VoIP dongle, after criticizing its terms of service. We stood our ground and beat them in court. Ten years later, Playboy sued us for posting about someone else's uploaded cover collection, claiming that linking to things is a form of copyright infringement. We beat them too, with the help of able friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

It's not all law and chaos, though.

Mark Frauenfelder says he's most proud of his two-part series on the fortified residential mailboxes of Los Angeles, Survival of the fittest mailbox and Fortified mailboxes, part 2. Readers, though, say his greatest gift to the world of letters is the gentlemen of Boing Boing.

A trilogy of Cory Doctorow's most incisive writing on technology, policy and freedom is found in Lockdown, based on his keynote speech to the Chaos Computer Congress in 2011, The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing, and Anodyne Anonymity. Also, would you just look at that banana. Furthermore, Christ, what an asshole.

David Pescovitz is a collector of unpopular culture with an affinity for haunted ontology, mall nostalgia and cryptids (more!, with a Grammy on the shelf for his part in reissuing the Voyager Golden Record.

But it's his touching obituary for Mark, his older brother, that will not be forgotten.

Xeni Jardin's posted countless articles about cutting-edge tech and light-hearted nods to the wonders of the web, and more seriously about politics, but it's her writing about cancer, hers and others', that sticks with readers. The Diagnosis; When life hands you cancer, make cancer-ade; Obamacare saved my life; Cancer and cannabis: How I learned to stop worrying and love medical marijuana; A medal for completing breast cancer treatment; and We should be worried that science has not yet brought us closer to understanding cancer.

Rob Beschizza's The Weird of Wendy Pini profiles one of America's most successful women cartoonists. His random generators include the Psygnosis Game Generator, the North Korean Press Release Generator and the Audiophile Hardware Review Generator. (For those who don't revile them, Rob's disturbing mouth-eyed politician shoops are collected in the gallery item Corinthian Leather). Fissure opens in Chess AI scene is a deep dive into a code-plagiarism scandal. He once reviewed a loaf of snot.

He eulogized his mother, Mandy Johnson, in 2016.

Did you know Boing Boing publisher Jason Weisberger was namechecked in a saucy romance novel?

Jason has also written obituaries for his close friends Molly, Lucy, Calliope and Nemo.

We published critical games writing under the aegis of Offworld, edited by Leigh Alexander: All the women I know in video games are tired and Why Silent Hill mattered. Zoë Quinn's call to creative arms, Punk Games, remains as relevant now as it was five years ago.

Laura Hudson's Women take a place at the pinball table is a deep look at a unique competetive area, complemented by her excellent reviews of games as different as Undertale — choose to kill monsters or understand them — and Bloodborne — In Bloodborne's brutal world, I found myself.

Our longtime science editor Maggie Koerth-Baker's analysis of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was featured in the anthology The Best Science Writing Online 2012. Don't miss her profile of James Watson, either.

Though known for chaingun blogging, we pioneered the trend toward Fancy Lookin' Features on the web, such as Maggie's Cassini Trip Reset, highlighting the astonishing imagery from NASA's probe, and Rob Beschizza's Friendly Darkness in the Palace of Utopian Fantasy, linking rare threads of modern and Victorian fantasy.

Here's just a few more of the nice features we've published over the years:

1906: Vintage Photographs by Mike Shaughnessy Leaking Secrets, leaking Blood by Raul Gutierrez Death in Space, by Maggie Koerth-Baker Ghost Babies, by Mark Dery A Season in Hell, by Mark Dery Hajj for Heathens, by Omar Chatriwala Maps, by Simon Parkin

Other guests are too many to mention – there are more than five hundred contributors in our archives now – but they account for many of our finest posts. Among the best are Sawyer Rosenstein's Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon and the many annual iterations of David Ng and Ben Cohen's Halloween Candy Hierarchy.

Glenn Fleishman's Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto is typeset in the then-new Google typeface it was about, and What it's like to be on Jeopardy is about his brief but impressive stint on the game show.

Unseen World War I photos: German Trenches reveals a unique collection of photographs inherited by Dean Putney, our longtime developer, from his great-grandfather Walter Koessler.

Carl Malamud is well-known for Liberating America's secret, for-pay laws, and we're immensely proud to have helped him make his stand.

We've also published loads of fiction over the years, including our own, such as Cory's By His Things Will You Know Him and The Man Who Sold The Moon, Jason's Kevin's List, and Rob's Mixtape of the Lost Decade, Such Bravery and Nomen Ludi.

Finally, here are our top traffic posts since we started counting: a master key for winning at blogging. But only if you have a time machine, because the web, as they say, is dead.

1. Nigerian astronaut lost in space

2. Rickrolling is sexist, racist and often transphobic in context

3. 'To Donald Trump,' by Leland Melvin, former NASA Astronaut and NFL Player

4. 16-year-old girl who took nude selfie photos faces adult sex charges

5. Campus rapist given lenient sentence to avoid "severe impact on him"

6. Man stole $122m from Facebook and Google by sending them random bills, which the companies dutifully paid

7. Climate change denier Rupert Murdoch just bought National Geographic, which gives grants to scientists

8. Trump is angry at NBC News for using this photo of him, so please don't use this enhanced, enlarged version of it for anything

9. I'm married. I'm a woman. I'm addicted to porn.

10. For sale: (1) California ghost town

https://boingboing.net/2020/01/21/20-years-of-blogging-at-boing.html

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

Nick Cave / Mick Harvey / Blixa Bargeld, Ghosts ...Of The Civil Dead. Mute, 1989.  Soundtrack to  Ghosts ...Of The Civil Dead, directed by John Hillcoat. 1988.

[hgghgfd]

On The Street, February 1988

Knocking on Nick's Door An interview (sort of) with Nicholas Cave

On The Street, February 1988

Interview by Rob Miller

Collected by Katherine B.

Saint and Sinner, Misogynist and Misanthropist... as famous in his own way as AC/DC or INXS (Australia's most well-known musical exports), Nick Cave is a bad boy of international proportions these days. Recognized as one of the major talents of the '80's in culturally elevated circles from London to Berlin and New York, there's no small irony in the fact that Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (or even The Birthday Party for that matter) are virtually unknown to the average music-listening Australian. And out of those that do acknowledge Cave in his own country, a fair proportion can't decide whether they love him for the brooding emotional soundscapes he and the Bad Seeds conjure or despise him for the blatantly arrogant attitude he displays to his listening public.

In equal parts misanthropic, exceptionally talented and wantonly self-destructive, it's also kind of unfortunate that the notoriety surrounding Nick Cave (which he does little to dispel), the tales of the man's narcotic over-indulgence and prima-donna arrogance have tended to overshadow the erratic brilliance of the Birthday Party/Bad Seeds career. Speaking for myself, a shameless fan since the early days of the Birthday Party, rarely have records been so eagerly awaited or as obsessively consumed as those by Nick Cave and his cronies. Yet in all that time I've never felt tempted to shoot up hard drugs just because that was part of the Nick Cave mythology. The price I've paid has been when my interest spilled over into curiosity to interview Cave, who's hardly the most receptive candidate for questions (which with the reputation is perhaps understandable).

Certainly when trying to separate the Man from the Myth, when you're second in a line of four phone interviews is a quest only for the foolhardy, especially when the questioning turns to the relationship between Cave's fabled decadence and his creativity...

"You're asking me if I take drugs?"

No, I'm not. I don't care particularly. I'm just interested in the what makes the records the wonderful experiences they usually are...

"Well, I guess I do. I don't know why you're looking for external factors. You're talking to the reason why those records are wonderful, I don't think that's got anything to do with drugs. I'm not on drugs at the moment, and as you can see, I'm still speaking with wit and intense as ever..."

Actually one gets the impression that these days Nick Cave would rather be known as a workaholic rather than for any other kind of obsessive behaviour.

"The last year I've been working my arse off," confides Nick. "It may not appear that way since no product has come out, but I'll reap the fruit this year. I've written a novel. I have two books coming out this year. I'm involved in a couple of films. Um, yeah, records and that shit."

Is music still a primary focus for you? Do you still consider yourself primarily a musician?

"I've never considered myself that way, but yeah, it's still very important to me. I've always felt that my areas of creativity were fairly open. But it's only in the past couple of years that I've actually had the chance to become involved in other things."

Long noted for his innate and formidable 'sense of the dramatic' by former Rich kid turned video producer Evan English, Nick cave has been based in Melbourne for the past few months where he'd been playing the part of Manyard in Ghosts (of the Civil Dead), a film about life in a high-tech maximum security prison. "I played a psychopath with a leaning towards self-destruction and shooting his mouth off," explains Nick. "It's about the authorities deliberately provoking a situation, where a series of violent events occur, so that the prison can be put under what's called lockdown, that's kind of twenty-four hours a day locked in the cells without any privileges or whatever. And there's that story plus the following of one particular character who goes into the prison a smalltime criminal and comes out a killer."

Along with Mick Harvey and Blixa Bargeld, Nick Cave will also be scoring the music for Ghosts, but is adamant that it will bear little resemblance to the Bad Seeds.

"The Ghosts film is the first I've done any music for. Apart from Wings of Desire, but that was only playing a couple of songs from our repertoire on stage. It wasn't actually doing music for the film as such. For Ghosts, I'm actually having to compose music to suit a certain type of atmosphere and so forth to kind of please the producer. And in that way it's kind of the first time I've had to do anything like that and it's quite a challenge. Usually I'm only pleasing myself..."

With songs like Knockin' on the Joe and Jack's Shadow (based on the story of Norman Mailer's friend Jack Henry Abbott, who wrote In the Belly of the Beast), Nick Cave has long been interested in the brutality and twisted emotions of the jail experience. Yet once again, attempts to prove Cave's seemingly fatal attraction towards these things merited an unenlightening response.

Have you mellowed over the years or are you still drawn to these sorts of things?

"I've written lots of prison songs... there's two or three prison songs on the next album"

Yet it seems prison is only one of the ways you've attempted to deal with various extremities of experience...

"The basic theme in my latest record are death, isolation and prison, basically the same things I've always been harping on about..."

What about sex and violence?

"Yeah, well, sex and violence of course. (Said with barely a trace of humour.) There's a good deal of sex and violence in it."

Is it still in the production stages?

"We've recorded quite a lot of songs for it, but we're still interested in recording more. Basically we want to make a better record than the last one even though I'm very happy with the last one. And I won't be really happy until I've done that."

Is Your Funeral... My Trial your favourite of the Bad Seeds records so far?

"Yeah..."

Although it is as yet untitled, Mick Harvey, who OTS spoke to last week (but that's another story!) is confident that the new album will be more than just a worthy successor to Your Funeral... My Trial. Incidentally, Cave will also be contributing to the soundtrack of Wim Wenders' next movie (Paris, Texas), who he met whilst living in Berlin and between whom there is apparently a mutual respect.

In fact, diversity - surprisingly enough for those whose perception of Cave would favour him as an apathetic, drug-ridden layabout junkie - has been one of the characteristics of his career in recent years even if it hasn't necessarily improved his sense of humour or sociability. From the well-received album of covers, Kicking Against the Pricks, to Cave's long-awaited novel And the Ass saw the Angel, from which an excerpt, Atra Vigaro or the Vargas Barking Spider appeared on the Smack my Crack compilation last year, Cave has doubtless in his own inimitable fashion been hard at work.

Is the novel to be published soon?

"Yeah, it's being typed up now. There's still a few more weeks work left to do on it, but it'll be out this year sometime. But the first book that'll come out will be a collection of other writing apart from the novel of lyrics and extra-curricular writings called King Ink. My publishers are actually compiling it but I think it'll have hand written pages and the odd doodle and that punctuating it. That'll coincide with the album, which will come out in a few months."

And what of Nick Cave's immediate plans? Does he intend to stay in Melbourne?

"Well, I'm just here for two months and then I'll go to Berlin, I think. We plan to do a fair bit of traveling this year. We've got our eye on visiting Brazil and Argentina. I'd quite like to stay there for a while."

A few years ago you said you'd like to go to Mexico and be a gas attendant for a while, and the suggestion was, get away from the pressure for a while. Is having a lot of preconceptions and expectations foisted on you what's ultimately a drag about being Nick Cave?

"Well, it keeps me on my toes, I guess. I've never managed to do that; to cut myself off from obligations is a near impossible thing. But yeah, there is a lot of pressure to fulfill a lot of contracts, but ultimately that sort of situation is one I work best in."

Do you still enjoy playing live? It seems to me that you've always had a fairly ambivalent attitude, almost take us as you find us...

"Yeah, sometimes, I've always had the attitude that I can't really give anymore than I can give and I always try to give as much as I can. Basically that's the way people will find us and the way they'll have to take us."

It seems like a very brief tour that you're doing this time, only half a dozen dates spread over ten days...

"It seems to me like a very long tour!"

Will you only do one date in Sydney?

"I don't know. Are we doing a date in Sydney?"

Thanks for the interview, Nick! Reprinted with permission. Copyright by Rob Miller, 1988. Wholesale publication requires the written consent of the author. Contact site administrator for details.

[agateophilia101]

According to Salah Jaheen: I'm a young man, but a thousand years of age Alone, but crowds throng within my rib cage Afraid, but it is myself I fear Mute, but my heart is full of words it cannot gauge How strange! Note: This is my own translation of one of Jaheen's quatrains. I'm going to translate other stuff in this post, as well as share some music, but first, something is to be said about Jaheen (as per usual though, the music player(s) will not show on the dashboard, so view the post on my blog, and if you are using your phone, then it probably won't work, even on the blog). This quatrain of Jaheen's, which he wrote in the early 1960s, is one of the most well known quatrains in Egypt. I tried to be as literal as possible, while retaining the quatrain form of the poem, i.e.: its rhyme scheme of the AABA form. No matter how carefully one is translating, there is something in Jaheen's original verses that remains characteristic only to them, and to his sensitivities. So, as with any translation that purports to translate, maybe my translations, above and below, captured something of Jaheen, maybe they didn't, I have no hope of certainty here, since I'm already in possession of that which the poems, in their original form and language, cast; I find it difficult to dissociate myself from the original and discern the translation anew, even when its my own translation. Salah Jaheen (1930-1986) was an Egyptian poet, playwright, and cartoonist, who wrote in the Modern Egyptian Language (AKA: Egyptian Arabic, which is not Arabic at all, it is called "Masri", meaning "Egyptian", it is a de facto language of itself, with grammar that mainly follows that of the Coptic language, and vocabulary that is predominantly derived from Coptic as well, if not outright transcriptions of Coptic words, but also with influences from Greek and French; Coptic was spoken in Egypt up until the 16/17th century; the Modern Egyptian Language evolved from Coptic and its contact with several other languages, and hence it remains Egyptian, both linguistically and culturally; excuse my tendency to digress, let's shelve this topic for another time). Jaheen's "Quatrains", which are sometimes referred to as "How strange!" (the exclamation with which each of the quatrains ends), convey his own personal outlook on life and existence. He is known to be a versatile poet, concise in his verses yet cuts deep, his works encompass the range of human emotion, from sorrow to festivity to love to loneliness to frustration, etc., and almost always contain underlying existential motifs. Jaheen once famously said in jest, intentionally poking fun at himself, that he wished he had learned ballet dancing, which prompted laughter from the audience because he was bulky and didn't have the body of a ballet dancer, but Jaheen still danced in his poems, the choreography was just slightly different. Some of his quatrains were sung several times both during his life and later on, he also wrote the lyrics to some songs. Here is one, along with my translation of its lyrics below, that was written by him and performed by the Egyptian band "Al Massrieen (The Egyptians)", which they released in 1977 in one of their albums, it is called "Streets Are Stories"; Egyptian: "Elshawarea Hawadeet"; the original of every poem/song in this post is in the Modern Egyptian Language: Here is my translation of the lyrics, which I'm satisfied with; I preserved the rhyme, but not in places where I felt that it would change the essence of the lyrics: Streets are stories, One turn it is a story of love, with every joy and trial, Another turn it is demons, and ghost stories and guile, Hear me, O beautiful one, perhaps I will make you smile: This is the street where we used to live, Everyday it gets narrower and the walls each other near, Now that we are older, it is a mother's womb; There is no longer a place for any of us here. Streets are stories, One turn it is a story of love, with every joy and trial, Another turn it is demons, and ghost stories and guile, Hear me, O beautiful one, perhaps I will make you smile: This is the street where we went to school, This is what is left of it, and the rest is forgotten, It was swept away by those who sweep, And in a moment of sorrow, I, too, have forgotten. Streets are stories, One turn it is a story of love, with every joy and trial, Another turn it is demons, and ghost stories and guile, Hear me, O beautiful one, perhaps I will make you smile: This street begins with lively, beautiful gardens, But though it so begins, it leads to a dead end; Here lives my untold, unrequited love; I was happy, But to this story the street guards put an end. Streets are stories, One turn it is a story of love, with every joy and trial, Another turn it is demons, and ghost stories and guile, Hear me, O beautiful one, perhaps I will make you smile: This is the street where I saw you walk, Wearing a jupe and a rosy blouse, with graceful horsetail hair, Your destination was my destination: toward it we walk; This is a street of crowding and loss, but we have to bear. Streets are stories, One turn it is a story of love, with every joy and trial, Another turn it is demons, and ghost stories and guile, Smile, O beautiful one, perhaps you will hear me somewhile! As beautiful as you may find this to be, it is at least as beautiful in its original language, but maybe you can tell from listening to the song. This band was formed in the 1970s, with Jaheen as an unofficial member. One of the founders, Hani Shenouda, was inspired to form the band after his conversation with Naguib Mahfouz (an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature); Naguib asked him, when Hani was in another band, why he and his band are not making songs whose lyrics capture the Egyptian spirit, and after some back-and-forth he said this to Hani: "Never replace the joy of making with the joy of criticizing; make music that is in accord with your own convictions." Hani said that Naguib's comment was the seed for what became "Al Massrieen". Here is another one of theirs, which was not written by Jaheen, but I'm going to translate it anyway, it is called "A Matter of Age"; Egyptian: "Massaalet Elsen", released in 1979: Here is my translation: The difference between me and my father Is only a matter of age; They always say that he had rather Devilish candor when my age; Lived a life that was his own, A knight with his sword drawn, All his days were but mirthful, Sleepless yet content and joyful, Indulged in all kinds of love and art And jumped from heart to heart, Never over the future fretted, And never a memory regretted, Everyone he loved, and him they loved, But they blamed him for not being Like his father, whom they loved, And he told them in replying: "The difference between me and my father Is only a matter of age, They always say that he had rather Devilish candor when my age, And like him I am, I helplessly am; It is in my blood, it is who I am." It is repeated one more time in the song. This is as close as is possible to a literal translation. Here is another one that is a bit funky. It was not written by Jaheen either. It is called "In the Middle of the Forest", Egyptian: "Wist Elghabat": It is describing life in the forest, during a vigilant walk in its wilderness and while taking photos of the animals, describing what each animal is up to. This one is hard to translate without changing its spirit. In the song there is a fearsome tiger, whose photo she took, and the photo rendered the tiger smaller in size, with a cheerful smile; a group of elephants that he took a photo of, and refused to sell the photo for money; a rhinoceros under its feet the earth trembles as it runs, where there is an elegant gazelle and it is dinner time for the bear; there is a lion with a magnificent hair, that runs with grace, he took a photo of the lion holding down a giraffe with its claws (yes, of course, this corresponds with the singer with the deeper voice); a clever monkey notices the camera, he snatched it from her hands and tried to take a photo, but accidentally broke it. Back to Jaheen. This next one is one of his quatrains, whose music was composed by his friend Sayed Mekawy (which himself was a renowned Egyptian singer, and songwriter), the singing is also by Sayed Mekawy, it was probably recorded in the 1960s: Here is my translation (the first two lines are repeated in the song): Why, my love, is there always distance between us and travel? Your absence is a sin; yours, mine, and that of distance and travel! Why, my love, are there always seas between us to cross? With each sea that I cross, more seas unravel! How strange! Hopefully, this post was pleasant. Let's end it how it began; here is my translation of another one from Jaheen's quatrains (from the 1950s/1960s as well): Millions of miles away from Earth, I could not see When I looked from the endless, void cosmic sea The difference between oceans, land, and mountains, Nor between joy and sorrow; they seemed the same to me! How strange! When the time allows, I'm going to write a post about some Egyptian composers of more technical music (composers of classical music and traditional Egyptian music mainly), specially ones who utilized themes of ancient Egypt in their work (I don't have an interest in oriental middle eastern stuff), it will be strictly about music not songs. Let's not end this post how it began. Here is something of a tease for what I'm going to talk about. This, below, is a variation on a sound from the very core of Egypt, both ancient Egypt and modern Egypt actually, since the musical instruments used in this one originated in ancient Egypt and were part of the ancient Egyptian music, they continue to be used up to the present day. This is a hint of the sounds you would hear in several areas of Egypt today; few things can define a civilization in the same capacity as does music, and in that regard too ancient Egypt was a cultural marvel; I shall not say more, let this remain a mystery here till I get to writing the next post (unless you already know this one, in which case, hello there, friend):

[mateushonrado]

Highest grossing films per year since 1980

Status Post #8176: According to Box Office Mojo.

- 1980: Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Fox/Lucasfilm)

- 1981: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (Paramount/Lucasfilm)

- 1982: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Universal/Amblin)

- 1983: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (Fox/Lucasfilm)

- 1984: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Paramount/Lucasfilm)

- 1985: Back to the Future (Universal/Amblib)

- 1986: Top Gun (Paramount)

- 1987: Fatal Attraction (Paramount)

- 1988: Rain Man (MGM)

- 1989: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Paramount/Lucasfilm)

- 1990: Ghost (Paramount)

- 1991: Terminator 2: Judgement Day (Tristar/Carolco/Studio Canal)

- 1992: Aladdin (Disney)

- 1993: Jurassic Park (Universal/Amblin)

- 1994: The Lion King (Disney)

- 1995: Die Hard with a Vengeance (Fox/Cinergi/Disney)

- 1996: Independence Day (Fox)

- 1997: Titanic (Fox/Paramount)

- 1998: Armageddon (Touchstone)

- 1999: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (Fox/Lucasfilm)

- 2000: Mission: Impossible 2 (Paramount)

- 2001: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Warner Bros.)

- 2002: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (New Line)

- 2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (New Line)

- 2004: Shrek 2 (Dreamworks)

- 2005: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Warner Bros.)

- 2006: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Disney)

- 2007: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (Disney)

- 2008: The Dark Knight (Warner Bros./DC)

- 2009: Avatar (Fox)

- 2010: Toy Story 3 (Disney/Pixar)

- 2011: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (Warner Bros.)

- 2012: The Avengers (Disney/Paramount/Marvel)

- 2013: Frozen (Disney)

- 2014: Transformers: Age of Extinction (Paramount/Hasbro)

- 2015: Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Disney/Lucasfilm)

- 2016: Captain America: Civil War (Disney/Marvel)

- 2017: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Disney/Lucasfilm)

- 2018: Avengers: Infinity War (Disney/Marvel)

- 2019: Avengers: Endgame (Disney/Marvel)