#an evocative documentary

[davidclark24]

Unraveling Secrets of the World's Most Enigmatic Ruins | Evocative Explorer | Exploring the Secrets of Most Enigmatic Ruins in the World

AncientMysteries #HistoricalSecrets #HiddenRuins #LostCivilizations #AncientWonders #ForgottenWorlds #MysteryUnveiled #RuinsExploration #AncientSites #HistoricMysteries #SecretRuins #AncientLegends #ArchaeologicalDiscoveries #HistoricWonders #RuinsOfTime #AncientArchitecture #UnsolvedHistories #AncientEnigmas #TimeTravelThroughRuins #MythicalRuins

[writingquestionsanswered]

Any advice to write your own quotes that is not so common?

Learning to Write Memorable/Quotable Prose

As readers, we know there are few things better than reading a quote that hits in all the right ways...

"The moon understands what it means to be human. Uncertain. Alone. Cratered by imperfections." —Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared.” —Angie Thomas, The Hate U Give

As writers, part of the dream is to be able to craft quotes that resonate with our readers like that... quotes that will be quoted... quotes that will be remembered.

Unfortunately, learning to write quotable prose isn't something you can do immediately just by following a few tips. It requires a few thing that take some time...

1 - A Fertile Mind - A big part of being able to write quotable prose is having a fertile mind... or in other words, giving your brain all the right elements it needs to be able to produce quotable prose. Here are some things you can do to encourage a fertile mind:

-- Filling Your Creative Well ensures that your brain is full of words, ideas, and imagery that will help you think up memorable quotes.

-- Improve your vocabulary by using a thesaurus (just make sure to cross-reference with a dictionary), subscribing to Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day e-mails, buying a "word of the day" desk calendar, using a reference like The Describer's Dictionary or the Random House Word Menu, and reading as much as you can--books, short stories, poetry, magazines, blog posts, song lyrics, anything you can get your hands on. Read through lists of vocabulary related to specific things, like geography, weather, architecture, travel, etc. Keep a journal of new words and their meanings as well as words that resonate with you.

-- Bring out your inner poet by reading poetry (there's a ton of poetry available for free online), reading song lyrics, and trying to write your own poetry.

-- Fill your mind with beautiful imagery by traveling... in person, if you can, but if you can't, YouTube makes it super easy to be an armchair traveler. There are countless beautiful videos of every place on Earth you could ever want to visit. There are travel documentaries, montages of beautiful scenery, walk-throughs, and tours. You can also go to a photo site like Pexels or Pixabay and type in random imagery terms like "mountains" or "starry night" and see what images come up. Save the ones that speak to you most in a pretty folder.

2 - Practice - Even with a full creative well and fertile mind, you're still not going to be able to instantly craft beautiful prose or memorable quotes. You still need to hone this skill through lots of practice. That's going to mean trying to craft beautiful prose and memorable quotes, which is going to mean writing a lot of not-so-great ones before they get better and better. Try looking at some of those pretty images you saved and see if you can write some pretty quotes about them. Look at the list of interesting vocabulary you saved and see if you can use any of it to craft a pretty quote. Take a pretty line of poetry or a evocative song lyric and try to craft it into a memorable quote. And more than anything else... just write your stories and always try to craft beautiful prose and memorable sentences. The more you try, the better you'll get.

3 - Have a story that merits pretty prose and memorable quotes - The truth of the matter is that even if you do everything listed above, you still won't be able to craft pretty prose and memorable quotes unless your story provides you the necessary raw materials. You need an engaging plot, compelling characters, interesting themes, quote-worthy imagery in plot elements and setting, and both characters and circumstances where memorable quotes make sense.

If you do all of these things, though, you'll be writing pretty prose and memorable quotes in no time! ♥

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

LEARN MORE about WQA

SEE MY ask policies

VISIT MY Master List of Top Posts

COFFEE & COMMISSIONS ko-fi.com/wqa

[thinkingimages]

When Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Elena Subach found herself unable to photograph those fleeing the conflict. Instead she turned her lens on what they left behind

Elena Subach was born in Chervonohrad, a small coal-mining city in the Lviv region of western Ukraine. Her father was a miner while her grandfather painted icons for local churches. Such buildings are characterised by shiny, Baroque-style domes and ornate interiors, and make a spectacular impression on the city skyline. Subach uses her camera to make sense of the post-industrial landscape, but also the strange foreboding mood that defines cities like hers, and the ways that spirituality and superstition seep into everyday life in Ukraine.

As her artistic practice has evolved, Subach’s projects have become more vivid and evocative. Her work celebrates the inconspicuous objects that often evade attention, elevating them to near iconic status. She turns the fabric of life into a technicoloured patchwork of reality and myth. “Elena Subach is a tender observer of small moments and daily rituals. Ordinary items become totems: old ladies are elevated to the status of goddesses, and a simple hand gesture makes us think of magic,” says Polish photographer Rafał Milach, who nominated her for Ones to Watch. “She mixes memories, tropes and clichés, continuously drawing on and reimaging the visual identity of Ukraine.” 

When Russia launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, disrupting and devastating the lives of ordinary Ukrainians, it was the biggest military attack in Europe since World War Two. At the time, Subach was living in Lviv and working as a researcher at the Lviv National Art Gallery. With the sound of air-raid sirens warning citizens of incoming missiles, her instinct was to leave the city and go to Poland. Instead, she and her husband drove to Uzhhorod, a city in western Ukraine situated between mountains where she felt they would be better protected.

The following day, the couple joined the local volunteer movement, the Transcarpathian Gastronomy Battalion, which organises shelter, food and psychological support for fleeing Ukrainians seeking asylum in Europe. Subach’s team was stationed closest to the border zone. In March, martial law was imposed in Ukraine, banning adult men from leaving the country, and the days became marked by farewells. Men drove their families to the border and dropped them off; couples parted ways; all of them hugged, kissed and said goodbye.

“All this time, I couldn’t photograph people,” says Subach. “I did not want to, I did not dare to interfere in their already violated personal space, despite understanding the importance of documenting this history.”

Instead she turned her lens on the empty chairs on which people left their belongings, imbuing them with gravitas while preserving a sense of humanity.

“They seemed to me like small islands in a sea of people – places to stop and relax for a minute. In many cases this would be the first time a person had a chance to sit down in 24 hours. Thousands of people have passed by these chairs. I think [the chairs] are very important witnesses to this war.” 

Documentary photography can often reduce the victims of war to wounded bodies, and turn individual refugee experiences into one single story. Subach’s work does not show people encountering war but compels us to imagine them beyond the frame. 

www.elenasubach.com

Subach’s latest photobook, Hidden, is published by Besides Press and launches 15 September 2022.

[noonereallyknowswhatwedo]

Announcing the pre-order for Jett Lara: Dreams & Nightmares, published by NORKWWD Jett Lara, a self-taught documentary photographer, explores stories of LA's most vulnerable yet resilient inhabitants, all captured while navigating the congested streets on his bike, White Horse. His portraits showcase small miracles amidst the constant chaos, and offer a raw and evocative examination of a place that is often misunderstood and therefore ignored. The book comes with a 5x7 Giclee print, a tote bag, or an original photo album crafted by Lara. Available now for pre-order at norkwwd.com

[why-animation]

If you follow me, there's a fair chance you're well familiar with the rocket launch scene animated by Hideaki Anno at the climax of Royal Space Force: Wings of the Honneamise – and if so, there's a fair chance you know the rocket is essentially a Soviet R7/Soyuz family launch vehicle with fancy calligraphy.

But lately I noticed something cool.

Ryusuke Hikawa, who is something of a scholar of Japanese effects animation, notes for the BD release that Anno and his friends appear to have paid close attention to gas temperature gradients when animating all the scene's many excellent explosions.

That's pretty neat. Let's take a look at the gases at not!Soyuz's booster and core stage nozzles.

There's a curtain of cooler gases near the nozzle, which transitions rather sharply into very bright and hot gases depicted using toukakou. Toukakou literally means "light transmission," but I like rendering it as "cel glow:" simple and evocative. I'm mentioning this because it's translated a million different ways in a million different sources, including as "filtration" in the BD notes above.

In any case, this is typical of rocket engines which use film cooling to keep their nozzles from melting – and a specific type of film cooling too. This looks like what happens when you dump a lot of cold gas – for instance, from the gas generator – through a manifold down the lower portion of the nozzle.

It's a fascinating detail, but it's a bit weird, because no engine used on a Soyuz family rocket looks like that.

There's a good reason for it though. The Soviets were all about Great Scientific Accomplishments, but they never really believed in the "pics or it didn't happen" principle. As far as I'm aware, they didn't bother sticking expensive high speed high resolution engineering cameras near their rocket launches, and they were selective about releasing what they did have for national security reasons. Anno would not have had great close-up reference footage of an RD-107 family rocket engine burning.

There is one very famous, very well documented rocket engine that uses this cooling method, however.

In fact, from the timing of how the gas curtain flutters, I'm pretty sure Anno had this exact footage.

It'd figure too. Yasuhiro Takeda mentions this while talking about a small, trial run convention his SF club hosted before Daicon III:

I could certainly see Anno or someone else hearing about these materials through Takeda and either borrowing it themselves or making a copy. Not that similar footage would've been hard to obtain otherwise. Using the sophisticated research method of "search アポロ11号NHK on youtube," I can find a documentary from as early as '94 which includes this footage, and who knows what tapes Anno would've been able to bring back from his trip to Kennedy SFC?

Thank goodness for VHS.

[kabutoraiger]

spinnie eat a grass and spinnie drink a water are both so evocative to me they should be clips from a nature documentary narrated by mr attenborough

[victorianwhitechapel]

The Long Shadow review – a shattering serial killer drama that breaks all the rules

A mighty cast including Katherine Kelly and Toby Jones tells the stories of the women murdered by Peter Sutcliffe. Finally, the focus is on the victims

By the end of the first two of the seven episodes of ITV’s new drama about the Yorkshire Ripper made available for review, Peter Sutcliffe has barely been glimpsed. This alone marks it out from the herd of serial killer dramas, let alone documentaries, of which every streaming platform has a full quota. The general rule is that, however much the makers stress that their creation will centre the victims instead of the perpetrator of the crimes, they somehow all end up in thrall to precisely that person. Even when there really are intentions otherwise, the perpetrator inevitably becomes the dramatic focus and the narrative engine.

The Long Shadow – so far, at least, which is already further than most – shatters the general rule. Written by George Kay (whose last outing was the very different, very fun Hijack starring Idris Elba) and directed by Lewis Arnold (Sherwood, Time, Des – the Dennis Nilsen drama starring David Tennant), it is based on Michael Bilton’s book Wicked Beyond Belief, plus additional research and with the consultation and blessing of the families.

More than any rendering of a notorious case that I can remember, the attention is on the women. Specifically, the living women. And, when they are gone, the people they leave behind. After Wilma McCann’s (Gemma Laurie) murder, and the investigation that will take five years to apprehend Sutcliffe despite the police interviewing him nine times, the focus moves to Emily Jackson (Katherine Kelly). The opening episodes concentrate on presenting her situation to us in the round, as dire financial straits drive the embattled wife and mother to sell sex and put her fatally in Sutcliffe’s sights.

The Long Shadow deals in details. It is not simply poverty that leads the Jacksons to extreme solutions, but the social pressures and the desire not to lose face in front of the neighbours are all carefully and accurately drawn. So too are the subtle prejudices that nudge Irene Richardson (Molly Vevers) out of the chance of a job as a nanny that might have saved her from becoming Sutcliffe’s third murder victim.

After her, there is Marcella Claxton (Jasmine Lee-Jones), who survives a hammer attack by the man who will soon be tagged “the Yorkshire Ripper” by the media, though the moniker – hated by the families – is barely used in The Long Shadow. She miscarries at four months as a result of the attack. Back home from hospital, we see her gently touching her terrible head wound, trying to see it in the mirror and gauge its extent, with the empty cot in the background – a moving evocation of the literal and metaphorical extent of trauma; how much we want to find its boundaries and how impossible it can be to do so.

The police investigation weaves round the women’s stories, and although it hits many familiar beats, the quality of the writing and presence of the likes of Toby Jones, David Morrissey and Lee Ingleby as the various detectives in charge over the years means that this too is better done than usual. We have come to expect virulent misogyny and racism to be on show in dramas set in earlier decades and involving the police – or any other unwieldy, male-dominated institution – but The Long Shadow succeeds in embedding it more quietly but firmly. It is a way of life, a way of thinking rather than a succession of big instances (though it still has its moments, such as when the detectives’ hospital interview with Claxton turns into an interrogation, as their engineered politeness in front of a black woman begins to fail).

This all means that we better understand how the investigation went so wrong so many times, with even “the good guys” believing that the deaths of sex workers (and assuming that any woman near a known streetwalking area was one) were not worth much effort, or that any woman drunk and out after dark got what was coming to her. And it means we can better see its descendant attitudes now and how insidiously they still work against women. Big, sexist/racist set pieces or a clear divide between bad cops and the angelic few who have managed to transcend their eras allow us to believe that things are different now. The Long Shadow’s subtlety and care denies us such mistaken comfort.

The Long Shadow is on ITV and ITVX in the UK, and on Stan in Australia

==

I hope one day they do the same with the Whitechapel Victims... RIP.

[bigfootbeat]

Bigfoot and Ancestral Memory

The idea of Bigfoot, a tall, ape-like creature that prowls North American forests, deeply instills ancestral memories. This character, commonly referred to as Sasquatch, weaves together elements of cryptozoology, collective storytelling, and indigenous folklore to create a rich tapestry that has a profound impact on cultural history. Bigfoot stories can be traced back to the oral traditions of many different Native American tribes. These legends, passed down from one generation to the next, tell of encounters with big, mysterious creatures living in the woods. Many tribes view Bigfoot as more than just a physical monster; to them, he represents a spiritual being, a forest defender, and a strong bond between people and the natural environment. This respect reflects a more comprehensive view of Bigfoot as an essential component of their ancestral homeland. Due to multiple sighting reports and widespread media coverage, Bigfoot's notoriety grew in the eyes of the general public over the 20th century. A key factor in this phenomenon was the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film, which purportedly contained evidence of a female Bigfoot in Northern California. Though there are still arguments concerning its veracity, the movie captivated the public's interest and cemented Bigfoot's status as a contemporary myth.

Bigfoot's fascination stems from its evocative portrayal of the undiscovered and unexplored. It pushes the limits of our current understanding by embodying the mysteries of the natural world. Other phenomena, such as sightings of UFOs and the Loch Ness Monster, demonstrate this curiosity where skepticism and belief coexist. In this way, Bigfoot serves as a link to a less explored and more enigmatic era of history. In addition, Bigfoot represents resistance to the unrelenting progress of contemporary society. A creature concealed and untainted in the forest's depths appeals to people who experience a sense of loss in the face of environmental degradation and urbanization. Bigfoot represents the ancestral memory of the wild and untamed regions that persist, if only in our shared minds. Media depictions of Bigfoot continue to shape and support the creature's story. Media portrays Bigfoot in a variety of ways, including books, documentaries, films, and television series. At times, media portrays Bigfoot as a kind, misunderstood giant, while at others, it portrays him as a terrifying, elusive creature. The Bigfoot legend endures because it is ever-evolving and flexible enough to fit into various cultural settings. Bigfoot has also become a commercial icon in today's society. Social media, product branding, and marketing efforts use its picture, demonstrating its widespread recognition and appeal. This commercialization may alter Bigfoot's traditional mystery, but it also ensures that the figure will remain a significant and enduring element of popular culture. In the end, Bigfoot's remembrance as an ancestor symbolizes humanity's continuing curiosity about the mysterious and rudimentary elements of the natural world. It represents our shared hopes, worries, and the never-ending search for knowledge. In this sense, Bigfoot remains a potent symbol in our common history, connecting the past and present.

[feral-lore-creature]

oh boy oh boy oh boy am i here to tell you how much that was not rhetorical.

i guess the best place to start wpuld be simply with HR Giger and his rise to fame with his biomechanical artwork. Biomech, as it sounds, is the combination of organics and mechanics, most often represented with human/animal anatomy where joints are replaces with gears and pistons, but infused with muscles and tendons. Gigers art was particularly inspired by Salvador Dali, HP Lovecraft, and Alfred Kubin

(some examples of their work in order of who was listed)

(The Temptation of St. Anthony ,The Shaggoth,Homage to Rimbaud)

Giger was enlisted to the design set by Ridley after he viewed Giger "Necronimicon IV", for which the Xenomorph was designed after.

"Giger's design for the Alien evoked many contradictory sexual images. As critic Ximena Gallardo notes, the creature's combination of sexually evocative physical and behavioral characteristics creates 'a nightmare vision of sex and death. It subdues and opens the male body to make it pregnant, and then explodes it in birth. In its adult form, the alien strikes its victims with a rigid phallic tongue that breaks through skin and bone. More than a phallus, however, the retractable tongue has its own set of snapping, metallic teeth that connects it to the castrating vagina dentata.'"

The Alien is meant to incite sexual horror in men specifically, between ita phallic shaped head/inner tongue and vaginal secondatry mouth, whule still maintining no sexual dimorphism (except feom the queen) so you cant tell if its a male or female.

"however, he could not conceive of an interesting way for it to get onto the ship. Inspired after waking from a dream, Shusett said, "I have an idea: the monster screws one of them", planting its egg in his body, and then bursting out of his chest. Both realized the idea had never been done before, and it subsequently became the core of the film. "This is a movie about alien interspecies rape", O'Bannon said in the documentary Alien Evolution. "That's scary because it hits all of our buttons." O'Bannon felt that the symbolism of "homosexual oral rape" was an effective means of discomforting male viewers."

after this point all of my thoughts devolve into a garble of pointing and hand flapping so enjoy what i was able to provide and i hope we become moots bc i wanna talk abt alien w ppl so so bad

BY THE VOID, THANK YOU! This is so well done. I fucking LOVE IT. I'd LOVE being moots! 😭 I need somebody to info dump on, too!

Putting my own thoughts below the cut so nothing gets too long.

I always thought the idea of making (usually cis) men uncomfortable via graphic, fictional representations of rape was SUCH a good change of pace. It's refreshing, not just in terms of "flipping the script", but the way it's presented is often beautiful, and grotesque.

I remember watched the "horror" (read: fetish) movie "Don't Breathe" with my FATHER not knowing the plot twist (because that's the point of watching the damn movie...) It made me so fucking uncomfortable. It's just a fetish film, honestly. It handles extreme, very real events with no grace or creative liberty. It's horrible.

ANYWAY! Back to Aliens, I think that's also why I fucking LOVE the hive system the Xenomorphs work in. I know some people don't enjoy these terrifying, eldritch organisms being "reduced" to something so earthly as a hive system, but let's be honest, it's effective way to reproduce/gain numbers, and it's still just as scary.

That's the reason I adore the QUEEN herself. Her design is powerful, and elaborate. She sure as hell plays and looks the roll of queen. She's the epicenter of the species who commands all those under her as she "births" more of the monstrosities to destroy worlds in her children's wake. She's the only feminine being binding the hive together into an organized destructive force, and she doesn't even need a male to fertilize the eggs. (<- also a detail I really like.) She's quite literally an evil girl boss LMAO I love her.

These are the main reasons (and I'm sure there's more,) as to why I love HR Giger's original art work, and how it was shown in the first two movies, then later beautifully presented again in Prometheus 2012. (<- somebody please be obsessed with the Engineers with me, I love them, and need to bang one asap LMAO)

It's an amazing example of art that's meant to "comfort the disturbed, and disturb the comfortable."

[headinbookishclouds]

Rules for Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall

“If there are rules, there’s a way things ought to be”.

I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover but everything about this book fits right into my alley. I mean, look at the title alone. What an intriguing title. The cover was also stunning. It had all of the trademarks of a good horror book - ghosts, folktales, and monsters. Ultimately, ​​Rules for Vanishing intertwined looking for a long lost sister, a deadly ghost story and teenage angst into a riveting book.

It genuinely terrified me. I suppose I shouldn’t have been reading so late into the night but I really couldn't put it down. Marshall combines exquisite prose with a documentary-style narrative that included police reports, transcriptions of interviews, text messages. The multi-media format complemented each other because the narration was built to be unreliable to an extent. It helped to build up the creepy atmosphere of the book. The suspense and dread is apparent early on with the mention of the road, Lucy Gallows and the game. Marshall truly excelled in delivering such an evocative environment where it was so easy to picture in my head. She did the same thing with the horror e;lements of the book - the monsters were terrifying and there was always a sense of dread in the atmosphere.

However, what didn’t match was the almost laissez-faire attitude by the characters. They were all teenagers and honestly, most of them were distinct enough. But they weren’t all remarkable. I think the setting and the plot allowed this book to truly excel. I did find some of the characters a little lacklustre but Sara and her sister Becca’s bond was sweet. Additionally, while I appreciated the creepy atmosphere, there was a lot going on sometimes where I wasn’t sure what was even happening. Overall, this was a great read and I would read it again!

[fiercynn]

queer short film: "carne | flesh"

queer short cuts is a biweekly newsletter where i share queer & trans short film recommendations. i'm featuring some of my favorite films on tumblr because why not

this film was screened at the 2021 queer cinema for palestine film festival, where filmmakers pledged to boycott the israeli-government sponsored lgbt festival TLVfest. the next queer cinema for palestine, which is a global festival with screenings in many cities and some online, is from november 29-december 10, 2023, and you can sign up for updates here.

brazil | 11 minutes | 2021 | documentary/memoir short film audio in portuguese; english subtitles embedded

carne | flesh, written by ana julia carvalheiro and camila kater, and directed by kater, tells five stories of women’s embodiment: a girl who has dealt with fatphobia since childhood; a pre-teen beginning to menstruate; a black trans woman who sees her body be hypersexualized, devalued, and framed as threatening; a middle-aged lesbian awaiting menopause as a new chapter in life; and a woman in her late seventies welcoming old age and continuing to learn how to live in her body, but not be ruled by it. each story is gorgeously and viscerally illustrated by a different animator, all women as well, and each medium and art style is perfectly evocative of the emotions behind how each woman exists in her body and how she feels treated. visual trigger warning: the last story, which plays from 8:20 to 10:40, has a lot of flashing and shifting animation, though i don’t know if the flashing is bright enough or the contrast distinct enough to be a trigger. but please proceed with caution! - read deepa's full review, including content notes at the end

watch on ny times op-docs, and find camila kater’s work at her website

[davidclark24]

Unraveling Secrets of Enigmatic Ancient Temples - Mysteries of Ancient Architectural | Unraveling Mysteries of Ancient Architectural: Secrets of Enigmatic Ancient Temples

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (Graham, 1980)

Apparently director William A. Graham had a long career in directing television, and this is very much in a TV movie style, which isn’t a bad thing. The direction is largely functional and in the service of the performances, which is a smart thing to do when you have this many good actors in the cast. Powers Boothe as Jim Jones is appropriately charismatic and intense. He also has some killer style, wearing not just his trademark aviator sunglasses but also an assortment of safari jackets, guayaberas and other warm weather wear. I’m pretty sure “Jim Jones: Fashion Icon” is the wrong thing to take away from this, in my defense I have menswear-blog-induced brain damage. I won’t rattle off every single other cast member in the list, but there is a small but memorable role by James Earl Jones, who steals the movie in his one scene.

One clever thing about this is that the first hour hits the beats of an inspirational biopic. I’m no Jones expert, but after glancing through his Wikipedia page, it does seem like this glosses over some of the more overt red flags from his earlier life. But in framing him and his congregation against the realities of racism in their community, it does allow us to grasp how one could be seduced by Jones and his message. (The one Jones fact that I know for whatever reason is that they didn’t drink Kool Aid but Flavor Aid, a Kool Aid competitor. The movie glosses over this distinction as well, likely because it might invite a lawsuit. “Come my children, it’s time to die. Now drink this reasonably priced Flavor Aid, now in mango and tangerine.”)

The movie breaks from its conventional TV movie style during the sermons, which are shot like documentaries, with unfussy handheld setups. The end of the first half has Jones deliver a fiery sermon, accompanied by a vivid tableaux and multimedia show. And through this verite style, it allows us to grasp what it might be like to be in Jones’ commanding presence and get swept up in his fervour. It’s an effective choice, and one that the movie increasingly returns to in its second half as Jones’ mania escalates and the action moves to Guyana (played by an evocatively humid Puerto Rico). I don’t think the results are as consistently intense as I would have liked, as the movie understandably cuts to Ned Beatty as Congressman Leo J. Ryan looking to investigate the situation at Jonestown. But the climax has an unsettling power, and the final shot before the credits, with the camera closing in on Boothe’s face, is pretty chilling.

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this week (#178):

2 X Wojciech Jerzy Has + 2 X Bruno Schulz:

🍿 Bruno Schulz, "The Polish Kafka", is regarded as 'one of the finest Polish prose stylists of the 20th century'. Before being killed by the Gestapo in 1942, he published only 2 small works. Both were adapted to the cinema later on.

The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973) is a wild surrealist interpretation of Schulz's stories. An acclaimed masterpiece of Borgesian proportions, but where the magical realism is of the Eastern European type, played by poor Shtetl-Jews. A dark, decrepit nightmare, covered with spiderwebs, years before Terry Gilliam ploughed through the same insanities. Schrodinger time-shifts, mysterious doppelgängers, grotesque wax mannequins and lots of sensuality among the ruins. It's a heady, bizarro work of mythological unease. And the final dream scenes connect the story to the holocaust and the annihilation of this world, taking place in graveyards and on the shocking deportation lines. It's Heavy!

🍿 Accordion, Jerzy Has's first short, was how I discovered him. A wordless, bleak fable from 1947, about a son of a poor shoemaker who dreams about buying a used 'Harmonia'.

🍿 Street of Crocodiles on the other hand, the second Bruno Schulz adaptation, was a let down. Dark British stop-animation puppetry, wordless, confusing and in dirty back alleys. An experimental mood piece in a Jan Švankmajer style, but without the charm. M'eh. 1/10.

(Meanwhile I am listening to the music score for Kieślowski's Three Colors: Blue.)

🍿

Six by Sondheim, a 2013 documentary and my introduction to composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Absolutely beautiful! (And I loved his Ethel Merman / Loretta Young anecdote...) 8/10.

I have to start searching for his full repertoire. (Or at least I should re-visit 'Marriage Story' one more time...)

🍿

2 by female directors:

🍿 On May 9, 1954, two days before the start of 'La Pointe Courte', her first feature film, Agnès Varda took a photograph of a naked man, a boy named Ulysse and a dead goat on the beach of Calais. (Photo Above). In 1983, she recreated that experience in the documentary Ulysse, an evocative reflection about the time machine of memory, history and art. It’s my 15th Varda film, and was as good as the best of them - 9/10. [*Female Director*].

🍿 Possibly in Michigan (1983) an avant-garde horror musical about cannibalism, a feminist revenge fantasy. Two women shopping for perfume at a department store, are being stalked by a masked serial killer. Artsy and disturbing. A complete review here. [*Female Director*].

🍿

The Browning Version, a British public school drama from 1951. Michael Redgrave gave a tremendous performance as a repressed and meek teacher, isolated and unloved. His contemptuous wife has an affair with a coworker, his nickname by his pupils is 'Himmler of the Fifth Ward', and on his last day of his last term, he's denied his pension. It's a story of failure and heartbreak.

🍿

Benoît Magimel X 3:

🍿 "...La Salope…… La Salope.... La Salooope..."

Magimel made his debut performance as a 12 year old delinquent in the quirky comedy Life Is a Long Quiet River, which tackled the question of Nature vs. Nurture in a wry and unexpected way. 2 babies get swapped at the hospital out of spite. One belongs to a rich family, the other to a poor one.

I never heard of it before, didn't know what to expect - and enjoyed it very much. 7/10.

🍿 The Bridesmaid, my 11th Amour Fou thriller by Claude Chabrol, made 6 years before his death. It started effortlessly and smooth, and was a delight to watch. But then Magimel meets and falls hopelessly in love with an enigmatic, 'unusual' woman, who's also a compulsive liar and a psychotic nutcase, and the rest just didn't work out. 3/10.

🍿 In Putain de Porte from 1994, 4 guys, including very young Vincent Cassel, Mathieu Kassovitz, and Magimel try to crash a party they were not invited to. M'eh.

🍿

3 by Dutch Bert Haanstra:

🍿 Glass, a short documentary from 1958, and the first Oscar win for The Netherlands. A highly-satisfying jazzy poem with terrific score, performed by The Pim Jacobs Quintet. My best film of the week - 10/10.

🍿 Zoo, made 3 years later, is similarly wonderful. Filmed with hidden camera, it draws parallels between the animals at the zoo and the many visitors who come to observe them, but really, behave in exactly the same ways. 9/10.

🍿 Fanfare was another successful comedy which he directed in 1958, and one which for decades, was “the most popular of all Dutch films”. It's a charming low-brow entertainment [what the Danes call 'Folkekomedie'] about a musical feud in a small touristy village. Its bucolic country all the way: Cows in the meadows, beer steins in the coffee hall, love in the haystacks, a trombone band, the whole nine yards. The only things missing were Gouda cheese wheels, wooden clogs and stork nests.

🍿

2 with Anne Miller:

🍿 I'm getting more and more enamored with old-fashioned musicals, especially from the technicolor era, and all the ones with Fred Astaire. He was such a happy dancer! Easter parade is a Pygmalion story with the usual power imbalance: He's 49, and Judy Garland is 26. But they were so wonderful! Ann Miller, (as was her custom I guess), played the the third wheel to their romance.

🍿 I think that Room Service was the only Marx Brothers comedy I haven't seen before. Their best comedies were masterpieces, but the weak ones were pitiful. The whole plot was about the three of them not able to pay their hotel bill, so basically it was "based on a true story". Ann Miller and young Lucille Ball served as background decorations. Jumpin' butterballs! 2/10.

🍿

My friend Simon is going through the classic works of Russian literature (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Etc.), and is currently heavy into Nikolai Gogol. So in sympathy I tried watching the 1926 silent Soviet version of The Overcoat. Unfortunately, I couldn't finish it.

🍿

2 juvenile comedies by Steve Pink:

🍿 "Excuse me, Miss, what color is Michael Jackson?"

In the opening scene of the gross-out guy comedy Hot Tub Time Machine, Craig Robinson pulls out a BMW key out of a dog's ass. Right off the bat, you know if this screwball time-machine story is for you. With ‘method actor’ Rob Corddry playing a raging asshole, (which he seems to be doing very well), and naked cameo of Megan Calvet-Draper. Raunchy but funny in parts. 7/10.

🍿 I shouldn't have tried to follow it up with his trashy teenage comedy Accepted. Jonah Hill, a year before 'Superbad', with about 100 lb. more, young Blake Lively, angry Lewis Blake and Dr. Frederick Chilton get together 1/2 a star (out of 10). For the rest, I could barely stay for half an hour, before having to turn it off. it was "Super Bad"!...

🍿

New discovery - The brilliant shorts of Arthur Lipsett!

🍿 Arthur Lipsett was a visionary Canadian avant-garde artist, who suffered from schizophrenia, and who eventually killed himself. His 1963 montage film 21-87 was a tremendous collage of discarded snippets found on the editing floor of the National Board Of Canada where he worked as an editor. 10/10.

🍿 Very nice, very nice, his very first film from 1961, was just as unique. It was nominated for an Oscar, and was adored by Stanley Kubrick, who subsequently offered Lipsett a job as the editor of the trailer for 'Dr. Strangelove'. Another 10/10.

🍿 Free Fall (1964) was even darker and more chaotic, with definite hints of psychosis. He had a brilliant sense of juxtaposition and collage, both sights and sounds.

🍿

"You made me the happiest juvenile delinquent in Baltimore!..."

First watch: John Waters’ most mainstream attempt Cry-Baby, a 1950's 'Squares vs. Hill-billies' teen rebel musical. Elvis + Grease + Rebel without a cause with Tracy Lords and Willem Dafoe and Iggy Pop and Joe Dallesandro. 3/10.

🍿

“Back to the salt mines…”

James Bond No. 2, From Russia with love, before the series got its footing. With blond villain Robert Shaw, and primitive levels of intrigues and suspense. Best producer fruit-name still goes to Albert R. Broccoli. 3/10.

🍿

More random bunch of acclaimed 10-minute shorts:

🍿 In the Darkness of Time, J-L Godard's 2002 collage of poetic images, juxtaposed into a mosaic of concepts: love, art, memory, death, humanity, destruction and cinema. He really was 'un poète' first and foremost.

🍿 René Laloux 1964 visual essay, Dead Times. A sardonic, surrealistic poem about Man's inherit need to kill everything around him. Like 'La Planète sauvage', the drawings are by Roland Topol, and the music is similar.

🍿 When the Day Breaks, another National Board of Canada Oscar nominated short, from 1999, about a humanoid pig who witnesses the accidental death of a humanoid rooster. 8/10. [*Female Director*].

🍿 Inspiration (1949), my second film by Czechoslovakian Karel Zeman (after ‘Invention for destruction’). A stop motion tale of a glass ballerina and a glass clown, the type of little figurines that used to be so popular then.

🍿 I think this is the closest to how the footage looked (2012) is an artsy but touchy Israeli short. A young man remembers the actual last day in the life of his mother, and how his father by mistake erased the video he had taken of her that last day.

🍿 Bluebeard, a fantastic 1901 film by Georges Méliès, about the serial killer and his eighth wife.

🍿Litany of Happy People (1971), my first by Slovenian Karpo Godina, of the Yugoslav 'Black Wave' cinematic movement. Experimental hippy documentary about the various minority ethnicities in some village.

🍿 Cathedral (1971), one of the earliest gay films that came after Stonewall. A poetic love session between three beautiful guys in a shrine of sheets, which eventually turns into a cathedral. Not for me, but okay…

🍿 Once Upon a Time there Lived a Dog, a 1982 Soviet folk tale about a dog and a wolf.

🍿

James Payne, curator of the channel 'Great Art Explained' gave a 51 min. exploration of Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. A fascinating run-down, worth watching together with the detailed 'De tuin der lusten' project and Wikipedia. 8/10.

🍿

(My complete movie list is here).

[justforbooks]

Hungry Ghosts sees the prize-winning poet Gabriele Tinti collaborate with the acclaimed photographer Roger Ballen on a unique artistic engagement with the furthest edges of life and consciousness. Drawing inspiration from the Petavatthu verses of the Buddhist tradition, Hungry Ghosts is a thrilling evocation of the disturbing visions and the yearnings for a world beyond that have fed both ancient and modern understandings of the afterlife.

Taking as their starting points the simplest of media—respectively the brief epigraphic verse and the photographic negative—Tinti and Ballen have produced something truly extraordinary: a masterfully crafted series of poems in dialogue with a stunning array of phantasmagoric images. Tinti’s verse has become renowned for its combination of rigorous sparseness on the level of diction with imagery of an extraordinary power and resonance. These qualities are once again much in evidence in Hungry Ghosts, but Tinti’s response to Ballen’s brilliant and disquieting works has also led him to explore an entirely new terrain: the uncanny borderlands between life and death.

“HUNGRY GHOSTS IS A BOOK in which words and pictures combine to make the absent pre­sent—that which is lost but may nevertheless return, the ghosts of our mind, supernatural powers. It is a phantasmagoria that gives voice to the repressed part of our existence: to nightmares and bad thoughts, to that which we desperately wish to banish or regain, even if only in effigies or words.

The title and structure are derived from the Petavatthu (“Ghost Stories”—“Hungry Ghost”, to be precise. In Pāli: peta; 隞苤—literally: “hungry spirit”), a Theravada Buddhist scripture of fifty-one poems evoking the dramatic stories of the spirits, the restless dead, their sufferings that result from bad actions performed in previous lives and, also, the possibility of redemption.

The book retains both the form and the content of the Petavattu, combining them with the resonance of epigraphs from the ancient world. So there are fifty-one poems composed by Gabriele Tinti in the form of epigrams that, in relation to Roger Ballen’s pictures, compel us to reckon with the mystery of our thirst for transcendence—with the desire for, and fear of, death and the beyond.

Reading Hungry Ghosts shows what it means to consort with ghosts—to speak with and compare ourselves to our forebears in the conviction that art and poetry are none other than that same quest and attempt.”

✔ Gabriele Tinti is an Italian poet and writer. He has worked with the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the British Museum (among many other institutions), and his poems have been performed by actors including Abel Ferrara, Willem Dafoe and Kevin Spacey. His work is focused on the theme of death and suffering and is mostly composed in the form of ekphrastic and epigrammatic poetry. In 2018 his ekphrastic poetry project Ruins was awarded the Premio Montale with a ceremony at the Museo Nazionale Romano in Palazzo Altemps.

✔ Roger Ballen is one of the most important photographers of his generation. He has published over twenty-five books, and his photographs are collected by some of the most prominent museums in the world. His oeuvre, which spans five decades, began with the documentary photography field but evolved into the creation of distinctive fictionalized realms that also integrate the mediums of film, installation, theatre, sculpture, painting, and drawing. commonly referred to as Ballenesque. Ballen has also been the creator of several acclaimed and exhibited short films that dovetail with his photographic series. Ballen was one of the artists that represented South African at the Venice Biennale Arte 2022.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Cecil Taylor In Paris (1968)

I love listening to Cecil Taylor play piano — but I might love watching Cecil Taylor play piano even more. The guy was a true force of nature, poetry in motion, an acrobat on the 88s, superhuman. Whatever cliche you want to throw his way, he transcended it. This late 1960s documentary, made by avant-garde musician Luc Ferrari and his collaborator Gérard Patris, gives us a very up-close-and-personal look at Cecil and his band rehearsing ... in some kind of abandoned Parisian mansion? Not sure of the location, exactly.

But wherever they are, it's an intimate/evocative portrait of Taylor with his band: Jimmy Lyons on alto sax, Alan Silva on bass and Andrew Cyrille on drums. In between the music, Taylor expounds upon his singular concepts, as cool as can be. I love his response when he's asked what he thinks of Stockhausen, Cage and Bach: "They are not of my community."