Your copy of the Ballard issue was destroyed by a river??? That seems kind of appropriate. Actually, I lost some of my editions due to water damage as well. They’re all online though.
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Yes, 15 years ago the river came into my house up to the ceiling and destroyed everything. Six bookcases of comics, manga and art books, 1000 vinyl records, 2000 cds, vintage synths and drum machines, the hard drive with my master tapes, three paid off vehicles, everything. We climbed out the bathroom window with our cats and the clothes on our backs. It was exciting!
But I’m thrilled those books are available online now, I shall snatch them forthwith!
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Oh no! If this goes on for another 200 years or so Apple will go bankrupt!
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Note: the whole article is filled with spoilers.
“The Pitt” has gotten better and better with each episode. Hard to watch – blood, gore, and brutal honesty – but highly recommended.
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Intriguing. Are you recommending it?
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Not yet. I visited one of the locations of the movie and the people of who lived there recommend it with a little of pride for being part of the production. I will try to watch it this week.
I recommend the japanese cartoon Princess Arete I mentioned in the post before. It is a nice fairy tale with a modern touch.
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“I forgot to forget to remember” - Short Documentaries of Alain Resnais
While Resnais went on to successfully direct features for more than fifty years, these early shorts, more essay films than standard documentaries, seem especially timely, considering their focus on the petrochemical industry, libraries, and fascist atrocities.
Le chant du Styrène (1958)
Perhaps the most celebrated industrial film ever, our first short is actually Resnais’ last. Commissioned by French aluminum conglomerate Péchiney to celebrate the plastics industry, Resnais created an art film, which resembles the abstract animations of Oskar Fischinger in its prelude, featuring a narration written by Oulipian Raymond Queneau, all in rhyming alexandrines. (The Criterion Channel’s copy of Styrene features subtitles which, although perhaps technically less accurate, do a better job of capturing the poetry of the French narration.)
Toute la mémoire du monde aka All the World’s Memory (1956)
Ostensibly a portrait of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Toute la mémoire du monde is, as are so many of Resnais’ films, a meditation upon memory. The narration and visuals both compare the library to a prison, and the opening references to Citizen Kane imply that some of the memories sequestered away in the stacks are both unpleasant and being repressed. One could speculate that these elements of the film were inspired by Resnais’ experiences while making his immediately preceding film, Night and Fog. (All the World’s Memory is also available in a superior version on hoopla.)
Guernica (co-director Robert Hessens 1951)
https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/15044130
On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Spanish town of Guernica was aerially bombed by combined German and Italian forces working to aid Franco’s Nationalist faction. This bombing of civilians by a military air force was one of the first of such bombings to attract global attention and created much international outrage. Within months Picasso had completed his famous painting Guernica which was exhibited alongside Paul Éluard’s poem “The Victory of Guernica” at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition. Both the painting and the poem provide the primary elements of this powerful anti-fascist film.
Night and Fog (1956)
Alternating black and white archival material which shows the horrors of Nazism with color footage of the abandoned Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps, Night and Fog was one of the first documentaries on the Holocaust to achieve widespread critical notice and acclaim. The title comes from the Nazis’ Nacht und Nebel Decree, a directive that certain prisoners were to be disappeared in order to create terror among the occupied, to prevent the Nazis from being held accountable for their crimes, and to keep the general public unaware and therefore less likely to speak out.
Not all have been pleased with Resnais’ film, disliking its lack of focus on Jewish victims specifically. Instead, Night favors a universalist approach giving few details about the reasons for the prisoners’ internment. Although Resnais never explicitly said so, it has been suggested that the film is not meant to simply document the past, but also to warn of future atrocities, such as those of France’s contemporary war in Algeria. This idea is certainly supported by the narration’s final words:
“We survey these ruins with a heartfelt gaze, certain the old monster lies crushed beneath the rubble. We pretend to regain hope as the image recedes, as though we’ve been cured of the plague of the camps. We pretend it was all confined to one country, one point in time. We turn a blind eye to what surrounds us, and a deaf ear to the never-ending cries . . .”
(Superior quality copies can be found on Max, Criterion, and Kanopy.)
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Amazing, thank you!
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Just finished this movie, and it is a fun one.
Starts off like your typical high school drama - you’ve got the nerdy girl, the popular cheerleader, the cool guy, and the jock bully. Of course prom is coming up. And of course there’s a serial killer. (But oddly enough the serial killer isn’t even really that important for most of the movie.)
About halfway through it all goes pretty off the rails in the best sort of way, and most of the rest of the movie is a fun series of unexpected WTF moments. Kinda ends up feeling like you got to watch 3 or 4 movies in one.
Free on Tubi until the end of the month.
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Worth about 5 minutes of your time…
Also… this looks good…
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Saw this in a mostly full theater which is unusual these days.
Probably one of the better baseball movies, it is more about the inevitability of the end.
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This is my jam
ETA after actually reading the article - They mention The Heroic Trio as one of the Girls-With-Guns flicks that came in the wake of Yes, Madam but it’s not. It’s actually a superhero movie inspired more by Tim Burton’s Batman that just happens to star three of the hottest and most talented HK actresses of the time (it is fantastic). For more GWG action, I highly recommend Yes, Madam’s direct sequel starring Yeoh, Royal Warriors - it’s a much better movie than Yes, Madam because it’s a tonally consistent thriller without the painful comedy. Also check out She Shoots Straight starring Joyce Godenzi for a high quality film. Then you have all the Yes, Madam numbered sequels starring Cynthia Khan. And all the movies with Angel in the title, many starring the amazing Moon Lee. For action comedy GWG check out The Inspector Wears Skirts and sequel
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