277: In which I travel from Dystopia to Venus.

Absentmindedly trawling the internet for ideas and images to form a blog post or two.  It’s quiet a little journey I’ve been on, wading through the mire of google images and Wikipedia articles, and have arrived at an interest series of twists and turns; plenty of pictures too.  Starting off by trying to locate the name of the Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds song that Harry and Hermione dance to in that cringeworthy scene in Deathly Hallows pt. 1, I discovered a detail about how the Ministry of Magic scene contains a reference to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.  From there I went on a search for images related to dystopian fiction.

Dystopia is a vague concept seemingly related to all sorts of nightmare visions of the future, ranging from robots taking over, all out war, mind control, fascism, malevolent and benevolent dictators, etcetera, etc, &c.  Often dystopias can be masked by a surface veneer of utopia; everything appears perfect, but look closer and all is rotten.  Like in Demolition Man.

A Terminator and a big gun

Part man, part machine, all cop; The future of Law Enforcement.

Then logically we take a look at the peaceful beauty of utopia, far from the terror of the Morlocks, MDKs and mimetic polyalloy.  It’s a world of tra-la-la’ing around the maypole, joyous comfort in our nudity, free from worries of war, disease, hunger and poverty.  Monetary systems are no longer needed and all our needs are fulfilled, our goals are realistic and achievable, and our bellies are full.  We are doing pretty well for ourselves.

from The Garden of Earthly Delights, by Hieronymus Bosch 

Utopian flying machines, France, 1890-1900 (chromolithograph trading card).

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at” Oscar Wilde

The Golden Age by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

So now I’ve discovered an artist totally new to me; Lucas Cranach the Elder, a German Renaissance painter and printer who lived from 1472 ‘til 1553.  Completely new to me, but an instant favourite.  Just look at his signature:

Yes, he may have been a little strange.  I can easily imagine his name cropping up in the dark ages of Bathilda Bagshot’s weighty tome A History of Magic.  His pictures I have seen this evening are bizarre and beautiful; they seem on the surface like so many others from their time, but something about them seems just a little off.  As a result they are unsettling and I can’t put my finger on exactly what is going on there.  They are just weird ok.  Don’t make me explain it.  He also liked Venus a lot, but then again, how can you not?

Venus and Cupid, 1508

Venus in a Landscape, late era

Duke Henry IV, Duke of Saxony, yeah nice clothes mate

This is clearly a post more about images than words, so I’m going to stop babbling and let you look at the pictures, and the hardcore among you can explore the links I have gifted you.  If you click on them you will magically be transported to another island in Internet Ocean.

125: Penguins, Deathly Hallows and the petty distractions

Just got back from watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, and it was good but if I’m honest I didn’t enjoy it as much as the film of the Half Blood Prince.  The changes made from the book all made perfect sense considering the necessity to condense and the transition from written to visual media, but all things considered it wasn’t quite as exciting or emotional.  The books were the exact opposite with Deathly Hallows being clearly superior of the two.  It is much more story driven and focused with all the intrigue and war manoeuvrings accumulating and culminating.  I guess because the book has been split into two films we will get all the excitement and release in the final film.  (Note to my mates:  I am about to reveal myself as more of a geek than any of you perhaps imagined.)  The opening is bound to be incredible given that Harry, Ron and Hermione are soon to break into Gringotts to steal Voldemort’s Horcrux from the LeStrange vault.  From there on in it can only get better culminating in all out wizarding war and the Battle of Hogwarts.

I think the main reason I didn’t fully enjoy watching the Deathly Hallows tonight was that the house lights in the cinema were not fully extinguished.  They remained at a low level but noticeable in the corner of my eye.  This was massively distracting and prevented me fully suspending my disbelief.  Despite Ron Weasley continually playing with his Deluminator the house lights remained on.  I seem to remember when watching the Half Blood Prince the cinema was plunged into an oppressive choking darkness making the on-screen action the entirety of experience; no stupid little glowing bulbs at the outskirts of vision.  Why the cinema wasn’t in total darkness today I do not know.  It was my first visit to Vue in Lancaster; I watched the last one at the cinema in Parrs Wood, Didsbury.  Perhaps it is some health and safety based paranoia that keeps the low lights on; perhaps it is a forgetful, lazy and inconsiderate attendant.  Either way it is amazing how such a minor detail can affect one’s perception of events.

For years and years I couldn’t eat breakfast cereal because I had once found a hair in my bowl.  The hair was a long one (not short and curly) and mixed in with the milk and cereal.  It pressed across my tongue like a cheese wire, and for years afterwards when I thought of cereal I felt the cringe of the hair against my tongue and pictured the cheese wire.

I once tried to watch March of the Penguins, an American-made ‘documentary’ with extremely high-quality camera work.  Apparently good documentaries are so rare in the USA that when they make one they have to get all self-congratulatory and stick it in the cinemas.  We here in the UK are blessed with David Attenborough and the BBC and so are used to amazing documentaries.  As a result we know how to do them; as well as amazing visuals you also need to convey important accurate information about the actual lives of the animals being shown.  The makers of March of the Penguins didn’t give a shit about factual accuracy or naturalist realism; they thought fuck it, let’s turn reality into a made up story where everything is anthropomorphic and all the little penguins are good Christians, and if you have faith you don’t need knowledge and fuck off you fucking fucks, you ruined it with your stupid little script.

There’s more examples out there somewhere but my brain is in the off position.  Night.