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Blade Runner concept painting by the great Syd Mead. Several reliable news sources are reporting that Blade Runner is to finally receive a decent DVD release. In September of 2006, Warner Home Video will release a restored and remastered version of the Blade Runner 1992 Director’s Cut for a special four month limited release, in [...]

Later today, boys and girls… Jay Babcock’s interview with Godsmack (a big band in America, apparently…) about the use of their music in ads for the US military caused quite a stir earlier this month after the band had a hissy fit and put the phone down on him. I posted the interview here and [...]

Emmanuel Frémiet (1824–1910) is chiefly known for his rather prosaic sculptures of animals, some of which are still sold in reproduction today. He also produced a notorious piece in 1887 entitled Gorilla Carrying off a Woman, a precursor of King Kong and all the other rampaging apes of later pulp fiction. His Lizard ceramic (also [...]

Photography by Howard Roffman.

Irrepressible Adj. 1) Impossible to repress or control. Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Websites blocked. Search engines restricted. People imprisoned for simply posting and sharing information. The Internet is a new frontier in the struggle for human rights. Governments – with the help of some of the biggest IT companies in the world – are [...]

From war to fashion photography. Oh well… If there isn’t room in the world for art and beauty then what are we living for? Gray Scott‘s photographs use subtle Photoshop processing to make his models appear like showroom dummies. He’s also good with colour adjustment and blurring as well, creating some very effective pastiches of [...]

7 ¶ And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. 8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part [...]

The pages for my Haunter of the Dark book now have a news section where relevant announcements and updates will be posted. Any important news will also be mirrored here.

Ernst Fuchs, one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism in 1946, and a big influence on a later generation of artists such as HR Giger and Robert Venosa. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The fantastic art archive

A plate from The Romance of London by Alan Ivimey (1931). He crossed the road and went into the darkness towards the little steps under the archway leading into Essex Street, and I let him go. And that was the last I ever saw of him. The Diamond Maker (1894) by HG Wells London’s water [...]

Towers Open Fire 58.8 mb (AVI) 1963, UK, 9’29″, Black and White Cinematography: Antony Balch Screenplay: William S. Burroughs Cast: Antony Balch, William S. Burroughs, David Jacobs, Bachoo Sen, Alexander Trocchi

Mark Pilkington is organising this insect arts festival. Looks great, I’ll have to try and get down to see it. Nice that Phase IV, Saul Bass‘s strange and rather fascinating feature film, is one of the highlights. 27 May – 4 June 2006 London Wetland Centre “If all mankind were to disappear, the world would [...]

Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of one of my favourite artists, Austin Osman Spare. Like many people in the 1970s, I was introduced to the work of Austin Spare by Man, Myth and Magic, a seven volume “illustrated encyclopedia of the supernatural” published weekly in 120 112 parts by Purnell. My mother [...]

From Homo Sum by Konrad Helbig. For once, a decent and restrained use of Flash. The books of erotic photography for sale from www.6×6.com can be browsed via simple animations that turn the pages of the book. A gimmick but it makes a change from clicking through another load of gallery thumbnails. Their site is [...]

Ask anyone for a definition of this term and most people would immediately mention Leonardo Da Vinci (can his reputation survive Dan Brown?) or Michelangelo, the two most highly-regarded geniuses of the Italian Renaissance. While Leonardo’s numerous achievments are well-documented, Michelangelo’s work as a painter and sculptor tends to overshadow his other talents as an [...]

Difficult to imagine ads like this one being produced any more, in innocence, at least. These days companies like Dolce & Gabbana are confrontational in a manner that an earlier age would probably regard as outright porn. I’m happy with both examples although the painted quality of the soldiers ad lends itself to a higher [...]

The Guardian‘s archive feature today has their original review of Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Who, it may be asked, was Finnegan? Friday May 12, 1939 Mr Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, (Faber, 25s), parts of which have been published as “Work in Progress” does not admit of review. In twenty years’ time, with sufficient study and [...]

I’ve had the late RT Gault’s extraordinary web achive linked on my main site for years but thought it was worth giving it another plug here. The title of his site, The Absolute Elsewhere, comes from the equally extraordinary Pauwels and Bergier book, The Morning of the Magicians, a unique concoction of fact, fiction and [...]

There’s nothing new about the observation that American superhero comics are often stupidly sexist. The tendency to depict women in superhero comics as little more than super-powered fetish figures increased considerably during the 1990s, so much so that at one time The Comics Journal was making a regular note each issue of recent covers showing [...]

Patrick Wolf’s Wind in the Wires album was one of the best releases of 2005. If you haven’t heard his unique blend of violin, piano, electronics and sophisticated balladry yet then you really ought to. His third album, The Magic Position, will be out later this year. For now he has an inevitable MySpace promo [...]

I designed these two very different covers last year (with some slight tweaking later). Books always take a while to reach publication, however, so both titles have ended up appearing in the same month. I was particularly pleased to be involved with the Donald Cammell book as this is the first substantial biography of the [...]

The Avrocar BBC News enters the twilight zone interviewing hacker Gary McKinnon who is currently facing extradiction to the US for hacking NASA and US military computers. McKinnon claims to have discovered evidence of secret UFO technology and says this is justification for his activities. If true this would make him a kind of X-Files [...]

Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), directed by Georges Méliès and loosely inspired by the works of Jules Verne and HG Wells. Hard to believe this inventive little film is now over a hundred years old. Méliès made over 500 shorts like this, many of them just as clever and beguiling.

Naturalist, lecturer and photographer Kjell Sandved photographs the natural occurence of letter and number shapes on butterfly wings. You can order posters of these beautiful patterns from his site.

Boston band Godsmack are a bigger deal in America than here, their latest album having gone to no. 1 in the Billboard charts this week. The band like to play concerts for the US military and have allowed their songs to be used in recruitment ads in the past but seemed to get rather flustered [...]

Photography by Dylan Rosser.

America’s most vital cultural bulletin. Free PDF download. How nature droners GROWING found their flow. By Peter Relic. Photography by Eden Batki. Swiss anthropologist-author JEREMY NARBY talks with Jay Babcock about what hallucinogens like LSD and the Amazonian drink ayahuasca have to teach us in the 21st century. Introduction by author Erik Davis, with a [...]

The Empire State Building, 75 years old today.