Pierrot le Fleur by Marina Mika.
• I’ve been saying for years that Andrzej Zulawski’s On the Silver Globe should be given a proper blu-ray release, and that’s what Region B viewers will receive soon courtesy of Eureka. Andrzej Zulawski: Three Films will be released in May, a set that comprises the director’s unfinished SF film, his debut feature, The Third Part of the Night (1971)—which I still haven’t seen—and also The Devil (1972), which I have seen but only as a poor copy that’s been circulating via illicit channels for many years.
• “The album’s 18-minute, multi-section standout Jenny Ondioline acquired a crucial role. It became the first track I’d play whenever I boarded a train, slipped on my headphones, and settled in beside an anonymous rail rider.” Hayden Merrick on travelling across the USA to the sounds of Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements by Stereolab.
• At Aquarium Drunkard: E. Hehr explores musical exotica via Technicolor Paradise: Rhum Rhapsodies & Other Exotic Delights, “…a compilation that touches upon the noir side of exotica, far more gritty and raw compared to the lavish production on the esteemed exotica albums from Capitol and Liberty.” I own this collection. It’s a good one.
“My own experience,” Leda muses “tells me that more love goes into the thought of homosexuality than the practice.” Other gays are neither radical heroes nor the pathetic, self-hating fairies of, say, Mart Crowley’s Boys in the Band. This frankness makes Love, Leda a singular work; a contemporary portrait of working-class gay London in the years running up to decriminalisation that neither flatters nor sensationalises. In doing so, Hyatt transforms gay sex and love from an abject taboo to a deeply human intimacy.
Huw Lemmey on Love, Leda by Mark Hyatt, a candid tale of gay life in the Britain of the 1960s
• “It became something like a ritual, an exhumation of long-unheard music reanimated as glacial drones and ghostly symphonic movements—the sound of the cathedral transmuted into an enveloping shadow of pulsation, echo and glitch.” Orgelwerk by Ted Reichman.
• Max Richter answers 50 questions. Sleep, Richter’s 8-hour ambient epic, is still my favourite among his compositions that I’ve heard to date: 8 CDs and a blu-ray disc from Deutsche Grammophon.
• RIP Alastair Brotchie, publisher of books at Atlas Press, and biographer of Alfred Jarry. Also a commenter here on one occasion when he corrected an erroneous photograph caption.
• A trailer for Suzume, a new feature film by Makoto Shinkai. Related: A Gathering of Cats.
• The story behind Jack Pierson’s homoerotic new photo book.
• The Strange World of…Phew.
• Why Do I Still Sleep (1983) by Popol Vuh | Sleep I (1995) by Paul Schütze | The Dreamer Is Still Asleep (1999) by Coil
‘On the Silver Globe’ is long overdue a commercial release, so I’m really excited about this news.
There was a Region 1 DVD available over here in the states for about ten minutes during the mid-2000s when OtSG was making the rounds of US festivals. I went to a screening and they actually had the DVD on sale at a merch table. I had read about the movie so I took a chance and purchased it before the screening figuring (correctly) that if was as good as claimed the DVD would go quickly. This slightly makes up for the Blu-Ray being Region B which I expect will be a superior transfer.
I thought the depiction of the birdpeople aliens was striking and effective, a combination of actors and marionettes. I suppose when we think of actors in alien costumes it’s easy to flash on low budget 1950s American B movies or Star Trek’s bad wigs and actors painted blue. But here I thought it was very creative.
Has anyone read the source materials, Jerzy ?u?awski’s novels?
I think there was also a Japanese blu-ray although I don’t know how official the release was.
I’ve always assumed the books were untranslated but it turns out the trilogy was published in its first English edition just recently: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Lunar-Trilogy/Jerzy-Zulawski/9781950423163
The reputation of the film has no doubt helped with this. I’d guess that the novels will be very different from the film which is delirious even by the standards of Zulawski’s other works.