A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Design
Three pages of them, and BIG scans as well, which makes a nice change for a web gallery. Strictly speaking, many of these films aren’t what’s usually classed as film noir (a debatable term at the best of times) but we shouldn’t quibble, painted posters are now a lost art.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Alida Valli, 1921–2006
“For a while there I was criticized as being the vice president for torture. We don’t torture. That’s not what we’re involved in.” Vice President Dick Cheney, October 24th, 2006.
“In the “war on terror”, the US administration has resorted to secret detention, enforced disappearance, prolonged incommunicado detention, indefinite detention without charge, arbitrary detention, and torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” Amnesty International.
Today is the 120th anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty, that famous gift of the French to “the home of freedom”. One can only wonder what President Grover Cleveland would have made of the current White House incumbent when George Bush signed the Military Commissions Act into law recently, giving himself and future presidents the power to “indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions.” (Anthony D. Romero, American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director).
Now that the United States has taken yet another step towards becoming the kind of country it used to profess to despise, I thought it was time that the Statue of Liberty received a makeover, something more suited to the Neo-Stalinist nation that Bush and co have been busy creating. The challenge for America in the near future, if the Democrats manage to take back the White House in 2008, will be to reverse the course the country has been set upon since 2001. At the moment I’m too cynical to believe that there’ll be any immediate reversal of these policies. Parties in opposition always complain loudly about the ravaging of constitutions then find the new laws they were complaining about have all sorts of conveniences for them once they gain power. Have the Democrats the courage to face down more “terrorist sympathiser” bullshit? Time will tell.
In the same series: Blood Money 1, Blood Money 2, War®.
Update: seems like I missed George’s latest wheeze, signing a new law relaxing the restrictions on the President declaring martial law. We’re constantly told these days it’s hysterical to mention creeping fascism (and I usually agree with George Orwell that the “f” word trips off the lips too easily). Any bets on when the time will be right?
Q: What do you get when you cross analogue synthesizers, samples from obscure public information films, the graphic design of Pelican Books, Arthur Machen, HP Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, CS Lewis, Hammer horror, the Wicker Man and the music from Oliver Postgate’s animated films for children?
A: the CD releases by artists on the Ghost Box label. Ghost Box describe themselves as “an independent music label for artists that find inspiration in library music albums, folklore, vintage electronics, and the school music room” which, if you’re familiar with the reference points, is exactly what you get. A rather wonderful blend it is too, some of the tracks on Belbury Poly’s The Willows (named after Algernon Blackwood’s stunning horror tale) are how I expected Stereolab to sound until I heard them and was rather disappointed.
Favourite of the Ghost Box releases I’ve heard to date is (perhaps inevitably) Ourobourindra by Eric Zann (the “artist” here is named after Lovecraft’s haunted musician from The Music of Erich Zann). The website description—”Eric Zann’s radios, oscillators and recordings conjure eldritch, echoing spaces and invoke the voices of the dead that whisper within them”—again is a pretty accurate summation of this atmospheric and sinister audio collage. “Sinister” is a term that can be applied to much of this music and the Ghost Box founders, Julian House and Jim Jupp, declare in a Wire feature this month that matters spectral are of particular concern, hence the label name. Ourobourindra works especially well in this regard, sounding like the product of someone working through a trauma caused by viewing the seance scene from Dracula AD 1972 at too young an age. This is one I’ll be playing on Halloween.
Ghost Box music can be purchased online here.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Penguin book covers
• The music of Igor Wakhévitch
• The music of the Wicker Man
• The Absolute Elsewhere
The (low-res) digitisation of the past continues apace on this site which is accumulating cover scans from a host of American sf and fantasy magazines. Oddly enough, I’d been looking for a place with pictures of the early Omni covers just recently, but this site didn’t come up on Google, or if it did, I missed it. I bought most of the first year’s run of Omni so it’s interesting seeing which covers I remember and which I’d forgotten about. Now, where is there a site with a complete run of New Worlds covers? Link via Strange Attractor.
And an item of contemporary magazine news:
Jonathan Barnbrook designs the latest issue of Adbusters.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• A few thousand science fiction covers
• Vintage magazine art II
• Neville Brody and Fetish Records
• View: The Modern Magazine
• Vintage magazine art
• Oz magazine, 1967–73
