Oct 29, 2009

Irish writer J Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) has long been a favourite of mine since I first discovered his weird tales in ghost story collections, still the place you’re most likely to find his work. His ghost stories are frequently superior to the more celebrated MR James (who edited a Le Fanu collection), they’re less [...]
Aug 15, 2009
Computers draw a new chapter in comics | Artist Dave Gibbons on comics and technology.
Jul 30, 2009

In Spaces Between from The Great Old Ones (1999).
Some noteworthy pieces of news as the month draws to a rain-sodden and dismal conclusion.
• Frank Woodward was in touch this week to let me know that his excellent HP Lovecraft documentary, Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, will at last be appearing on DVD in October. This [...]
Jul 20, 2009

I was a Space Age boy. John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in Project Mercury’s Friendship 7 a month before I was born, and growing up in the 1960s it was impossible to be unaware of the NASA missions. The first encyclopaedia I was given in 1967 had a whole chapter [...]
Jun 20, 2009
The Untied States of America | New film and theatre projects from Adam Curtis.
May 1, 2009

I said, “Girl, you drank a lot of Drink Me,
But you ain’t in a Wonderland
You know I might-a be there to greet you, child,
When your trippin’ ship touches sand.”
Donovan, The Trip (1966).
Most of the key texts of the psychedelic period tend to be either non-fiction—Huxley’s Doors of Perception, Leary’s Psychedelic Experience—or spiritual works such as [...]
Feb 20, 2009

The Chevalier d’Eon wins a fencing bout.
I’ve known of the cross-dressing Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Thimothée d’Eon de Beaumont—or the Chevalier d’Eon (1728–1810) to give him his title—for some time thanks to a typically witty and informative entry by Philip Core in Camp: The Lie that Tells the Truth (1984). The nobleman rubs shoulders there with the equally flamboyant [...]
Feb 5, 2009

Cover painting by Tom Phillips, design by Russell Mills.
A post for a Thursday.
Brian Eno’s ambient music receives a lot of playing time here, especially Music for Airports, On Land, The Shutov Assembly and, when something really minimal is required, Neroli. But it’s Thursday Afternoon which receives the most attention. Recorded at the request of Sony [...]
Jan 16, 2009

Patrick McGoohan as Number Six.
“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”
The Prisoner, which ran for seventeen episodes from 1967 to 1968, was the best original drama series there’s ever been on television. Period, as Harlan Ellison would say. Best because it grabbed the format of [...]
Dec 28, 2008

Harold Pinter and Eartha Kitt.
2008: the year that keeps on taking.
The Guardian has a copious collection of Pinter pieces including Michael Billington’s lengthy obituary. Eartha Kitt was just as unique in her own way, prompting Orson Welles in the 1950s to call her “the most exciting woman in the world”. For my sister and [...]
Dec 10, 2008

The Clangers (and a Froglet).
Lots of eulogies for Oliver Postgate doing the rounds just now, somewhat inevitable when his Smallfilms productions for the BBC furnished the imaginations of generations of British children in the Sixties and Seventies. Smallfilms’ films matched their name, being short animations created on minimal budgets by a trio of Postgate [...]
Aug 16, 2008
Excavation of the Lower East Side
| Richard Price from The Wanderers to The Wire.
Aug 13, 2008

More cult stuff from Ubuweb, you lucky people. Being a big Tom Phillips enthusiast I’ve been watching A TV Dante (1989) for years, having taped the one and only broadcast of the series. I also bought the accompanying booklet (below).
This ambitious program, produced by the award-winning film director Peter Greenaway and internationally-known artist Tom Phillips, [...]
Aug 11, 2008

The enigmatic hibiscus: Le Testament d’Orphée (1960).
Here’s a conundrum for you: what connects Jean Cocteau, Ravi Shankar, Doctor Who and March of the Penguins? Read on and all will become crystal clear….
This latest { feuilleton } examination of the byways of musical culture isn’t concerned so much with an individual artist, more with a particular [...]
Aug 4, 2008

This is worth noting even though it’s nearly over, a short presentation of sound recordings by Chris Watson at the alt.gallery, Newcastle. Watson was a founder member of one of my favourite groups of the post-punk era, Cabaret Voltaire. He left CV in 1981 and shortly thereafter formed The Hafler Trio, an experimental audio outfit [...]
Jul 15, 2008

I wrote recently about John Selwyn Gilbert’s television play, Aubrey, an hour-long drama concerning the artist Aubrey Beardsley. That play was only screened once in 1982 and, like most one-off studio works of the period, is unavailable on DVD. John Osborne’s 1976 adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray is a welcome exception to this [...]
Jul 7, 2008
Making us all imbeciles
| (UK) censors were once sent packing. But now they’re back.
Jun 22, 2008

Aubrey Beardsley photographed by Frederick Evans (1894).
I’ve been going through the Coulthart VHS library recently, transferring to DVD recordings which can’t be purchased or found online. Among these is a drama from the BBC’s Playhouse strand, Aubrey by John Selwyn Gilbert, broadcast in 1982. This follows the life of artist Aubrey Beardsley from the [...]
May 14, 2008

Retroactive I (1964).
My youthful enthusiasm for art acquainted me with the name of Robert Rauschenberg (who died two days ago) earlier than most. Surrealism and Pop Art held an appeal that was immediate, if rather superficially appreciated at the time, and it was seeing works from both those movements which were the most memorable aspect [...]
Mar 8, 2008

Mouse Heaven: Minnie and Mickey.
Kenneth Anger’s paean to Disney rodent memorabilia, and one of his most recent works, turns up at the Grey Lodge. Mouse Heaven is a distinctly minor piece, an awkward mix of film and video which juxtaposes shots of mouse figurines with a song-based soundtrack. Scorpio Rising this isn’t but the editing [...]