RED LIGHT BYTES: The Red Light Roundup (5-22-2024)
Classics, Deep Cuts & All-New Killers in Art & Entertainment...
OVERVIEW
As we race down to the wire in these last 2-3 weeks before the magazine goes live, it is getting tough to make time for everything, but I do have quite a few items for you this week on our curative excursion for the middle of the week. It will be a bit more movie-heavy, but I think these are all titles worth exploring.
LAST CHANCE: Star Wanderers
You will be receiving this within the 30-something hours of this campaign coming to a close. JD Cowan’s science fantasy collection which I have been hawking for the better part of a month, and have contributed two musical compositions towards has made its goal, and we may even be able to get to our first stretch goal of yours truly expanding the track listing for Star Wanderers: The Soundtrack from two songs to three!
From its astonishing cover art to the promise of planet-hopping adventure and cyberpunk mystery, led by two unique agents of justice, Star Wanderers is a project I’m proud to be a part of and I hope we make it to that stretch goal. Cowan’s been a class act and a great supporter of my work in its many facets, Alex and the crew at Cirsova have been wonderful to work with, so help us finish strong and deliver some high-quality adventure fiction at a time when it is sorely needed.
REVIEW: Il Cartaio (2004)
Following on from last week’s reminiscing about the chromium future promised by those anticipating the new millennium, I want to spotlight a film that took the aesthetics and curios of its day and made something out of it. A film I am now horrified to realize is 20 years old, and a film that I truly feel is not as bad as many proclaim it.
In parts else where, I've made my affection for Argento’s video-poker giallo The Card Player well-known. It’s the story of a policewoman who finds herself playing video poker for lives of kidnap victims held hostage by a serial killer. It’s the procedural theatrics of the then new-hotness of CSI, with the gamified serial killing of Saw, all wrapped up in Argento’s classic black-leather package.
I don't regard it as the man’s finest hour. It's hard to match his golden era from 1975 to 1987, a streak of cinematic gold including Deep Red, Suspiria, Tenebrae, & Opera, or even some of his work before and immediately after. Hell, I'll say it right now, the script is a hot mess, and almost all of the bit players beyond our female & male lead can't act their way out of a paper bag. It's a million miles away from Argento's best, but it still has chilly atmosphere, surprisingly solid humor (both intentional & admittedly unintentional), and some tense sequences.
What I love about it is what it tries and how it goes about it. The production design by veteran collaborator Massimo Antonello Geleng, cinematography by Gaspar Noé associate Benoît Debie, and the music by Argento regular Claudio Simonetti all explore the technological component of the film to the point of conjuring up this sterile, even wintery atmosphere. The natural lighting, emphasis on cool colors, and the tinge of 90s electronica on top of the minimalist piano passages imbue it with the kind of aura I'd expect more of a Hong Kong film than of an Argento picture. Maybe it's my bizarre nostalgia for early 21st century tech that draws me to this one as well. The greatest thing ever by no means, but above all else, a fun twist on the giallo formula by Il Maestro.
SHORT FILM: La Prisonnière (1985)
Produced before their collaboration on 1987’s Gandahar (though released after in some territories) famed French fantasist René Laloux (Fantastic Planet) teams up with bande dessinée stud Caza (Arkhé) to adapt the latter's comic Equinoxe into a short film equal parts bewildering and hypnotic.
The Captive shows two boys finding themselves within a kingdom where silence is golden, and all sound from the outside world is shunned in that pursuit. It is only when a race of aquatic beings come from out the sea, an ocean the boys so dearly love, that this obsession with silence is brought to an end. A snippet of a war, a snapshot of a strange kingdom, but all relayed in faith to the artist's designs, but through a Moebius-like graphic lens that Laloux employed throughout the 80s, including in his final two theatrical features.
While the plot is frankly nonexistent, but the aesthetic charms more than compensate for it, with incredible art that helps to offset the tedium of the short’s pacing. It is both a blessing and a curse that it all feels like a vignette from a larger story, rather than the story itself. A blessing in that you want more (presumably found in the pages of Equinoxe), but a curse in that it kneecaps its ability to stand on its own.
Like a lost sequence from 1981’s Heavy Metal, The Captive is a slice of fantasy as delicious as it is esoteric. For fans of Laloux, Caza, and Métal Hurlant.
SONG OF THE WEEK: “Experiment IV”
We’re gonna round things out by going quality-over-quantity with our music recommendations. Nestled in that sweet, savory era of paranoid pop from the likes of Michael Jackson and Phil Collins comes a special single from art pop pioneer Kate Bush.
Written for her greatest hits album The Whole Story, this dynamite piece of polished rock tells of a twisted tale where development of a secret sonic weapon by the military (“a sound that could kill someone from a distance”), a story fully relayed in a music video directed by Bush herself and starring quite a few familiar faces including Hugh Laurie and Dawn French. One of those brilliant videos where the twist was bound to scar a kid who caught it at the wrong hour, all for a song that slots perfectly alongside the moodier climbs of tracks like the 1985 hit “Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)” by Mike + The Mechanics.
As always: stay searching, stay jamming, and always dig where no one else will. Be seeing you, soldiers!