Notes on Film

To interpret the ghostliness of the visible world by means of authentic experiences drawn directly from that world. Even the very germ cell of a film, the elementary idea, must suit the medium. The particular human problem or setting that is chosen as the theme may also be suitable for a novel or stage play, …

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Sonny’s Blues – James Baldwin

We went to the only nightclub on a short, dark street, downtown.We squeezed through the narrow, chattering, jampacked bar to the entrance of the big room, where the bandstand was. And we stood there for a moment for the lights were very dim in this room and we couldn't see. Then, "Hello, boy " said the voice …

The Brian Jonestown Massacre – Leadmill

So I went to see The Brian Jonestown Massacre at Leadmill on Monday and I'm finally sitting down to thrash out a few words on the whole affair. As usual I made some notes right after the gig that'd massage my memory back into action when I came to write up a review. Just a …

Jean Moreas – The Symbolist Manifesto

As with all arts, literature evolves: a cyclical evolution with strictly determined returns and which become more complicated of various modifications brought by the step of time and the confusion of circles. It would be superfluous to point out that every new progressive stage of art corresponds exactly to senile degeneration, at the ineluctable end …

Machiavelli – The Prince

However, one has to remark that men ought either to be well treated or crushed because they can revenge themselves of lighter injuries, but of more serious ones they cannot. Therefore the injury that is to be done to someone ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of …

High Hawaiian

“You're crazy.” The gut-bucket growls at me from across the room. I lash out at it, only to find that it's now floating above my head, emptying it's mucoid contents all over me. Relentless and unforgiving, like a high Hawaiian sun. We'd landed in Amsterdam that morning – seven of us – spending our first …

The Horrors – Strange House

'Strange House' is a Transylvanian Outlook Hotel, whose scatterbrain inhabitants come out to play at dusk. They're frenzied zombies with Nosferatu as their master. The living dead in a mechanical edifice whose corridors swing wildly, rooms shake spasmodically, guests die invariably. Of course, there's a foggy courtyard no man's land, where cold whispers send spectral …