Cammell & Roeg’s Performance (1970) was marketed in Italy with all the restraint for which the Italian film industry has long been celebrated.
• “To the good men I offer the hand of friendship, to the foes of our sex I offer resistance and annihilation!” We Women Have no Fatherland (1899), a novel by Ilse Frapan, is the latest title from Rixdorf Editions.
• More Edward Gorey: Mark Derey discusses his biography on the Virtual Memories Show podcast. Related: Edward Gorey’s Calling Cards, a spoiler-heavy investigation.
• “It starts how most horror films end, and it just keeps building and building, crescendo on crescendo…” Ben Cobb on the original (and, for me, only) Suspiria.
• The next compilation release from the excellent Light In The Attic label will be Kankyo Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980–1990.
• Saint Flournoy Lobos-Logos and the Eastern Europe Fetus Taxing Japan Brides in West Coast Places Sucking Alabama Air (1970) is a short film by Will Hindle.
• Film producer Sandy Lieberson and author Jay Glennie on Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance.
• “Wes Anderson‘s offbeat debut as a curator drove a storied museum’s staff crazy. The results are enchanting.”
• Above Water, Inside, a video by James Ginzburg from his recent album, Six Correlations.
• For the LRB Podcast: Iain Sinclair and Patrick Wright discuss living with buildings.
• Not necessarily the best ambient and space music of 2018: a list by Dave Maier.
• “The net is not a good guide to book prices,” says Mark Valentine.
• David Bennun on 30 years of the Pet Shop Boys’ Introspective.
• Mix of the week: XLR8R Podcast 568 by Young Marco.
• At Dennis Cooper’s: Chris Marker Day.
• Introspection Pt. 1 (1969) by The End | Introspection (1984) by Minimal Compact | Intro-Spectiv (1996) by Chris & Cosey
Ah, but have you seen the “new” Suspiria ?
No, I haven’t, but several people whose opinions I respect have done, and all expressed various degrees of dislike (“hot mess” was one description). The original is one of my favourite horror films so I’d take a dim view of a remake even if a more suitable director like (say) Nicolas Winding Refn was doing it. I watched Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name recently, and thought it was marvellous, but really don’t understand why he made this.
I listened to an interview with him on The FilmStruck Podcast a couple of weeks ago, and apparently, he’s wanted to make his own version of the film since he was a teenager, he even designed a poster for it when he was around 15 or 16 years old. I haven’t seen it yet either…but watched Call Me by Your Name last year, and also thought it was wonderful. This is a link to the Guadagnino/Suspiria FilmStruck episode. https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/turner-podcast-network/filmstruck/e/56887643
That makes sense. Peter Bradshaw’s Guardian review called it a labour of love but with the emphasis on the labour. I’ve never been happy about the ease with which Hollywood co-opts cult or “foreign” films, even if the results are the work of good directors (see Scorsese’s pointless remakes of Cape Fear and Infernal Affairs, the Coens’ godawful mangling of The Ladykillers, etc). Tilda Swinton called the new film a cover version but you can’t compare a complex dramatic work like a feature film to a song. Given the mixed reaction to Guadagnino’s film I’d guess in time it will be quietly neglected the way Soderbergh’s Solaris has been.
Haven’t managed to see the Suspiria remake yet. The impression I get from the reviews is that it takes on a lot of heavy-handed thematic concerns and historical allusions that wind up being ultimately shallow and vague. I did finally manage to see the original on the big screen over the Halloween – as many times as I’ve seen it on home media, it was literally astonishing to experience in its native medium. This clip of Argento discussing the original for Sight and Sound last year is great if you haven’t seen it: https://vimeo.com/275610491?ref=fb-share&1&fbclid=IwAR0KtCjT8O3E_YM1J4MW2AWMqmGnvAwUhr-YpRV3iPxoMInkDlkEICoHsJM
Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash was also a remake of Jacques Deray’s La Piscine, but I enjoyed it..thought I am Love was quite good too, but Call Me by Your Name is definitely my favourite of his so far, he really captured that first love/summer love vibe. I think i’ll wait a while until the fuss dies down to watch his Suspiria though, he says in that FilmStruck interview that he hopes someone else will do another version of it somewhere down the line. I totally get what you mean about Hollywood remakes of cult and foreign film, and I also see that there’s to be a new film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’ (Ben Wheatley directing)…the original Hitchcock version is one of my all time favourite films, but to be honest i’m surprised that it hasn’t been done sooner. I know that there was a tv mini-series with Diana Rigg made in the 90s, but I haven’t seen it.
Tristan: Thanks, I missed that one.
Sweet Jane: I’d not heard that about Wheatley but that would be another for the “Don’t mention that this exists” list. Unless they’ve started production it may not materialise: he was down for doing a remake of The Wages of Fear at one point–good luck with trying to compete with Clouzot and Friedkin!–but that seems to have fizzled out. With Wages and Rebecca it’s arguable that any new version is a fresh adaptation of the novel but that still begs the question of how much you can improve upon (or deviate from) the previous adaptation. I like the Coens’ a great deal but don’t think their version of True Grit is as good as the Hathaway version.