Weekend links 777

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The Seven Wonders of the World (1886). 1: Lighthouse on the Island of Pharos, Alexandria; 2: Statue of the Olympian Jupiter; 3: The Colossus at Rhodes; 4: The Temple of Diana at Ephesus; 5: The Mausoleum of Artemisia; 6: The Pyramids of Egypt; 7: The Walls and Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

• “The space of possible languages is vast, and full of exotic languages that are much weirder and stranger than any we have yet imagined.” Nikhil Mahant on the many possible forms of alien language.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse (translated by Basil Creighton).

• At Alan Moore World: A new interview with Mr Moore about Long London, magic and the future of humanity.

• New music: The Reverent Sky by Steve Roach; and Contrary Motion by Scanner & Nurse With Wound.

• At Public Domain Review: Tangled Dürer: The Six Knots (ca. before 1521).

• At The Daily Heller: A Typographer’s Mother Goose by Louise Fili.

• At Colossal: Woodblock prints by Utagawa Hiroshige.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Jud Yalkut’s Day.

• The Strange World of…Steve Aylett.

Seven And Seven Is (1966) by Love | Seven By Seven (1973) by Hawkwind | Seven, Seven, Seven (1995) by Money Mark

Omnibus: A Portrait of Raymond Chandler

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The full title of this BBC documentary is Down These Mean Streets a Man Must Go: A Portrait of Raymond Chandler. The film was broadcast in 1969, ten years after Chandler’s death, and has been on iPlayer recently to judge by the logo in the corner, but it’s not one I’d seen before. It would have been ideal viewing a couple of years ago during my attempt to watch all the films listed in The Big Noir Book. While working my way through the film list I was also reading some of Dashiell Hammett’s novels (The Maltese Falcon is excellent; The Dain Curse is terrible) and all of Raymond Chandler’s novels. Or almost all…I didn’t read Poodle Springs, his final book, left unfinished then completed by other hands. I enjoyed the Philip Marlowe novels so much I was tempted to start them all over again after I’d reached the end of Playback. Added to the enjoyment was the opportunity to see how much the books were mauled when they passed through the Hollywood mill. The BBC documentary opens with a clip from The Big Sleep which has always been the best of the adaptations (it can be difficult getting Humphrey Bogart out of your head when you’re reading Philip Marlowe’s narration) but even this one alters the story while downplaying the sexual content (homosexuality and pornography in the novel), something that all the films of the 40s do their best to avoid.

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A Portrait of Raymond Chandler was written by John Foster and Fred Burnley who present the writer via his own words in a sequence of dramatised interviews and enactments of scenes from the novels. There’s also a brief interview with JB Priestley, an intriguing thing in itself as I’d no idea that Priestley knew Chandler. The enactments don’t work very well—all the very small and very English rooms look nothing like Los Angeles architecture—but Edward Judd makes a decent attempt to apply his hard-boiled manner to the detective role without any Bogart impersonations. Judd appeared throughout the 60s in a succession of science-fiction films, and the film works best when he’s reading from the novels. Omnibus used him for the voiceovers a few years later in another portrait of a writer, Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision, a film about Hunter S. Thompson. The Chandler documentary appeared just ahead of the wave of renewed Hollywood interest in the Marlowe books that broke in the 1970s. Among the film clips there’s a short scene from the soon-to-be-released Marlowe, an updated adaptation of The Little Sister which isn’t one of the best Marlowe films but it has some nice interior shots of the Bradbury Building, and you get to see Bruce Lee demolish James Garner’s office with his feet and fists.

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The Big Noir Book, or 300 films and counting…

The art of Dick Ellescas

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The Boy Friend (1971).

I chanced upon the album cover art of Dick Ellescas a few weeks ago when I was searching for something on Discogs. Classical music labels are extraordinarily lazy when it comes to packaging their recordings, as a result of which the commissioning of original art always stands out. Dick Ellescas turned up again more recently when I was working my way through the Ken Russell filmography. Russell’s Sandy Wilson adaptation, The Boy Friend, was released in the US with an Ellescas poster that combines an Art Deco style with the modishness of early 70s graphics. This also stood out from the crowd and sent me in search of more of the same. The examples here are only a small selection from the Ellescas oeuvre; Discogs credits him with over 30 album covers. The Strauss cover below is uncredited so there may be more out there. Some of Ellescas’s illustrations for Cosmopolitan magazine may be seen here.

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The Magic Christian (1969).

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Borodin/Liadov: Symphony No.1/From The Book Of Revelation From Days Of Old/A Musical Snuff-box (1971); Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra, USSR Symphony Orchestra.

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Strauss: Die Frau Ohne Schatten (1971); Kurt Eichhorn, Orchestra of Bavarian Radio, James King.

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Weekend links 776

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Illustration by Adolf Hoffmeister for a Czech edition of The First Men in the Moon by HG Wells.

• It’s good to hear that Czech animator Jiri Barta is back at work on his long-gestating feature film based on the Golem legend. The new iteration looks like a reimagining of the entire project.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: The First Men in the Moon by HG Wells.

• This week in the Bumper Book of Magic: Ben Wickey breaks down more of his Great Enchanters pages.

• At Colossal: Charles Brooks photographs the interiors of musical and scientific instruments.

• At Igloomag: Philippe Blache on neo-noir, doom jazz and related atmospheric music.

• At The Daily Heller: The book-brick that is the 1,264-page Emigre Specimen Encyclopedia.

• New music: Changing States by Matmos, and Of Shadow Landscapes by Skotógen.

• At the BFI: Josh Slater-Williams selects 10 great Japanese time-travel films.

• Lawrence English remembers the sound-art pioneer Alan Lamb.

Tunde Adebimpe’s favourite albums.

Time Machine (1967) by Satori | Time Machine (1968) by Lemon Tree | Turn Back Time (1971) by Time Machine

Documents Décoratifs by Alphonse Mucha

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I’ve had a copy of the Dover edition of these plates for some time, but it’s good to find a digital copy at last, especially now I can see that Dover bleached all the subtle background tones to a solid white. The artwork looks much better in its original state. It was also a little surprising to discover that Documents Décoratifs was originally a collection of loose sheets in a portfolio, not a book as I always thought.

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The plates were Alphonse Mucha’s contribution to that small collection of publications intended to assist other designers and craftspeople in their decorative work. Mucha’s drawings break down his style into a series of isolated motifs and design elements: panels, borders, figures, flowers, lettering and other details, together with a few pages of more complete designs. He also offers several pages of suggestions for applying his Art Nouveau flourishes to jewellery, furniture and other household objects. I’ve used parts of these designs a few times in my own work, most recently in the Bumper Book of Magic. Even if you don’t have a practical use for the plates they’re all very beautiful pieces in themselves, especially the pencil drawings.

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