Continuing our David Bowie week-long celebration of his life and work, K and I watched Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth last night. I had not seen this in some time, and both of us sat captivated for the entire 2 hours and 19 minutes run time. Anthony B. Richmond's camera combines with Roeg's deliberate pacing to juxtapose Bowie's inherent renowned alien beauty with the beauty of the Earth. Such a great mission statement to approach source material about an alien on Earth. The supporting cast is extravagant - Candy Clark, Rip Torn and Buck Henry* all turn in fantastic performances, but it's Bowie's grace and reserved performance that really makes this film what it is. You literally could not have cast anyone else and had this work the way it does.
* Being that Buck Henry was also in Friday night's viewing of The Linguini Incident, I guess you could spin my weekend celebration as a Buck Henry double-feature as well.
One of the most touching tracks on an album filled with touching tracks.
Watch Bowie:
Being that yesterday was Friday night and the ninth anniversary of David Bowie's death, I wanted to do more than just listen to his music. I decided to watch a movie with Bowie. I'd recently noticed the Criterion Channel added a Bowie playlist that had The Man Who Fell To Earth on it, and it's been quite some time since I watched that one. En route, however, my finger stalled on the remote as the cursor passed over a different film - one I don't remember ever hearing about before:
Super fun film Directed by Richard Shepard. Reminds me a bit of After Hours, a bit of Quick Change, and a bit of The Dark Backward and The Birdcage (which came after). Spoiler-free Letterbxd review HERE, but the long and the short of it, with Bowie as the male lead, if you're a fan and missed this like I did, see it!!!
Watch:
Oh my god. This movie!!!
Read nothing! If this hadn't gotten a small theatrical run late last year and I could count it toward next year's best of, I have faith that twelve months from now, this would still be in my top ten. Holy F*CK! Kudos to Nick Frost on writing and starring in this, and Steffen Haars for Directing. Everyone involved does a smashing job!
January 10th - nine years ago today David Bowie soared from Earth. Hopefully, he's bringing joy through music to some distant cosmic race (and we'll eventually be able to get copies on vinyl!).
Watch:
Lowell Dean, the Writer/Director of Wolfcop, has a new Horror movie based around an underground Wrestling match meant to raise the Dark Lord? In, 100%.
Even though I don't count myself a wrestling fan, this looks pretty fun.
Read:
I've been suffering a spot of insomnia and using it to blow through Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola's Joe Golem and the Drowning City.
About 90 pages in, this is a fantastic novel that kind of mashes up modern Steam Punk elements with Lovecraftian Horror and old-school Detective/Adventure/Fantasy tropes. Sounds a bit crowded, but it's not at all. The prose is brisk and vivid, and Mignola's illustrations are light and fantastic, capturing just enough imagery to really help accentuate the images the prose already brings to life. Here's the solicitation:
"In 1925, earthquakes and a rising sea level left Lower Manhattan submerged under more than thirty feet of water, so that its residents began to call it the Drowning City. Those unwilling to abandon their homes created a new life on streets turned to canals and in buildings whose first three stories were underwater. Fifty years have passed since then, and the Drowning City is full of scavengers and water rats, poor people trying to eke out an existence, and those too proud or stubborn to be defeated by circumstance.
Among them are fourteen-year-old Molly McHugh and her friend and employer, Felix Orlov. Once upon a time Orlov the Conjuror was a celebrated stage magician, but now he is an old man, a psychic medium, contacting the spirits of the departed for the grieving loved ones left behind. When a seance goes horribly wrong, Felix Orlov is abducted by strange men wearing gas masks and rubber suits, and Molly soon finds herself on the run.
Her flight will lead her into the company of a mysterious man, and his stalwart sidekick, Joe Golem, whose own past is a mystery to him."
This is the first of several collaborations between Mignola and Golden that I'm reading, and I have my good friend Chris Saunders to thank for gifting me a beautiful hardcover copy last year during my trip to L.A.
Playlist:
Mick Jagger - Strange Game (Theme from Slow Horses single)
David Bowie - Black Star
Laylow -.Raw
L.A. Witch - Eponymous
Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
Arcade Fire - Everything Now
Antibalas - Where the Gods Are In Peace
Mr. Bungle - Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny
David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
David Bowie - Outside
David Bowie - The Buddha of Suburbia OST
Vanessa Williams - Dreamin' (single)
Al B. Sure! - Nite and Day (single)
Diana Ross - Missing You (single)
Karate - Unsolved
Card:
Today's card is the Five of Wands - Strife:
From the grimoire: "Often signals the querent is unhappy with a situation such as work or home, but can also indicate inner conflict. Introduces the suite of Wands/For of Will undercurrent of moral or ethical issues (what will ultimately happen to other in the pursuit of our Will?).
Chaos that can prove growth."
Fives are Geburah - Severity; Mars. Fives are demanding cards.
So what are they demanding?
There's a balance found in Four that is interrupted by Five. This is demanding growth! Growth is Chaos, and in pursuing growth, we often offset others' balance as well as our own. So this is a 'tread with caution, but definitely tread!!!" card.
The apparently unreleased video for "Slow Burn," track four on 2002's Heathen. Such a great song; I'm not the only one to specifically call this one out here in our little music blog community.
Released 9 years ago today. It was a Friday, and no one realized that in three days David Bowie would be called back to his ancestors in the cold, black void of space. I'm wondering if this video is modeled after his home planet?
NCBD:
Oh man, I am psyched for this week's books! Let's get into it!!
Back in November, the first issue of David Ian and Rebekah McKendry's Barstow took me by surprise and blew me away! The desert can certainly be a creepy place, and Barstow leans into that all the way. Can't wait to see where this goes!
Bruticus vs. Devastator? 'Nuff said! This has me twitching with anticipation that HasbroPulse might be gearing up to release a Combaticons set similar to the Constructicons one they did last year. I could let Devastator lads pass me by, but Swindle, Vortex and their crew are probably the only merger set I would love to own. The original versions just never did the character designs on the cartoon and comic book justice. To have a Swindle or Onslaught that actually look like the characters... that would be amazing.
I read the first issue of Dan Watters' Batman: Dark Patterns last month and really liked it. Watters has become go-to writer for me; I won't read everything he does for the big two, but I think I'm 100% up on everything he's released that's creator-owned. I'm digging these one-off Bat-series, though, so I'm back on Patterns this month for another round.
This book is just f*ckin' nuts! I don't know where we're going or how we ended up where we are (what a fantastic final page last ish!), but I'm hooked once again. Boss and Rosenberg have a punk rock dystopian epic on their hands.
Watch:
Rejoice! Vinegar Syndrome announced the Blue Ray for Ryan Kruger's Street Trash!
I pre-ordered mine as soon as I saw the announcement; this SEQUEL to the 1987 original came in at number six on my Top Ten Favorite Horror Films of 2024, which can be heard over on the latest episode of The Horror Vision.
Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She
Chrystabell & David Lynch - Cellophane Memories
David Bowie - Heathen
David Bowie - Black Star
The Jesus Lizard - Rack
Hall and Oats - Greatest Hits
Card:
Today's card is the Knight of Wands:
The Firey aspect of Fire, or the Willful aspect of the Will, which feels convoluted or redundant. What does A.C. say about this one in his Book of Thoth?
"The moral qualities appropriate to this figure are activity, generosity, fierceness, impetuosity, pride, impulsiveness, swiftness in unpredictable actions."
This card implies a quickening and might warn about going off half-cocked. Things have to get done, but be careful how to do them. Impetuous actions don't often work out well, and impulsiveness can be a good thing, but it can also lead to a bad end.
You know, I never really gave Nothing's 2020 album, The Great Dismal, the chance it deserved. I wouldn't say I didn't like it, but before recently, I'd never bonded with this one like I did some of their others. That's changed, and this song resonates as a perfect album closer. Very MBV, but not, if you know what I mean.
Here's Nothing's Bandcamp HERE or their site (which is really well-made) HERE.
Watch:
F*ck. Not sure I'm ready to go back to this world...
Well, we have until April. Gonna have to look at A LOT of cat pictures to prep.
Read:
Now that issue three of Rafael Grampa's Batman: The Gargoyle of Gotham is out, I sat down over the weekend and read all three. Holy smokes. This is seriously one of the best Batman series I've read, and even though I don't read all that many Bat-Books, I've read my share of the classics. I think this will sit amongst them. One of the reasons for that? The villains.
I've talked on Drinking with Comics about how I feel Bruce's standard rogues gallery is one of the major issues keeping from reading Bat-books. I rejoiced at Morrison's run when Prof. Pig and the Black Glove were introduced. Anything to get the same stupid, overdone bad guys out of the spotlight. I mean, yeah, I like a good Joker story here and there, and I loved Max's Penguin, but it's how you approach it. For the purposes of a Batman comic that's going to hold my interest, I need something new. And Mr. Grampa has certainly done that. Cry is fantastic (if that is actually their name), and whoever this is that showed up at the end of issue three blew me away. Let's not forget the weird, hallucinogenic psychic chick. There's just so much NEW going on here, and I absolutely reveled in it while reading. Can't recommend this one enough; I just hope it doesn't take the better part of another year to get issue four. If it does, it's worth it, but man - it would be tough just waiting a month or two.
From Jonathan Grimm's Hand of Doom Tarot, which you can buy HERE.
• Page (Princess) of Swords
• XVI - The Tower
• II - High Priestess
The Earth of Air, the Earthly realms of intellect. In other words, you can be as smart as you like, and it won't mean spit if you're not street smart. The Tower tells me I'm not as smart as I think, and High Priestess suggests nurturing, so I'm reading this as a direct rebuttal to the nearly crippling self-doubt and imposter syndrome that's been hammering on the inside of my skull for the last few days. I'm not as smart as I think - meaning I've misread everything and should chuck all that baggage in the bin.
