Weekend links 787

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Noonday Heat (1903) by Henry Scott Tuke.

• It may still be summer but the Halloween film reissues are already being announced. This year Radiance Films is presenting two features by Belgian director Harry Kümel: the lesbian vampire drama Daughters of Darkness (UHD+BD | BD), and Malpertuis, Kümel’s adaptation of the Jean Ray fantasy novel. This week I’ve been watching Polish animated films on Radiance’s just-released Essential Polish Animation.

• At Colossal: Dennis Lehtonen documents a pair of immense icebergs paying a visit to a small Greenland village.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: ShoreZone, nine short stories by dramatist David Rudkin.

The problem is that the extraterrestrials that xenolinguists claim to seek are often beings imagined to have technologies, minds or languages similar to ours. They are projections of ourselves. This anthropomorphism risks blinding us to truly alien communicators, who are radically unlike us. If there are linguistic beings on planets such as TOI-700 d or Kepler-186f, or elsewhere in our galaxy, their modes of communication may be utterly incomprehensible to us. How, then, can xenolinguistics face its deficit of imagination?

Perhaps by re-engaging its speculative origins. Through the mode of thought characteristic of science fiction, the science of alien language might yet learn to open itself to every conceivable degree of otherness, even the possibility of beings that share nothing with us but the cosmos.

Eli K P William on problems in xenolinguistics

• DJ Food’s latest foray into pop psychedelia is a look at the psych influence on the teen romance comics of the late 1960s: part 1 | part 2 | part 3.

• Mixes of the week: DreamScenes – July 2025 at Ambientblog, and Bleep Mix #305 by Adam Wiltzie.

• “The hot tar splashed everywhere.” Dale Berning Sawa on Derek Jarman’s Black Paintings.

• At Unquiet Things: Meet your friendly neighbourhood art book author & book seller.

Winners of the 2025 Big Picture natural world photography competition.

• At the BFI: Rory Doherty chooses 10 great heatwave films.

The closest images ever taken of the Sun’s atmosphere.

Kae Tempest’s favourite records.

Heat (1983) by Soft Cell | Heatwave (1984) by The Blue Nile | Heatwave (1987) by Univers Zero

Weekend links 786

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The Skylark (1850) by Samuel Palmer.

• The latest book from A Year In The Country is Other Worlds: “Searching for far off lands via witchcraft battles, spectral streets, faded visions of the future and the secrets of the stones”.

• At Colossal: The 16th-century artist who created the first compendium of insect drawings.

• New music: Triskaidekaphobia Extd. by Pentagrams Of Discordia; Atamon by Amina Hocine.

• Old music: Cantus Orbis Collection by Cantus Orbis; Resonance by Yumiko Morioka.

• Coming soon from Top Shelf Productions: More Weight: A Salem Story by Ben Wickey.

• At the BFI: Miriam Balanescu chooses 10 great British pastoral films.

The ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025 Shortlist.

• Mix of the week: A mix for The Wire by Ben LaMar Gay.

Jack Barnett’s favourite music.

Pastoral Symphony (1960) by Richard Maxfield | Pastoral (1975) by Mahavishnu Orchestra | Pastoral Vassant (2018) by Jon Hassell

Weekend links 785

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A 1933 poster for the second of Fritz Lang’s Mabuse films.

• Good news for those who missed the original run (from 2002–2013), Arthur Magazine is now available for the first time as a complete set of free PDFs. I was laterally involved with the magazine from the outset, mostly as a remote supporter, but I also did several covers and interior illustrations for the early issues.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler by Norbert Jacques (translated by Lilian A. Clare); and two books by J. Sheridan Le Fanu: Short Fiction, and a novella, The Room in the Dragon Volant.

• New music: Spilla by Ensemble Nist-Nah; and Sea-swallowed Wands by Jolanda Moletta and Karen Vogt.

With his compulsions for systems and architecture, his command of shadows and symbolism-imbued sets and props, Lang is never less than arresting. Yet few of the films make complete statements; Lang’s art, in this period, is seemingly as much a fugitive as are his archetypal characters. That is, until the moment that his long journey to the direct subject matter and cultural framework of the 1950s United States, addressed in the terms and by the means available to him in Hollywood, abruptly comes to superb fruition with The Big Heat.

Jonathan Lethem on Fritz Lang in Hollywood and one of the greatest noir pictures of the 1950s

• This week in the Bumper Book of Magic: an enthusiastic review at The Joey Zone. My thanks to Mr Shea!

• Mixes of the week: A mix for The Wire by Nina Garcia; and Isolated Mix 133 by Pentagrams Of Discordia.

• At Colossal: David Romero’s digital recreations of Frank Lloyd Wright’s unrealised buildings.

• At Smithsonian magazine: John Last investigates the history of the Tarot.

• At Planet Paul: An interview with artist Malcolm Ashman.

• At the Daily Heller: A porno gag mag with attitude.

Hodgsonia

Das Testaments Des Mabuse (1984) by Propaganda | (The Ninth Life Of…) Dr Mabuse (1984) by Propaganda | Abuse (Here) (1985) by Propaganda

Weekend links 784

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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

Weekend links 783

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An illustration by William Heath Robinson for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1914).

• New music: How To Shoulder The Radiance Of Revelations by Dadub; Leviathan by Stephen Roddy; and Echoes Of The Hollow Earth by Cryo Chamber.

• At Sight & Sound: “Every time I look at the film, it gets better.” Stephen Soderbergh on Jaws.

• At Public Domain Review: The Language of Form: Lothar Schreyer’s Kreuzigung (1920).

Leafing through the merveilleux-scientifique novels today allows for a dual rediscovery: firstly, it uncovers the previously unrecognised richness of Belle Époque scientific fiction, which did not perish with the works of Verne. The stories take in journeys to Mars, solar cataclysms, reading of auras, psychic control, weighing of souls, death rays, alien invasions, even strolls among the infinitesimally small. But exploring the genre also offers insights into the cultural history of the era, marked by a significant permeability between science and pseudo-science. Reading this work, we can learn a lot about the aspirations, fears and beliefs of early 20th-century Europe.

Fleur Hopkins-Loféron on the evolution of French science fiction after Jules Verne

• Mix of the week: A Twin Peaks mix for The Wire by Lori Eschler & Dean Hurley.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Kefir.

Patrick Wolf’s favourite albums.

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Frou-Frou Foxes In Midsummer Fires (1990) by Cocteau Twins | Midsummer Night (2010) by The Time And Space Machine | Midsummer Boulevard (2022) by Hawksmoor