_(14753404655).jpg)
An illustration by HB Ford for The Violet Fairy Book (1906), edited by Andrew Lang.
• New music: An Aesthetic – Experiments in Tape by Hawksmoor; Leylines (2025 remaster) by Aes Dana; A Fragile Geography (10th Anniversary Reissue) by Rafael Anton Irisarri.
• “Skoda Auto designers reimagine Ferat Vampire car from cult classic 1981 Czech horror film”.
• At Colossal: Chris Ware illustrates a postwoman’s day to celebrate 250 years of USPS.
Seen today, the failure of Sorcerer looks like a grim prophecy of where the film industry would be headed in the years to come. It signaled that the creative ambitions of the New Hollywood, and its indulgence of stubborn renegade auteurs, had been cast aside for a new and dispiriting blockbuster ethos. Decades later, that ethos is still with us: a Hollywood dominated by digitally smoothed, effects-encrusted moviemaking, where every backdrop looks fake (even the real ones) and action sequences carry no physical weight. It’s a wretched landscape, and Sorcerer positively towers over it. To watch the film now, from its electric opening moments through its gaspingly bleak denouement, is to encounter something more than just a magnificent ruin or an object of cultish reclamation: a thwarted masterwork that is thwarted no longer.
Justin Chang on the bleak magic of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer.
• At the BFI: The Red Shoes wallpaper by the film’s designer Hein Heckroth.
• All This Violence by Caspar Brötzmann Massaker.
• RIP Lalo Schifrin and Rebekah del Rio.
• The Strange World of…Jon Spencer.
• In Ultra-Violet (1983) by Cinema 90 | Violet Ray Gas (2009) by Violet | Violetta (2012) by Demdike Stare
How unfortunate to hear of the passing of Rebekah del Rio. ”No Stars” might be my favourite Roadhouse song in TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN; and, as it happens, I watched SOUTHLAND TALES, also featuring the late singer, some weeks ago. What is your favourite song in THE RETURN?
How is your summer going? Are you thinking of attending the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton this year?
Wow, new Caspar Brötzmann? Thank you for making me aware of this! (Not that I can hear it… ears are still ringing from standing next to the speakers at their Blast First gig in London in the mid-90s).
Liam: Following my last watch of The Return I think I’d choose ‘No Stars’ as well, especially with it being one of Lynch’s own songs. The other Roadhouse songs weren’t bad but many of them could have been easily replaced by something else.
My summer is okay, thanks, I have a lot of illustration work on the go just now. I don’t attend conventions although I made an exception for NecronomiCon in 2015 since I was a guest, it was in Providence, RI, and I also liked the idea of a convention organised solely around weird fiction.
Dan: Yes, I was very surprised that Caspar is back, I thought he’d given up music altogether.
I was particularly moved by “Out of Sand” and I am anything but a fan of the artist’s other work. A bitter-sweet lament for a show that was mired in nostalgia, I think. The reprise of “The World Spins”, my favorite from the first two seasons, led to a series of outraged rants by Julee on Facebook. She eventually recanted, saying she and David had come to an understanding. I remember being perplexed at how it had been cut short, the only song that was. Looking back, it makes sense that the world’s spinning was short-circuited.