18th November 11
God bless you, wherever you are, Ronald Codger.
23rd March 10
Settlement: The Park and "this space cop."
The most rewarding thing about the Internet: sometimes you write a bunch of hooey about space cops, of all things, and wake up the next morning to find someone else has taken it and turned it to something thoughtful and beautiful. Logan Antill writes:
In both Space Cop and the future we’ve fashioned our protagonist is long dead. He died in space, floating above the city, floating above the world. The supporting cast’s discussion of his actions takes up much more time than did his actual living. Looking solely at screen time, the film isn’t even about the main character. This space cop. For all of his flare and promise he dies alone in a spaceship he can’t began to understand or operate.
The photo above is one he has held on to for several years, of a helicopter crash in Arizona. “The future,” he writes, “is a well-dressed man guarding a bonfire.”
Assignment: Put together a Movies in Frames-style imagining of Space Cop, using public domain and creative commons photos.
11th January 10
Painting by Tynan Kerr.
5th January 10
Well, I kept up my end of the bargain. It’s a beautiful turn of phrase and it describes the doin’s here surprisingly well, I’d say.
23rd November 09
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
“South Street,” the Orlons, 1963. Same basic idea as last night’s featured Philly art kid track “Sth St Rx,” forty years earlier — a woolly subcultural Philadelphia pride anthem. Here are some key adjectives used in the lyrics to describe South Street:
- “loose”
- “crazy”
Check, check.
Plus: “where do all the hippies meet?” What a question! It’s 1963! They’re aren’t supposed to be any hippies yet! And yet, they’re already all shroomed up and bopping down South Street a full five years ahead of schedule.
My theory is this: dreadlocked shirtless Philadelphia art kids with homemade India ink keystone tattoos created a tinfoil time machine with a built-in theremin and fluid-stained bedsheets for their BFA thesis in the mid-2000s. They then travelled back in time to colonize 1960s Philadelphia. You know how some people are claiming scientists from the future have travelled back through time to sabotage the Large Hardon Collider in order to prevent the destruction of the universe? Same deal with Philly art kids, except a reverse-sabotage and Philadelphia-specific. So actually, not like that at all.
How like a god.
16th September 09
Inspired by Elizabeth Wilcox’s recent-ish essay on Withnail & I, I have assembled here a comprehensive list of the greatest movies of the 1980s that end with a character reciting excerpts from Act II, Scene 2 of Hamlet. In each of these films, the “what a piece of work is a man” excerpts are the last lines of spoken dialogue before the credits roll.
- Withnail & I (1986): Here, beginning at 5:25. The lines are recited by the out-of-work actor Withnail (played by Richard E. Grant) in a rainstorm to a group of indifferent zoo animals. His best friend and partner-in-crime has abandoned him for a lifetime of responsibility, and Withnail is alone. This very hammy, but very moving recitation is as vulnerable as we’ve seen him throughout the whole film.
- Britannia Hospital (1980): Here, beginning at 1:40. The lines are recited by a talking computer made from Malcolm McDowell’s brain, which was non-surgically removed from his body a few scenes earlier. Britannia Hospital is a violent, messy, absolutely furious film, a catalog of broad indictments of every aspect of British society (and also starring Mark Hamill!). This is the one scene where every character in the movie is gathered in one place, and they all get to witness together in mute horror the bleak future that the bureaucrats and technocrats have in store for ’em: a robotic perversion of Shakespeare and, by extension, the human sprirt!
Actually, I think those are the only two. Or I can’t think of any more. Are there more? But regardless, you really see the full range on the subtlety spectrum with which this monologue can be employed in wrapping up cult films of the 1980s.
