The Blank Engine

Django Rechained and experiments in film crit.

TV spot (16mm) for The Omen (1976) directed by Richard Donner, two years before directing Superman.

Four shots from Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Doppelganger (2003).

From Roberto Bolaño’s Woes of the True Policeman:

EL PROYECTO TERCIOPELO AZUL (The Blue Velvet Project) @ the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina was launched as a book in Spanish at the 27th Mar del Plata Film Festival on November 20. Here, at the Argentinian newspaper La Nación is a nice write-up of the project and film obsession. And here is some more info. about the event from Filmmaker Magazine, where the project originally appeared serially from August 2010 to August 2011.

Yabuike, trying to restore the “rules of the world.” Listening to the heartbeat of the tree, and poisoning the soil.

“The Ones,” a story, coming in November out now at Fiddleblack #6, the serial killer issue.

At the Oxford American.

The first 3 1/2 stanzas of Louise Glück’s poem “Witchgrass,” from her collection The Wild Iris.

A short note about a wonderful poet and artist, Rupert Loydell, who teaches at University College Falmouth and who edits Stride Magazine and whose work has been published by Shearsman Books, among other places. Rupert and I crossed paths–digitally–several years ago, and have maintained a trans-Atlantic snail-mail exchange, with poems, chapbooks, film strips and other small paper-based experiments flying back and forth across the cold Atlantic. His writing is tender and tough and deeply humanistic in the best possible way. If you’re unfamiliar with his work, I strongly recommend it. Here is the opening stanza to his poem “Under the Radar”:

Although it seemed right at the time,
we later decided it would have been
more tactful if we hadn’t. Meanwhile
the door lock became a swipe card
and the whole marking system changed.
The journey toward summer is more
convoluted and confused, no slipping
out under the radar this time it seems.

The scan below is from Without, by Loydell and Peter Gillies.