From the ripping new album Blackbraid III, which is destined to be in my top ten of the year. Awesome video to boot - not too often I can say that. Order your copy of the album HERE.
Watch:
Somehow, it's probably been close to 20 years since I last watched my DVD copy of Caro and Jeunet's The City of Lost Children. It's amazing how, just like I wrote about rediscovering Man Man's Life Fantastic last summer, something I once loved so much could slip to the wayside and go so long without a viewing.
This film is still every bit as magical as it was the first time I saw it, circa the early 2000s. Released in 1995, the internet show the original, Sony Pictures Classics' DVD was first released in 1999, and I did not acquire my first DVD player until somewhere either near the end of 2000 or the beginning of 2001. This was one of the first DVDs I ever purchased, as the film had been covered in the Wrapped in Plastic David Lynch/Twin Peaks magazine due to Angelo Badalamenti providing the film's score, and all the stills and the write-up had me ravenous to see this film. Ron Perlman is fantastic as One, and all of the children are grand. What really steals the show, though, is the set design. This is a Steampunk Fantasy world unlike anything realized on film at the time. I'd argue that Caro and Jeunet's film is still one of the most unique visions I've had the pleasure of beholding, and I can only hope that, since this December marks the 30th anniversary of its original release, someone might hold a retrospective screening at one of the theatres in Chicago (cuz it ain't gonna play in Tennessee).
Read:
I am, frankly, all over the damn place with my reading at the moment.
While I've dedicated the remainder of my year for the written word to all the research I need to do for Shadow Play Book Two, I'm leaving comics/graphic novels as an outlet for pleasure reading. In 2024 I began a Sandman re-read that got me through the first three volumes, and now, since finishing Netflix's second season adaptation, I've knocked out Season of Mists and, this past weekend, A Game of You.
Barbie's story was an interesting one to continue, a thread pulled from back in The Doll's House, where we first met her living with Ken in the house where she and several other memorable characters acted as roommates to Rose during her search for her brother.
Of particular note here is Wanda's story. Although Netflix did use this character, they eschewed all of A Game of You, lifting her instead as a character in what would ultimately come from the "Dream and Delirium" road trip story from Volume 7: Brief Lives. I had zero problems with this change, and in fact, found Indya Moore's portrayal of the Wanda character quite affecting. It's important to note the different cultural contexts that distinguish the two versions of Wanda. In the comic, the character first appeared in The Sandman issue #32, published in September, 1991. The character is far more masculine here, despite their Transsexual disposition. That makes sense; the creators were no doubt playing off a cultural zeitgeist of the time, where trans people had a much harder time identifying in public and transitioning (not that they necessarily have it easy now, but I would think '91 would seem like the Dark Ages compared to cultural awareness today). Juxtapose that with Wanda in the show, who, in present-day New York, would have a considerably more established and possibly even 'mainstream' support network than the Wanda of 1991 would have ever had.
Playlist:
Deftones - private music
Blut Aus Nord - Shadows Breathe First (pre-release single)
Blut Aus Nord - Debermur Morti
Blut Aus Nord - 777: Cosmosophy
Blut Aus Nord - Hallucinogen
Revocation - New Gods, New Masters (pre-release singles)
Chris Connelly - White Phosphorus (Chris Connelly Plays Throbbing Gristle)
Ruelle - Emerge
bunsenburner - Reverie
Russian Circles - Gnosis
The Cars - Eponymous
Godflesh - Post Self
Giraffe Tongue Orchestra - Broken Lines
Frank Sinatra - In the Wee Small Hours
Card:
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Three of Swords
• Ten of Pentacles
• IX: The Hermit
Introspection leads to unhappiness, but that unhappiness leads to long-term security.
Well now, that's a pickle, but it seems like something I should try and figure out, now doesn't it?
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