Behold the spring delights of Edinburgh in this wee montage of recent snaps I’ve taken. No poverty or bar brawls here; it’s my propaganda piece.
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Kevin & Perry Go Large (2000) – appalling movie, transcendental tunes.
Kevin & Perry Go Large (2000) – it’s barely a film, more a hotchpotch of childish, pointless, often cringeworthy scenes. It has nothing to say and no reason to exist. The movie is the cinematic equivalent of jizz on a tissue. The music, though. It’s fucking magical. God, those were the days – Ibiza at the turn of the last century, when falling asleep in a pool of your own vomit was considered a trailblazing activity.
The soundtrack to Kevin & Perry Go Large is trance music at its zenith.
Right, time for a bit of Eyeball Paul. Pass the eccies.
Kolberg (1945) – last looney propaganda piece of the Third Reich.
Kolberg (1945) is frankly bonkers.
The most expensive German film of World War II at eight million marks, and shot between October 1943 to August 1944, this monstrosity depicts the defence of the eponymous fortress town against French troops at the height of the Napoleonic Wars (1807). It’s a kind of metaphor for German fortunes after the failures of Stalingrad and Kursk; with strategic initiative lost, the remainder of the fight on the Eastern Front became a series of attritional, reactive operations with no chance of success.
The extras comprised 187,000 people and 50,000 soldiers, apparently the second-highest cast of all time behind Gandhi (1982).
The city of Kolberg itself was declared a fortress town a mere month after the film’s opening, this consisting of regular showings in Berlin whilst air raids pummelled the capital.
Imagine the ideological fanaticism of a regime that, as ultimate annihilation beckoned, it still felt the need to plough such ludicrous resources into a movie of epic undertaking, resources that could have been of immeasurable human and material value in the war effort. This Nazi-opus Gone with the Wind (1939) just serves to highlight the tenuous grip on reality exhibited in the last years of the Third Reich, and an overbearing emphasis on *will* as the essential component in turning the tide of war.
Further reading:
I am a travelling slob.
On every one of my wee city adventures I have pre-trip visions, grandiose plans for culture, a desire to immerse myself in the local community, a wolf in the sheep pen (something like that).
All I ever end up doing is getting fucked up and sitting on my arse. A ten-minute museum cameo and I’m back to the pub for another intake of liquid delights. Sometimes I think I’d be better off just staying at home, necking Lidl’s own-brand Scotch from the bottle whilst furiously wanking away to Apocalypse Now (1979).
This snap defines my ‘adventures’. Copenhagen in spring. Winning (maybe).
The Lost City of Z (2016).
Z was such a pleasant surprise. It’s so rare these days to see an old-fashioned adventure movie that’s classically crafted, with a concentration on very few themes but these taken all the way and succinctly explored. It borders on David Lean at times, but peppered with vignettes of early Herzog.
Based on the exploits of Percy Fawcett, the film brought out the seeming wonder (and danger) of travel at a time when something called The British Empire actually existed, as risible the proposition now looks. Not that the film was nostalgic; merely, it captured the mores and eccentricities of the age, and the obsession with new discoveries that went with it.
These adventuring … pioneers, I suppose, are held in high esteem because they paved the way, accomplished things most men couldn’t. It’s films like this that do them service. And there isn’t a single sighting of a CGI monster or a nincompoop in a cape. Refreshingly old school.
Further reading:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/lost-city-z-review-transporting-profound-piece-cinema/
http://www.history.com/news/explorer-percy-fawcett-disappears-in-the-amazon-90-years-ago
Verisimilitude on the Eastern Front.
I’ve always wondered about this one, and have no way to verify whether it’s a legitimate piece of footage or not. It appears to be shot on the Eastern Front, capturing brutal house-to-house fighting between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht. Stalingrad, perhaps? I know re-enactments were commonplace, and especially right after battles. It’s an eerie proposition, though, that a soldier’s passing would one day be played back in an Edinburgh slum on a Friday evening, the viewer drinking Southern Comfort from a ThunderCats mug.
Any further info welcomed.
1:32 on the clip.
Orient Express.
A wee trip back into the luxury high-end voyages of the past here, with Hercule Poirot actor David Suchet doing the Orient Express thing sans the Agatha Christie plot mechanisms. Nothing matters outside the train, the roving slice of the Victorian beast a world unto itself. It’s a charming doc. And I’m never travelling with ScotRail again after viewing this.
Total Recall – Dreams of Mars.
“You’re a top operative working undercover on an important mission. People are trying to kill you left and right. You meet this beautiful exotic woman. I don’t want to spoil it for you, Doug, but you rest assured that by the time the trip is over, you get the girl, kill the bad guys, and save the entire planet.”
Philip K. Dick wrote We Can Remember It for You Wholesale in 1966. I’ve never read the short story, only having on about 16 occasions watched the movie adaptation Total Recall (1990). As a kid I was in it for the action and Arnie one-liners. As an alleged adult it’s the purchased memory theme that brings me back, the ambuiguity as to whether Quaid’s Secret Agent adventure is fantasy or not.
Perhaps the peak Arnie flick – a blistering entertainment married to cerebral ideas and conceits – it still stands as one of the most accessible sci-fi works over the past 30 years. The future of the holiday here is the downloading of data, the transcending of air travel. Returning with artefacts aside, what are journeys but the accumulation of memories, imprints which serve as building blocks of the id.
The movie – and, I presume, the short story – was way ahead of its time, and still holds up.
Quaid’s Rekall program: Blue Sky on Mars.
Hong Kong – The Handover.
‘I have relinquished the administration of this government. God Save The Queen. Patten.’
Last Governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten transfers sovereignty to the People’s Republic of China on 1 July 1997.
Nothing quite encapsulates the spluttering anticlimactic end of the British Empire as does this dreary, pitiful snap. No drama, no tension, just a timorous ceremony and this accompanying image for posterity.
Sometimes watershed moments of history produce underwhelming accounts. I hate goodbyes, too.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 