Month: November 2017
Of Interest to 4AD Fans of Olden Times
(November 28, 2017)Back in the late 80s/early 90s, I was a huge 4AD fan and did many fannish things, like running VHS tape chains of 4AD-related video clips and the like. It’s a bit difficult to remember at this remove just what was so important about watching video clips and interviews with these bands now, but this … Continue reading Of Interest to 4AD Fans of Olden Times
ACW1979: Elvis
(November 26, 2017)Apparently Fritz the Cat was huge in Tupelo in the 40s. Elvis. 1979. I didn’t know what to expect. John Carpenter doing a TV documentary about Elvis? Presley? Starring Kurt Russell!? But John Carpenter is no David Cronenberg. I had somehow gotten them slightly confused in my brain: They’re both people starting in the 70s … Continue reading ACW1979: Elvis
ACW1978: Someone’s Watching Me!
(November 26, 2017)Someone’s Watching Me!. 1978. This film was made before Halloween, but released after it, apparently. I thought it kinda strange that Carpenter would go from a smash hit like Halloween to making films for TV (it was shown on NBC), but that chronology makes more sense. The version I watched is in 16:9, which is … Continue reading ACW1978: Someone’s Watching Me!
ACW1978: Halloween
(November 25, 2017)Halloween. 1978. As with most of these films, I’ve only seen them on VHS before. Man, the blu-ray transfers look fine. (And all of John Carpenter’s films seem to be available on blu-ray, which is pretty impressive (commercially) for a director.) The movie may have had a small budget, but Carpenter didn’t skimp on the … Continue reading ACW1978: Halloween
ACW1976: Assault on Precinct 13
(November 24, 2017)Assault on Precinct 13. 1976. John Carpenter’s music is a definite draw. It’s kinda raw and has a vitality to it. Anyway, I thought I had seen this before, but I think I must have been confusing this film with The Warriors or Fort Apache, The Bronx or something. Some of the scenes are very … Continue reading ACW1976: Assault on Precinct 13
Let It Snow
(November 24, 2017)I wanted to make the Carpenter series of posts look ridiculously romantic, so I got the swashiest font I could find. But it’s not enough: I wanted to make it snow, too. Now, this blog is on WordPress.com, which adds limitations to what is easy or even possible to do. I wanted a CSS-only snowing … Continue reading Let It Snow
ACW1974: Dark Star
(November 24, 2017)Dark Star. 1974. Hey! It’s movie time again! I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this before, but it’s a long long time ago. The context now is very different, because it seems like every other line in the film is familiar from samples in music. I think Meat Beat Manifesto has most of the dialogue on … Continue reading ACW1974: Dark Star
A Carpenter Winter
(November 24, 2017)I had planned on re-watching all of Ingmar Bergman’s films starting about right now (we all need cheering up when winter arrives, right?), but the Bergman box set has had its release pushed back two week, so I’m here without any Bergman movies to watch. So I got all of John Carpenter’s films instead, because … Continue reading A Carpenter Winter
My New Concert Blog
(November 22, 2017)Le Guess Who
(November 21, 2017)I went to Le Guess Who in Utrecht, and it was very good. Here’s a festival report. The festival is spread out all over Utrecht, like here in front of a church where Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares performed. (The doors closed mysteriously before the huddled throng and nobody let us know what was happening, … Continue reading Le Guess Who
New Music
(November 20, 2017)Music I’ve bought this month. (Well, mostly recorded from old tapes.)
Wurst
(November 15, 2017)Space Age
(November 10, 2017)If only there were some kind of wild space age technology that would allow you to update a schedule on a web page instead of having an annoying permanent overlay notifying you that the schedule may be out of date. But that’s science fiction.
Black Metal
(November 9, 2017)Rutsch
(November 8, 2017)Felder
(November 7, 2017)Fonts, Swashes, Linux, Problems
(November 1, 2017)I recently bought a font called Jolie Romantique (for a future, er, project), and it worked without any problems: I plopped the .ttf file into ~/.fonts, created an SVG file with some text in it, ran it through ImageMagick “convert” and got this: Of special interest here is that end-of-word swash. (That’s apparently the technical … Continue reading Fonts, Swashes, Linux, Problems