Watch Moebius and Miyazaki, Two of the Most Imaginative Artists, in Conversation (2004)

in Animation, Art, Film | November 11th, 2016

The worlds so thor­ough­ly imag­ined by the French com­ic artist Jean Giraud, bet­ter known as Moe­bius, and the Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki, imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized the world over by his fam­i­ly name alone, could have arisen from no oth­er artis­tic minds. It stands to rea­son not only that appre­ci­a­tors of one would appre­ci­ate the oth­er, but that the two men would hold each oth­er’s work in high regard. “Japan­ese ani­ma­tion is impres­sive,” Moe­bius once said to Miyaza­ki as the two expressed their mutu­al appre­ci­a­tion. “I real­ly think it is the best in the world, and Miyaza­k­i’s work is top in Japan.”

“Moe­bius first dis­cov­ered Miyaza­k­i’s work in 1986, when his son Julien (then a school­boy) showed him a pirate copy of a video con­tain­ing a title­less, author­less, and undubbed ani­mat­ed fea­ture,” writes Dani Cav­al­laro in The Ani­me Art of Hayao Miyaza­ki. “The French artist was instant­ly seduced by the film’s graph­ic vig­or and tech­ni­cal inven­tive­ness but took it to be the one-off accom­plish­ment of an unfamed ani­ma­tor. When he even­tu­al­ly dis­cov­ered that the film’s name was Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind and that its cre­ator’s name was Hayao Miyaza­ki, Moe­bius endeav­ored to delve deep­er into the Japan­ese ani­ma­tor’s oeu­vre and to pub­licly voice his admi­ra­tion.”

And Miyaza­ki turns out to have drawn inspi­ra­tion from Moe­bius when he focused on ani­ma­tion. Miyaza­ki, who began as a com­ic artist him­self, remem­bers dis­cov­er­ing Moe­bius through Arzach, his series of word­less visu­al sto­ries of a hero who rides a ptero­dactyl through oth­er­word­ly and for­bid­ding­ly sub­lime land­scapes. “It was a big shock,” says Miyaza­ki. “Not only for me. All man­ga authors were shak­en by this work. Unfor­tu­nate­ly when I dis­cov­ered it, I already had a con­sol­i­dat­ed style. So I could­n’t use his influ­ence to enrich my draw­ing. Though, even today, I think he has an awe­some sense of space. I direct­ed Nau­si­caä under Moe­bius’ influ­ence.”

In 2004, the exhi­bi­tion Miyazaki/Moebius pre­sent­ed brought them togeth­er in Paris. Cav­al­laro describes it as “a panoram­ic sur­vey of the two artists’ careers through 300 works includ­ing water­col­ors sto­ry­boards, cels and con­cept designs, the­mat­i­cal­ly arranged, drawn from their per­son­al col­lec­tions,” includ­ing a draw­ing of Nau­si­caä by Moe­bius and one of Arzach by Miyaza­ki. They also sat down there for the con­ver­sa­tion record­ed in the video above. “The 21st cen­tu­ry is a tricky time,” says Miyaza­ki. “Our future isn’t clear. We need to re-exam­ine many things we’ve tak­en for grant­ed, whether it’s our com­mon sense or our way of think­ing.” The sheer imag­i­na­tive pow­er of artists like the both of them con­tin­ues to show us the way for­ward.

You can read tran­scripts of their record­ed con­ver­sa­tions here and here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

In Search of Mœbius: A Doc­u­men­tary Intro­duc­tion to the Inscrutable Imag­i­na­tion of the Late Com­ic Artist Mœbius

French Stu­dent Sets Inter­net on Fire with Ani­ma­tion Inspired by Moe­bius, Syd Mead & Hayao Miyaza­ki

Moe­bius Gives 18 Wis­dom-Filled Tips to Aspir­ing Artists (1996)

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

Watch Ground­break­ing Com­ic Artist Mœbius Draw His Char­ac­ters in Real Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Animated Version of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner Made of 12,597 Watercolor Paintings

in Art, Film | November 10th, 2016

Three years ago Swedish artist Anders Ram­sell cre­at­ed this 35 minute con­densed ver­sion of Blade Run­ner, frame by frame, using water­col­ors. Blade Run­ner: The Aquarelle Edi­tion con­tains 12,597 impres­sion­is­tic works on water­logged artist paper that togeth­er present, if not a faith­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Rid­ley Scott’s film, then a remem­brance of the film.

It’s as if you boot­ed up a repli­cant film fan and had them try to recon­struct Blade Run­ner from mem­o­ry. (Ram­sell him­self calls it a “para­phrase” of the film.) It’s rec­og­niz­able, but due to the light­ness and fuzzy lines of water­col­or, there’s also a mag­ic to these images. (This is also due to the small size of each frame, 1.5 x 3 cm.)

The film is a jump for­ward from Ramsell’s oth­er works. Before 2011, he was dab­bling in var­i­ous media: nudes in ink on can­vas, abstract acrylic splotch­es, sur­re­al draw­ings that explore hors­es and preg­nan­cy. Div­ing into Blade Run­ner and the amaz­ing amount of work to pro­duce this film did the trick. Ram­sell has tak­en on this tech­nique as wor­thy of fur­ther explo­ration and made a new­er film, Gen­der­ness, which explores trans­sex­u­al­i­ty, and fea­tures a nar­ra­tion by none oth­er than Rut­ger Hauer, who decid­ed to work with Ram­sell after see­ing, Blade Run­ner: The Aquarelle Edi­tion. Watch it above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Blade Run­ner Sketch­book Fea­tures The Orig­i­nal Art of Syd Mead & Rid­ley Scott (1982)

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

Wes Ander­son Movie Sets Recre­at­ed in Cute, Minia­ture Dio­ra­mas

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Is The Big Lebowski a Great Noir Film? A New Way to Look at the Coen Brothers’ Iconic Movie

in Film | November 9th, 2016

The Big Lebows­ki, Joel and Ethan Coen’s sev­enth and most polar­iz­ing film, has raised every feel­ing in its view­ers from imme­di­ate and utter devo­tion to sim­ple puz­zle­ment. When some­one says “I don’t get it,” fans may find them­selves tempt­ed to quote Louis Arm­strong on the nature of jazz — but they’ll prob­a­bly quote Wal­ter, Don­ny, or the Dude him­self instead. The film’s very quota­bil­i­ty, longevi­ty, and ambi­gu­i­ty have enthralled some and frus­trat­ed oth­ers, sug­gest­ing that, as with any impor­tant work of art, you can see The Big Lebows­ki in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways. The Film School’d video essay above exam­ines one of those ways with the ques­tion, “Is The Big Lebows­ki a Film Noir?”

“We know film noir for its black-and-white cin­e­matog­ra­phy, grit­ty voiceovers, venet­ian blinds, detec­tives in trench coats, trou­bled dames, and femme fatales with legs that go all the way up,” says its nar­ra­tor, begin­ning in an imi­ta­tion of the mid-Atlantic accent so often heard in movies of the noir era. “But what if a film does­n’t imme­di­ate­ly qual­i­fy as film noir? What if that film uti­lizes all the major ele­ments, but car­ries a sar­don­ic tone that, at times, still takes itself very seri­ous­ly? What if that film does­n’t real­ly look like a film noir right away? What if, on the sur­face, that film appears to be an absur­dist ston­er com­e­dy about mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty, bowl­ing, and a stolen rug?”

We’ve cov­ered lists of the essen­tial ele­ments of film noir here at Open Cul­ture, and this video essay does a com­par­a­tive study, lin­ing aspects of The Big Lebows­ki against those of such clas­sics of the genre — or maybe move­ment, or maybe just fad — as The Big Sleep, Touch of Evil, The Big Heat, D.O.A., and Mur­der My Sweet. Like those pic­tures, Lebows­ki also uses the much-pho­tographed city of Los Ange­les in a strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent way from its con­tem­po­raries, and it pro­vides the Coen broth­ers a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to indulge their skill for repur­pos­ing 20th-cen­tu­ry genre con­ven­tions (most recent­ly on dis­play in the 1951 Hol­ly­wood-set Hail, Cae­sar!).

“The Big Lebows­ki is about an atti­tude, not a sto­ry,” wrote Roger Ebert , who also once drew up his own list of the rules of film noir, upon induct­ing The Big Lebows­ki into his pan­theon of great movies. “It’s easy to miss that, because the sto­ry is so urgent­ly pur­sued.” He could have said the same about the pic­tures in the core film noir canon, which you can kick back and catch up on from the com­fort of your own pad with our free film noir col­lec­tion. The Dude, and Ebert, would most cer­tain­ly abide.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

60 Free Film Noir Movies

The Essen­tial Ele­ments of Film Noir Explained in One Grand Info­graph­ic

The 5 Essen­tial Rules of Film Noir

Roger Ebert Lists the 10 Essen­tial Char­ac­ter­is­tics of Noir Films

The Two Gen­tle­men of Lebows­ki: What If The Bard Wrote The Big Lebows­ki?

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven: Watch an Award-Winning Short Film That Modernizes Poe’s Classic Tale

in Film, Poetry | November 8th, 2016

In 1909, ear­ly cin­e­mat­ic auteur D.W. Grif­fith offered his sev­en-minute inter­pre­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe com­pos­ing his acclaimed and wide­ly-read poem “The Raven.” In 2011, film­mak­er Don Thiel offered his twelve-minute inter­pre­ta­tion of an encounter between a writer named Poe, appar­ent­ly young and not long out of the mil­i­tary, and a state­ly talk­ing raven — an encounter that takes place not in the mod­ern day, nor in the first half of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry dur­ing which the real Poe lived, but in the win­ter of 1959, over a cen­tu­ry after Poe died — and in a Hol­ly­wood room, no less.

Poe made his name on tales of mys­tery and imag­i­na­tion; Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven adds anoth­er lay­er of mys­tery and imag­i­na­tion atop it all. The effort won the film sev­er­al awards, includ­ing Best Short at the H.P. Love­craft Film Fes­ti­val.

That might at first seem like an odd place for an adap­ta­tion of a poem of long­ing like “The Raven,” how­ev­er delib­er­ate­ly skewed, to earn its hon­ors. But you could see Love­craft, who launched his own life’s career in elab­o­rate explo­rations of dread beyond man’s direct com­pre­hen­sion almost exact­ly a cen­tu­ry ago, as Poe’s lit­er­ary heir.

But then, unlike Poe and “The Raven,” Love­craft nev­er claimed to have writ­ten any­thing delib­er­ate­ly and sin­gle­mind­ed­ly to max­i­mize the sat­is­fac­tion of the widest pos­si­ble audi­ence. Indeed, Love­craft’s work, how­ev­er influ­en­tial on that of lat­er imag­i­na­tive writ­ers, remains in the shad­owy realm of the “cult,” while Poe’s has ascend­ed onto the plane of required read­ing. Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven, which envi­sions Poe’s most famous piece of work with booze, cig­a­rettes, yel­low­ing pat­terned wall­pa­per, lurid light­ing, eight-mil­lime­ter film, a Coro­na type­writer, and oth­er arti­facts of mid­cen­tu­ry dis­so­lu­tion, shows us that they’ve done so in part by tran­scend­ing time and place. Long­ing, it seems, nev­er gets old.

Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Free eBooks & Audio Books

The First Biopic of Edgar Allan Poe: 1909 Film by D.W. Grif­fith Shows the Hor­ror Mas­ter Writ­ing “The Raven”

Edgar Allan Poe Ani­mat­ed: Watch Four Ani­ma­tions of Clas­sic Poe Sto­ries

The Simp­sons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teach­ers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Lit­er­a­ture

Hear the 14-Hour “Essen­tial Edgar Allan Poe” Playlist: “The Raven,” “The Tell-Tale Heart” & Much More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Decoding the Screenplays of The Shining, Moonrise Kingdom & The Dark Knight: Watch Lessons from the Screenplay

in Film, Writing | November 3rd, 2016

“A screen­play isn’t meant to be read,” said no less a direct­ing-screen­writ­ing auteur than Stan­ley Kubrick. “It’s to be real­ized on film.” The quote comes up in “The Shin­ing — Qui­et­ly Going Insane Togeth­er,” an episode of the video essay series Lessons from the Screen­play. Cre­ator Michael Tuck­er uses it to explain his lack of access to the actu­al “shoot­ing script” of the film, mean­ing the sort of script typ­i­cal­ly writ­ten before pro­duc­tion and then more or less adhered to on set. But Kubrick worked dif­fer­ent­ly. On his projects “the words of the script and the design of the film were cre­at­ed togeth­er.” (Or as star Jack Nichol­son says in a bit of archival footage, “I quit usin’ my script. I just take the ones they type up each day.”)

Tuck­er goes on to break down The Shin­ing’s writ­ing process in a way that will fas­ci­nate not just screen­writ­ers but any­one with an inter­est in artis­tic struc­ture, begin­ning with the seg­men­ta­tion implied by the film’s mem­o­rably stark title cards: “THE INTERVIEW,” “THURSDAY,” “8am,” and so on. He does this in ser­vice of one impor­tant over­ar­ch­ing ques­tion: “What, exact­ly is so creepy about The Shin­ing?” (I’ve been ask­ing it myself ever since watch­ing it at a Hal­loween par­ty near­ly twen­ty years ago.) In “Moon­rise King­dom: Where Sto­ry Meets Style” he gets into the ques­tion of what sto­ry­telling func­tions Ander­son­’s sig­na­ture abun­dance of vivid, whim­si­cal, or askew details per­form, and how they do it effec­tive­ly.

As far as what makes Christo­pher Nolan’s sec­ond Bat­man movie The Dark Knight work so well, Tuck­er has the answer in two words: the Jok­er. Dif­fer­ent actors have por­trayed Bat­man’s most famous rival with dif­fer­ent lev­els of effec­tive­ness, with Heath Ledger’s Jok­er gen­er­al­ly acknowl­edged as the Jok­er, or at least one of the Jok­ers, to beat. But like any char­ac­ter, this Jok­er began on the page, and in “The Dark Knight — Cre­at­ing the Ulti­mate Antag­o­nist,” we learn which screen­writ­ing guru-approved qual­i­ties instilled there give him so much pow­er: his excep­tion­al skill at attack­ing Bat­man’s weak­ness­es, how he pres­sures Bat­man into dif­fi­cult choic­es, and how he and Bat­man ulti­mate­ly com­pete for the same goal, the soul of Gotham, and become two sides of the same coin.

You can learn oth­er lessons that Tuck­er draws from the screen­plays of movies like Night­crawler, Gone Girl, Inde­pen­dence Day, Ghost­busters, and a two-parter on Amer­i­can Beau­ty. While ele­ments of cin­e­ma like the direct­ing, the act­ing, the edit­ing, and even the music might cap­ture our atten­tion more aggres­sive­ly, we should­n’t for­get that every nar­ra­tive film, large or small, tra­di­tion­al or uncon­ven­tion­al, grows from words some­one wrote down. “It’s not what a movie is about,” declared Roger Ebert, “it’s how it is about it” — and the deci­sions of how to be about it hap­pen in the screen­play.

via The Over­look Hotel

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kurosawa’s Advice to Aspir­ing Film­mak­ers: Write, Write, Write and Read

10 Tips From Bil­ly Wilder on How to Write a Good Screen­play

Woody Allen’s Type­writer, Scis­sors and Sta­pler: The Great Film­mak­er Shows Us How He Writes

How Ray Brad­bury Wrote the Script for John Huston’s Moby Dick (1956)

Ray­mond Chan­dler: There’s No Art of the Screen­play in Hol­ly­wood

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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When Akira Kurosawa Watched Solaris with Andrei Tarkovsky: I Was “Very Happy to Find Myself Living on Earth”

in Film, Sci Fi | November 2nd, 2016

tarkovsky-kurosawa

Image of Kuro­sawa and Tarkovsky via NPR

Though Aki­ra Kuro­sawa and Andrei Tarkovsky occu­py the same plane in the pan­theon of auteurs — the high­est one — nei­ther their lives nor their films had much obvi­ous­ly in com­mon. The old­er, longer-lived Kuro­sawa start­ed his career ear­li­er and end­ed it lat­er, but dur­ing those cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly glo­ri­ous decades of the 1960s and 70s, the two brought into the world such pic­tures as Yojim­bo, Ivan’s Child­hood, High and Low, Red Beard, Andrei Rublev, Dodesukaden, Solaris, The Mir­ror, Der­su Uza­la (Kuro­sawa’s sole Japan­ese-Sovi­et co-pro­duc­tion, though Tarkovsky was­n’t involved), and Stalk­er.

They actu­al­ly met around the mid­dle of that peri­od, when Kuro­sawa came to vis­it the set of Solaris (watch Solaris online along with many oth­er major Tarkovsky films). “Tarkovsky guid­ed me around the set, explain­ing to me as cheer­ful­ly as a young boy who is giv­en a gold­en oppor­tu­ni­ty to show some­one his favorite toy­box,” Kuro­sawa writes in an essay orig­i­nal­ly run in the Asahi Shin­bun in 1977 and repub­lished at Cinephil­ia & Beyond.



“[Direc­tor Sergei] Bon­darchuk, who came with me, asked him about the cost of the set, and left his eyes wide open when Tarkovsky answered it. The cost was so huge: about six hun­dred mil­lion yen as to make Bon­darchuk, who direct­ed that grand spec­ta­cle of a movie War and Peace, agape in won­der.”

But the work, as Kuro­sawa soon found out, mer­it­ed the cost and then some:

Mar­velous progress in sci­ence we have been enjoy­ing, but where will it lead human­i­ty after all? Sheer fear­ful emo­tion this film suc­ceeds in con­jur­ing up in our soul. With­out it, a sci­ence fic­tion movie would be noth­ing more than a pet­ty fan­cy.

These thoughts came and went while I was gaz­ing at the screen.

Tarkovsky was togeth­er with me then. He was at the cor­ner of the stu­dio. When the film was over, he stood up, look­ing at me as if he felt timid. I said to him, “Very good. It makes me feel real fear.” Tarkovsky smiled shy­ly, but hap­pi­ly. And we toast­ed vod­ka at the restau­rant in the Film Insti­tute. Tarkovsky, who didn’t drink usu­al­ly, drank a lot of vod­ka, and went so far as to turn off the speak­er from which music had float­ed into the restau­rant, and began to sing the theme of samu­rai from Sev­en Samu­rai at the top of his voice.

As if to rival him, I joined in.

For I was at that moment very hap­py to find myself liv­ing on Earth.

Solaris makes a view­er feel this, and even this sin­gle fact shows us that Solaris is no ordi­nary SF film. It tru­ly some­how pro­vokes pure hor­ror in our soul. And it is under the total grip of the deep insights of Tarkovsky.

Kuro­sawa pays spe­cial atten­tion to the sequence, which you can watch above ana­lyzed by film schol­ars Vida John­son and Gra­ham Petrie, filmed in his own home­land: “What makes us shud­der is the shot of the loca­tion of Akasakamit­suke, Tokyo, Japan. By a skill­ful use of mir­rors, he turned flows of head lights and tail lamps of cars, mul­ti­plied and ampli­fied, into a vin­tage image of the future city. Every shot of Solaris bears wit­ness to the almost daz­zling tal­ents inher­ent in Tarkovsky.”

Like all of Tarkovsky’s fea­tures, Solaris only holds up more firm­ly with time and thus still enjoys revival screen­ings all over the world, but you can also watch it free online right now. Just get ready, when you descend to Earth after­ward, to feel your own grat­i­tude at find­ing your­self back here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa to Ing­mar Bergman: “A Human Is Not Real­ly Capa­ble of Cre­at­ing Real­ly Good Works Until He Reach­es 80”

Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Gabriel Gar­cía Márquez Talk About Film­mak­ing (and Nuclear Bombs) in Six Hour Inter­view

Watch Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la in Japan­ese Whiskey Ads from 1979: The Inspi­ra­tion for Lost in Trans­la­tion

Watch Solaris (1972), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Haunt­ing Vision of the Future

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris Shot by Shot: A 22-Minute Break­down of the Director’s Film­mak­ing

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What Makes a Good Horror Movie? The Answer Revealed with a Journey Through Classic Horror Films Clips

in Film | October 31st, 2016

A few min­utes with Lewis Bond’s first video essay, “Let’s Dis­cuss Hor­ror,” above, was all it took to scup­per my care­ful avoid­ance of cer­tain film fran­chis­es—Saw, Hos­tel, The Human Cen­tipede…

Bond’s cin­e­mat­ic pre­oc­cu­pa­tions usu­al­ly come with far few­er explod­ing heads. Lat­er entries on his Chan­nel Criswell Youtube chan­nel explore such Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion-wor­thy top­ics as “Colour in Sto­ry­telling,” “The French New Wave,” and “Stan­ley Kubrick.”

Clear­ly, he cares about the hor­ror genre, as well as the more rar­i­fied stuff. He opines that hor­ror movies have lost their capac­i­ty to scare. The industry’s quest for ever more trans­gres­sive shocks and gore (many of which are on dis­play above) has left view­ers desen­si­tized. Bond likens the phe­nom­e­non to hit­ting a brick wall and “try­ing to break it down by adding more bricks.”

Part of the prob­lem, Bond sug­gests, is an indus­try onus to deliv­er wall-to-wall deprav­i­ty, the gross­er, the bet­ter. Tor­ture porn may have cor­nered a siz­able piece of the mar­ket, but lack of fore­play is killing the sus­pense. Slow builds such as Dan­ny Torrence’s end­less Big Wheel rides past Room 237 or Rosemary’s uneasy preg­nan­cy are a thing of the past. Today’s film­mak­ers have the meat hooks out from the get go.

When audi­ences become inured to the non-stop buf­fet of burst­ing entrails and the rot­ting zom­bies  who feast on them, film­mak­ers grow even more reliant on jump scares. These pop-go-the-weasel moments invari­ably get a rise out of me, but Bond, like most hor­ror purists, views them with dis­dain. Too easy.

“Let’s Dis­cuss Hor­ror” con­tains a pletho­ra of them, but they seem sil­ly, divorced from the nar­ra­tive and the req­ui­site scary music.

(Speak­ing of which, “Tubu­lar Bells” under­scores a good por­tion of Bond’s breezy nar­ra­tion.)

When­ev­er Bond makes a point with a longer scene from more cel­e­brat­ed fare such as JAWS, Don’t Look Now, or Audi­tion, he includes a click­able link that will deposit view­ers on the oth­er side of spoil­ers. Depend­ing on your sat­u­ra­tion point, you may find your­self wish­ing those links would drop you off in Linus’ pump­kin patch.

Hap­py Hal­loween!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Hor­ror Film, George Méliès’ The Manor of the Dev­il (1896)

Watch the Cult Clas­sic Hor­ror Film Car­ni­val of Souls (1962)

Mar­tin Scors­ese Names the 11 Scari­est Hor­ror Films: Kubrick, Hitch­cock, Tourneur & More

Time Out Lon­don Presents The 100 Best Hor­ror Films: Start by Watch­ing Four Hor­ror Clas­sics Free Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her play Zam­boni Godot is open­ing in New York City in March 2017. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The 14-Hour Epic Film, Dune, That Alejandro Jodorowsky, Pink Floyd, Salvador Dalí, Moebius, Orson Welles & Mick Jagger Never Made

in Film, Sci Fi | October 28th, 2016

Frank Her­bert, David Lynch, and Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky sure­ly all rank among the most imag­i­na­tive cre­ators of the sec­ond half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. It made sense to film pro­duc­ers to turn Her­bert’s Dune into a movie, but they had a dev­il of a time find­ing the right direc­tor to bring that epic nov­el of the feu­dal inter­stel­lar future to the screen. Lynch, as all his fans know and most regret, wound up with the job, and soon after the botched result hit the­aters in 1984, it made his­to­ry as one of the all-time clas­sic mis­match­es between film­mak­er and project, and at $40 mil­lion, one of the most expen­sive. Les­son learned: don’t hire the direc­tor of Eraser­head to helm your big-bud­get sci-fi block­buster.

But what about the direc­tor of the even stranger and more ambi­tious The Holy Moun­tain? In 1975, almost a decade before Lynch’s Dune, Jodor­owsky announced his own adap­ta­tion of Dune, fund­ed by a French con­sor­tium and made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with artists like Chris Foss, H.R. Giger, and Moe­bius, writer and spe­cial effects design­er Dan O’Ban­non (who’d just made the low-bud­get space com­e­dy Dark Star with John Car­pen­ter), and actors like Orson Welles, Glo­ria Swan­son, and David Car­ra­dine.

He also cast such icons not known pri­mar­i­ly for act­ing as Mick Jag­ger and Sal­vador Dalí. “Jodorowsky’s mid­night audi­ences were noto­ri­ous for being high,” writes The Hol­ly­wood Reporter’s Chris O’Falt, “but with Dune the direc­tor set out to make a film that fab­ri­cat­ed the effects of LSD for a sober audi­ence, com­plete with a sound­track by Pink Floyd.”

Or as Dalí once declared, “I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.” This cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence of expand­ed con­scious­ness would have run approx­i­mate­ly four­teen hours, as Her­bert dis­cov­ered when he checked in on the pre-pro­duc­tion to find $2 mil­lion of the film’s $9.5 mil­lion bud­get already spent and a script “the size of a phone book.” Unable to find a stu­dio to bankroll the Dune he and his col­lab­o­ra­tors had envi­sioned, Jodor­owsky ulti­mate­ly dropped the project, but its mate­ri­als — and the stag­ger­ing breadth as well as depth of its vision — pro­vid­ed the basis for the 2014 doc­u­men­tary Jodor­owsky’s Dune, whose trail­er you can watch above.

“Almost all the bat­tles were won, but the war was lost,“Jodorowsky writes in an essay on his expe­ri­ence with the project. “The project was sab­o­taged in Hol­ly­wood. It was French and not Amer­i­can. Its mes­sage was not ‘enough Hol­ly­wood.’ There were intrigues, plun­der­ing. The sto­ry-board cir­cu­lat­ed among all the large stu­dios. Lat­er, the visu­al aspect of Star Wars resem­bled our style. To make Alien, they invit­ed Moe­bius, Foss, Giger, O’Ban­non, etc.,” to say noth­ing of its traces vis­i­ble in Blade Run­ner and The Matrix. While the 87-year-old Jodor­owsky has made a return to film­mak­ing in recent years, his Dune will most like­ly remain on the lists of the great­est movies nev­er made. But its influ­ence, if not its scale, will no doubt con­tin­ue to man­i­fest in gen­er­a­tions of sci-fi cin­e­ma to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moe­bius’ Sto­ry­boards & Con­cept Art for Jodorowsky’s Dune

Mœbius & Jodorowsky’s Sci-Fi Mas­ter­piece, The Incal, Brought to Life in a Tan­ta­liz­ing Ani­ma­tion

The Glos­sary Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios Gave Out to the First Audi­ences of David Lynch’s Dune (1984)

Napoleon: The Great­est Movie Stan­ley Kubrick Nev­er Made

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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