by Chris Barrus
Everyone in Blogistan is talking about the next-gen NASA spacecraft Orion and the freshly inked contract with Lockheed Martin. Yeah, the Raumpatrouille Orion is way marvy, and the 50s-era “Project Orion” nuke ship is a fun Bad Idea, but I’m shocked that none of the pop-sci-cult watchers out there (and yes Boing Boing, I’m looking at you) namechecked the most notable Orion of all.
These mock-up pictures of what the 2001 Orion operation would have looked like are pretty cool too.
It seems odd that such a highly developed civilization has not yet found a way to combat parasites. These pesky creatures build huge hives or nests which often block or slow down the orderly progress of the earthling. However, the earthling seems to have this matter in hand. The eradication of these pests is obviously a top priority job for the working class.
Kaj Pindal & Les Drew’s awesome animated short What On Earth! – now available on YouTube.
1. Aaron Koblin’s “Flight Patterns” – alternative visualizations of US air traffic.
2. Op-Art artist Bridget Riley
3. The iPod edition of the Yule Log
4. The second wave of retrocars, especially the concepts for the Dodge Challenger (I’ll take one in “Vanishing Point” white please) and Lamborghini Miura.
5. The Friends Of Eddie Coyle. This turned up on one of the cable networks a couple days ago and annoyingly it’s not on DVD yet. I started watching it because of Robert Mitchum, who’s terrific in it, but the movie’s real star is the grimy New England industrial autumn – lots of faded overcast grey, brown, flat green, battered strip malls, faded cars from the 70s, – barely a blue sky or primary color to be found. It’s a hell of a cracking good 70s-era existential noir movie too.
StreetWars arrives to Los Angeles in March and I’m stumped to think of any 
remaining 70s-era geek activities that haven’t been transmogrified into a new 2006 edition. Next thing you know I’ll be playing Asteroids while waiting on a new season of Battlestar Galactica. Oh wait…
The potential downside of the new LA edition is simple geography. You live in Long Beach, your target is in Chatsworth, you work in Pasadena, etc. Much of that three week game duration would be spent in traffic. Still it’s kinda neat to see that the authorities are just as angry now as back when we were playing it at sci-fi conventions. Steve Jackson Games (Cthulhu bless ’em) still publishes the original rules such as they were.
Anyway, every good cult activity deserves an exploitation movie and you can’t go wrong with Tag: The Assassination Game. It’s not particularly good and is probably more noteworthy now as a Linda Hamilton trivia answer, but having both Michael Winslow and Frazer Smith guarantees it’s spot in a future episode of “I Love The 80s.”
Good luck guys – don’t get shot by the L.A.P.D.
1. The Fall on “Later with Jools Holland.” I kinda liked Holland way back when he was the snarky new wave guy that would randomly show up on MTV’s old “IRS’ The Cutting Edge,” but now he an old smug self-importance Paul Shaffer-type who insists upon inserting his boogie woogie piano into every act on his show. M.E.S. would just murder the guy and the Fall’s performance was indeed great, but my favorite part came at the beginning when all the guests perform together in an attempt to out awesome each other – only the Fall jump up and down like a band of sinister muppets.
2. Mapping Toponymy. Where regional differences in name for topographical features like “hollows,” “coves,” “-burg,” etc. are actually mapped out.
3. The AMT Piranha. As seen in the Man From U.N.C.L.E. The closest thing there was to a Hot Wheels car you could actually drive.
4. Big Bugs. Just what the web site says – giant insectoid sculptures.
5. Wrong Is Right. You want to give this movie more credit than it probably deserves… Middle Eastern shenanigans, dictators who suddenly can’t get the CIA to return their phone calls, suicide bombers, a president who becomes emboldened after being perceived as a wimp, a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and a media who’s only interested in which side will give them the best ratings. Add in the usual supporting cast of 80s-era parody actors (Leslie Nielsen, Dean Stockwell, Henry Silva) and it should add up to a forgotten movie twenty years ahead of it’s time and at least a short list candidate for a “in the footsteps of Dr. Strangelove list.” Well, kinda sorta. After recently watching it for the first time since it was released, it doesn’t seem quite as sharp as I remember it being but dorky comedies like this and Deal Of The Century are a damn sight better compared with the shrill pound-you-over-the-head tone of current war satires like Lord Of War.
Still, bonus points for the sight gag of Sean Connery throwing his hairpiece out of a helicopter at the end. Double extra bonus for casting a young Jennifer Jason Leigh as a child who poisons her parents for a reality show.
I’m kinda surprised that The Satan Bug hasn’t been namechecked that much in the pantheon of “viral science gone mad” films. The proto-Andromeda Strain elements are all in place: secret underground lab in the desert, government scientists of ambiguous allegiances, hideous threat to Los Angeles (and by extension, the world), and crackerjack performances from all (George Maharis, Anne Francis, Richard Basehart, Ed Asner, and Simon Oakland in front of the camera, John Sturges and James Clavell behind). All in all, a decent thriller about trained professionals doing their job…
However, the real reason to watch this has nothing to do with biological apocalypse and everything to do with desert modernism. Every location could double as a feature house in an early 60s issue of Sunset or Arizona Highways magazine.
Forget the action, I want a DVD release so I can study the architecture. It’s a heck of a lot less expensive than that spiffy Palm Springs Weekend book.
1. The television series Fortier. Gritty police crime dramas are a dime-a-dozen, but this one is superior than most anything else that’s airing right now. Reminds me a lot of Prime Suspect only with grouchy French-Canadians.
2. I’m not a big fan of watermelons, but I might reconsider now that they’ve been repackaged as Godzilla eggs.
3. This essay on the Winchester Mystery House which recontextualizes Sarah Winchester’s mania into a capitalist parable.
Part of what makes the Winchester Mystery House so spooky, I think, is the way it reminds visitors and Silicon Valley neighbors of how fleeting industrial power really is–eventually, the fortunes made in Silicon Valley will pass away and remain only in the form of preserved houses built during the 1980s and 1990s. The death of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, symbolized in Sarah’s house, is a reminder to Silicon Valley professionals and residents that their industry, too, will die, taking fortunes and lives with it.
4. I’m not sure if I’ll see A Good Woman, but it’s goddamn great to see illustrated movie posters making a return.
5. The unbelievably fantastic metallic album covers for Philips’ Prospective 21e Siècle series of avant-garde electronic LPs.
1. This collection of posters for the movies presented by Mystery Science Theater 3000.
2. The “musical furry lobster”
3. Though not furry, the the sponge crab carries around a sponge on it’s back for camouflage.
4. Italian guitars of the 1960s. (full disclosure: I own a Crucinelli-built Vox Cheetah)
5. François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters’ comic series Les Cités Obscures. Mysterious steampunk adventure stories where the story/plots center around architecture city planning constructs. I’ve got three of the books and love them dearly, but I had no idea that there were nine more. Each one feels like a history parable that fell out of some parallel universe. (more reading)
There’s much more under the hood of Todd Haynes’ Safe than the basic slow death by suburban life plot, but regardless of which ambiguous analysis you follow the endpoint is still the same: Julianne Moore’s character is compelled and/or logically decides that living in a germ-free igloo is the only way to recover some real or imagined medical/emotional/psychological control.
I never would have expected Safe to be in that small list of “future now” tales like Blade Runner where the social milieu/whathaveyou inside supersedes the story. Well maybe not so soon. Enter Snowflake, Arizona…
In this town 150 miles northeast of Phoenix, “for sale” signs have become as commonplace as sagebrush. “Real estate has gone crazy around here,” said Bruce Wachter, an agent with the local Century 21 franchise.
But one “for sale” sign has a group of residents worried. They suffer from multiple chemical sensitivities, an illness that led them to flee cities for this remote high desert town.An electrical engineer from Mesa, a broker from Chicago, a software executive from Santa Cruz, Calif. — all settled in Snowflake to escape pesticides and paints that they say caused them devastating health effects.
Now they fear that a nearby house could be bought by a family that wants to use chemicals on its lawn, or install a blacktop driveway, rendering the fragile haven a haven no longer. “We might have to evacuate some people,” said Susan Molloy, who has lived in the area since 1994.
1. The statue of Godzilla in the Ginza district of Tokyo.
2. The terrazzo floor of the Clark St. subway station in Brooklyn.
3. The Yu-Mex music movement. When Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet Union during the “Informbiro” period, the entertainment authorities had to go elsewhere for film and music inspiration. Enter Mexico…
4. The web page of Albanian President Alfred Moisiu
5. Julian Opie’s strangely hypnotic Bruce Walking and Sara Walking LED signs in front of the Tweed Courthouse on Chambers St. immediately next to the Brooklyn Bridge.
