June 2006 – { feuilleton }

Davy Jones

No, not the dreadful singer from The Monkees but he of the undersea locker and also the new villain in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. Bill Nighy plays this splendidly-designed character, with the assistance of some CGI to get those tentacles working. I’ve still not seen the first film but the look of this makes me more interested in the series as a whole.

Aside from William Hope Hodgson‘s sea tales, the pirates plus voodoo/Sargasso Sea angle has rarely been exploited properly in fiction. Tim Powers had a go in On Stranger Tides but the results fell rather flat. In film there’s been hardly anything apart from the Hammer oddity The Lost Continent (1968), based on Uncharted Seas, a Dennis Wheatley potboiler that plundered Hodgson’s Sargasso Sea stories. The new Pirates film may be about to amend this situation; Davy Jones looks like something dreamed up after a heavy diet of Hodgson and HP Lovecraft.

So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh

So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh

A benefit album curated
by Josephine Foster

“All profits from sales of this
compilation will be distributed to
specific counter-military recruitment
and pacifist organizations and
programs. We hope to assist them
in their efforts promoting peace
and non-militarism in the United States.

“All of the musicians represented
here are US citizens. Our voices
join with many others across this
land that freely question and
openly oppose war.”

Josephine Foster

Track listing:
THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS – ‘Dragonfly’ (live)
FEATHERS – ‘Dust’
MICHAEL HURLEY – ‘A Little Bit of Love for You’
MEG BAIRD – ‘Western Red Lily (Nunavut Diamond Dream)’
ANDREW BAR – ‘Don’t Trust That Man’
GOATGIRL – ‘President Combed His Hair’
DEVENDRA BANHART – ‘I Know Some Souls’ (demo)
KATH BLOOM – ‘Baby Let It Come Down On Me’
CHARLIE NOTHING – ‘Fuck You and Your Stupid Wars’
DIANE CLUCK – ‘A Phoenix and Doves’
JOHN ALLINGHAM & ANN TILEY – ‘Big War’
JOSEPHINE FOSTER – ‘Would You Pave the Road?’
ANGELS OF LIGHT – ‘Destroyer’
RACHEL MASON – ‘The War Clerk’s Lament’
PAJO – ‘War Is Dead’
MVEE – ‘Powderfinger’
KATHLEEN BAIRD – ‘Prayer for Silence’
LAY ALL OVER IT – ‘A Place’

Cover artwork by Fred Tomaselli

Available August 1. $12US/14Can/17World postpaid.

Click here for info on pre-ordering.

Early Kubrick

Before Stanley Kubrick’s first self-financed feature, Fear and Desire, there came two documentary shorts: Flying Padre and Day of the Fight. The latter is probably the best, not least for the way it connects to the noir ambience of the period (boxing dramas such as Body and Soul and The Set-Up) and points towards Kubrick’s own noir excursions, Killer’s Kiss (featuring a boxer as the lead character) and The Killing. Thanks to the miracle of the interweb you can now see this early Stanley gem for yourself in a reasonable copy, not crappy YouTube grain-o-vision. Grab it while you can.

a dvd-r recently arrived from an anonymous source. upon hitting ‘play’ i found it was none other than stanley kubrick’s 1951 debut ‘day of the fight’.

i initially considered taking it viral, but decided against that because i thought such anonymity would be an insult, modern american independent filmmaking began here. kubrick didn’t have dvds to study or final cut pro. at the age of 22, he taught himself and did it. and invented the trajectory of the kid who scraps it together and rises to greatness.

Day of the Fight (116MB mov)

Vintage magazine art II

In the days before colour photography most magazine covers were created by illustrators (as the New Yorker still is), a situation that’s left behind a rich legacy of wonderful artwork often far more stimulating than any of the magazine contents. This site has a great collection of early Vogue covers that show an amazing amount of variety and originality at play. Some of these early issues even break with the understandable stricture for a fashion magazine of having a female figure as the focus.

Looking over this selection, it’s impossible not to compare the rich designs of the 1920s with today’s bland uniformity. Vogue now looks like any other magazine for women, with an overly made-up (often celebrity) face filling the cover and the whole picture crowded with sub-headings and a general clutter of typography. UK Vogue‘s own cover archive pages show the gradual degeneration of a stylish flagship to a condition of cultural muzak over the passage of ninety years.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Vintage magazine art I
• View: The Modern Magazine

Russian Utopia

Glass Stonehenge: Monument for the Year 2001 (1986) by D Bush and A Khomyakov.

“The sheet of heavy glass laying on the row of stones is carrying the next row, etc.”

Russian Utopia is a repository of 480 unbuilt architectural projects from the last 300 years of Russian history. I love seeing designs for unrealised architectural schemes and this site has some fascinating examples like the Glass Stonehenge above. A shame all the pictures are so frustratingly small.

Temple-City (1987) by I Galimov.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The etching and engraving archive