{film} – Page 295 – { feuilleton }

Sedlec Ossuary panoramas

A couple of panoramic views from the celebrated Sedlec Ossuary in the Cemetery Church of All Saints at Sedlec, Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. The quality of these isn’t as good as some of the panoramas I’ve linked to in the past but they help give an idea of the crypt which is now a World Heritage site. Jan Švankmajer enthusiasts should be familiar with the bone sculptures from his 1970 film, The Ossuary, which can be found on the BFI’s Svankmajer DVD set.

• Sedlec Ossuary at Flickr

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague

Weekend links 53

Ancient Egyptian capitals from The Grammar of Ornament (1856) by Owen Jones at Egyptian Revival.

• Golden Age Comic Book Stories has been pulling out all the stops recently with entries for Will Bradley, Alphonse Mucha’s Documents Decoratifs (a companion volume to Combinaisons Ornementales), and pages from My Name is Paris (1987) illustrated by Michael Kaluta, an Art Nouveau-styled confection which features scenes from the Exposition Universelle of 1900. Related: Alphonse Mucha in high-resolution at Flickr.

• The Sinking Of The Titanic by Gavin Bryars at Ubuweb, the first release on Brian Eno’s Obscure label in 1975. Bryars’ Titanic is an open composition which has subsequently been reworked and re-recorded as more information about the disaster has come to light. The accompanying piece on that album, Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, is the only version you need unless you want Tom Waits ruining the whole thing in the later recording.

• Hayley Campbell claims to have the worst CV in the world but she has a better way with words than most people with bad CVs. She’ll be giving a talk with Tim Pilcher entitled Sex, Death, Hell & Superheroes at The Last Tuesday Society, 11 Mare Street, Bethnal Green, London, on April 8th. Just don’t shout “Xena!” if you attend.

• Monolake live at the Dis-Patch Festival Belgrade, Serbia, 2007; 75 minutes of thumping grooves. Related: A video by Richard De Suza using Monolake’s Watching Clouds as the soundtrack.

• “I preached against homosexuality, but I was wrong.” Related: Gay Cliques, a chart, and Sashay shantay épée at Strange Flowers, the last (?) duel with swords fought in France.

• Mixtapes of the week: Electronica from John Foxx and Benge at The Quietus, and Ben Frost mashing up early Metallica, Krzysztof Penderecki, and late Talk Talk for FACT.

• A 40 gigpixel panorama of the Strahov Philosophical Library, Prague, described by 360 Cities as the world’s largest indoor photo.

• How Hollywood Butchered Its Best Movie Posters; Steven Heller on Saul Bass.

• Back issues of Coilhouse magazine are now available to buy in PDF form.

• Absinthe minded: The ruin of bohemians is back in all the best bars.

• Fade Into You (1993) by Mazzy Star.

Anamorphosis

Some anamorphosis for All Fool’s Day. De Artificiali Perspectiva, or Anamorphosis (1991) is a short film by the Brothers Quay which can be seen in two parts at YouTube. (And I’d urge anyone interested to avail themselves of the essential double-disc collection of the Quays’ early work which includes this film.) There are plenty of sites devoted to anamorphosis such as this one but films tend to explain the effect better than still pictures by showing the stages of transformation to or from pictorial coherence. The stills below, for example, work better in motion than they do here. The Quay’s first feature, Institute Benjamenta (1995), also features some anamorphosis with a mural on the walls of a passage in the film’s strange school for servants.

Also at YouTube there’s a short video demonstration of mirror anamorphosis, a variation where the distorted picture corrects itself when viewed with a mirrored tube. Musician Rick Wakeman used this effect for an album he released in 1976, No Earthly Connection, a work whose cover art is more impressive than the music it embellishes. The album came with a thin sheet of mirrored plastic which could be folded to create a viewing device.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Ambassadors in detail
• False perspective
• Trompe l’oeil

Weekend links 52

Three Seekers (2009) by Kelly Louise Judd.

• Kevin Sessums talked to Elizabeth Taylor in 1997 about Tennessee Williams, her AIDS activism and related matters. Other related matters: Catholics lead the way on same-sex marriage and Mahatma Gandhi was in love with a German body-builder named Hermann.

• Cray porn (the computer, that is) at Barnbrook Design as the CD package for Interplay by John Foxx and The Maths is unveiled.

• Michael Rother and Friends Play the Music Of Neu! A stream of an hour-long concert from August 2010.

One of the tragedies of drug prohibition is that we have never developed a culture in which young people can learn how to use powerful drugs properly from older, wiser and more experienced psychonauts. I count myself lucky to have encountered such good teachers to guide me with such drugs as LSD, psilocybin, DMT, MDMA and mescaline.

Dr Susan Blackmore on using LSD.

• Another Dispatch in a World of Multiple Veils, a new release by Arkhonia.

• Micromachina by Scott Bain “examines what makes the insect world tick”.

• Down with art!: the age of manifestos. Related: The Manifesto Manifesto.

• John Patterson: “We’re all living in the future as seen by Philip K Dick.”

• Music To Play In The Dark: A Wake For Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson.

• Albert Einstein, Radical: A Political Profile.

• Was “God’s Wife” edited out of the Bible?

• Porn made for women, by women.

• Hallogallo (1972) by Neu! | Opa-Loka (1975) by Hawkwind | Jenny Ondioline (1993) by Stereolab | Hallogallo (1997) by Porcupine Tree.

Elizabeth Taylor, 1932–2011

Remember her for her incomparable beauty, her great performances in great films, the camp confections like Cleopatra and Boom, and years of activism on behalf of gay people:

There is no gay agenda, it’s a human agenda. Why shouldn’t gay people be able to live as open and freely as everybody else? What it comes down to, ultimately, is love. How can anything bad come out of love? The bad stuff comes out of mistrust, misunderstanding and, God knows, from hate and from ignorance.

It would also be remiss of me (since no obituaries will be tasteless enough to mention it) if I didn’t note her presence at the heart of one of the more notorious novels of the past fifty years. I often used to wonder whether anyone had told her about Crash. Not that she’d want to know about it if they did; who would be eager to read detailed plans for their own horrific death? But it was her status as a 20th century icon, the nonpareil of film stardom, that made her the perfect choice as the focus of Vaughan’s obsessions in Ballard’s novel.

• Elizabeth Taylor: a career in clips
• RIP Elizabeth Taylor: A Ballardian Primer