This sounds fantastic. Nick Cave's new novel, The Death of Bunny Munro is to be released in September, and the man himself is doing a series of events comprising music and readings to promote it.
The Audiobook looks very interesting too, as it features a specially composed soundtrack by Cave and Warren Ellis, using a '3D Spatial mix'. The excerpts on the website sound cool. Very twisted black humour. Definitely one not to miss...
I like the occasional romantic comedy every now and then, especially when they're as good as Definitely Maybe. Coming from the Working Title stable (Love Actually, Notting Hill etc) Definitely Maybe manages to side-step all those usual A-Z cliches of Rom-Coms, while still being sweet and funny and managing to tick all the boxes any casual film-goer would expect. I've always been a fan of Ryan Reynolds, from way back in his sit-com days when he starred in a show called Two Guys and A Girl, which never really got a decent airing over here in the UK, and still hasn't ever seen a release on DVD anywhere. It started out as a Friends clone, but evolved into a very funny ensemble show, and also introduced the world to the charms of Mr Nathan Fillion. But Reynolds always stood out, and I expected him to have a huge movie career. But he's been saddled with some pretty shoddy vehicles over the years. Definitely Maybe kind of slipped under the radar upon release, possibly due to its slightly-smarter-than-the-average-bear credentials. But it's an excellent film. The story is mainly told in flashback, as Reynolds' daughter in the film (played by the wonderful Little Miss Sunshine's Abigal Breslin) quizzes him as to how he met his mother, who he’s in the process of getting a divorce from. Reynolds' tale follows three failed romances - with college sweetheart Emily (Elizabeth Banks), free spirit April (Isla Fisher), and ambitious intellectual Summer (Rachel Weisz) - and the film holds back on revealing the answer to its mysteries until pretty much the final reel. It's not laugh out loud funny, but it carries a little more weight than your standard rom-com and by the end leaves you feeling that you've seen something with a little more substance than usual. The cast are excellent, particularly Isla Fisher, (who pretty much labours under the weight of being Sasha Baron Cohen's other half these days), and Reynolds repartee with Breslin is beautifully played. Kevin Kline (who plays an alcolholic writer also has a splendid part to play in the proceedings. It's unconventional, bittersweet and much, much better than you'd expect from the writer of Wimbledon and Bridget Jones 2. Highly recommended.
Well, it might have taken three seasons (even if the last half of season two was rather good) but Torchwood has finally stepped out of the shadow of Doctor Who and become the show it always just needed some fine tuning to be. Two episodes in and it's fast paced, witty and finally feels like a show that gives US TV a run for its money. It was a clever ploy by the Beeb to air the show on its flagship channel with the week long event that it deserves, and return the ubiquitous Mr Barrowman to what he does best: being killed multiple times and getting his arse out... High points so far: the Torchwood-mobile being stolen by Chavs, the creepy Wyndham-esque WE ARE COMING, and the very funny WE WANT A PONY riff on it tonight, the scene between Jack and a daughter who looks older than he does, the regeneration of Jack in episode two, and the curious allure of Eve Myles running around with two guns... A slightly Scooby-Doo escape in episode two did nothing to diminsh the fun of it all. It's hokum but it's utterly wonderful hokum.
A quick question for anyone who's out there. There's part of my current novella that involves a director who only made one film due to box office failure and critical indifference, and I was trying to compile a list of similar directors for inclusion in the story. Most cinephiles know about Charles Laughton and Night of the Hunter which failed mightily upon release, but is now generally regarded (rightfully) as a classic, but are there any others? Any help would be gratefully received!
Very much enjoying this lady's new album. In the vein of Regina Spektor (but with a dash of some world music influences), Aussie TV actress Lenka's The Show is a fabulously catchy summer record. The title song had featured on numerous adverts, and the video is suitably kooky. It's a crowded market these days (and I must admit there are too many crazy singer songwriter girls around these days), but this is fab.
I've been a little absent from my blog for a while now. Admittedly it's for good reasons. In the past month I've finally completed all the work on my novel and started sending it out to agents. Thus far I've had three rejections, but there's plenty of agents and most of them only take on one or two authors a year; throw in the present current financial climate and it's a uphill struggle. To offset any downside to the rejections, I've started work on a new novella, Everything Beautiful Is Far Away which I'm currently 40-odd pages into. It's going extremely well too. The writing feels good to me and a niggling problem with some of the 'weird stuff' was rectified this morning with one of those 'eureka' moments. I had to get out of bed to make some notes and now the core of the story has some much needed internal consistency. Even the weird stuff needs internal consistency...
Aside from that, I have a lot of plotting done for another full length novel (should the first one not find a home, I'd like a back up book to be ready to go), as well as notes for a follow up to the novel that out in agent-world. In between bouts of writing, I'm also enjoying the Wimbledon this year. Tennis is the only sport I can stand to watch without lapsing into a coma. All those Russian female players certainly aid the enjoyment too. Plus we finally have a Brit who can play. Andy Murray absolutely slaughtered Troicki today on Centre Court...
I'm currently half way through Carlos Ruiz Zafon's excellent The Shadow of the Wind. This was a huge Spanish bestseller about a 'Cemetery of Forgotten Books' in Barcelona, and the mystery of an author's life and death. It's a great book; deeply evocative and full of mystery and atmosphere.
And on the less cerebral side of life, I'm currently enjoying Dead Space on the XBox - hugely entertaining and downright scary stuff on a monster filled space station. Whack on the surround sound at night and this is jump out of your seat good. Looks beautiful too. I've also picked up TopSpin 3 too, which is an excellent Tennis sim - much more fun than Virtua Tennis - and a lot less effort than actually playing tennis...
And we watched Priceless tonight. An fantastic French comedy starring the luminous Audrey Tatou. She plays a scheming opportunist who dates rich older men on the French Riviera purely for their money. When she mistakes a shy bartender (the fanbulous comic talent, Gad Elmaleh) for a millionaire, this lovely movie unfolds like a modern day Audrey Hepburn movie. Tatou is gorgeous and the film shimmers with French Riviera heat. And it's absolutely hilarious. I recommend it highly.
Daily Telegraph: "The new queen of Cabaret...When she sings it's as though her breath is soaked in paraffin; one spark, and the whole room would ignite" Next time Camille O'Sullivan comes around to Birmingham EVERYONE I know has to come. Tonight's Dark Angel show was more than just a gig; it was Cabaret of the darkest kind, it was frequently hilarious, and took the term 'audience partcipation' to its absolute limit! Having heard how O'Sullivan likes to bring the show to the crowd, I decided to book tickets that although right in the centre, was a 'safe' three rows back. Alas, when we got there, we discovered that the row in front of us was purely for her to prowl across and then jump over... we were right in the firing line! By the second song, she was amongst us, sitting on laps, talking to us, taunting us and in my case, ruffling hair and enjoying the look of fear on my face... But it was incredible. I'd go as far to say that it was one of the best gigs I've ever been to. I, of course, was a captive audience: she sang Jacques Brel (My Death for the starter), Nick Cave (Little Water Song, and her stunning interpretation of The Ship Song for the finale), Tom Waits (All The World Is Green and Misery Is The River of the World), as well as a staggeringly emotive version of Hurt, a very dark version of Mack The Knife (in the original German, no less), and an impromptu rendition of Nick Drake's River Man (that they'd rehearsed once and completely nailed). The intimacy of the Town Hall - and the fact that we were front and centre - made it feel like you were transported to the dark and unpredictable 30's Weimar Berlin. It's part West End show, part absurdist comedy and pure burlesque. To cover songs like Brel's Amsterdam and Bowie's Five Years, and make them entirely her own is no mean feat. It was absolutely stunning. At the end, she and her band filed off the stage singing the final refrain of Cave's The Ship Song, and then out into the foyer. And afterward, she even waited to meet everyone, sign CDs and talk about the songs and the show, and was a delight to meet. And as I said before, next time EVERYONE is coming. Front and centre. I think it's the only way...
... and as an example of that 'audience participation' thing, here's a YouTube clip of just that...
Although this escaped into the world with only lukewarm reviews, I finally managed to catch up with Franklyn tonight, and enjoyed it immensely. It's admittedly not for everyone. Taking place in modern day London, as well as a the dystopian future Meanwhile City (where church and state are one), Gerald McMorrow's feature film debut deserves to be celebrated, not just because it's a pretty satisfying story that refuses to explain where it's going until it's good and ready, but also because it's nice to see a new Brit movie maker who can make something as visionary as established fantasy movie makers like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton, but on a minimal budget. While the aetheist vigilante Ryan Phillipe wears a hollow eyed mask in search of his nemesis, The Individual in Meanwhile City, in a more prosaic London, jilted groom, Sam Riley goes in search of his childhood sweetheart, Bernard Hill searches for his estranged war damaged son, and Eva Green makes video installations of herself comitting suicide. It's an audacious (and sometimes a little bit pretentious) bit of storytelling; a scattered jigsaw of pieces that gradually begin to form a satisfyingly complete picture, while playing with comic book mythology and the notion of perception and fantasy. The design of Meanwhile City is a ruined gothic delight, the acting is subtle and the writing sensitive and low key. I hope that despite the somewhat muted response to the movie, McMorrow can follow Franklyn up with more of the same. We need more Brit directors with this kind of vision. It's interesting to note that McMorrow started out as a runner on the movie Hardware; there's a hint of that DIY spirit that Richard Stanley started out with in Franklyn. Lets hope McMorrow doesn't end up with such a disastrous career...
As a side-post to the last one, I started re-reading Jonathan Carroll's Land of Laughs again the other day, when I realised that the aforementioned novella was going to similar places as that wonderful book. Just to make sure that no fictional toes were stepped on. And I'd forgotten just how brilliant that book was. Of course, most of Carroll's books are wonderful, uncategorizable flights of fictional genius, but Land of Laughs was most people's point of entry into his world, and it remains one of his absolute best and the template for much of his work: a smart, funny, likable narrator, a sparklingly perfect woman and a romance that unfolds, and then things get weird. Dogs talk in their sleep weird. Of late, I started to fall out of love with Carroll's books purely for the reason that the madness seems to start too early in his recent stuff; in the early books he took his time with the romance and introducing a normal world and then turned it upside down. I've tried to read White Apples and The Wooden Sea several times and just can't get into them (although I'll doubtless try again). To that end, I've embedded this audio interview with Carroll from the Barnes and Noble website, as it's an excellent interview. I had the good fortune to meet Carroll a good ten or twelve years ago now in - of all places - Swansea. I was with Rog Peyton for a horror convention, and Rog knowing Carroll, I was introduced to him. I've never met another writer who seemed to have such an aura about them; even other authors were falling over themselves to introduce themself and looking sort of awestruck. He arrived with a beautiful woman that Rog didn't seem to think was his wife. He wafted about the halls, giving off the whiff of an old Hollywood star; in short we were all under the influence of the magic of his books - he brought it with him somehow. On the Sunday afternoon I took my chance to talk with him. We were in a crowded room and although our eyes didn't meet across it, no one else seemed to be able to summon up the nerve to talk with him. So I did. And we talked. And talked. And talked. During that hour of one to one, he told me about his father, Sidney Carroll, about his writing habits, about Vienna, and about his lunches with Harrison Ford and Oliver Stone (who'd both intended to make movies of his books). I in turn felt impelled to tell him about the time I was reading Bones of the Moon; it was deep in the middle of a very harsh British winter; I had taken the bus home in the snow from work with about a hundred pages of Bones to read. About a mile from my house, the bus finally gave up amongst the drifts of snow, just as I'd finished. Anyone who's ever read the book will tell you what an emotionally affecting ending that book has and I was in tears. I had to surreptitiously wipe my eyes before we all disembarked and started the trek on foot. He was enormously pleased to hear the story. When I looked around after an hour, I realised that a lot of people had that look of why am I not talking to Carroll? I probably wouldn't be able to do it now, so I'm glad I got the chance. It's good when your heroes are more than you expect. Here's the link...
In the course of bringing all the strands of a recent idea together for what will probably be a novella, I've been gathering various (and very disparate) books and research materials for it. The first seed of the idea began a couple of years ago while we were holidaying in Devon; we were in Ilfracombe at the time, which is one of those old, faded (but still deeply pretty) Victorian seaside towns. I realised that I wanted to set a story there, possibly in one of those old, dilapidated guesthouses, and probably in the vein of Don't Look Now. I wrote it down, along with a few notes and left it to percolate in the recesses of my brain. At some point I've wanted to write a fictionalised version of the Carry On ensemble, as they've long fascinated me; Kenneth Williams in particular. And Williams at some point became a key figure in the aforementioned story idea. The camp raconteur with the acid tongue, and a faded Victorian seaside town. That's all I had for a long time. Then a couple of weeks ago, the idea seemed to want to come out; ideas do that sometimes. They're like babies; they've come to term and here they come, ready or not. So I started taking notes, involving spiritualists and little children and the past, and suddenly the story was taking shape, and then wanting to be a novella when I discovered there was a burgeoning market for them (no money, but a market just the same). Then a little side-note to add some colour suggested something else, and I ended up discarding a lot of the plot and going elsewhere. I ordered a book of Kenneth Williams diaries, and an annotated volume of the complete Lewis Carroll as Dodgson and little Alice were taking over the story too. I'm hoping I can get this off the ground in the next couple of weeks as I've written nothing since completing the novel. Hence this post. Forcing myself to feel bad if I don't get this story about Alice and Carroll and Williams and the Muses in a faded seaside town done. Hassle me about it if you know me. Really. Hassle me about the novel too while you're at it...
There's little I can add to the generally across the board love for the Star Trek franchise's reboot by J.J. Abrams. I'm certainly not going to disagree with any of it. It's a fantastic blockbuster movie, made even more impressive by the eye-popping IMAX cinema experience. The young cast are excellent. Quinto's Spock is as perfect a piece of casting as everyone expected, as is Karl Urban's spot-on 'Bones' McCoy. Chris Pine, wisely side-stepping a Shatner caricture is also absolutely excellent, playing his Kirk as defiant, rebellious and heroic and promising to only get more confident and comfortable in the role as the franchise continues. In fact all of the classic characters get a fair crack at the whip - the young Sulu and Chekov play on some old series tropes and come out well, as does Pegg's Scotty, who delivers the classic Doohan lines with relish. The story manages to straddle the old Trek values and cliches with a knowing wink and also serves up a huge effects-laden blockbuster that barrels along at break-neck pace. This is, of course, no mean feat. Re-imagining a forty year old show for a much more clued-up generation while retaining its charm, character and look is a real achievement. It's hard these days to be really swept up by the blockbuster movie, as there's just so many of them, but the new Trek is two hours of exhilarating, unalloyed FUN. Fantastic.
...and speaking of Joel Lane, I just ordered his new novella, The Witnesses Are Gone from PS Publishing tonight.
Here's the blurb:
The Witnesses Are Gone is a first-hand account of a journey into the underworld in all the wrong places. Martin Swann, its narrator, moves into an old house and finds a box of videocassettes in the garden shed. One of them has a bootleg copy of a morbid and disturbing film by a little-known French director, Jean Rien.
Martin's search for Rien's other films, and for a way to understand them, draws him away from his home and his lover into a shadow realm of secrets, rituals and encroaching decay. An encounter with a schizoid film journalist in Gravesend leads to a drug-fuelled vision in Paris – and finally to the Mexican desert where a grim revelation awaits him.
The Witnesses Are Gone updates the Orpheus myth for a world losing touch with reality. Blending supernatural horror with eroticism and warped comedy, it takes a look behind the screen on which our collective nightmares play.
It can be found here at PS Publishing. Sounds fantastic. I'll post a review once I've read it.
Also available (but a little more expensive at $40) is a new short story collection from Ex Occidente Press, by the title of The Terrible Changes.
I may try and get hold of one at some point as it looks like a nice selection of 25 years of Lane horror, and has an absolutely tremendous cover that feels very reminsicent of the old Arkham House Lovecraft hardcovers.
Some time ago I contributed a short story called Lost and Found for Joel Lane's Beneath The Ground anthology, which after some delays was published in 2003 by Alchemy Press. It remains one of my favourite short stories as it references a couple of subjects that have long been close to my heart: the music of Nick Drake and the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. To be able to merge the two into some kind of cohesive piece of fiction is one of my proudest achievements. Sometimes you look back on old work and you recall where and who you were when you wrote it, and see shortcomings both in your life and your work, but I think Lost and Found still holds up even now. It being for Joel Lane, who inspired and encouraged me right from the start, I felt an obligation to give him the absolute best that I could, and I think I did. I bring all this up purely because I was pointed toward a recent review of Beneath the Ground by D.F.Lewis here
Lost and Found This substantial story continues the river of people on the London Underground from the previous story, each story complementing and enlightening the other. I can't do this story justice. It is teeming with images that coalesce: an obsession with the London Underground finally bearing fruit as a religious epiphany with a presence that overhangs us all as well as subsuming us; a subtle narrative trick of narrators narrating being narrated in various layers of collusiveness and non-collusiveness; relationships both sibling and sexual; loss, failure, amputation, Leonard Cohen... but I was listening to Goldfrapp's 'Felt Mountain' duing the reading of this story and it imbued everything with a gorgeous sadness... "'It was like a cathedral,' he wrote. Amongst the stalagmite basins and the stalactite pillars, he could hear the sound of something like prayer. He was terrified and in awe." There are letters, too, a stack of letters. This story would not have worked in the email age. I feel as if I cannot fix this story in the kiln. It's far too diffusive - like music straight into the veins. Like trying to shape origami from air (to pinch an image from the story). Or as if trying to rediscover a place... "'It was one of those anonymous East End streets,' he wrote. 'Concrete gardens. Children playing in the road. A chip shop at one end, an off-licence at the other. It was the kind of place you'd never find twice.'"
It's nice after all these years to see that people are still discovering the anthology and the story. Strange too at this point while I'm about to start working on a short horror story that feels like it'll have a similar 'vibe' to Lost And Found. Perhaps someone's trying to tell me something...
What initially strikes you about Flicker is, quite apart from its cultural prescience (and it was published in 1992) is its similarity thematically with Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. But while there are shadowy conspiracies, paranoia and Gnosticism, Flicker contains no car chases, cliff-hangers or narrow escapes. Roszak at the time was better known for his sociology texts and for allegedly coining the term 'counterculture'; subsequently Flicker is a slow-burn - literary, analytical, comtemplative and a deeply, deeply seductive piece of writing. Beginning in the 50's, Jonathan Gates, a young film scholar gradually discovers that the works of an all-but forgotten German film-maker, Max Castle are a window to an ancient hidden conspiracy, the ongoing work of Cathar religious heretics. Gates finds himself under the tutelage of the older, analytical Clare Swann, a woman running a mildewed art-house cinema in L.A. and who likes to use film criticism as a sex aid. A "frenzied cerebral-genital curriculum". Together they unearth more of the mystery of the enigmatic Castle. To avoid the Nazi's Castle fled to Hollywood and found himself knocking out low grade horror and exploitation fare. After Castle was lost at sea near the end of the war, Castle's movies slid into obscurity. When they discover one of the 'lost' Castle movies, Gates slowly starts to realise there is more to his movies than meets the eye - literally. There are movies within his movies, something hidden within the 'flicker'...
There was in Castle’s films a genuine horror, one that froze through to the bone. At no point could I have said precisely where the film’s power lay—except that I was sure it was nothing I’d consciously seen that produced the effect. Rather, it was as if somewhere behind my eyes, another part of me was observing a different world, one in which the vampire and his victim were real, the supernatural events were real, the blasphemy was real.
Of course the subject of subliminal imagery has cropped up in many movies over the years: the skull over laying Anthony Perkins face in Psycho, the devils head in The Exorcist, and of course any amount of subliminal messages lurking behind modern day advertising. But that's a whole other conspiracy for another day.
Over the course of 600+ pages, Roszak very deliberately builds up a grandiose conspracy involving Gnostic dualists, Catholic persecution and an impending apocalypse that manages to convince purely because he's taken his sweet time about building up a rich fantasia of characters and places. There's a deep abiding love for cinema too, directors, actors, Hollywood trivia and an almost masturbatory detail for media theory. Orson Welles makes a cameo after it's established that Castle was on set for Citizen Kane, and was responsible for many of the innovations in the movie; indeed there's a wonderful overlap of fiction and actual movie fact in Flicker that you constantly find yourself wanting to rush to Wikipedia in order to tease apart the two in more obscure refrerences.
The subliminal 'movies within movies' is a seductive idea too; aside from the more well-known examples as noted earlier, it makes you wish for a real life equivalent of Castle's movies. Readers of the novel will know each other by the quickening of their pulse at the mention of a 'sallyrand', and I'll say no more.
Alas in the final 200 pages or so of the book, Roszak loses focus to an extent as he turns his attention from classic film appreciation to modern day movie making. The conspiracy takes centre stage and the characters slip out of focus somewhat. And for all Roszak's clear and abiding love of the golden age of cinema, his view of more modern fare makes him sound like an old curmudgeon. The ending too, while admittedly quite peverse, is something of a let-down after the comtemplative and academic stance of much of the novel. It feels like the denoument of a completely different, slightly more sensationalistic book.
That aside I can say that I did adore the book. It's rich, funny, beautifully written and filled to the brim with ideas. And books like that don't come along all that often.
Apparently Darren Aronofsky and Fight Club screenwriter JimUhls were connected with the book for a while, but it appears to have slipped through the cracks for the time being. Although Flicker would be a tough call for most directors, I can easily imagine Aronofsky getting to grips with the book's complexities and playing with the idea of Castle's subliminal movies within movies. Maybe one day.
Next up is Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road...
The memory is a funny thing. Years ago when I was quite young, I used to collect re-prints of 50's comic books published by Marvel before Stan Lee went on to create Spider-Man/Fantastic Four/X-Men etc. They went under the banner of Atlas Comics and had titles like Tales of Suspense, Strange Worlds and Tales to Astonish, and usually contained short comic book tales akin to Rod Serling's Twilight Zone. At an impressionable age, they really blew my mind and remain a delight. In fact I started to track them down on ebay to see if they were as good as I recalled, and they were. They were also probably my first exposure to the writing talents of Stan 'The Man' Lee and the wonderfully weird world of artist Steve Ditko.
But that isn't really where the post is going. Tonight after watching an episode of the recently obtained boxset of Supernatural (a show that has inexpicably slipped under my radar for four seasons, and is really rather fantastic), I was reminded of a story I read when I was probably no more than six years old in one of those Atlas Comics reprints. It purported to be a true story of the Stardust Airliner that vanished from the skies mid-flight in 1947. I don't recall the details by now but what I do remember is the final panel that recounted the final radio message from the Stardust minutes before it vanished; it was
ETA SANTIAGO 17.45 [standard time] STENDEC
The meaning of the word STENDEC has never been conclusively explained, the comic book told me.
Somewhat bizarrely the word STENDEC has stuck with me for over thirty years. I've forgotten the detail of people's faces, names, dates and experiences, but STENDEC stuck with me. When this episode of Supernatural concerning a demon causing a series of plane crashes begun, STENDEC suddenly popped into my head for the first time in a few years, and as the internet was at hand, I typed it into Google, expecting some seriously random results.
But it turns out that that story in a reprint of a fifties comic was based on an actual event, and finally after thirty years the mystery of the word opened up for me again.
This is from a BBC site concerning a Horizon programme about the missing Stardust...
On August 2nd 1947, a British civilian version of the wartime Lancaster bomber took off from Buenos Aires airport on a scheduled flight to Santiago. There were 5 crew and 6 passengers on board the plane - named "Stardust". But Stardust never made it to Santiago. Instead it vanished when it was apparently just a few minutes from touchdown. One final strange morse code radio message - "STENDEC" - was sent, but after that nothing more was heard from the plane.
Despite a massive search of the Andes mountains no trace of the plane was ever found. For 53 years the families of those who disappeared have not known what happened to their loved ones.
But earlier this year the plane suddenly reappeared on a glacier high up in the Andes, more than 50 km’s from the area where the plane was last reported. In February this year the Argentine army arranged a major expedition to visit the crash site beneath the massive Tupangato peak (6800m). Their aim was to bring back the human remains which had been found at the site, so that an attempt could be made at identifying them. The expedition also offered a unique opportunity for crash investigators to see if they could finally explain what happened to the ill-fated plane.
The expedition discovered the plane and some human remains, and explained much of the mystery surrounding the Stardust's disappearance: the high altitude 'jetstream' in all probability caused the Stadust to veer from its course and collide with Mount Tupangato; the plane then became buried in the glacier, travelling downhill under the influence of gravity until it reached a warmer zone, and the ice began to melt. Fifty years later, the Stardust had revealed its secrets. All save for one: STENDEC. For a long time it became part of the tapestry of UFO conspiracy theories (and becoming the name of a Spanish UFO magazine); but of course, once the Stardust was discovered, we could be fairly certain that little green men had nothing to do with it. If I recall correctly, that Atlas story certainly indicated the UFO angle, and was probably why it captured my imagination at an early age; who doesn't love a UFO story when they're a kid? In 1947 the official report into Stardust’s disappearance had this to say on the subject of STENDEC: The 17.41 signal was received by Santiago only 4 minutes before the ETA. The Chilean radio operator at Santiago states that the reception of the signal was loud and clear but that it was given out very fast. Not understanding the word "STENDEC" he queried it and had the same word repeated by the aircraft twice in succession. A solution to the word "STENDEC" has not been found. From this time on nothing further was heard from the aircraft and no contact was made with the control tower at Santiago. All further calls were unanswered. Type STENDEC into Google and you'll find a multitude of theories:
STENDEC is an anagram of DESCENT. Variations suggested that the crew might have been suffering from hypoxia (lack of oxygen) as the Lancastrian was unpressurised and the plane was flying at 24000 feet, which would have led the radio operator to scramble the message. Other explanations for the appearance of an anagram in an otherwise routine message included a dyxlexic radio operator and/or receiver in Santiago, and playfulness on behalf of Stardust’s radio operator.
The radio operator meant to say Stardust. STENDEC and Stardust have some similarities both in Morse code and English.
Various people came up with intriguing, imaginative and sometimes amusing messages based on using STENDEC as a series of initials: Hence we have:"Santiago tower message now descending entering cloud" (or "Santiago tower aircraft now descending entering cloud")"Stardust tank empty no diesel expected crash""Systems to the end navigation depends entirely on circle" (although this correspondent conceded that "the last bit may be a bit muddled")."Santiago tower even navigator doesn’t exactly know"
STENDEC (or anything similar to the word ) doesn't appear in any language apparently, so the mystery will remain unsolved. I'm sure the truth is really rather prosaic (as is often the case), but at least tonight I've resolved a word that's been bouncing around unarrested in my subconscious for thirty years. Maybe one day I'll find the comic it appeared in too, and I can close the circle completely...
When Serge Gainsbourg died on 2 March 1991, the news resulted in Paris coming to a standstill. Police blocked off the streets around his home at the Rue de Verneuil as thousands flocked, in much the same way that John Lennon's fans had gathered at the Dakota building. There was nothing on the TV but Gainsbourg all day long; the radio a continous rotation of Serge's prodigious backcatalogue. People in tears. Flags were flown at half-mast. French President Francious Mitterrand said of him, "He was our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire... He elevated the song to the level of art."
Gainsbourg is best known to the world at large for the song Je t'aime... moi non plus, and beyond that, the general audience knows little else about the man. But Gainsbourg was (and remains) part of the French culture; Gitane-smoking, louche, the epitome of French cool. A singer, songwriter, soundtrack composer, novelist, photographer, actor, artist, director, screenwriter and a drunk. He was dedicated to cigarettes, alcohol and sex. Over three decades, his musical output encompassed classical, chanson, jazz, pop, reggae, disco, rap... His lyrics were astonishing exercises in Franglais double and triple entendres and rythmic word percussion. His subject matter covered literature, coprophagy, sexual obsession, incest, farting, philosophy, Nazi death camps and cabbage heads.
Since his death his musical legacy and reknown has grown in the past fifteen years or so. Jarvis Cocker (who incidentally wrote the lyrics for Charlotte Gainsbourg's solo album in the 'Serge-style'), Franz Ferdinand, Michael Stipe, Portishead, Beckand Nick Cave all owe (and freely acknowledge) a debt to Gainsbourg's years-ahead-of-his-time style. And anyone who owns an album by the French duo, Air should know that Gainsbourg created that style of music way back in the early seventies.
Which brings us to Histoire de Melody Nelson, Gainsbourg's finest and most 'complete' work. I only discovered Gainsbourg's work in the last few years, following our first trip to Paris. I'd immersed myself in a lot of Parisian culture when I realised that my first novel would indeed be set there. So that meant Piaf, Pere Lachaise, Pigalle and Moulin Rouge. And it had to mean Gainsbourg. It seemed incredible that I was arriving at such a 'complete' artiste in my thirties. How had I missed out on someone like this for so long?
There's a lot to get through and the Best of... package Initials S.G. is a good starting point for a potted history that takes in the early Be-bop jazz style, the classic Bardot collaborations (Bonnie and Clyde being one of the greatest three minutes of pop ever committed to tape), a smattering of Melody Nelson and some of the later, less impressive reggae diversions.
But if you want a crash course in French cool, Histoire de Melody Nelson is the first and last stop. There are a lot of arguably 'cool' albums: Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, Velvet Underground's Warhol album, Tom Waits Rain Dogs, Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers, Sinatra's Songs for Swingin' Lovers... but ...Melody Nelson outcools them all.
A loose (and louche) sort of concept album, its Lolita-esque storyline involves the middle-aged Gainsbourg losing control of his 1910 Rolls Royce and colliding with English teenage nymphet Melody Nelson, and the subsequent seduction and romance that ensues. Although I've since discovered an English translation of the superb (and decidedly kinky) lyrics, which are written with a novelist's grasp of narrative, language and allusion, it's inevitably the music that leaves an indelible mark on a non-French speaking listener.
And what music it is! While Serge mutters close to the microphone about sex, aesthetics, death and obsession, a thick and rubbery funk bass guitar rumbles beneath it all, creating rhythmic tension and melody, along with a scraping, staccato, almost punk-ish electric guitar, piano rolls, lush strings and choir. While much of the early seventies output of many progressive rock outfits now sounds dated, Gainsbourg's use of funk and deep orchestrated string and choral arrangements which accentuate the rhythm and salacious atmosphere make ...Melody Nelson sound like an album made in the nineties rather than the seventies. An organ that fades in and out on the track, L’Hotel Particulier creates a spacey trip-hop effect that pre-dates the synthesizer, and will make any new listeners instantly think of Air's Moon Safari.
In L’Hotel Particulier (Special Hotel) , Gainsborug slyly describes the hotel where he and Melody consummate their relationship: “While up there a mirror reflects us, Slowly I intertwine Melody.” After that En Melody (In Melody) it's clear what's transpiring—not only because of its title, but due to the vocals by a squealing Melody (vocalized by Jane Birkin, the girl on the cover and Gainsbourg's muse and long term love).
Despite selling little more than 15,000 copies on its release, it was a highly influential album, and remains so to this day. The cover also bears a mention. Mainly, because it's a gorgeous, iconic bit of pop art, but also beacuse there are stories behind it. Jane Birkin in a short red wig and a pair of patched bell-bottom jeans. The monkey she's holding was buried with Serge and the jeans are open purely because Birkin was at the time four months pregnant with Charlotte (who has gone on to become a respected actress and musician).
On our second visit to Paris there were a couple of trips I had to make. By this time I was a fully paid-up fan of Gainsbourg, and the city seemed different to me because of it in a way that only great writers and movie makers can transform people and places for you through their art.
We visited Montparnasse cemetary where Gainsbourg's body was laid to rest. It's a beautiful place and home to Baudelaire and De Beauvoir and Sartre. Serge's grave is hidden beneath a mound of metro tickets, fluffy toys, wine bottles and cigarettes. We weren't the only one's there; a man had come from the same metro station as us and sat opposite the grave, studying it carefully for some time. Being English we didn't linger as long. But by the time we left, an older couple had arrived and left something on the grave themselves.
We also visited 5 Rue de Verneuil, Serge Gainsbourg's modest two-storey home until his death. It's situated in a repsectable street in the St Germain area, a stones-throw from the Seine, and it's the kind of place where the shops sell old masters and antiques. A few years ago, the residents of the street paid to have the walls of Gainsbourg's home white-washed after his fans travelled from all over the world to cover it with slogans and graffiti. That same night someone arrived, spray-painted a new slogan, and it began all over again. The residents gave in.
It took a little while to find, and it is in a very high-class area and the shops do sell very expensive wares. So it's all the more fascinating to find hidden there a section of wall covered in colours, caricatures, graffiti, poetry, metaphysical debates and phallic images. This more than the grave in Montparnasse felt more like the Serge I'd discovered at this late point in my life.
In retrospect I should have contributed something to the wall as I had when we visited Abbey Road a few years previous (No one I think is in my tree seemed apt at the time). But I didn't. That English reserve again. Graffiti in an expensive area - how could I? I probably will if we visit again. Apparently, hidden amongst the scrawl is a message that seems to sum Gainsbourg up perfectly. It reads, "Serge is not dead. He's in heaven, fucking." That seems about right.
The new four-part Image comic book, The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft hasn't come out yet, but has already sold to Universal and Imagine Entertainment for Ron Howard to direct.
"Created by Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz, the book borrows elements from Lovecraft’s life, such as his family’s struggle with mental illness and his own bouts with writer’s block, and transforms the young writer’s darkest nightmares into reality when he comes across a book that puts a curse on him and lets the evils he conjures up loose on the world.”
Ron Howard wouldn't have been my first choice to finally bring some classic eldritch Lovecraft inspired-horror to our screen, but I'll take what I can get. It's high time. Hopefully the comic itself will do Lovecraft justice, and we'll go from there...
A link here and here and a video for the somewhat bone-chilling tours of Chernobyl, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster. I've always found the place fascinating - 30km of 'dead-zone' surrounding the centre of the explosion. I'd love to go. It's not exactly a conventional holiday destination but the idea of tramping through those abandoned and radioactive buildings, fun fairs and schools in Pripyat to the sound of a clicking geiger conter just appeals to the ghoulish side of me I suppose.
But there's also something distinctly poetic to an area that's now become a haven for wildlife, due to the absence of humans. Particularly as many of those animals are deformed due to the contamination. Should you want to book, you can do so here. Just don't tell your girlfriend/wife. It'll be a nice surprise for her when she gets off the plane...
A brief story about Glen David Gold before we begin. Before he wrote Carter Beats The Devil, Gold met his future wife, Alice Sebold (the bestselling novelist of The Lovely Bones) when they were both MFA candidates at California University. Gold arrived on a motorbike for the orientation and upon meeting Sebold, tried and failed to get his helmet off without success. He sat through the entire orientation with it on, and Sebold was smitten.
It's an odd little story but after finishing Gold's Carter Beats The Devil today, it sounds like a moment lifted from the novel itself.
Like Michael Chabon's incredible The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier and Clay, Carter Beats The Devil is a rich, surprising concoction of history, magic, science comedy and romance. A book that, despite it's size (560 pages), makes you wish it were longer. Those old adages about skipping meals and losing sleep due to a novel all apply to Carter Beats The Devil. It's an unalloyed joy from start to finish. I simply couldn't put it down.
The novel begins in 1923 with Carter performing his act, the climax of which is a duel with the Devil, with president Warren Harding taking part. But two hours later, Harding is dead and a dogged secret service agent is convinced Carter is responsible and in possession of a final Presidential secret.
After the audacious beginning, Gold takes us back to Carter's childhood in an upper class turn of the century San Francisco, following the budding magician through the vaudeville circuit, a titanic clash with a rival magician, a meeting with the legendary Harry Houdini, and Carter's ascent to his status as the greatest magician in the world. There's a dazzling array of larger-than-life characters along the way: fortune tellers, the world's tallest man, the inventor of television, pirates on the Molucca Sea, a blind woman with a dark past and pet lion called Baby.
To say more would be to spoil one of the biggest treats that books have to offer you. Gold's novel is an epic sleight of hand as well as a rip-roaring page turner. Using the old magician's adage of hiding a secret in plain sight, the book twists one way and then another, constantly suprising you. There are amazing escapes, huge magical set-pieces, and Gold effortlessly evokes the atmosphere of the early twenties and the spirit of theatre and vaudeville, weaving (and then tying up) an array of subplots and a wonderfully OTT villain into the finale. It's also a beautifully written love story between Carter and the two women who come into his life. Only in this book can a magician and a blind woman flirting in an overgrown park while a lion eats roast beef off of wax paper move you so completely. It's a charming, clever and unique piece of fiction, and destined to join Kavalier and Clay as one of my all time favourite novels.
Now seven years after the publication of Carter Beats The Devil, Glen David Gold has a new novel imminent, which sounds equally fascinating. Sunnyside opens on a winter day in 1916 during which Charlie Chaplin is spotted in more than eight hundred places simultaneously, an extraordinary mass delusion. From there, the novel follows the overlapping fortunes of three men: Leland Wheeler, son of the world's last (and worst) Wild West star, as he heads to the battlefields of France; snobbish Hugo Black, drafted to fight under the towering General Edmund Ironside in America's doomed engagement with Russia; and Chaplin himself, as he faces a tightening vice of complications - studio moguls, questions about his patriotism, his unchecked heart, and, most menacing of all, his mother - to finally make a movie 'as good as he was.'
And just as promising is the news that Carter Beats The Devil has been picked up by AMC, the company behind Mad Men to be adapted into a mini-series. Although Tom Cruise owned the rights for several years, and intended to produce and star in movie version of the book, this AMC produced version sounds like a much more appealing proposition. Let's hope it pans out.
Born in Birmingham in 1971. I've been a writer of short fiction for over twenty years, and have been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including Crimewave, Birmingham Noir, Black Static, The Third Alternative and The Best British Mysteries IV. I was nominated for the CWA Short Story Dagger in 2001 for Leaving Seven Sisters, published in Crimewave 4: Mood Indigo.
I've recently completed a second novel, Everything Beautiful Is Far Away, as well as a private eye novel, Secret Skin, set in Paris.
I like the occasional romantic comedy every now and then, especially when they're as good as Definitely Maybe. Coming from the Working Title stable (Love Actually, Notting Hill etc) Definitely Maybe manages to side-step all those usual A-Z cliches of Rom-Coms, while still being sweet and funny and managing to tick all the boxes any casual film-goer would expect.
Well, it might have taken three seasons (even if the last half of season two was rather good) but Torchwood has finally stepped out of the shadow of Doctor Who and become the show it always just needed some fine tuning to be.
I'm currently half way through Carlos Ruiz Zafon's excellent The Shadow of the Wind. This was a huge Spanish bestseller about a 'Cemetery of Forgotten Books' in Barcelona, and the mystery of an author's life and death. It's a great book; deeply evocative and full of mystery and atmosphere.
And we watched Priceless tonight. An fantastic French comedy starring the luminous Audrey Tatou. She plays a scheming opportunist who dates rich older men on the French Riviera purely for their money. When she mistakes a shy bartender (the fanbulous comic talent, Gad Elmaleh) for a millionaire, this lovely movie unfolds like a modern day Audrey Hepburn movie. Tatou is gorgeous and the film shimmers with French Riviera heat. And it's absolutely hilarious. I recommend it highly.
Next time Camille O'Sullivan comes around to Birmingham EVERYONE I know has to come. Tonight's Dark Angel show was more than just a gig; it was Cabaret of the darkest kind, it was frequently hilarious, and took the term 'audience partcipation' to its absolute limit!
Although this escaped into the world with only lukewarm reviews, I finally managed to catch up with Franklyn tonight, and enjoyed it immensely. It's admittedly not for everyone. Taking place in modern day London, as well as a the dystopian future Meanwhile City (where church and state are one), Gerald McMorrow's feature film debut deserves to be celebrated, not just because it's a pretty satisfying story that refuses to explain where it's going until it's good and ready, but also because it's nice to see a new Brit movie maker who can make something as visionary as established fantasy movie makers like Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton, but on a minimal budget.
...and speaking of Joel Lane, I just ordered his new novella, The Witnesses Are Gone from PS Publishing tonight.
Also available (but a little more expensive at $40) is a new short story collection from Ex Occidente Press, by the title of The Terrible Changes.
... a new Doctor Who. Who needs Easter eggs when you have a new Doctor Who on the telly?
When Serge Gainsbourg died on 2 March 1991, the news resulted in Paris coming to a standstill. Police blocked off the streets around his home at the Rue de Verneuil as thousands flocked, in much the same way that John Lennon's fans had gathered at the Dakota building. There was nothing on the TV but Gainsbourg all day long; the radio a continous rotation of Serge's prodigious backcatalogue. People in tears. Flags were flown at half-mast. French President Francious Mitterrand said of him, "He was our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire... He elevated the song to the level of art."
We also visited 5 Rue de Verneuil, Serge Gainsbourg's modest two-storey home until his death. It's situated in a repsectable street in the St Germain area, a stones-throw from the Seine, and it's the kind of place where the shops sell old masters and antiques. A few years ago, the residents of the street paid to have the walls of Gainsbourg's home white-washed after his fans travelled from all over the world to cover it with slogans and graffiti. That same night someone arrived, spray-painted a new slogan, and it began all over again. The residents gave in.
The new four-part Image comic book, The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft hasn't come out yet, but has already sold to Universal and Imagine Entertainment for Ron Howard to direct.
A brief story about Glen David Gold before we begin. Before he wrote Carter Beats The Devil, Gold met his future wife, Alice Sebold (the bestselling novelist of The Lovely Bones) when they were both MFA candidates at California University. Gold arrived on a motorbike for the orientation and upon meeting Sebold, tried and failed to get his helmet off without success. He sat through the entire orientation with it on, and Sebold was smitten. 
