#the new French reprint looks absolutely stunning

[atariince]

There's no such things as "too many" editions of HoMe IV

#tolkien #history of Middle-earth #the Shaping of Middle-earth #jrr tolkien #the new French reprint looks absolutely stunning #ooc

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Cosmic Horror, Tom Barber, Casino Royale, David C. Smith

Horror (Bloody Disgusting): The phrase “cosmic horror” conjures up images of massive tentacled beasts that defy all aspects of human understanding. Monsters created by author H.P. Lovecraft, such as Cthulhu, Dagon, and Shub-Niggurath, drive those that see them into madness, driven insane by their pure incomprehensibility. Their massive size, many limbs, innumerable eyeballs, and unnatural forms only amplify their horrific nature, making humans realize their insignificance in the universe. It is a genre that allows for speculation and questions about what it means to be human, especially in the face of these monsters.

  RPG (Brain Leakage): I was introduced to D&D in 1994, during my freshman year of high school. I had no idea what to expect going in. The sum total of my exposure to D&D up to that point was vague memories of the old cartoon, half-remembered rumors about the Satanic Panic of the 1980’s, and multiple viewings of Charles Band’s glorious, b-movie masterpiece, The Dungeonmaster.

  Art (The Silver Key): Last week I had the pleasure of meeting a sword-and-sorcery legend: The talented Tom Barber, perhaps best known for his illustrations of Zebra paperbacks in the 1970s, including a Robert E. Howard title (Black Vulmea’s Vengeance), several Talbot Mundy reprints, and a trio of stunning covers for a Weird Tales paperback revival edited by the late great Lin Carter.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Recoverings): With his hopes of entering the hallowed ranks of the slicks dashed, Ed turned the book over to Munsey and McClurg. Bray was still at McClurg, but Davis was gone and his replacement was Matthew White, 69 years old and the editor for Argosy since 1886. White wanted a shorter title than The War Chief of the Apaches, and suggested, “Apache,” “The Big Chief,” or “The Good Indian.” “Apache” might have confused book buyers into thinking that it was about the notorious Parisian Apaches, muggers and criminal gangsters of Europe. Ed wasn’t happy with any of the alternate titles, for good reason, and The War Chief was finally settled on.

  Clark Ashton Smith (DMR Books): Fans of Clark Ashton Smith have been waiting a long time for a collection of his stories set in the fictional medieval French province of Averoigne. There have been many attempts to collect all 11 stories over the decades, but none of them were able to get off the ground until recently.

  Gaming (Greyhawkery): Greetings Greyhawk enthusiasts! Today’s topic comes with a map of the ENTIRE Flanaess. I was mulling over a subject while trying to banish thoughts of not being at Gen Con 2019 and then it dawned on me, how about a “What If” scenario? I’ve done similar premises in the past, it’s fun to tinker with world-wide events and what was more game changing to the World of Greyhawk than the 2E Greyhawk Wars! For those who don’t know the events an geo-political changes that happen post-wars and through 591 CY then check out this timeline. Surprisingly the “Greyhawk Wars occurred in a short span (582-584).

  Gaming (Hack Slash Master): I’ve run. . . a lot of high-level games. The first high-level campaign I ran started in 1984, and involved going through the entire Temple of Elemental Evil and environs in a second edition campaign. I’ve run several high level 5th edition campaigns, including 17 levels of Horde of the Dragon Queen, 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons to level 11/12, Pathfinder and 3rd edition, ranging up to levels around 14. My average campaign length is about 50 games, which is approximately 18 months of play.

  Westerns (Brian Niemeier): If you want sterling example of top-down social engineering, look no further than the death of the western. The western genre dominated novels, magazines, comics, and movies for decades. Contrary to common misconceptions, westerns never faded in popularity. One day, the word came down that westerns were over. These days, this once noble genre is a haven for vanity projects by over-the-hill actors. Our overlords hate the western. Gary Cooper’s iconic 1952 film High Noon shows why.

  Cinema (Rough Edges): I suspect this is one of those love-it-or-hate-it movies. I love it. THE MAN WHO KILLED HITLER AND THEN THE BIGFOOT has such a goofy title that you really don’t know what to expect, and it asks the viewer to accept a lot of odd things that are played with an absolutely straight face, but for me, it works.

  Ian Fleming (M Porcius): The first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, was published in 1953; I’m reading a scan of a paperback published in 1983 by Berkley.  This isn’t one of the books I tackled as a child, and the only Casino Royale film of which I am aware is the spoof one starring Barbara Bouchet (you loved her in The Red Queen Kills Seven Times), so I have no idea what the plot of this thing is going to entail.

  Comic Books (Porpor Books): In the mid-80s, Eclipse Comics got the rights to reproduce comics from early 80s UK titles, including Warrior. One memorable Warrior entry was ‘Spawn from Hell’s Pit’, the inaugural episode of ‘Father Shandor: Demon Stalker’ which debuted in the very first issue of Warrior in 1982.

  Writing (Pulprev): Much of modern entertainment is a garbage fire.

Many male characters are weak, wimpy and wishy-washy. They exist not as men in their own right, but simply to make the designed Strong Female Character look even more powerful when contrasted against their incompetence. Shounen protagonists inevitably run away screaming at the first signs of romance and emotional intimacy, those that aren’t blank slates for the audience to project themselves into.

  Comic Books (Bookgasm): If you grew up in the ’80s, once you hit puberty and got over the superhero comics that are flooding the big screen, the only magazine left on the rack was Marvel’s gory, black and white, comic-code free “Savage Sword of Conan.” Those busty wenches and barbarians were everywhere in the 1980’s – from album covers to conversion vans. It seems like a different world now.

  Fiction (Smashpages): Will Murray has long been a journalist for Starlog and other publications, but he’s best known as one of the great pulp historians. Murray’s been involved with the recent reprints of Doc Savage, The Shadow and other characters. A few years ago, Murray had two major books published, Writings in Bronze, which collected a lot of his writings about Doc Savage and Lester Dent, and Wordslingers, a book about the pulp Westerns, and more broadly, about what the Western genre was and continues to mean.

  Robert Heinlein (Tip the Wink): Tunnel In the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein. Scribner’s & Sons, 1955. Juvenile novel # 9  Published in both hardcover and paperback that year by Scribner’s as part of the Heinlein juvenile series.

The Plot BACKGROUND: The novel is set in the future, when overpopulation on Earth has been lessened after the invention of teleportation, called the “Ramsbotham jump”, which is used to send Earth’s excess population to colonize other planets. However, the costs of operating the device mean that the colonies are isolated from Earth until they can produce goods to justify two-way trade.

  Author Interview (DMR Books): David C. Smith is one of the most well-respected sword and sorcery authors from the ‘70s. He’s also been a friend and supporter of DMR Books since the beginning, when he wrote the introduction for our very first release, Swords of Steel. He has a brand new story in our brand new anthology Warlords, Warlocks & Witches, so I thought this would be a good time to learn more about his career, as well as his current endeavors (which will be covered in part two tomorrow).

  Sensor Sweep: Cosmic Horror, Tom Barber, Casino Royale, David C. Smith published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[party-hard-or-die]

The Best and Worst of Cannes, Maybe Coming to a Theater Near You

Over the next year or so, a number of the great, good and absolutely unnecessary movies at the 71st Cannes Film Festival will trickle into American theaters and then onto streaming platforms. Some will open with a splash, like Gaspar Noé’s flashy, amusing, then disappointing “Climax,” which played in a parallel program and has been picked up by the distributor A24. If we are lucky, others, like Alice Rohrwacher’s lovely “Happy as Lazzaro,” will also open, though probably far more quietly, buoyed largely by the ardor of critics. It is unlikely that most of these movies will mean much to the American box office, which is dominated by industrial product.

Every year, Cannes presents an overstuffed, witless event movie that generates publicity for the festival and reminds the world that the event can go commercial when it wants. Sometimes the movie is a forgettable French divertissement; this year it was “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” But the festival’s reputation has not been built on Hollywood mega-events. It has been built on strategically positioning itself as the paramount champion of global cinematic art — “the mecca,” as Spike Lee called it the other day — while being the world’s largest film market.

That commitment to art cinema — and specifically to the international auteurs who burnish its standing — is only part of the story. You wouldn’t know that from some of the reports in the American entertainment media, though, which has been announcing the festival’s irrelevancy for years. Whether Cannes matters (oui! non!) makes for a catchy headline, but the better question is who the festival matters to and for what reason. It certainly matters to France, which subsidizes the festival, which in turn promotes the country’s cultural heritage, generates a great deal of revenue and helps tourism. Cannes sells movies; it also sells France.

As always, the festival has a significant international presence, offering a bounty of movies from around the world suggesting that borders remain open, at least in art. Set in rural Italy, “Happy as Lazzaro” traces the story of a blissful innocent who with several dozen relatives works the land for an imperious owner. With a sensitive touch that makes every face, tree and ray of light come alive, Ms. Rohrwacher creates a textured, vibrant portrait of a lost world that is at once emotionally sustaining and grossly exploitative. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s delicate, beautifully paced “Shoplifters” centers on a very different marginalized Japanese family, though one as affecting.

Among the strongest competition entries is “Burning,” from the South Korean director Lee Chang-dong. Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, it centers on a young man who, in the midst of a family crisis, becomes pulled into an increasingly unsettled, unsettling relationship with a young woman who in turn takes up with another man. Mr. Lee creates a seductive intimacy — pulling you close enough to think you’ve figured everyone out — that grows progressively ominous and dangerous. In a crucial role, a terrific Steven Yeun (who was here last year with “Okja”) proves that he’s a star, even if the American industry hasn’t yet figured that out.

Two directors in the competition were barred by their governments from attending, including the Russian Kirill S. Serebrennikov, who in “Leto” looks back at the Soviet rock scene during perestroika. The story is a fictional gloss on the story of the real Viktor Tsoi (the swoony Teo Yoo), who helped lead the rock revolt in grungy clubs, jam sessions and pastoral idylls. Another director whose absence became a reverberant presence this year is the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who plays himself (or a version of that persona) in “3 Faces,” a moving multigenerational portrait of three independent female performers, including a woman who was banned after the 1979 revolution.

Yoon Jong-bin’s “The Spy Gone North,” a rollicking cloak-and-dagger adventure about a South Korean agent who infiltrates North Korea, is the kind of genre title that the festival often relegates to special sections, which it did in this case. Presumably the movie was seen as too commercial and slick for the competition; it’s also a lot of fun and I’d rather watch it again than revisit David Robert Mitchell’s grating “Under the Silver Lake,” which is in competition. Movie allusions and Andrew Garfield’s hard-working star turn as a Los Angeles slacker is about all that holds together this labyrinthine, wildly self-satisfied mystery. Mr. Garfield of course is also useful for red-carpet duties.

The red carpet at Cannes has in recent years also become a symbolic battlefield, specifically when it comes to women. The festival’s dress code is vaguely defined (in principle it is just black tie), but the enforcement of that code by employees monitoring the carpet has led to dust-ups, including one a few years ago over a woman’s shoes that was labeled Heelgate. (Women have pushed back and this year Kristen Stewart kicked off her stilettos.) It’s an unfortunately silly nickname that obscures the reality that Cannes relies on the spectacle of a rigid ideal of female beauty — cue elegant wraiths promenading in designer gowns — to sell its image to the world.

And, all too often, a fair number of the women walking, smiling and smiling some more on the red carpet are doing so in support of a male director. Only three of the 21 movies in the main competition are from women, though the numbers are better elsewhere. As in the United States, this imbalance can be blamed in part on the inequities of the movie industry. A 2016 report from the European Women’s Audiovisual Network found that only one in five features was from a woman. But programming plays a powerful role in the cinematic biosphere, which is why the number of mediocre male directors who pop up here each year can be so frustrating.

For much of its history, after all, Cannes has sold male auteurs, one reason it was moving to see “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché” here in a special screening. Directed by Pamela B. Green, this documentary explores the life, career and fade-out of the woman thought to have been the first female director. Born in France in 1873 (she died in 1968), Guy-Blaché made the leap from secretary to director while working for Gaumont, where she directed hundreds of films. She went on to found a studio, Solax, in the United States, only to fall on difficult times and — as she was excluded from one history after another — into obscurity.

Ms. Green discovered Guy-Blaché while watching a TV documentary about female filmmakers. “I never thought of a first,” Ms. Green told me, “and I never even thought of a woman director.” But she was intrigued and her curiosity led her on an eight-year odyssey that found her scouring archives across the world, cold-calling possible Guy-Blaché relatives and making stunning discoveries, including a clip of this foundational figure holding a camera that seems to have been shot by those other pioneers, the Lumière brothers. The determined Ms. Green isn’t yet finished with the movie, which she has financed through donations, including from Hugh Hefner.

When I asked what the chances were that she could get more money to finish, Ms. Green wasn’t optimistic. “Difficult, believe it or not — I mean we talk about the #MeToo and Time’s Up, etc.; Hollywood has not funded this movie,” she said. “All the people who have come forward are outside the business.” Ms. Green, who discovered a trove of material while making the documentary — old letters, photographs — said that she planned to start a foundation named for the filmmaker. Ms. Green wants to help in the restoration of Guy-Blaché’s films and make them accessible, doing her part to write a woman back into the history she helped make.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C8 of the New York edition with the headline: Coming to America: Best and Worst of Cannes. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post The Best and Worst of Cannes, Maybe Coming to a Theater Near You appeared first on World The News.

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[dragnews]

The Best and Worst of Cannes, Maybe Coming to a Theater Near You

Over the next year or so, a number of the great, good and absolutely unnecessary movies at the 71st Cannes Film Festival will trickle into American theaters and then onto streaming platforms. Some will open with a splash, like Gaspar Noé’s flashy, amusing, then disappointing “Climax,” which played in a parallel program and has been picked up by the distributor A24. If we are lucky, others, like Alice Rohrwacher’s lovely “Happy as Lazzaro,” will also open, though probably far more quietly, buoyed largely by the ardor of critics. It is unlikely that most of these movies will mean much to the American box office, which is dominated by industrial product.

Every year, Cannes presents an overstuffed, witless event movie that generates publicity for the festival and reminds the world that the event can go commercial when it wants. Sometimes the movie is a forgettable French divertissement; this year it was “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” But the festival’s reputation has not been built on Hollywood mega-events. It has been built on strategically positioning itself as the paramount champion of global cinematic art — “the mecca,” as Spike Lee called it the other day — while being the world’s largest film market.

That commitment to art cinema — and specifically to the international auteurs who burnish its standing — is only part of the story. You wouldn’t know that from some of the reports in the American entertainment media, though, which has been announcing the festival’s irrelevancy for years. Whether Cannes matters (oui! non!) makes for a catchy headline, but the better question is who the festival matters to and for what reason. It certainly matters to France, which subsidizes the festival, which in turn promotes the country’s cultural heritage, generates a great deal of revenue and helps tourism. Cannes sells movies; it also sells France.

As always, the festival has a significant international presence, offering a bounty of movies from around the world suggesting that borders remain open, at least in art. Set in rural Italy, “Happy as Lazzaro” traces the story of a blissful innocent who with several dozen relatives works the land for an imperious owner. With a sensitive touch that makes every face, tree and ray of light come alive, Ms. Rohrwacher creates a textured, vibrant portrait of a lost world that is at once emotionally sustaining and grossly exploitative. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s delicate, beautifully paced “Shoplifters” centers on a very different marginalized Japanese family, though one as affecting.

Among the strongest competition entries is “Burning,” from the South Korean director Lee Chang-dong. Based on a short story by Haruki Murakami, it centers on a young man who, in the midst of a family crisis, becomes pulled into an increasingly unsettled, unsettling relationship with a young woman who in turn takes up with another man. Mr. Lee creates a seductive intimacy — pulling you close enough to think you’ve figured everyone out — that grows progressively ominous and dangerous. In a crucial role, a terrific Steven Yeun (who was here last year with “Okja”) proves that he’s a star, even if the American industry hasn’t yet figured that out.

Two directors in the competition were barred by their governments from attending, including the Russian Kirill S. Serebrennikov, who in “Leto” looks back at the Soviet rock scene during perestroika. The story is a fictional gloss on the story of the real Viktor Tsoi (the swoony Teo Yoo), who helped lead the rock revolt in grungy clubs, jam sessions and pastoral idylls. Another director whose absence became a reverberant presence this year is the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who plays himself (or a version of that persona) in “3 Faces,” a moving multigenerational portrait of three independent female performers, including a woman who was banned after the 1979 revolution.

Yoon Jong-bin’s “The Spy Gone North,” a rollicking cloak-and-dagger adventure about a South Korean agent who infiltrates North Korea, is the kind of genre title that the festival often relegates to special sections, which it did in this case. Presumably the movie was seen as too commercial and slick for the competition; it’s also a lot of fun and I’d rather watch it again than revisit David Robert Mitchell’s grating “Under the Silver Lake,” which is in competition. Movie allusions and Andrew Garfield’s hard-working star turn as a Los Angeles slacker is about all that holds together this labyrinthine, wildly self-satisfied mystery. Mr. Garfield of course is also useful for red-carpet duties.

The red carpet at Cannes has in recent years also become a symbolic battlefield, specifically when it comes to women. The festival’s dress code is vaguely defined (in principle it is just black tie), but the enforcement of that code by employees monitoring the carpet has led to dust-ups, including one a few years ago over a woman’s shoes that was labeled Heelgate. (Women have pushed back and this year Kristen Stewart kicked off her stilettos.) It’s an unfortunately silly nickname that obscures the reality that Cannes relies on the spectacle of a rigid ideal of female beauty — cue elegant wraiths promenading in designer gowns — to sell its image to the world.

And, all too often, a fair number of the women walking, smiling and smiling some more on the red carpet are doing so in support of a male director. Only three of the 21 movies in the main competition are from women, though the numbers are better elsewhere. As in the United States, this imbalance can be blamed in part on the inequities of the movie industry. A 2016 report from the European Women’s Audiovisual Network found that only one in five features was from a woman. But programming plays a powerful role in the cinematic biosphere, which is why the number of mediocre male directors who pop up here each year can be so frustrating.

For much of its history, after all, Cannes has sold male auteurs, one reason it was moving to see “Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché” here in a special screening. Directed by Pamela B. Green, this documentary explores the life, career and fade-out of the woman thought to have been the first female director. Born in France in 1873 (she died in 1968), Guy-Blaché made the leap from secretary to director while working for Gaumont, where she directed hundreds of films. She went on to found a studio, Solax, in the United States, only to fall on difficult times and — as she was excluded from one history after another — into obscurity.

Ms. Green discovered Guy-Blaché while watching a TV documentary about female filmmakers. “I never thought of a first,” Ms. Green told me, “and I never even thought of a woman director.” But she was intrigued and her curiosity led her on an eight-year odyssey that found her scouring archives across the world, cold-calling possible Guy-Blaché relatives and making stunning discoveries, including a clip of this foundational figure holding a camera that seems to have been shot by those other pioneers, the Lumière brothers. The determined Ms. Green isn’t yet finished with the movie, which she has financed through donations, including from Hugh Hefner.

When I asked what the chances were that she could get more money to finish, Ms. Green wasn’t optimistic. “Difficult, believe it or not — I mean we talk about the #MeToo and Time’s Up, etc.; Hollywood has not funded this movie,” she said. “All the people who have come forward are outside the business.” Ms. Green, who discovered a trove of material while making the documentary — old letters, photographs — said that she planned to start a foundation named for the filmmaker. Ms. Green wants to help in the restoration of Guy-Blaché’s films and make them accessible, doing her part to write a woman back into the history she helped make.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C8 of the New York edition with the headline: Coming to America: Best and Worst of Cannes. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post The Best and Worst of Cannes, Maybe Coming to a Theater Near You appeared first on World The News.

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