#crimes of the future 1970

[amatesura]

Crimes of the Future (1970) | dir. David Cronenberg

[cannibalspicnic]

DAVID CRONENBERG MARATHON TONIGHT 10/30/24 ON THE CRITERION CHANNEL!

[icantthinkofaclevername]

Crimes of the Future (1970)

Not to be confused with the movie of the same name, directed by the same guy and released in 2022.

[fredbydawn]

Crimes of the Future (1970) dir. David Cronenberg

Crimes of the Future (2022) dir. David Cronenberg

[mostlygibberish]

I liked the part with the BAR.

Almost indecipherable. Crimes of the Future shares little in common with its 2022 namesake, yet is unmistakeably a product of the same mind. It's a good thing they had access to such interesting buildings for filming, because there's rarely anything else to look at. It's unclear to what extent it was intended to be a comedy, but I got the impression from the dialogue and presentation that it was at least partly satirical.

Basically a series of disconnected scenes in which Adrian "Try-pod" Tripod (Ronald Mlodzik) wanders around narrating vaguely about fictional organisations and the strange politics of the distant future of 1997. All the post-pubescent women have died from a disease caused by applying cosmetics, and now corporations/"heterosexual paedophile" rings are experimenting on young girls to try and continue the human race, maybe? I think?

Bizarre distorted sounds played over scenes with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Sounds like water running in a shower, a level crossing alarm, or a motorbike passing, but if someone had majorly fucked with them on purpose. There's a significant segment where guys touch each others feet and appear to be agonised by the act, before one of them is murdered off screen, possibly.

One guy constantly grows new unique organs and collects them in specimen jars, which represents the strongest connection to the 2022 film, in what passes for a narrative. The final sequences after the girl was introduced were very uncomfortable, though thankfully nothing too distasteful actually occurred, for a given value of distasteful, I suppose.

Crimes of the Future is barely a movie, though it's certainly an experience. I'm glad I watched it, but I don't think I can rate it.

[doubtfultaste]

Crimes of the future (1970)

[haverwood]

Crimes of the Future David Cronenberg Canada, 1970

[sourkitsch]

Just walked passed the most massive brutalist mental hospital in existence & it had a pride flag in one of the windows it was very disorienting and all I could think was how it felt like something out of a Cronenberg film

[vibratome]

pretty based of brandon cronenberg to follow in his fathers footsteps and make his first film follow a deranged pale freak scientist with no morals

[amatesura]

Crimes of the Future (1970) | dir. David Cronenberg

[fortheturnstiles]

i should watch a david cronenberg movie soon......

[infamousbrad]

I warned you.

About 15 years ago, I had a minor moment of Internet fame when I wrote a lengthy essay series on LiveJournal called "Christians in the Hand of an Angry God." In it, I argued that right-wing evangelical "Christianity" was literally Satanic by scriptural standards, was literally the cult of anti-Christ that Jesus prophesied in Matthew 25:31-46, that they were literally worshiping a made-up guy with the same name to justify cruelty, just like Jesus predicted they would the week before the crucifixion.

And at least half of the people who read it and praised it called it excellent satire. They saw my point, thought I was onto something, but couldn't take seriously that I literally meant what I literally said.

"Do not commit the sin of empathy."

Jesus' prophesy that these people were coming was not especially miraculous, in hindsight. No philosophy or theological movement becomes a large organized church, let alone a majority faith of a nation, without needing rich people's money, and/or government funding, to pay for it all.

And rich people in general, and right-wing governments in general, get to be the way they are by believing that the poor and the down-trodden can never be shown anything but cruelty, should never be rewarded, or else they'll lose all motivation to obey, to work hard, to be good. (By contrast, they believe that the same thing would happen to rich, powerful, popular people if they were ever punished in any way, if they were ever anything but rewarded.)

And rich people and governments are not going to subsidize your church foundation funds, your church repair funds, et cetera if you tell them that they're evil. But someone definitely will come along and offer to take that money. The people who take that money and conform won't even all be lying psychopaths; if you truly believe that your organization matters, is doing irreplaceable good in the world, you'll sacrifice any principle of your faith to keep the bills paid, you'll look away from or excuse any sin. It's that or see it all shrink and crumble into irrelevance.

I've come to the conclusion that it may not actually be possible to be a good person while practicing the majority faith of the land you live in. Or, if it is possible, well, like the man said, "straight is the gate and narrow is the way, and few there be that find it."

The Episcopal Church has its own legacy of sin, they've long overlooked a laundry list of crimes to pay their own bills, so don't rush to congratulate a mainline bishop for preaching mainline Christianity or take too much pleasure from Trump and his fascist followers being surprised that that happened. But do remember this:

From the mid-1970s to the present, right-wing billionaires have poured a LOT of money into church expansion and maintenance conditional on them distorting the Bible's teachings to make it appear that Jesus was pro-fascist. "To deceive, if it were possible, the very elect." So when honest theologians tell you that this is literally anti-Christ, literally checks every box in the Bible's description of the future cult of anti-Christ, you need to hear us.

The modern book and movie image of "the Antichrist" was a well-funded propaganda campaign to distract you from the plain language of the scriptures. The biblical anti-Christ is not some socialist liberal peacenik. The biblical anti-Christ is everyone who tells you that Jesus wants you to be cruel to "the least of these, my brethren" so that they'll straighten up and fly right.

[mydaddywiki]

Carroll O'Connor

Physique: Average/Husky Build Height: 5′ 10½″ (1.79 m)

John Carroll O'Connor (August 2, 1924 – June 21, 2001; aged 76) was an American actor whose television career spanned over four decades. O'Connor found widespread fame as Archie Bunker (for which he won four Emmy Awards), the main character in the CBS television sitcoms All in the Family (1971–1979) and its continuation, Archie Bunker's Place (1979–1983). O'Connor later starred in the NBC/CBS television crime drama In the Heat of the Night (1988–1995), where he played the role of police chief William "Bill" Gillespie. In the late 1990s, he played Gus Stemple, the father of Jamie Buchman (Helen Hunt) on Mad About You. In 1996, O'Connor was ranked number 38 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time. He won five Emmys and one Golden Globe Award.

Carroll was born in Manhattan and raised in Forest Hills, a borough of Queens, New York. After graduating from high school in 1942, O'Connor joined the Merchant Marines and worked on ships in the Atlantic. In 1946, he enrolled at the University of Montana to study English. While there, he became interested in theater. During one of the amateur productions, he met his future wife, Nancy Fields, whom he married in 1951. They would later adopted their only child while in Rome, Italy in 1962 while he filmed Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra.

I first fell in lust with O'Connor for his role as crusty police chief William 'Bill' Gillespie on the crime drama "In the Heat of the Night." O'Connor captured my imagination so much that he still remains one of the key templates of what a daddy should be like to me. Chubby, grey hair, gentle features but with a hint 'I'll fuck you up if you cross me' added for good measure. But as hot as he looked on the show, he looked insanely gorgeous as Archie on reruns of "All in the Family." Yes a rarity for me. Liking a man when they were younger.

Even though O'Connor was nothing like his alter ego, Archie. Being shy, soft-spoken, introverted, intellectual and liberal. He had a charm that would have had me on my knees in minutes of speaking with him. Just sheer daddy perfection. He may not have been traditional-leading-man handsome, but I’ve always found Mr. O'Connor as nice looking. Listed as #20 on TV Land’s Top 50 TV Icons Countdown, but in the top five on my all time actors that I’d like to fuck senseless. O'Connor died at the age of 76 on June 21, 2001, in Culver City, California, from a heart attack brought on by complications from diabetes.

RECOMMENDATIONS: Return to Me (2000) In the Heat of the Night (TV Series 1988–1995) Archie Bunker's Place (TV Series 1979–1983) All in the Family (TV Series 1971–1979) Law and Disorder (1974) Kelly's Heroes (1970) Waterhole #3 (1967)

[hooked-on-elvis]

ELVIS GEMS

Hey, friends! So, @buglass suggested a while ago for me to share some less known (or less mentioned) Elvis songs. I guess today I felt inspiration to. Note: This is my personal selection, based on my taste and vision - not necessarily meaning all the songs are not as appreciated as they should be or that they are technically and content-wise flawless. I just think they're great for different reasons, and that they should get more plays. Oh... song 5 in this list contains wisdom for life in the lyrics and it's something that's really meaningful today as we reach Elvis' 90th birthday. Hope you enjoy this short list!

"Blue Moon"

Album: "Elvis Presley" (1956) I don't think it's that unknown but when I see people talking about the ballads E recorded, this song is not much remembered. I love it very much!

"Fool, Fool, Fool"

Recorded during a studio radio session. KDAV Radio - Jan 6, 1955. First released first in the album: "The King of Rock 'n' Roll: The Complete 50's Masters" (1992). This song is great Rock and Roll. When the guitar solo comes (0:56), it's impossible not to move.

"Dark Moon" and "Tennessee Waltz"

Album: "Elvis: The Home Recordings" (1999) Although the poor audio quality, those are songs I, particularly, get the most intense feeling of what it would be like to jam and harmonize with Elvis among, probably, all of his home/jam sessions recordings. I love to sing along with those tracks. Plus, I can always visualize E with his friends gathered around the piano he's playing... it's a plus. In "Tennessee Waltz" they mess up with the lyrics, it's annoying and fun at the same time.

"Once Is Enough" ♥

Soundtrack: "Kissin' Cousins" (1964) That song came to me randomly right now on my Spotify playlist but it fits like a glove in the mood today. I think the lyrics is pure "words of wisdom" material, and the melody is fun. And hey, it's Elvis' birthday! In this song he sings: "What's the good of reaching 90 if you waste 89? You got one life so live it If you don't it's a crime." Elvis didn't live to reach his nineties we would be celebrating with him today, but he lived quite the life in just forty-two years walking on this earth. People tend to pity on him, thinking he had such a tragic life story but, the way I see it, Elvis lived more than many of us ever will get to do. This song represents quite well the way he did things in life... not waiting 'till tomorrow, just going for it. "As a lightning-bolt" ⚡ El, you're amazing for leaving so many precious life lessons for us. We couldn't thank you enough, King. By the way, there's great gems among the soundtracks from his movies... this is just one of my favorites.This song is really a gem. ♥

"You Better Run"

First released in the album "Elvis Presley: Amazing Grace" (1994) Traditional arranged by Elvis and recorded during an informal gospel session filmed for the documentary "Elvis On Tour" (1972) on March 31, 1972 at RCA's Studio C, Hollywood.  This gospel tune was never officially recorded by Elvis, but he did sing it in concert on a few occasions. "You Better Run" was sung in a medley with "Bosom of Abraham," that's why they're quite similar in melody. Note: I love the latter song, one of my favorites by E, so "You Better Run" as similar as it is, it's like an extension but not as well known as "Bosom of Abraham" because wasn't featured in the documentary.

The footage below is composed of random scenes from "Elvis On Tour." As mentioned, the footage in which Elvis harmonizes "You Better Run" with his close friend and musician Charlie Hodge, plus JD Sumner and The Stamps Quartet didn't make it to the final cut of the 1973 music documentary and (for what I know) wasn't even released yet as an outtake. As we know, director Baz Luhrmann is working to get never-seen-before footage from Elvis' two documentaries finally out, so maybe this footage will be released in the not-far-away future. Fingers crossed.

"Almost"

Album: "Let's Be Friends" (1970) I'll never get over how sweet this song and the scene from the movie "The Trouble With Girls" in which Walter Hale (Elvis) performs it playing the piano are. I think 1:50 is way too short for such a beautiful song, it actually pissed me off how quick it ends.

"Loving Arms"

Album: "Good Times" (1974). When this song gets to 1:47 it hits hard in the soul. I just feel like crying every time (how did he do that?) Great song!

"It's Easy for You"

Master released on the album "Moody Blue" (1977), but here's the X-rated take 1 because it's so fun! This version below is on "Way Down In The Jungle Room" (2016)

"Pledging My Love"

Album: "Moody Blue" (1977). The lyrics is just so precious! "Making you happy is my desire, dear... Keeping you is my goal."

I could go on but Tumblr has limitations of 10 videos per post, unfortunately. I think I'm gonna share more in a bit. For now, I'd love to see what are the songs you think fits this list.

[macrolit]

NYT's Notable Books of 2023

Each year, we pore over thousands of new books, seeking out the best novels, memoirs, biographies, poetry collections, stories and more. Here are the standouts, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

AFTER SAPPHO by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Inspired by Sappho’s work, Schwartz’s debut novel offers an alternate history of creativity at the turn of the 20th century, one that centers queer women artists, writers and intellectuals who refused to accept society’s boundaries.

ALL THE SINNERS BLEED by S.A. Cosby

In his earlier thrillers, Cosby worked the outlaw side of the crime genre. In his new one — about a Black sheriff in a rural Southern town, searching for a serial killer who tortures Black children — he’s written a crackling good police procedural.

THE BEE STING by Paul Murray

In Murray’s boisterous tragicomic novel, a once wealthy Irish family struggles with both the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and their own inner demons.

BIOGRAPHY OF X by Catherine Lacey

Lacey rewrites 20th-century U.S. history through the audacious fictional life story of X, a polarizing female performance artist who made her way from the South to New York City’s downtown art scene.

BIRNAM WOOD by Eleanor Catton

In this action-packed novel from a Booker Prize winner, a collective of activist gardeners crosses paths with a billionaire doomsday prepper on land they each want for different purposes.

BLACKOUTS by Justin Torres

This lyrical, genre-defying novel — winner of the 2023 National Book Award — explores what it means to be erased and how to persist after being wiped away.

BRIGHT YOUNG WOMEN by Jessica Knoll

In her third and most assured novel, Knoll shifts readers’ attention away from a notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, and onto the lives — and deaths — of the women he killed. Perhaps for the first time in fiction, Knoll pooh-poohs Bundy's much ballyhooed intelligence, celebrating the promise and perspicacity of his victims instead.

CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

This satire — in which prison inmates duel on TV for a chance at freedom — makes readers complicit with the bloodthirsty fans sitting ringside. The fight scenes are so well written they demonstrate how easy it might be to accept a world this sick.

THE COVENANT OF WATER by Abraham Verghese

Verghese’s first novel since “Cutting for Stone” follows generations of a family across 77 years in southwestern India as they contend with political strife and other troubles — capped by a shocking discovery made by the matriarch’s granddaughter, a doctor.

CROOK MANIFESTO by Colson Whitehead

Returning to the world of his novel “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead again uses a crime story to illuminate a singular neighborhood at a tipping point — here, Harlem in the 1970s.

THE DELUGE by Stephen Markley

Markley’s second novel confronts the scale and gravity of climate change, tracking a cadre of scientists and activists from the gathering storm of the Obama years to the super-typhoons of future decades. Immersive and ambitious, the book shows the range of its author’s gifts: polyphonic narration, silken sentences and elaborate world-building.

EASTBOUND by Maylis de Kerangal

In de Kerangal’s brief, lyrical novel, translated by Jessica Moore, a young Russian soldier on a trans-Siberian train decides to desert and turns to a civilian passenger, a Frenchwoman, for help.

EMILY WILDE’S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF FAERIES by Heather Fawcett

The world-building in this tale of a woman documenting a new kind of faerie is exquisite, and the characters are just as textured and richly drawn. This is the kind of folkloric fantasy that remembers the old, blood-ribboned source material about sacrifices and stolen children, but adds a modern gloss.

ENTER GHOST by Isabella Hammad

In Hammad’s second novel, a British Palestinian actor returns to her hometown in Israel to recover from a breakup and spend time with her family. Instead, she’s talked into joining a staging of “Hamlet” in the West Bank, where she has a political awakening.

FORBIDDEN NOTEBOOK by Alba de Céspedes

A best-selling novelist and prominent anti-Fascist in her native Italy, de Céspedes has lately fallen into unjust obscurity. Translated by Ann Goldstein, this elegant novel from the 1950s tells the story of a married mother, Valeria, whose life is transformed when she begins keeping a secret diary.

THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith

Based on a celebrated 19th-century trial in which the defendant was accused of impersonating a nobleman, Smith’s novel offers a vast panoply of London and the English countryside, and successfully locates the social controversies of an era in a handful of characters.

FROM FROM by Monica Youn

In her fourth book of verse, a svelte, intrepid foray into American racism, Youn turns a knowing eye on society’s love-hate relationship with what it sees as the “other.”

A GUEST IN THE HOUSE by Emily Carroll

After a lonely young woman marries a mild-mannered widower and moves into his home, she begins to wonder how his first wife actually died. This graphic novel alternates between black-and-white and overwhelming colors as it explores the mundane and the horrific.

THE HEAVEN & EARTH GROCERY STORE by James McBride

McBride’s latest, an intimate, big-hearted tale of community, opens with a human skeleton found in a well in the 1970s, and then flashes back to the past, to the ’20s and ’30s, to explore the town’s Black, Jewish and immigrant history.

HELLO BEAUTIFUL by Ann Napolitano

In her radiant fourth novel, Napolitano puts a fresh spin on the classic tale of four sisters and the man who joins their family. Take “Little Women,” move it to modern-day Chicago, add more intrigue, lots of basketball and a different kind of boy next door and you’ve got the bones of this thoroughly original story.

A HISTORY OF BURNING by Janika Oza

This remarkable debut novel tells the story of an extended Indo-Ugandan family that is displaced, settled and displaced again.

HOLLY by Stephen King

The scrappy private detective Holly Gibney (who appeared in “The Outsider” and several other novels) returns, this time taking on a missing-persons case that — in typical King fashion — unfolds into a tale of Dickensian proportions.

A HOUSE FOR ALICE by Diana Evans

This polyphonic novel traces one family’s reckoning after the patriarch dies in a fire, as his widow, a Nigerian immigrant, considers returning to her home country and the entire family re-examines the circumstances of their lives.

THE ILIAD by Homer

Emily Wilson’s propulsive new translation of the “Iliad” is buoyant and expressive; she wants this version to be read aloud, and it would certainly be fun to perform.

INK BLOOD SISTER SCRIBE by Emma Törzs

The sisters in Törzs's delightful debut have been raised to protect a collection of magic books that allow their keepers to do incredible things. Their story accelerates like a fugue, ably conducted to a tender conclusion.

KAIROS by Jenny Erpenbeck

This tale of a torrid, yearslong relationship between a young woman and a much older married man — translated from the German by Michael Hofmann — is both profound and moving.

KANTIKA by Elizabeth Graver

Inspired by the life of Graver’s maternal grandmother, this exquisitely imagined family saga spans cultures and continents as it traces the migrations of a Sephardic Jewish girl from turn-of-the-20th-century Constantinople to Barcelona, Havana and, finally, Queens, N.Y.

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY by C Pam Zhang

Zhang’s lush, keenly intelligent novel follows a chef who’s hired to cook for an “elite research community” in the Italian Alps, in a not-so-distant future where industrial-agricultural experiments in America’s heartland have blanketed the globe in a crop-smothering smog.

LONE WOMEN by Victor LaValle

The year is 1915, and the narrator of LaValle’s horror-tinged western has arrived in Montana to cultivate an unforgiving homestead. She’s looking for a fresh start as a single Black woman in a sparsely populated state, but the locked trunk she has in stow holds a terrifying secret.

MONICA by Daniel Clowes

In Clowes’s luminous new work, the titular character, abandoned by her mother as a child, endures a life of calamities before resolving to learn about her origins and track down her parents.

THE MOST SECRET MEMORY OF MEN by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

Based on a true story and translated by Lara Vergnaud, Sarr’s novel — about a Senegalese writer brought low by a plagiarism scandal — asks sharp questions about the state of African literature in the West.

THE NEW NATURALS by Gabriel Bump

In Bump’s engrossing new novel, a young Black couple, mourning the loss of their newborn daughter and disillusioned with the world, start a utopian society — but tensions both internal and external soon threaten their dreams.

NORTH WOODS by Daniel Mason

Mason’s novel looks at the occupants of a single house in Massachusetts over several centuries, from colonial times to present day. An apple farmer, an abolitionist, a wealthy manufacturer: The book follows these lives and many others, with detours into natural history and crime reportage.

NOT EVEN THE DEAD by Juan Gómez Bárcena

An ex-conquistador in Spanish-ruled, 16th-century Mexico is asked to hunt down an Indigenous prophet in this novel by a leading writer in Spain, splendidly translated by Katie Whittemore. The epic search stretches across much of the continent and, as the author bends time and history, lasts centuries.

THE NURSERY by Szilvia Molnar

“I used to be a translator and now I am a milk bar.” So begins Molnar’s brilliant novel about a new mother falling apart within the four walls of her apartment.

OUR SHARE OF NIGHT by Mariana Enriquez

This dazzling, epic narrative, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, is a bewitching brew of mystery and myth, peopled by mediums who can summon “the Darkness” for a secret society of wealthy occultists seeking to preserve consciousness after death.

PINEAPPLE STREET by Jenny Jackson

Jackson’s smart, dishy debut novel embeds readers in an upper-crust Brooklyn Heights family — its real estate, its secrets, its just-like-you-and-me problems. Does money buy happiness? “Pineapple Street” asks a better question: Does it buy honesty?

THE REFORMATORY by Tananarive Due

Due’s latest — about a Black boy, Robert, who is wrongfully sentenced to a fictionalized version of Florida’s infamous and brutal Dozier School — is both an incisive examination of the lingering traumas of racism and a gripping, ghost-filled horror novel. “The novel’s extended, layered denouement is so heart-smashingly good, it made me late for work,” Randy Boyagoda wrote in his review. “I couldn’t stop reading.”

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS by Vajra Chandrasekera

Trained to kill by his mother and able to see demons, the protagonist of Chandrasekera’s stunning and lyrical novel flees his destiny as an assassin and winds up in a politically volatile metropolis.

SAME BED DIFFERENT DREAMS by Ed Park

Double agents, sinister corporations, slasher films, U.F.O.s — Park’s long-awaited second novel is packed to the gills with creative elements that enliven his acerbic, comedic and lyrical odyssey into Korean history and American paranoia.

TAKE WHAT YOU NEED by Idra Novey

This elegant novel resonates with implication beyond the taut contours of its central story line. In Novey’s deft hands, the complex relationship between a young woman and her former stepmother hints at the manifold divisions within America itself.

THIS OTHER EDEN by Paul Harding

In his latest novel, inspired by the true story of a devastating 1912 eviction in Maine that displaced an entire mixed-race fishing community, Harding turns that history into a lyrical tale about the fictional Apple Island on the cusp of destruction.

TOM LAKE by Ann Patchett

Locked down on the family’s northern Michigan cherry orchard, three sisters and their mother, a former actress whose long-ago summer fling went on to become a movie star, reflect on love and regret in Patchett’s quiet and reassuring Chekhovian novel.

THE UNSETTLED by Ayana Mathis

This novel follows three generations across time and place: a young mother trying to create a home for herself and her son in 1980s Philadelphia, and her mother, who is trying to save their Alabama hometown from white supremacists seeking to displace her from her land.

VICTORY CITY by Salman Rushdie

Rushdie’s new novel recounts the long life of Pampa Kampana, who creates an empire from magic seeds in 14th-century India. Her world is one of peace, where men and women are equal and all faiths welcome, but the story Rushdie tells is of a state that forever fails to live up to its ideals.

WE COULD BE SO GOOD by Cat Sebastian

This queer midcentury romance — about reporters who meet at work, become friends, move in together and fall in love — lingers on small, everyday acts like bringing home flowers with the groceries, things that loom large because they’re how we connect with others.

WESTERN LANE by Chetna Maroo

In this polished and disciplined debut novel, an 11-year-old Jain girl in London who has just lost her mother turns her attention to the game of squash — which in Maroo’s graceful telling becomes a way into the girl’s grief.

WITNESS by Jamel Brinkley

Set in Brooklyn, and featuring animal rescue workers, florists, volunteers, ghosts and UPS workers, Brinkley’s new collection meditates on what it means to see and be seen.

Y/N by Esther Yi

In this weird and wondrous novel, a bored young woman in thrall to a boy band buys a one-way ticket to Seoul.

YELLOWFACE by R.F. Kuang

Kuang’s first foray outside of the fantasy genre is a breezy and propulsive tale about a white woman who achieves tremendous literary success by stealing a manuscript from a recently deceased Asian friend and passing it off as her own.