Category Archives: movies

>Alternative movie posters

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I know, this “trend” is as old as when piracy suddenly allowed every miffo out there to download Photoshop for free, but some of these are pretty cool.

However, here’s a slightly different take on the genre, since they are set in another time, featuring different actors, directors and so forth. I would love to see Fritz Lang’s German adaptation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, not to mention Akira Kurosawa’s version… That would seriously slay.

If I had the skills, I’d make a bad ass poster with Klaus Kinski starring in Blade Runner, rewritten by Alan Moore and simultaneously directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Kenneth Anger.
Soundtrack: Sunn 0))), Godspeed You Black Emperor, Clint Mansell and Burzum.
What about that? Yes, awesome.

Posters stolen from Peter Stults and Hartter.

Related posts:
Czech film posters
Modern film posters
British propaganda posters
American propaganda posters
German propaganda posters

>The books, movies and music of 2011

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BOOKS

Volumes 1–3 of Karl Ove Knausgård’s Min kamp (My Struggle) were the most crushing, honest and valuable books for me last year. Good thing there are three more volumes to read. Holy shit. I can’t wait.

So, the list of good books I read from 2011’s batch goes like this (mostly Swedish stuff):

Tomas Bannerhed – Korparna (Weyler förlag)
Roberto Bolaño – Amulett (Albert Bonniers förlag)
Mircea Cărtărescu – Dagbok. 1994–2003 (Albert Bonniers förlag)
Jacques Cazotte – Den förälskade djävulen (Malört förlag)
Noam Chomsky – Hopes and Prospects (Haymarket Books)
Magnus Dahlström – Spådom (Albert Bonniers förlag)
Crister Enander – Skiftande speglar (Bokförlaget h:ström – Text & Kultur)
Daniel Goldberg & Linus Larsson – Svenska hackare (Norstedts)
Ted Goldberg – Legalisera narkotika? Ett diskussionsunderlag (Academic Publishing of Sweden)
Michel Houellebecq – Kartan och landskapet (Albert Bonniers förlag)
Ika Johannesson & Jon Jefferson Klingberg – Blod Eld Död (Alfabeta förlag)
Karl Ove Knausgård – Min kamp 1–3 (Norstedts)
Jon Kristiansen – Metalion: The Slayer Mag Diaries (Brazillion Points)
H.P. Lovecraft – Cthulhu vaknar och andra ohyggligheter (Hastur förlag)
H.P. Lovecraft – Skräcknoveller (Vertigo förlag)
Kristian Lundberg – Och allt skall vara kärlek (Ordfront förlag)
Arthur Machen – Den röda handen (Hastur förlag)
Markis de Sade – Juliette del 5–6 (Vertigo förlag)

———–

MOVIES

To begin with, four movies that I haven’t seen yet. I believe they are more than ok:
Le Havre (Ari Kaurismäki), Play (Ruben Östlund), Shame (Steve McQueen), The Adventures of Tintin (Steven Spielberg) and Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine). I need to check these out ASAP.

My favourite movies of 2011:

The Sunset Limited (Tommy Lee Jones) [blog post]

1UP – One United Power

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson)

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)

I Love Trains – The Movie


Some truly great movies unleashed in 2010 that I saw later on in 2011:
Biutiful, Black Swan, Blue Valentine, Incendies, Inside Job, Into Eternity [blog post], Senna.

———–

MUSIC

40 Watt Sun
The Inside Room
Cyclone Empire

This is THE album of 2011 for me. Total bölfezt.
The lyrics are truly soul crushing and the music is overwhelming. I ain’t got much more to say, but if you like this one you need to check out all releases by Warning as well. Pretty much the same band.

Restless, the opening song of The Inside Room, is available here (original version) and here (acoustic version). They are both equally amazing.

40 Watt Sun is playing the Roadburn festival in Tilburg this year. I’m gonna hide in the back and probably cry my eyes out.

———–

Counterblast

Nothingness
Alerta Antifascista

This is – by far – one of the very best bands ever. Inspired by Neurosis and Amebix, rising from the ashes of the unparalleled grindcore band G-Anx, these dudes and their music are unique in a world of conformity. All of their stuff is top notch, their old songs having more of a crust edge to them (listen to Prospects (1995)).

They’re getting slower and more powerful for every album, and on Nothingness I can feel the vibes of the mighty Wovenhand and Morte Macabre, so you better start drooling. This is their most consistent release to date.

It’s hard to describe their style, but apocalyptic beauty, darkness and melancholy might say something about the atmosphere. Just listen to The Truth Will Remain and bend over.

———–

In Solitude
The World. The Flesh. The Devil.
Metal Blade

I couldn’t wrap my head around In Solitude’s debut album. I wanted to worship, but I just couldn’t do it. I really can’t put my finger on what was keeping me away. It’s far from bad, but I just didn’t get it. Great lyrics, ok songs and such, but not as good as I wanted it to be.

Everything, and I mean everything, changed when I got a hold of this masterpiece. This is the essence of occult heavy metal darkness. It’s like a sinister and dense version of the kings of the genre (Mercyful Fate), performed by highly dedicated freaks. And this time the songwriting is nothing but flawless, it’s just fucking epic.

Their upcoming tour with Watain, The Devil’s Blood and Behemoth should be killer.

———-

Looking For An Answer
Eterno Treblinka
Relapse Records

I can’t even remember the last time I heard a seriously good grindcore record. As I write this I’ve just heard a couple of songs off the new albums by Napalm Death and Terrorizer – bands who once were gods of grindcore. That was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, and now they aren’t really that interesting. The new songs may be good, but they sound like shit. Modern day metal production was what made grindcore so terribly boring in the first place, and these guys haven’t learned a thing since 1990 (Napalm Death) and 1989 (Terrorizer) respectively. In my mind, grindcore should sound like Napalm Death’s Peel sessions, Arsedestroyer’s Teen Ass Revolt, or when it gets technical and/or metallized, like Assück’s masterpiece Misery Index (listen to the whole album here).

Lo and behold! In 2011 God gave us the new Looking For An Answer assault, and holy shit, this one is a killer! Hail to Spain! Mixing the finest bits of grindcore, crust punk and old school death metal, Eterno Treblinka rocks all the way through. Great hooks, quite memorable songs, awesome production (punkish, but yet with a thick wall of sound) and funky nods to what once was (Running Through The Blood is a Fear of God cover (the great band from Switzerland), and starts off just like the old Master song by Master – awesome! Original live version here and LFAA cover here). The vocals could use some variation in style, maybe, but what the heck… I like it raw and brutal, and I got all hyped up about this release, so if you once enjoyed old school crunchy grindcore back in the day, you might want to give this one a couple of spins.

I had the chance to check out LFFA on stage once, and they were awesome live as well.

If you’ve got Spotify you’ll find it here.

———-

Rite
Lie In Wait For Blood
EEE Recordings

The best black metal release 2011 – alongside Burzum – was executed by two unknown personas hailing from Sweden. I posted an article about them here and wrote a piece for Sweden Rock Magazine #89 (the massive Ronnie James Dio tribute issue). Listen to the demo on the bandcamp site or log on to Spotify.

I’m listening to a new song right now, Juridical Doctrine, and it fucking slays! One riff running for 8 minutes. Sheer brilliance. If you’ve got the slightest interest in Deathspell Omega, Ofermod, Malign, Negative Plane, Mgła, Funeral Mist and the likes, you need to check out Rite. Now.

———-

Roffe Ruff
Barrabas
Download here

Two years ago I declared Roffe’s debut Ormar i gräset the number one album of 2009. With Barrabas, his third and final statement, his career is over. At least for now. And by the way he’s saying it in the last song, I think he really means it. Whatever happens, this album is as solid as it gets, and – to quote the UFC – as real as it gets. People cry when they listen to Fröken Anderberg, because this is stuff everyone can relate to. It’s about life, and life pretty much sucks, so of course it’s depressing. If you’re not affected by this, your life is too good.
However, Mr. Rolf’s got the humour and wits to back it all up and make this a true feast. Roffe’s a truth-teller of epic proportions (L.I.M.B.O.).
Of all three albums, this one is easily the best, although all of them must be downloaded and worshipped. He’s really that good, so do believe the hype. I’d say even if you don’t understand Swedish, this gem is worth the download. The production is crisp as fuck, and I believe you can hear this dude’s honesty just by listening to his voice.
R.I.P.

———-

Additional good stuff

Anima Morte – The Nightmare Becomes Reality
Arckanum – Helvítismyrkr
Autopsy – Macabre Eternal
Nicklas BarkerEl Último Fin de Semana
Barn Owl – Lost In The Glare
Björk – Biophilia
Blodigt Allvar – Promo 2011
Bohren Und Der Club of Gore – Beileid
Bong – Beyond Ancient Space
Bonnie Prince Billy – Wolfroy Goes To Town
Brighter Death Now – Very Little Fun
Burzum – Fallen
Craft – Void
Deutsch Nepal – Amygdala 
Erik Enocksson – Apan
The Giesagöebbels – Demo 2011
Gösta Berlings Saga – Glue Works
Hell – Human Remains
Hills – Master Sleeps
Invidious – In Death 
Krux – He Who Sleeps Amongst The Stars
Macabre – Grim Scary Tales
J. Mascis – Several Shades of Why
Mogwai – Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
Morbus Chron – Sleepers In The Rift
Necros Christos – Doom of The Occult
Opeth – Heritage
Pentagram – Last Rites
Plastikman – Arkives 1993 – 2010
Portrait – Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae
Primordial – Redemption At The Puritan’s Hand
Primus – Green Naugahyde
PyramidoSalt
Ravencult – Morbid Blood
Reveal – Nocturne of Eyes And Teeth
Swarm2011
Teitanblood – Purging Tounges
Terra Tenebrosa – The Tunnels
Today Is The Day – Pain Is A Warning
Tormented / Bombs of Hades – Split
Undergång – The Mother of Armageddon
US Christmas – The Valley Path
UsurpressIn Permanent Twilight
Vanhelgd – Church of Death
Victims – A Dissident
White Hills – H-p1
Year of The Goat – Lucem Ferre 
Yob – Atma

>Great movies of the 80’s: The Plague Dogs

>The opening scene of The Plague Dogs (1982) really sets the tone.

A dog being subject to repeated drowning experiments. Outside the thunder roars, the rain comes down hard and a cold wind blows.
This is not Disney.

Two dogs escape from a British government animal testing lab – Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental), A.R.S.E. – and roam the grey and wintry Lake District in search of a new master, or rather, in search of a good human. The facility spreads the rumour that the animals are carrying bubonic plague, so being hated by humans and not knowing how to survive, they decide that they’ll have to ”live by our teeth and kill”.

This is a highly impressive, very realistic movie. It’s free from cool effects (even though the animation work is superb if you’re into old school stuff), kind of slow at times, and most importantly: it’s severely depressing, painful and sad.

Obviously, it still remains an underground movie since it actually has got something to say (something like this: The only way to free yourself from the cruelties of mankind is to die, so when the dogs swim out to sea in the end, they choose death instead of being killed by humans…). People with a short attention span probably won’t like it, and some scenes are pretty rough. It got censored due to graphical content, and only 8,000 copies of the uncut film exists on tape. It’s on YouTube, though.

Even though the dogs’ constant self-pitiness might become tedious after a while, I think the overall darkness and sadness of it all makes up for that. True animal friends most likely will cry when watching. Hell, you don’t even have to be a fanatic animal lover to be touched by this one. Anybody reaching the conclusion that mankind sucks ought to cry every once in a while.

The realism is a huge factor as well in making this a classic movie. Rowf’s fear of water, the death scenes and the dialogue are just a few examples of that.

I come to think of Grave of the Fireflies (a superb movie that everyone should see at least once) when watching The Plague Dogs, not really because they’re both animated films, but because of the depressing mood and the realism. Sometimes, stories like these are told more efficiently in comics and animated movies.

[Snitter, trapped in a garage, is hallucinating about his old home]
Rowf: Snitter! Can you hear me?
Snitter: I’m inside my head now. And it’s where I should be.
Rowf: This is no time for one of your turns!
The Tod: Come on out, ya great fool! Sharp with ye, now, before we’re all caught!
Snitter: I can’t come out. If I do, I’ll go mad again.

———-

OTHER GREAT MOVIES OF THE 80’s:
Manhunter (1986)
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Threads (1984)
The Quiet Earth (1985)
The Thing (1982)

>Great movies of the 80’s: The Thing

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A science outpost at the South Pole, winter 1982. Unexplainable madness. Burnt human remains and melted bodies. A heavy storm. Alien mutations taking over and imitating the human body, leaving the few inhabitants scrambling in a paranoid, claustrophobic frenzy as they try to determine who’s infected and who’s not. Darkness descends. Extreme tension. Pretty soon it’s every man against every man – bellum omnium contra omnes – and within them: The ultimate in alien terror.

This masterpiece is like H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (1936), Alien (1979), The Shining (1980) and Apocalypse Now (1979), all rolled into one.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) and The X-Files got some massive inspiration here as well.

The Thing (1982) has got that lovely, cheesy 80’s feeling, like when the technical aspects of movie making just started to develop into more hi-tech areas, and when people not quite knew how to handle their new tools but used them anyway. The drug-induced social realism featured in many movies of the 70’s is replaced by a bit plastic colours and feelings, quite noticeable stylistically, but also musicwise and how the camera works and moves. It’s like people stopped thinking and let the machines do most of the work. In other words, the 80’s cheese is a bit stiff, but that’s the great charm about these fantastic movies.

None the less, The Thing is probably the most realistic among the ”mainstream” horror movies of the 80’s, or, for that matter, amongst mainstream horror movies over all. There are a lot of eerie scenes. The one where they find the sarcophagus made of ice, for example, or when blood is drawn from each man to determine who is infected… Very creepy! The editing and sound is amazing in these scenes, and the music, the dark heartbeat-like rhythms made by Ennio Morricone, is crafted for worship. Here are the sounds of isolation, paranoia and darkness.

As for the alien, still to this day I think it’s pretty cool. Not as professional as in Alien, but hey… Disfigured corpses melting into each other rule, and that’s a fact.

It’s not all gloom and doom, though. In the beginning, it’s actually quite funny.

The mad Norwegian screaming: ”Se til helvete og kom dere vekk. Det er ikke en bikkje, det er en slags ting! Det imiterer en bikkje, det er ikke virkelig! KOM DERE VEKK IDIOTER!!” (”Get the hell outta there. That’s not a dog, it’s some sort of thing! It’s imitating a dog, it isn’t real! GET AWAY YOU IDIOTS!!”).

The black dude on roller skates: ”Maybe we’re at war with the Norwegians?”

And MacReady, who simply cannot distinguish between Norway and Sweden, yelling ”Hey, Sweden!” as he enters the Norwegian outpost.

That’s funny.

I believe this is the one movie that got me into horror and science fiction in the first place. I remember watching an old grimy VHS copy back in the 80’s, and now some 25 years later, I’ve got this awesome Blu-Ray edition. Both versions are cool, but if I could I’d mix the dirty picture quality of the VHS and the sound quality of the Blu-Ray, making it the ultimate ultimate in alien terror!

John Carpenter’s The Thing is a remake of Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World (1951). Sad to say, I still haven’t seen the original, although I own it. I guess I’m pretty stupid.

And now I hear there’s a prequel ready to launch in November 2011. We’ll see how that goes…

Until then:

It’s gonna get a hell of a lot worse before it gets any better.

———-

OTHER GREAT MOVIES OF THE 80’s:

Manhunter (1986)

A Short Film About Killing (1988)

Threads (1984)

The Quiet Earth (1985)

>This place should not be disturbed

>

This is not a place for you to live in.
You should stay away from this place, and then you will be safe.

No matter if you are for or against the use of nuclear power, with Japan in mind, this is a very interesting documentary film. The future will be far more turbulent than what we’re experiencing right now. 

As of today, I was supposed to be on my way to Tokyo and spend three weeks in what I believe is one of the most interesting countries in the world. Unfortunately, this did not happen.

I’ve been dreaming about visiting Japan for over 20 years. I was supposed to go last year, but ordinary life got in the way. When I finally got my shit together, the shit hit the fan… I will not give up on Japan, though. The sun will rise again, and I’ll be back.
As for now, my heart and energy goes out to the people of this brave country. Hail to Japan!

Related posts:
Some reflections on the historical pessimism of Yukio Mishima

>The world itself

>

I dont regard my state of mind as some pessimistic view of the world.
I regard it as the world itself.
Evolution cannot avoid bringing intelligent life ultimately to an awareness of one thing above all else and that one thing is futility.

Cormac McCarthy’s play (which some people believe reads more like a novel) has been called “a poem in celebration of death”. I have yet to put my hands on anything by McCarthy that is nothing short of amazing, and The Sunset Limited is no exception.

However, I don’t find this play to be such an awesome literary experience as compared to Blood Meridian, for example, and that’s quite obvious since this is a play. Here is no Cormac painting pictures in your mind, here is none of that superb prose you’re used to, but here are these two men talking about the meaning and the meaninglessness of life, death, God, faith and other fairly intangible ideas, and that’s about it.

I didn’t know about this play until I found out about the movie adaptation. Starring Tommy Lee Jones as White and Samuel L. Jackson as Black, this is one tough battle for the human soul. In a way, these two dudes represent two extremes, and also, to be honest, two stereotypes. At least that’s what I make out of it. The black man being an ex-prisoner, a murderer, who found God in jail, and the white man being a professor and an atheist. That’s pretty stereotype, isn’t it? So, at times, the dialogue gets pathetic.

Black relies entirely on his faith in the Bible and White believes in Culture. Or believed, rather. Because apparently, White just tried to commit suicide. He has lost his faith in Culture and the human condition: “The things I believe in don’t exist anymore”. White has awoken to the real world around him, and the real world is evil. Interpreting the play in this way, I find it superb. It’s pretty much what I’ve been trying to say all along. Thus, I can cope with some parts being rather simple-minded.

I yearn for the darkness. I pray for death. Real death. If I thought that in death I would meet the people I’ve known in life I don’t know what I’d do. That would be the ultimate horror. The ultimate despair. If I had to meet my mother again and start all of that all over, only this time without the prospect of death to look forward to?
Well. That would be the final nightmare. Kafka on wheels.

This is Cormac McCarthy without the surrounding mythos and tension and atmosphere. Also, he has left the territories he knows best: man in nature, the nature of the beast, the nature of man. A lot of true critics say he’s not working as well without the atmosphere and stuff, but I say fuck that shit… Sure, I’m a fanboy, and highly biased, but I think my mind is clear enough to say that this is some pretty good dope for the soul. The subjects he’s dealing with are pretty much the same as always, although in a more accepted way, so to speak. I think this dialogue speaks to more people than Blood Meridian, for example. The Sunset Limited is straight to the point, while Blood Meridian is almost occult and obscure in perspective. 

As for the movie VS the play, I’d say I enjoyed the movie more (despite the bad editing). Maybe because I’m not used to reading plays and all, and I really like the acting of Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel Jackson.
As always, you decide.

Show me a religion that prepares one for death. For nothingness.
There’s a church I might enter.