Hello, North Bergen

This blog is apparently quite popular (and has been for a few weeks) in one particular New Jersey town for reasons I don’t understand. I’m guessing it’s the same person? Can’t imagine sixty different people in one town I’d never heard of until recently being interested in my nonsense. Hopefully whoever’s checking in from there is finding what they’re looking for, at any rate… hate to think they’re checking in so much and I’m just disappointing them somehow. Hi there.

Age shall weary them… or me, at least

ARGH. I have the famous-ish 1913 recording of Beethoven’s 5th symphony by Arthur Nikisch, and have more than once pondered the way it now sits closer in time to the premiere of that symphony in 1808 than it does to us now. 105 years between the premiere and the recording, 113 years between the recording and us in 2026 (the latter number, of course, can only ever get bigger), and I always find that kind of head-spinning to contemplate. But something about this makes me feel even older… 92 years between the book and the film, 116 (and rising) between the film and us. Oh my aching bones. And then he further noted it was closer in time to Mary Shelley’s birth in 1797 than it is to us and oh my even more aching bones…

And then someone else noted:

Oh NO. There are, of course, multiple arguable points for the beginnings on cinema, but for the purposes of this discussion let’s say it was 1893 when Edison first publicly exbibited his… er, mostly W.K.L. Dickson’s experiments. That’s… 117 years from the declaration to the Brooklyn Institute showing and 133 (and rising) from the latter to ourselves. My bones are no longer aching, having disintegrated into a fine powder from the age of it all. If you need me, I’ll be somewhere among the rest of the dust in this room…

Meet George Doe

While going through that old Livejournal the other night, I rediscovered this picture of me with George W. Bush’s stunt double at 2SER… this was the glory days of APEC 2007; Australia was hosting the APEC gatherings for that year and Sydney was declared the location for Leaders’ Week, when the leaders of the 21 member nations did their particular get-together, and accordingly the old town became something of a police state where the people who actually live here weren’t allowed into our own city. Fortunately 2SER was outside the zone, so we kept going… and that Wednesday afternoon I met the “president”. Flat and lifeless like the real thing, though nonetheless still smarter than the present incumbent. So yeah, there’s me nearly 20 years ago… my beard was controlled and had no grey in it. Hard to believe it is me somehow…

And another thing about Alraune

After rewatching the film last night, I did a bit more research on it via Wikipedia and landed on the entry for Wolfgang Zilzer, who plays the young man that Alraune seduces in the first part of the film before “Dad” shows up… he evidently had an exceptionally long career, making his first film in 1915 and his last one in 1987; not quite as long as Curt Bois, who I believe is the film actor with the longest career, starting in 1907 and ending in 1987, but long enough.

Zilzer was born in the US but raised in Germany, became a featured player at UFA before fleeing to the US after you know who came to power, whereupon he appeared in a number of films by Ernst Lubitsch and did a number of anti-Nazi films during the war, including an obscure film called Casablanca (which also featured Curt Bois, oddly enough). One of those films was something called Enemy of Women, in which he actually starred as Joseph Goebbels, but most of them seem to have been minor, including one called The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler in which one of the main players was a fellow called George Dolenz; if you don’t know him, you may know his son. And one of his later films was Union City, the female lead of which was Debbie Harry from Blondie. Across the decades, Wolfgang Zilzer indirectly connected the world of 1960s pop with the New Wave. Even Curt Bois couldn’t claim that, I don’t think…

But the other notable thing about Wolfgang Zilzer is that he died in 1991, meaning that he was still alive when I first saw Alraune. Not only were SBS showing a film made in 1927, one of the primary supporting actors in it was still with us that night in July 1990 when they did. I wonder if he would’ve been as perplexed as I was back then about one of his old movies turning up on Australian TV like that…

Mandrakery

I suspect most people have never heard of Henrik Galeen’s Alraune, and very few of the folks who have would call it one of the world’s great classics. It’s kind of middling, and rather longer and slower than is good for it. Objectively, it’s good more than it is great. I don’t care about that, though, cos Alraune is possibly the most important film I’ve ever seen, and objecrivity be damned.

So, it’s mid-July 1990. I’ve only recently worked out how to tune the TV to pick up SBS (which only broadcast on UHF). Accordingly,  I’d started looking at the TV guide listings for SBS now that I could watch it. And one week I was struck by the sight from a film apparently from 1927 (in which year it was made, though actually released in January 1928) showing that Saturday night.

What the Christ was a film from the 1920s doing on Australian TV? And who know films were even being made then? Needless to say, I had to watch this thing…

I had next to no real knowledge of cinema at this time. I was 15, rarely went to the cinema, and mostly saw the films I did see on video or TV. As such, I had no sense of film’s history. Before this, I think the oldest film I’d seen was this one, which I think aired one day as a midday movie (remember when the TV networks here still did those?) and I just happened to have the TV on at the time. I do recall in what must’ve been 1988 or 1989 that Channel 7 showed the original Frankenstein, but it was very late at night and at that age late night TV was a bit beyond me. But I did watch the first few minutes and I got a sense something I can only call great age (probably cos Seven were likely showing a ratty old 16mm print they’d had for decades), and that this came near the beginning of something. Hard to explain, but thus it was.

And I wasn’t entirely wrong about that, cos in 1931 Hollywood was still dealing with the introduction of sound technology a few years earlier… but, as I obviously now know better, there’d been this whole world of silent cinema that I was almost entirely ignorant of; I have a very vague memory of seeing a clip of Metropolis before this, but that’s about it. And now there was a film from 1927 on TV. This was almost too much to believe.

And I loved it. I was blown away by its very existence, obviously. I can’t remember the last time I watched, though I did find a very old entry on Livejournal dated February 14 2005 where I wrote about the film cos I was dubbing my by-then kind of elderly recording of it to a better-quality tape, possibly I watched it while doing that. As far as I know SBS never showed it again (I read the TV guides religiously so I would’ve seen it listed if they had), it was too obscure a film to be on video to rent/buy, and even now the only copies of it I can see on Youtube are kind of crap. Full marks, therefore, to Deaf Crocodile for putting out on blu. (Just wish the English subtitles didn’t keep calling Alraune “Mandrake”. I know it’s technically not wrong as such, but I still don’t like it for some reason…)

I wonder, though, how I’d react to it if I were only discovering it now. Probably the way I summed it up at the start of this. Notably, this restoration is massively longer than I recall the film being when I first saw it; I don’t remember just how long that was but I think it might’ve been about 100 minutes. This version is about 134 minutes (not including the opening text on the restoration). It’s a silent film so that may be down to frame rate differences, but I think there’s some actual new footage… but it’s so long since I last it I don’t recall precise details.

As I said, it’s good rather than great. Wiki calls it a “science fiction horror film”, but really it’s more of an erotic melodrama that’s built on Alraune herself being the product of semi-weird science; I actually only got on this viewing just how grotesque the mandrake myth presented here really is. It gets by mostly on Brigitte Helm’s performance in the lead role, otherwise the acting is inclined to ham a bit, and the length is kind of preposterous given the pacing. And I still don’t care.

Because everything followed from Alraune. The initial befuddlement at the idea of a film made in 1927 ignited curiosity in me, I had to know more. First stop was the old Britannica article on film history, then to actual books. Gradually I came to the understanding that film was A Thing that could be and should be taken seriously, it had an interesting history and there was art to it, all of that, and I still had to know more. My horizons suddenly expanded vastly, and they still are. I then discovered you could actually study this stuff academically, and the later result of that was me spending 11 years as part of the 2SER film show. I owe Henrik Galeen a fair bit, really.

1989-90 was a period in which I feel now I was finally starting to come into myself and really discovering things that were mine. I don’t know how else to describe. H.P. Lovecraft put me onto a wider world of books, The Doors put me onto a wider world of music, and Alraune put me onto a wider world of cinema (especially silent cinema, which will always be a major fascination of mine). There were other “important” films I saw for the first time in 1990, but none of them was as big for me as Alraune was. Goes to show you it’s not necessarily the great classics that change everything for you.

Yea verily, JD saith unto us…

It wasn’t enough for Mushroom Cock to snark at the Pope; J. Divans felt someone more qualified should join in.

Vance is, of course, currently the most famous Catholic convert in the US, and we know he is because he’s written that book about it and kids will probably have to read it in school… so obviously someone who only became a Catholic in 2019 is far more adept than Bob Prevost, who was born into Catholicism and has been a Catholic for, what, over 60 years longer than Vance at judging matters of faith. I mean, the Pope’s statement could well be criticised cos it’s not like the church has been historically afraid of violence and war… but the warmonger and nouveau Catholique Vance is probably the last person to be making any such criticism.

And a lot of people have been judging him accordingly. Vance put out this bullshit at a Turning Point USA event where he was fairly roundly heckled and at which he already wasn’t a big drawcard:

Only about a quarter of the 8000 seats in this space had bums on them, apparently, and the crowd outside protesting him was pretty substantial too. Erika Kirk was supposed to be there with him but pulled out because of death threats or something. Apparently J. Divans could look after himself, though…

Indeed, I am reminded of the chihuahua that lives a few doors down from me. Lola is J. Divans, but she’s a lot funnier than him, and, though this is debatable, possibly less stupid…

Meanwhile in NSW…

NSW protest laws brought in after Bondi Beach attack deemed ‘unconstitutional’ by top court

Controversial laws to restrict protests in New South Wales following the Bondi Beach terrorist attack have been struck down by the state’s top court.
The Court of Appeal accepted arguments by protest groups that the expanded police powers were unconstitutional, in a judgment handed down on Thursday afternoon.
The laws passed on Christmas Eve during an emergency sitting of parliament were used to purportedly prevent authorised public assemblies in parts of Sydney for almost two months.
Chief Justice Andrew Bell ruled the laws “impermissibly burdened” the implied right to freedom of political communication under Australia’s constitution. […]
Within hours of the provisions entering the statute books on Christmas Eve, the police commissioner made a declaration restricting protests throughout Greater Sydney.
The declaration, which lasted for 14 days at a time, was extended on four occasions and did not lapse until February 17.
The subject area, however, was reduced in January to the eastern suburbs and CBD, with a carve out for Hyde Park to allow for protests on Australia Day.
The restrictions remained in place for Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit in February, which drew large protests. […]
The State of New South Wales argued the laws had effect only in “tightly confined circumstances” and had the “legitimate purpose” of “protecting the community and enhanc[ing] social cohesion” in response to the Bondi attack.

Yeah, as objectively awful as the Bondi event was, it still wasn’t enough justification for this other bullshit. A gross exploitation of those people’s deaths. This comes well-timed, too, given the post I made the other about those judges who went against Trump being fired for doing so; I’ll bet Minns is wishing he could get away with that now…

Doctor my arse

But there was one bit of levity from the White House in the last couple of days, with Mushroom Cock posting an AI picture of himself as Jesus:

This was… interestingly timed, given Krasnov’s recent dispute with the Pope; he posts this bullshit all the time cos someone insists on making it, and usually people just roll their eyes and sigh wearily at the old cunt, but this time even the cult are saying “WTF, dude?”. Among them:

Riley Gaines used to be a professional swimmer before changing careers and becoming a professional transphobe instead; and while she’s not wrong about Trump benefitting from a little humility, she’s also a champion fool for thinking he’d ever give into it. He’s not capable of humility and I don’t believe he even understands the concept. And in any case he’s not interested in her opinions:

That’s YOU told, woman! But the best part of the whole story is there: “He said he believed the photo depicted him as a doctor, not Jesus” and only the Fake News could possibly construe him as looking like that Christ character.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met any doctor who healed people just with the light glowing from his hands. I don’t know what’s worse, the idea that he might actually believe that, the idea that he thinks the rest of us would be believe that, or the idea that at least some of the cult WILL believe that. And why does the guy he’s “healing” look so familiar…

…Ah, THAT’S why. I’ve seen quite a few people comment on the similarity, one wit reckoned that whatever AI created the Jesus Trump image had just consumed so many photos of the two together that it just had to stick Epstein in there. Anyway, Trump’s deleted the silly thing now cos he doesn’t like “confusing” people, which must be the first time he’s ever worried about being confusing… good thing nothing ever fully disappears from the Internet, eh…