ce399 | research archive

The Satan Bug (1965): 44(Obama)/88(Heil Hitler)/777(Dow Crash'08)/9.3(Gattaca-Crowley)/H1N1(=6) (Video)

Military to Deploy on U.S. Soil to "Assist" with Pandemic Outbreak

Alan Moore on Watchmen Movie: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

For the record, Alan Moore has not softened his view on Hollywood nor its plan to bring his classic graphic novel "Watchmen" to the screen next March.

"I find film in its modern form to be quite bullying," Moore told me during an hour-long phone call from his home in England. "It spoon-feeds us, which has the effect of watering down our collective cultural imagination. It is as if we are freshly hatched birds looking up with our mouths open waiting for Hollywood to feed us more regurgitated worms. The 'Watchmen' film sounds like more regurgitated worms. I for one am sick of worms. Can't we get something else? Perhaps some takeout? Even Chinese worms would be a nice change."

Moore is often described as a recluse but, really, I think it's more precise to say he is simply too busy at his writing desk. "Yes, perhaps I should get out more," he said with a chuckle. In conversation, the 54-year-old iconoclast is everything his longtime readers would expect -- articulate, witty, obstinate and selectively enigmatic. Far from grouchy, he only gets an edge in his voice when he talks about the effect of Hollywood on the comics medium that he so memorably energized in the 1980s with "Saga of the Swamp Thing," "V for Vendetta," "Marvelman" and, of course, "Watchmen," his 1986 masterpiece. The Warner Bros. film version of "Watchmen" is due in theaters in March although the project has encountered some turbulence with a lawsuit filed by 20th Century Fox over who has the rights to the property. Moore has no intention of seeing the film and, in fact, he hints that he has put a magical curse on the entire endeavor.

Comedian "Will the film even be coming out? There are these legal problems now, which I find wonderfully ironic. Perhaps it's been cursed from afar, from England. And I can tell you that I will also be spitting venom all over it for months to come."

Moore said all that with more mischievous glee than true malice, but I know it will still pain "Watchmen" director Zack Snyder when he reads it. The director of "300" absolutely adores the work of Moore and has been laboring intensely to bring "Watchmen" to the screen with faithful sophistication. But I don't think there's any way to win Moore over, he simply detests Hollywood. Moore said he has never watched any of the film adaptations of his comics creations (which have included "V for Vendetta," "From Hell," "Constantine" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") and that he believes "Watchmen" is "inherently unfilmable." He also rues the effect of Hollywood's siren call on the contemporary comics scene.

(excerpt)

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/09/alan-moore-on-w.html

more:

Comic-book hero refuses to bow to Hollywood

...

Not only did Moore say he will not watch the film, but he will also not accept a penny of its royalties, nor allow his name to be used in its marketing. In the interview he tells the reporter that he recently received a contract from Warner Bros asking for his signature beneath the words: "I, the undersigned, hereby give you permission to take my name off of the film and to send my money to [his former collaborator] Dave Gibbons."

This is not the first time Moore has turned his nose up at Hollywood's lucre. He first fell out over the adaptation of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which resulted in makers 20th Century Fox being accused of plagiarism. Fox settled the case, which Moore saw as tantamount to an admission of guilt. Then, Moore was further stung by the Wachowski brothers' adaptation of V for Vendetta, which wore the clothes of his characters and spoke the words of his plot, but watered down his anarchist politics (although it nevertheless featured a sublime performance from Hugo Weaving as V). Since then Moore has refused to have anything to do with Hollywood, asking adapters to withdraw his name from the credits and refusing to accept payment. He instead asks for his share of the money to go to his collaborating artists.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/jan/08/moorestaystruetohiscomics

The Brain Eaters (1958)

The Brain Eaters (1958): Plot Summary, Trivia & Factual Errors.

Strange things are happening in Riverdale, Illinois. A huge, seemingly alien structure has been found jutting out of the earth. Sent to investigate the origin of the mysterious object, Senator Walter Powers discovers that parasites from the center of the earth have infiltrated the town, taking control of the authorities and workers, making communication with the outside world impossible, and leaving the responsibility of stopping the invasion up to Powers and a small group of free individuals.

* The producers of this movie were sued by Robert A. Heinlein, who claimed the plot stole several elements of his novel, "The Puppet Masters". The suit was settled out of court.

* Producer Ed Nelson, who also stars, created the parasites himself using little wind-up toys covered with fur from an old coat and pipe cleaners for antennae.

* Some sources have claimed that future exploitation director Jack Hill acted in this film. "Jack Hill" was actually the name being used by veteran actor Cornelius Keefe (who plays Senator Walter K. Powers) for his film credits during the 1950s.

* To save money on his own film, Ed Nelson, who also produced, wears the same coat he used in Night of the Blood Beast (1958).

Factual errors: Leonard Nimoy's name is misspelled in the opening credits as "Leonard Nemoy"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051432/trivia

"Here is..."

True force. All the king's men...cannot put if back together again.

القوة الحقيقية. جميع الملك الرجل... لا يمكن ان تضع اذا معا مرة اخرى الى الوراءء

"Neighborhood's going to Hell"

Southern California Wildfires (2007)

Hell Los Angeles: Constantine (2005)

Download d_storm05.jpg (1991)

In Heaven, Everything Is Fine

David Lynch's German Guru Angers Students with Goebbels Rallying Cry

Ercoli Virus

click to enlarge

More here. Note: contains screen shot 'spoilers.'

Army of Shadows (1969)

Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows (1969) (aka L' Armée des Ombres) . More here.

"Might I Remind You Mr. Spade..."

"Might I remind you Mr. Spade that you may have the falcon, but we certainly have you."--Joel Cairo 1941

Major Characters:

Sam Spade adult male, in his 30s, tall, with "yellow-grey" eyes, thick brows, a hooked nose, and pale brown hair growing down from a point on his forehead -- "....like a blond satan."

Joel Cairo adult male, possibly homosexual or bisexual, small-boned, shorter than Spade, black hair, wears lots of jewelry and cologne.

Ethnicity: Joel Cairo is described as "Levantine" and carries a Greek passport.

Gumshoes, Sleuths & Snoopers

The noir films that focus on Los Angeles or San Francisco are also Orientalist, as they tend to emphasize and demonize their Asian collectives and locales.   From the hideaway of D.O.A. 's Persian Majak . . ., West Coast noir takes us on an Orientalist tour that includes Geiger's Asian opium den in The Big Sleep , the apartment of noir's first homosexual Hong Kong-based and Istanbul-bound family in The Maltese Falcon , or to the similarly marked beach house of Jules Amthor in Murder, My Sweet , who is looking for his jewels (which happen to be Chinese).  In West Coast noir, the West is a threshold to the racialized East, and the sexually perverse Chinatown is often the portal.

...

While Oliver and Trigo attribute evil of the East "in parts: as jewels" and other objects, the name "Cairo" has rendered the character a metonym, an embodiment of the Orient.  The part that is an Oriental and the whole that is the Orient are wedded. Any ornament or physical feature, however small, on Cairo 's person, comes to crystallize the East.   Fastidiously, decadently dressed, with his less than manly posture, his exotic, alluring perfume, Cairo resembles a castrated Charlie Chan, a feminized homosexual.

A Touch of Yellow in Film Noir
[note: apologies to Sheng-mei Ma, could not locate your contact information.]

Edward Said’s “Orientalism revisited”

--

In 1539 the Knights Templar of Malta paid tribute to Charles V of Spain by sending him a Golden Falcon encrusted from beak to claw with rarest jewels. But pirates seized the galley carrying this priceless token, and the fate of the Maltese Falcon remains a mystery to this day.

...

As Greenstreet inspects the bird, turning it around and around, he grows frantic, produces a penknife, and begins to cut away the black enamel. He cuts faster and faster, carving in a frenzy but finds no jewels encrusted in the falcon’s body, finally shouting, “It’s a fake...it’s a phony...it’s lead...it’s lead...it’s a fake.”

The Maltese Falcon

Lot 268, Egyptian basalt statue of the falcon Horus, Late Period, Dynasty XXX, 380-343 B.C., 20 1/8 inches high

For lovers of the movie, "The Maltese Falcon," Lot 268, shown above, is a must. An Egyptian basalt statue of the falcon Horus, Late Period, Dynasty XXX, 380-343 B.C., this 20 1/8-inch-high statue is highly stylized and impressively large and in fine condition apart from a few surface abrasions. It has quite a smooth finish and the falcon's head is exceptional for its fine modeling and incised markings. Even for less obsessed collectors than the one depicted by the great Sydney Greenstreet in the movie, this is the ultimate "collectible," the type of piece that by itself makes a "collection."

--

The Book of the Law

Crowley said it was revealed to him during his 1904 vacation with his wife Rose in the Boulaq neighborhood of Cairo, Egypt, by the audible dictation of a spiritual being called Aiwass, who was both the messenger of the new deities set over this æon and Crowley's own Holy Guardian Angel. In a series of trance visions, Rose indicated a number of symbols related to the Egyptian god Horus, according to the system Crowley had gotten and augmented from the Golden Dawn. She pointed out Stele 666 in the Boulaq Museum, which has since come to have a meaning in Thelemic mythology as an alternate form of the Book of the Law. Following Rose's instructions, he went to one of their rented rooms at an arranged time and took an hour of dictation from an unseen voice on each of three successive days.

...

The trinity of the Book of the Law or Liber AL is composed of three reinterpreted Egyptian deities. First is Nuit (Nut), the goddess of the night sky, closely linked in Egyptian religion with Hathor, also known as the Egyptian Venus. Her message is of freedom, love and the mystical bliss of union, as expressed in the curious equation 0=2. Nuit reveals the Law of Thelema and declares that the æons have turned in the Equinox of the Gods. She is represented imagistically as space and the stars of space. Nuit has been interpreted as the space-time continuum, or as the infinite potential containing all things real and unreal.

Second is Hadit (Heru-Behdeti or Horus of Edfu), the winged solar globe, symbol of divine authority. This form of the Egyptian god Horus, originally local to Bedheti, had influence throughout ancient Egypt. Hadit symbolizes the secret individuality within each of us, the star that each person is, the invisible, ineffable and unmanifest divine spark which moves each of us on our self-appointed path of will. As such Hadit also represents the underworld, the infinitely small point, the capacity for knowledge, the partner of Nuit, and the fiery nature of underworld deities such as Blake's Los, the Greek Hekate and Hades, and the Christian Lucifer. Their aspect of wrathfulness is often interpreted as a form of great energy usable for many purposes. Themes of kingship are central to the message of Hadit.

Third in the trinity is the child produced by the union of Nuit and Hadit, the lord of the new æon, alternately expressed by two different forms of Horus. One form is Ra-Hoor-Khuit (Ra-Horakhty), a military aspect of Horus as conqueror and warrior. Ra-Hoor-Khuit extends the inwardly-turned energy of Hadit outwards into the world. Whether the urgings to war and violence found in the third chapter of the Book of the Law, and to a lesser extent in the second chapter, are meant as metaphorical magical formulae of fiery energy, or are actual exhortations to conquer on the plane of political and temporal power, or both, is a controversial issue. Many Thelemites find any literal interpretation of the warlike material repugnant, while others embrace it as a necessary part of the world's transition to the new æon.

--

Black Mask Magazine

The Flitcraft Story

Charles S. Pierce Studies

The Maltese Falcon (1931) PreCode

Previously Unseen Photo of Barbara Steele

British Actress Barbara Steele Outside of Pinewood Studios, UK , August 1, 1958. (not above photo)
"No Reproduction or Distribution Rights are Granted."
Art Thieves
Filthy Lucre

Click here for the actual photo.

Deconstruction of Kurtz Compound

"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." -William Faulkner

Much more here: Deconstruction of Kurtz Compound.

"Now Here in this Forsaken Jungle Hell"

From Bride of the Monster aka Bride of the Atom  (1955) Bela Lugosi, directed by Ed Wood.

Dr. Eric Vornoff: My dear professor Strowsky, twenty years ago, I was banned from my home land, parted from my wife and son, never to see them again. Why? Because I suggested to use the atom elements, for producing super beings, beings of unthinkable strength and size. I was classed as a madman, a charlatan, outlawed in a world of science which previously honored me as a genius. Now here in this forsaken jungle Hell I have proven that I am alright. No, Professor Strowski, it is no laughing matter.

Dr. Eric Vornoff: One is always considered MAD, if one discovers something that others cannot grasp!

Dr. Eric Vornoff: Don't mind Lobo. He's as harmless as a kitten.

Prof. Strowski: Now I am here, sent to bring you home.

Dr. Eric Vornoff: Home? I have no home. Hunted, despised, Living like an animal! The jungle is my home. But I will show the world that I can be its master! I will perfect my own race of people. A race of atomic supermen which will conquer the world! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

"He's Close, Man. He's Real Close..."

Do Lung Bridge

WILLARD (v.o.)
"It was the way we had over here of living with ourselves.
We'd cut them in half with a machine gun and give them a
band-aid. It was a lie, and the more I saw of them, the more
I hated lies."

...

WILLARD (v.o.)
"Do Lung bridge was last army outpost on the Nung river.
Beyond it there was only Kurtz."

...

SOLDIER
"He's down by the wire. You need a flare ?"

ROACH
"No. He's close, man. He's real close...
Motherfucker."

WILLARD
"Hey, soldier. Do you know who's in
command here?"

ROACH
"Yeah...."

Winter Soldier

Here (approx 39.4mb)  are all the .pdf files compressed in .zip format contained in the data portion of the 'Winter Soldier' DVD.

QUESTION. Mr. Bishop, could you elaborate some more on the circumstances  of the killing of the four NVA nurses?

David Bishop, 21, L/Cpl., "H" Co., 2nd Bn., 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division

BISHOP. I didn't say it in the testimony, but it's written on my testimony sheet. The operation was Meade River, a very large scale operation. ROK (Korean) Marines were involved, U.S. Marines and Army were involved, and the ARVNs were involved. A cordon was set up outside of Da Nang and a big squeeze was put on right outside the airport. There were quite a few body counts as far as the enemy went. It was something like 1,300. The allies had something like 700or 800 so-called dead — we never knew. On part of the operation, we had just gotten through making heavy contact and we went through a bunker system. It was a large bunker system and we found hospitals. We came across four NVA nurses that were hiding out in one of the bunkers. They were nurses, we found medical supplies on them and they had black uniforms on. The ROK Marines came up to us and one of their officers asked us if they could have the NVA nurses, that they would take care of them because we were sweeping through the area, and that we couldn't take care of any POWs. So, I imagine, that instead of killing them, we handed them over to the ROK Marines. Well, we were still in the area when the ROK Marines started tying them down to the ground. They tied their hands to the ground, they spread-eagled them; they raped all four. There was like maybe ten or twenty ROK Marines involved. They tortured them, they sliced off their breasts, they used machetes and cut off parts of their fingers and things like this. When that was over, they took pop-up flares (which are aluminum canisters you hit with your hand; it'll shoot maybe 100-200 feet in the air) — they stuck them up their vaginas — all four of them — and they blew the top of their heads off.

MODERATOR. Any further questions?

Synthetic Choronzon

"They [the Dark Brothers] keep themselves from the kisses of my Mother Babylon, and in their lonely fortresses they pray to the false moon. And they bind themselves together with an oath and with a great curse.
...
Yet of their own poison do they perish, and in their lonely fortresses shall they be eaten up by Time that hath cheated them to serve him, and by that mighty devil Choronzon, their master, whose name is the Second Death..." -Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth (Egyptian Tarot)

A work in progress at al-keme | research archive.  Continue reading here.