Take those old records off the shelf

[austin_dern]

Early report; I may be gone this evening. Parent's got tickets to a Skitch Henderson concert, surprising me. I don't think I thought he'd died, but I didn't particularly think he was alive either. There's quantum indeterminacy to it.

A Georges Méliès film: Méliès stands between two tables. He takes his head off, puts it on the left table, and grows a new head. He takes that off and puts it on the right. He grows a new head that he takes off and puts on the left. He takes out a banjo; the four heads (separately) sing, plainly out of tune. He smashes the ones on the left with his banjo, and throws the one on the right away. Méliès walks forward, out of focus, Fin. Four Troublesome Heads, 1898. That's far from his only ``cheerful dismemberment'' film, all done by multiple-exposure shots. Wow.

He's in Living Dollsfor a surfeit of films with statues, mannequins, drawings, and playing cards becoming live women, and (often) taunting Méliès, transforming as he approaches. The whimsy's marvelous, but I'm awed by doing this with only multiple-exposure shots and stop-substitutions. I want to know this better.

New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, at the Statue of Liberty Reopening preempting The Price Is Right: ``The Statue of Liberty is officially [ BLEEEEEEEEEP ]'' -- WCBS claimed ``technical difficulties''; I think Tom Ridge got him just before he fessed up about the ``reliable and credible evidence terrorists are gonna put explosive boogers in your handkerchief'' nonsense.

Trivia: France stopped maintaining the Maginot Line in 1964. Source: Maginot Line: Myth and Reality, Anthony Kemp.

Currently Reading: The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester.

Comments

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

That Troublesome Heads bit would all be done in computer graphics nowadays, and it would show up in the trailer for a really huge-budget film, and it would be far less impressive because of it. I still like the concept, though, and I find myself really wanting to see this.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yeah, unfortunately, on all accounts. In fact, I suspect that I could probably do it with my modest computer programming talent. Computer graphics can do wonderful things to awe the soul and fill one with wonder, but they're mostly used to generate humongous digital armies that we're all a bit tired of by now ...

But I really do want to see these movies, now. Baby Dolls called the various works scientific fairy-tales and as magical comedies, and really, why be alive if you're not in search of magical comedies?

The films are also described as ``acting out the very fictional tropes Freud listed as uncanny: he decapitates himself and plays with his head, he makes his own double appear out of nowhere; limbs are dismembered and inanimate objects are given a life of their own.'' I love the concept.