Fly Carefully (1969) by Stanislaw Zagorski.
• Video of Tuxedomoon live in San Francisco, Rotterdam and Paris, 1983 (or try this copy), and a late-night German TV broadcast from 1985. The first Tuxedomoon album, Half-Mute, has been reissued by Crammed Discs with an accompanying album, Give Me New Noise: Half-Mute Reflected, featuring cover versions of the songs by various artists.
• More end-of-year reviews: Dennis Cooper’s recommendations are always eclectic (and thanks again for the blog shout!); not necessarily the best ambient and space music of 2016 by Dave Maier; a review of the year by graphic designer Jonathan Barnbrook; the 15 finalists of the 2016 Art of Building architectural photography competition.
• The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington will be published in April 2017 by Dorothy. Related: Letters, Dreams, and Other Texts by Remedios Varo will be published next year by Wakefield Press. Also of interest on that page is a new edition of Haschisch by Oscar AH Schmitz illustrated by Alfred Kubin.
• The week in Things (see this post): John Carpenter’s The Thing: The Story of an SF Horror Game-Changer. Ennio Morricone’s score will be infecting the vinyl world next year. Meanwhile, Matthew Thrift recommends “10 great films set in the Arctic and Antarctica”.
• Mixes of the week: FACT mix 581 by Pan Daijing, XLR8R podcast 468 by Jan Jelinek, and Secret Thirteen Mix 203 by Blood Sport.
• A Year In The Country on Monumental Follies (1972), a book about architectural eccentricity by Stuart Barton.
• William Burroughs reads 23 random paragraphs from Naked Lunch each time you load this page.
• “The world is terrifying and destructive and dehumanising and tragic,” says Charlie Kaufman.
• Scents and sensuality: William Dalrymple on the perfumes of India, past and present.
• Brenda S G Walter on Hill House: The haunted soul of Shirley Jackson.
• A trailer for Dome Karukoski’s Tom of Finland. There’s more here.
• Illustrating the Sixties: Paintings by Italian artists in London.
• Michael Rother and Cavern Of Anti-Matter live in Berlin.
• Network 23 (1981) by Tangerine Dream | Exit 23 (1989) by Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia | Studio 23 (2012) by The Time And Space Machine
I look forward to the publication of the complete stories of Leonora Carrington; I meant to buy a copy of one of her novels at the Treadwells Bookshop in London when I visited for the Folk Horror Revival at the British Museum, but I completely forgot! Overwhelmed, I guess, with everything at the Museum and being inside two occult bookshops. But I might have another chance in March. I am glad to be aware of Carrington to celebrate her centenary next year.
John, thanks for the heads up on the Remedios Varo volume. What other folks have for Carrington and Kahlo I have for Varo, ever since I saw an exhibition of her work here in Wash DC in 2000 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The fine exhibition catalog (“The Magic of…” ) is still available at the usual outlets online. I have never read any of her writings (other than quotes and excerpts) and will be on the outlook for pub date.
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Polar cinema:
A terrific documentary from 2013, directed by Anthony Powell, called Antarctica: A Year on Ice. The film crew winters with the staff of researchers and technicians who spend the six months of darkness at a facility in Antarctica. No shape shifting monsters or suicidal penguins but an absorbing study of how humans cope with extreme environments. (And a picture of what life on Mars will probably be like for the colonists.) A nice companion piece to the Herzog.
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The resurgence in interest in the work of Shirley Jackson is heartening to see. The Ruth Franklin bio is excellent. I would also note that the film The Haunting from 1963 is a case where a first rate book is made into a first rate movie; a circumstance which happens much less frequently than one would expect. (And a case where the remake from 1999 is so bad that it’s actually funny. The other comparable remake disaster I can think of offhand (where an acknowledged classic is foolishly remade) is the appalling Day the Earth Stood Still from 2008. There oughta be a law folks!
I was surprised by the Varo news, I didn’t know she was a writer as well. So too was Leonor Fini but none of her novels have yet been translated into English.
And I like Robert Wise’s film so much I’ve always shunned the remake. That and The Innocents are two of my favourite ghost films.