Should Be Mentioned

A few little somethings to not be ignored.


First, HOORAY, Astroland has been spared for another Summer at Coney Island.


Second, imomus, aka Momus, has, to my delight, embedded three sections of John Berger's TV series Ways of Seeing in his journal. You can also just find them on YouTube through a search like THIS ONE (though the last two things that come up there aren't actually the Berger, but just refer to it).

The sharp, excellent book that was produced as an adjunct of the TV series was one of the first texts I had as a film student at NYU/Tisch, and has been quite important to me ever since (as well as a fine lead-in to Berger's denser works). The book is still just an approximation of the series - Berger laid it out specifically as a TV presentation, and it works much better in that format. We saw the first (maybe the second, too?) episode also during that first term at NYU, but that's the only time I got to see the preferred form of Berger's presentation (in 16mm projection). Unfortunately at the time we saw it, my professor, Daniel Kazimierski, had been made a little sensitive by previous students' reactions to the film, and warned us that it was "very 1970s" in style and that Berger's shirt and hairstyle were now out-of-fashion and "amusing." As a result, much of my class erupted in unfounded guffaws whenever Berger appeared onscreen in the fashion of a man of his age in early 70s London.

Which, in fact, only proves several of Berger's points about context and perception.

In any case, like Momus, I also hope that more of the series, if not the whole damned thing, makes it to YouTube.


Oh, and did I ever mention Look Around You here? If not (or even if so), here's the first episode:

And HERE's a search that will let you find the rest.


Oh, and I see you can now find Posh Nosh at YouTube as well:

HERE are the other episodes of that - Berit and I saw it as a filler piece on Buffalo PBS while we were up in Canada at New Year's.


Okay, enough videos. Other business -- I've been trying to get the Gemini CollisionWorks online presence somewhat down. We still don't have our own webpage, with archives, photos, reviews and the like (it's coming . . . sometime), but we have these things:


BLOG: http://collisionwork.livejournal.com/
PHOTOSTREAM: http://flickr.com/photos/geminicollisionworks/
STORE: http://www.cafepress.com/collisionworks
(now with brand-new Ian W. Hill's Hamlet and World Gone Wrong gear!)
MYSPACE: http://www.myspace.com/geminicollisionworks
LINKEDIN: http://www.linkedin.com/in/geminicollisionworks


Use as you like. Thanks.

The One That Achieves Madness

I mentioned Performance, the film by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, a couple of days ago, as I was watching it with a bunch of other Nicolas Roeg films.

It is, however, for all the tropes in it now thought of as Roeg-ian, and carried through Roeg's great works of the 70s, as much a film by Cammell as by Roeg, and it is only in recent years that Cammell's work is being appreciated.

Besides Performance, Cammell only directed three other films, the odd and interesting, if unsuccessful, Demon Seed, the amazing White of the Eye, and Wild Side, which I've only seen in a disowned-by-Cammell, mangled cut that was still wonderful (it has since been restored to Cammell's intentions and recently premiered at MoMA).

Cammell committed suicide in 1996 by shooting himself in the head, an act that saddened everyone who knew him, but seems to have surprised none of them.

While looking up some of the earlier clips I posted today on YouTube, I discovered that someone had posted the entirety of Kevin MacDonald and Chris Rodley's documentary, Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance in 9 segments. I've just started watching, and it's more interesting than I'd imagined, with new interviews with Mick Jagger, James Fox, Anita Pallenberg, Barbara Steele, Nic Roeg, Kenneth Anger (Cammell appears as Osiris in Anger's classic Lucifer Rising), and many others who knew Cammell.

If you're interested in Performance, 1960s England, or Brit new wave film in general, I recommend this. Here's part one as a taste:

And HERE's a page where you can find all the other pieces.

Enjoy.