Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Ennio Morricone A Fistful of Composer


Who else but famed Movie score/soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone would have a gorgeous Flash home page with great sound. Check it out. Yes it is in Italian. But the sound compostion that is playing in the background will more than make up for the time you spend navigating. It is by far the most stupendous sound I have heard come out of the tiny crappy speakers that are installed in my 19 inch Monitor. Amazing. Do check it out.

Oh and did I mention I am a Morricone fan. The man is a Genius. He is not only a composer of a mammoth collection of movie soundtracks but of Symphonic compositions as well.
Morricone in London!:

And I am not the only one
who thinks so.


Ennio not only outlasts the lumiƩre of such scored-film fare but still overshadows both his contemporaries and his bambinos.

His work is beyond just scoring films, without his sound the films are nothing. Whether the haunting echo of the harmoncia in Once Upon A Time In The West, or the strange melodies of terror he evokes for the films of Dario Agenta.

Unlike Gyuri, who becomes increasingly pallid, the film becomes more gray and dark, washing away all color. Its stark scenes of massed prisoners and looming guard towers acquire a bizarre, twisted beauty, which is accented by the haunting music of veteran composer Ennio Morricone.A haunting look at inhumanity and survival


Along with this new movie sound track he has a new collaboration with Ex-Smiths lead singer and now Bryan Ferry knock off Morrissey;



Morrissey Moves on From Miserable, Discovers Libido in New CD

With Tony Visconti producing, Morrissey has essentially made a thoughtful and probing album for adult-contemporary radio.
Musically, Morrissey falters

Considering the spottiness of Morrissey's last few releases, you wouldn't be out of line nursing low expectations for the singer's eighth solo release. Produced by former Bowie/T. Rex collaborator Tony Visconti, recorded in Rome and featuring string arrangements from spaghetti western composer Ennio Morricone, the disc sees the former Smiths frontman not only reinvigorating his sound but coming back to life
Ringleader of the Tormentors

It’s on the Ennio Morricone-arranged gospel concerto ‘Dear God, Please Help Me’ though where the intimacy really kicks in, as His Master declares his intent from the off (“There are explosive kegs between my legs”) like some sexually deprived artisan – which many have been led to believe he was for at least two decades – before erupting in magnanimous joy at his success in coveting a relationship at last (“…Now I’m spreading your legs with mine between!”).Morrissey: Ringleader Of The Tormentors


And the Ennio Morricone influence in modern pop rock continues with the release of Muse's new album

Muse To Shock Fans On New Album

Howard has described the album as a "very drastic" mix of musical styles, ranging from "mellow jazz" to "Prince-influenced, groove-based rock weirdness". New song "The Knights Of Cydonia" took inspiration from Italian film composer of such classics "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" and "The Untouchables", Ennio Morricone,

Muse Hope Fans Aren't Too Shocked By 'Genre-Morphing' New LP

And his influence is felt in the works of the musically adventureous Brit Punjabi Nitin Sawhney

His first album, Spirit Dance (1994), grew from listening to the Bristol trip-hop collective Massive Attack, and realising that "you can incorporate diverse music on one album and make it work". He retains his enthusiasm for Indian classical musicians, including Hariprasad Chaurasia, Ravi Shankar, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Zakir Hussain. Through the films of Satyajit Ray he discovered and was influenced by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore, famed for Bengali songs as well as poetry. He also admired Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who revolutionised the spaghetti western with his scores for Sergio Leone's films.



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Monday, April 03, 2006

The Many Faces of Solaris

Stanislaw Lem's most well known novel is Solaris (1961) because it has been the basis of several movies, not because a lot of people have read it.

There are of course the 'Solaris" movies one made in Russia in 1972 by Andre
Tarkovsky and the recent American remake in 2002. Lem has been critical of both. While Tarkovsky can be faulted by Lem he himself has been subjected to the Soviet Censors as Lem has.

Tarkovky's
earliest film Ivan Rublev has been yet to be released in its full form having suffered the worst excesses of American cut and paste editing as well as Soviet censorship. It is a tale not unlike that of the Wickerman.


But before these two versions of Solaris there were two B Grade movies that were based on Solaris or the theme of Solaris.

The first is
Journey to the Seventh Planet. Which was originally made in 1962 not 1959 as mistakenly listed here;

Journey To The Seventh Planet

Journey To The Seventh Planet

The Company Line

The United Nations sends a team to explore Uranus and they find a "small Danish village filled with voluptuous women!" Behind this set up though is a force that is using the memories of the crew against them so it can take over their ship and fly back to Earth.

1959, 77 minutes, Widescreen DVD



It is an Italian/American/Danish movie that I saw many times in my youth, usually on late night TV Sci Fi film fests. And I must admit a fondness for it.

It clearly was influenced by Lem's novel Solaris, and that maybe since the Writers and Producers are from Italy and Lems work was available in Europe before it was translated into English for UK and US distribution.

It starred B Actor John Agar. It also has a rather unique sound track. Very bubbly and hip sixties type music ahead of its time. You know that futuristic sound.....with crooning.

This cheapie came from low-budget producers/directors Ib Melchior and Sidney Pink who were between them responsible for films like The Angry Red Planet (1959), Reptilicus (1962), The Time Travelers (1964) and Death Race 2000 (1975). Pink and Melchior shot the film on the cheap in Sweden. And it certainly is cheap - the stop-motion animation for the one-eyed monster is atrocious, the actors don't even appear in the same shot as the giant creatures and the raygun beams have just been scratched onto the frame rather than animated.

But despite itself the film succeeds in transcending its limitations by creating an air of intriguing mystery. Some of the images at the opening of the film are quite striking - the apple which has rotted in one astronaut's hand after only a few minutes; the landscape that miraculously appears beyond the spaceship just before the astronauts look out; the great scene when commander Ottosen reminisces about his childhood while in the background behind him first the tree he talks about, then a windmill comes into being; the landscape that proves to be wholly surface in depth with trees that are found to have no roots. It does remind of the Ray Bradbury short story Mars is Heaven - and in turn looks forward to Solaris (1972) - but Pink does create a unique atmosphere of mystery and unease.

Directed by
Sidney W. Pink

Writing credits
Ib Melchior (screenplay)
Sidney W. Pink (story)


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Another Lem novelization that made it to film was First Space Ship on Venus a B Grade Sci-Fi movie from 1959. See Trailer here.

The trailer shows phenomenal special effects for the time. Interesting is that this movie has a Japanese cast while being a Polish East German Production.

Eight curious scientists in the far-future year 1985 try to find the source and meaning of a message disc from the planet Venus. Based on "The Astronauts" by the great Stanislaw Lem (SOLARIS), this SF curio also boasts a multinational cast, as well as beautiful photography and production design. Though Lem disowned the film, it stands on its own rather well and is probably one of the best SF films from the fifties.

I suspect that IB Melchior and Pink ,if they hadn't read Lem yet discovered him after they discovered this little gem. And you can download it for Free here.

And as usual Lem is critical of the Film version of his writing.

Still, the film is too ponderous and un-involving to stimulate the viewer's interest for long. Even the writer, Stainsaw Lem, author of such droll stuff as Solaris, has disowned it.

The image “http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004W19F.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.First Spaceship on Venus (1959) (Der Schweigende Stern/Milczaca ...

East Germany/Poland. 1959.
Director - Kurt Maetzig, Screenplay - Maetzig, J. Barkhauer, Jan Fethke, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, Stanislaw Lem, Gunther Reisch, Gunther Rucker & Alexander Stenbock-Fermor, Based on the Novel The Astronauts by Lem, US Version Produced by Edmund Goldman, Photography - Joachim Hasler, Music - Andrzej Markowski, Music (US Version) - Gordon Zahler, Special Effects - Helmut Grewald, Ernst & Vera Kuntsmann, Jan Olejarczak & Martin Sonnabend, Production Design - Alfred Hirschmeier & Anatol Radzinowicz. Production Company - Defa/Illuzjon Film Unit.
Cast:
Oldrich Lukas (Professor Harringway), Yoko Tani (Dr Sumiko Ogimura), Tang Hua-Ta (Dr Tchen Yu), Gunther Simon (Robert Brinkman), Michail N. Postnikow (Professor Durand), Kurt Rachelmann (Dr Sikarna), Ignacy Machowski (Professor Orloff), Julius Ogewe (Talua)

Plot: Scientists uncover a magnetic spool at the site of the Tunga explosion in Siberia. This is believed to have come from an exploding alien spacecraft. As all effort is made to decode the spool, it is discovered to have originated from Venus. The planned Mars rocket Cosmostrater 1 is hastily redirected towards Venus, along with a crew of top scientists. But once on Venus the Cosmostrater crew discover a world that has been devastated by atomic war and realize that the Venusians were planning to invade the Earth.


This East German-Polish co-production is a fascinating entry in the frenzy of movie making that greeted the Space Age. Amid the horde of American entries on the subject, this is an effort that quite intriguingly hails from the Communist Bloc



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LEM RIP


Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006)

Ukrainian Science Fiction writer Stanislaw Lem has passed on to the great Solaris. That world of hallucinatory existence which we create with our imaginations.

Now most bios will refer to him as Polish,
Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem, author of 'Solaris ...which is untrue since he was born in 1921 in Lviv — then part of Poland but now in Ukraine which was, is and always has been part of the Ukraine. It was a much disputed territory between the Polish Imperialists, German Imperialists and Moscow Imperialists over the past 400 years, but Ukraine it is.


Lem was Jewish, as Lviv was the largest Jewish city in the Ukraine or Poland. It was the historic city of Herzel and Bakunin, in their debates over Pan Slavism, liberalism and anarchism.

It was the most European of all East European cities.

Which reminds me of other Great Ukrainian writers who get absorbed by the Imperialists such as Hohol, opps I mean Gogol another Ukrainian writer who was claimed by the Russians through the Russification of his name. He too was an early Sci-Fi writer.

In fact let us remember that Sci-Fi beings in Eastern Europe with the advent of RUR from whence Isaac Asimov gets his theory of robotics.


Lem himself was the originator of the paranoid universe theory, which later became a popular motif for James Blish, Brian Aldiss and of course the ultimate paranoid American Phillip K. Dick.

Lem was an anarchic science fiction writer, opposed to the oppressiveness of Stalinism but equally critical of capitalism.
In The Futurological Congress, Mr. Lem created a rollicking satire of a cosmonaut taking part in a congress in Costa Rica

The congress itself is a clash of civilizations between the capitalist and communist authorities, which is overcome when terrorists, anarchists, unleash hallucinogenic drugs into the conference room.

Lem always speculated in the realm of realities being subjective as well as objective, as hallucinogenic realities, virtual realities before their time. His concept of cyberspace as we would call it today, or VR was based on the use of drugs.

His writing is dense , which is typical of Slavic writers, but worth the readers effort. Phillip K Dick in a final moment of hallucinatory madness, the very essence of American Individualist self alienation declared Lem was a collective endeavour by the communists, not a real human being.

Lem inronically praised Dick
as the only real science fiction writer in America and he viewed Dick as a religious writer in that earliest of Sci-Fi traditions,Gnosticism.
Stanislaw Lem- Philip K. Dick: A Visionary Among the Charlatans

It is a razor edged criticism of the genre ghetto in America that was defter than Harlan Ellisons usual bad boy commentary about the same ghetto. The result was that unlike Ellisons stand up comic routines that were all bluff and bluster, Lems critique of the American Sci-Fi ghetto as 'bad writers only in it for the money, cut them to the core and they turned Stalinist on Lem.

His honorary membership in the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association was withdrawn in the mid-1970s after he criticized his U.S. colleagues' writing and charged that they were more interested in making money than expanding the genre. He reserved his praise only for iconic sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick.


Lem wrote about madness and alienation, Dick descended into it. Perhaps for all its flaws there is something to be said for the collective social values of the old Soviet Union. And interesting that Lem who faced censorship by the State in Poland then faced censorship by the State of Writers in the USSA.

Lem would have been amused to see his hero Dick turned into the very incarnation of himself as an electric sheep (as in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep the short story that was to become Bladerunner).


(Philip K. Dick Robotic Memorial Portrait
At NextFest 2005)
The eerie robotic Philip K. Dick unveiled today at the NextFest 2005 event in Chicago is almost an objectification of Dick's fascination with what really makes people human. The robot was designed to provide a convincing imitation of life, with subtle head movements and facial expressions. The software that gives life to the device is well-stocked with all of Dick's printed works and memoirs. It also has face recognition software and a library of faces; it was capable of recognizing several of Dick's relatives who came to take a look at the project. It includes voice recognition and natural language processing features


Stanislaw Lem - Frequently Asked Questions


Scriptorium - Stanislaw Lem

"If [Stanislaw Lem] isn't considered for a Nobel Prize by the end of the century, it will be because someone told the judges that he writes science fiction," predicted a Philadelphia Inquirer critic in 1983. Lem is arguably the greatest living science fiction writer, and even one of the most important European authors of his generation; yet he commands little critical attention, and has failed to reach discerning American science fiction readers who ought, one would think, to be most interested in him. The reasons for this may be sought, paradoxically, in the high demands he makes of his own work: Lem is a true original, but at the price of being marginal.


We are still waiting for that Nobel Prize.

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Police View This Blog

I have been getting a lot of hits over my story on the Ianerios murder in Mexico, where I claim its a cover up. Mexican Murder Cover Up?

The most recent hit has been from the Peel Police Department. Hey guys anything to help out.

Unfortunately the Peel Police department has about as successful a record as the Mexican police, and they are just about as incorruptible as well. Remember they are police department that dealt with the Homolka/Bernardo murders.
Bernardo claims more alleged sex assaults: police



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The Conservatives Reign of Terror

What is the real reason that Immigration Minister Monte Solberg and the Conservatives are attacking immigrant workers in Canada?

Sure they have overstayed their welcome without the proper papers , but we face nowhere near the illegal immigration of other countries. And they were promised an amnesty.

I refuse to call them illegal aliens, as my grandparents, and any of us whose grandparents came from non UK based countries, were so refered to.

The big " Enemy Alien" scare in 1919 during the Winnipeg General Strike was that it was led by Reds, Bolsheviki, aliens to Canada's very British way of life. The fact that the leaders of the General Strike were all English or Scottish trade unionists in no way related to the charges that the real force behind the strike was Ukrainian, Finn, Icelandic and Jewish labour activists.


The government of the day was of course Conservative. Eighty years later the Conservatives are in power once again and attacking immigrant workers as Aliens.

Bad enought they began deporting Portugese construction workers in Toronto, that has caused an outrage and raised concerns about the Conservatives immigration policy.
Illegal immigrants told to stay 'underground'

One that appears influenced by the likes of Paul Fromm and his White Power advocates who influence the base of the Tories.

Here is the latest spin that the Conservatives will use to kick out undocumented workers; State security. And instead of it being Bolsheviki Reds they will use Terrorism as their excuse. But again like in 1919 the Conservatives will justify their reactionary policy with the supposeded threat of Enemy Aliens.

Cabbies speak out on arrest of colleague
Globe and Mail - 1 Apr 2006
NEWMARKET -- The recent arrest of two Toronto-area men on immigration charges -- and a published report linking one to a notorious Pakistani terrorist group -- has cast a chill over neighbours and co-workers while raising fresh concerns about how Canada ...
Suspect denies terror links Calgary Sun
Alleged al Qaeda terrorist arrested near Toronto CTV.ca
London Free Press - Toronto Sun - York Region Era Banner - 640 Toronto - all 26 related »


But we still have to ask why the Conservatives are hell bent on kicking out working class folks who are earning a living? It's not like we don't need them.

There is something sinister and white behind the Conservatives immigration concerns. It was no mistake they put a Mormon from white Southern Alberta in charge of Immigration. His riding is rife with racist attacks on foreign workers as the strike at Tysons showed last year.

And who is the new deportation policy hurting? Why those least able to defend themselves who came here looking for work. And of course they are not white.

Filipino caregiver in Canada to stay and fight deportation

Canadian immigration authorities set to deport Egyptian writer and ...





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Surrealist Blog



In searching web for my previous article on Zoo's I came across this interesting Surrealist Blog. And unlike the paintings of Salvador Dali, the blog does not melt on your screen.

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Zoo Screwed

Forget the protests by Pamela Anderson about the seal hunt. If she and other ill informed Anti-Sealing opponents were really concerened with wildlife they would have fund raised for the Quebec City Zoo which closed this weekend. It is not just an animal story but a political animal story.

It is a sad tale that exposed the continuing failure of the Neo-Conservative agenda. It includes opportunist federal Conservative candidates claiming they would save the Zoo. A secret report to the Liberal provincial government that exposes their privatization of the Zoo failed, and finally the closure of the Zoo this weekend.

The image “http://www.alamut.com/images/1999_misc/ernstBirdhead.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.The Chicago Surrealists called for the freedom of prisoners in Zoo's.

Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm describes the origins of Zoos in the 19th century, in his book Age of Empires, as part of the culture of Imperialism. Zoos captured and imprisoned animals and humans. The Zoo's and anthropological exhibtions of the 19th century included animals and captive humans from Africa. We have since released the humans from their beneficial captivity, but the myth of the benefits of Zoo's for animals continues.

That being said the occupants of the Quebec Zoo deserve to live their final days in security.

But some beasts like a pair of grizzly bears are probably too old to be moved, even if a new home can be found for the lumbering orphans. Devastated zookeepers say they have no intention of destroying any animals, but they have yet to hear the shut-down plan from the zoo's owner, the Quebec government. "We have an obligation to these animals, and there is nobody here who is going to euthanize these animals just because the zoo is closed," keeper Karl Fournier said in an interview.

Something they have in common with working class pensioners who now face a concerted capitalist assault on their penison benefits.


Joey the Bear meets Joey the Worker and they both get screwed by capitalism.

Quebec zoo closure ruffles a few feathers
More recently, the federal Conservative government refused to help despite the claim by many Quebec City residents that local Tory candidates promised during the recent election campaign to bail out the zoo. JosƩe Verner, the minister in charge of the Quebec City region, says the candidates' words were twisted. The provincial Liberal government finally decided to pull the plug on the zoo after a secret report that apparently recommended closure. When the zoo reopened a few years ago after renovations, admission was hiked to $25 per adult. Prices were later cut in half but annual attendance dropped from 250,000 in the 1990s to 60,000 by 2005. The zoo ran a $5 million deficit in each of the past three years, covering about half of its operating expenses. The province estimates closing the zoo will cost $23 million.


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WTO NAFTA And Montreal Metro

The Left has been correct in dissing the international accords Canada has signed that restrict our economic soverignty. Here is a case in point.

The irony being that the state capitalist Bombardier corporation calls for protectionism in the case of construction of subway cars for Montreals Metro.

While Premier Jean Charest, Mister Privatization at all costs, warns that if the Metro deal is done Bombardiers way it may meet a WTO or NAFTA challenge.

Which begs the question for all those right wingers who say don't worry about privatising Canada's medicare system, such NAFTA and WTO rules don't apply. They do. Just the same as they do for subway cars.

MONTREAL -- Bloc Quebecois industry critic Paul CrĆŖte says that Premier Jean Charest is dragging his feet on a construction contract for Montreal's metro.

Bombardier has requested that the province award the Montreal company the contract, worth $1.2 billion, without an invitation to tender.

Charest, however, says that he must first make sure that such an arrangement would not violate any international trade agreements.


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