Party Like It's 2033: Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956)

Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956), directed by Frederick Francis Sears. Starring Joan Taylor as Carol Hanley Marvin and Hugh Marlowe as her newly minted husband, Dr. Russell Marvin. 

This streamlined film is so bare-bones it might seem ludicrous at first, but it works. The aliens are compelling, as is their back-story. The way they understand time and distance is plausible and cool. Ranging from spaceships to weaponry, spacesuits to mind de-scrambler and universal translator, the alien technology is nicely designed. 

A weakness in the story is in how earthlings quickly pull together implausible counter-measures, but that hardly matters. It's all imaginative good fun.

Carol is the only woman in the whole movie as far as talking parts. Most of the characters -- talking or silent -- are men, and they are almost all depicted as technocratic drones with no more flexibility than the spacesuited aliens, which in turn are of indeterminate gender (assuming they have such distinctions). 

Carol, the daughter of a general, is sharp and daring as well as resilient and reliable. We even find her doing what in more recent decades of pop culture imagery is a man's prerogative. On screen, one's now more likely to see a Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) or Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis) flipping burgers and hot dogs than any woman at all. What does it mean?  I have no idea. I do hold that Earth vs. the Flying Saucers is pretty cool, though.  

P.S. Bowie and Prince are probably piloting their own spaceships now, so never fear of their eternal return. 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

"Look Out Honey, 'Cause I'm Using Technology!" (Part 2 of 2)

Additional inspiration from Douglas Brode's Fantastic Planets, Forbidden Zones, and Lost Continents: The 100 Greatest Science-Fiction Films (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015).

More favorites already seen include: 

Things to Come (1936)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Village of the Damned (1960 version) 
The Day of the Triffids (1963)

Still to see:

Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956)
This Island Earth (1955)
Conquest of Space (1955)
Five Million Miles to Earth (1967)
The Thing from Another World (1951)  
Them! (1954)
The Fifth Element (1997)

New to me, still to see:

Queen of Outer Space (1958)
Starcrash (1978)

Dr. Cyclops (1940)
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)

Do any of these jump out at you?

Today's Rune: Signals. 

"Look Out Honey, 'Cause I'm Using Technology!" (Part 1 of 2)

Here's a fun book and guide: Douglas Brode's Fantastic Planets, Forbidden Zones, and Lost Continents: The 100 Greatest Science-Fiction Films (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015). By doubling and tripling up some rankings and providing no fewer than ten appendixes, Brode squeezes in a lot more than a hundred films. I love it!

I have been very glad to read in here about many more than the usual suspects. Brode explores several science fiction movies that have seriously stuck with me from an early age, such as: 

Colossus: The Forbin Project  (1970)
La Planète sauvage / Fantastic Planet (1973)
Invaders from Mars (1953)
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)

Also happy to see Andre Tarkovsky's Solaris / 
Солярис / Solyaris (1972), a more recent favorite.

Just Imagine (1930)

Was surprised to see some I've overlooked or hadn't known about, all of which look intriguing, such as:

a 1956 version of 1984
The Last Man on Earth (1964)
The Satan Bug (1965)
Just Imagine (1930)
Capricorn One (1977) with O.J. Simpson as an astronaut landing on Mars (or is he?)
Frau Im Mond / Woman in the Moon (1929)

If you've seen any of these, what do you think?

In terms of science fiction turned reality, I could hardly believe my ears when I first heard the new Audi advertisements spotlighting Iggy & The Stooges' way-ahead-of-its time "Search & Destroy"(1973, remixed in 1997).  And here we are now. Can you grok?

Today's Rune: Flow. 

In the Mix: World's Fair 1965 (Round B)

More images derived from 8mm frames, New York 1964/1965 World's Fair.

The Big Tire ferris wheel, now located off I-94 between Detroit Metro Airport and Detroit proper. It's the world's largest Uniroyal and, indeed, the world's largest tire. From the World's Fair (where it included 24 little gondolas) to Allen Park, Michigan.

NASA booster rocket!

T-Rex -- now relocated to Glen Rose, Texas.

Today's Rune: Signals.

Salutation of the Dawn

More illusory photographs of Buddhist monks creating a sand mandala in Saxapahaw's SaxArt Gallery (1616 Jordan Street) on Saturday, June 15, 2013. It was completed and then deconstructed on Sunday, and given to the Haw River.

In the Earth realm of local time, Saxapahaw is located inside the borders of the State of North Carolina within some vaster land called the United States of America. 

As of this moment reading these symbolic words, what state do you find yourself in?

"Look well, therefore, to this day, such is the salutation of the dawn" --

Kālidāsa, as rendered by Florence Scovel Shinn.

A big salute to James Gandolfini, RIP (1961-2013), a great actor within this shimmering Veil of Time, given back to the Universe.

Today's Rune: Growth.  

  

Life On Mars

Was there life on Mars? Is there life on Mars? Will there be life on Mars? In reponse to the first two questions, I truly don't know the answer; but as far as the third question goes, the answer is yes. Right here, right now on Earth are people who will be, later in this century, as taikonauts, cosmonauts and astronauts -- or as all three together -- scampering around the surface of the Red Planet, exploring craters and mountains, and probably looking for good places to start a base camp and colony. That's pretty mind-blowing when you think about it.
 

And don't you know it, somebody out there will be playing David Bowie tunes on whatever crazy little delivery methods they've dreamed up in the meantime.

"Oh, man, look at those Cavemen go / It's the freakiest
show . . ."

Can you dig?

After Mars, next stop is . . .  [fill-in-the-blank].

Today's Rune: Wholeness. 

Holger-Madsen: Himmelskibet

Holger-Madsen's Himmelskibet (1918) is a Danish film about the journey of the Sky Ship Excelsior and its crew from Earth to Mars. Arriving with canned meat and weaponry, these space travelers encounter an advanced civilization peopled with beings that look remarkably like Danes, albeit dressed in loose-fitting white outfits similar to something probably worn by ancient Greeks and Romans -- with Egyptian accessories. Turns out that Martians are peaceful vegetarians, neither tempted to start the next World War nor particularly daunted by Earthlings. 

During the Great War of 1914-1918, Holger-Madsen (1878-1943) worked on films in neutral Denmark. He was, no doubt, appalled by the industrialized slaughter wrought by the adjacent conflict. Interestingly, his "real" name was Holger Madsen, to which he added the flourish of a dash. 

What else was going on at the time? Just days before American entry into the Great War in 1917, the Convention between the United States and Denmark for Cession of the Danish West Indies (1916) went into effect, allowing Denmark to remain neutral right to the end of the war. Jomfruøerne (De dansk-vestindiske øer) have been known ever since as the U.S. Virgin Islands. Meanwhile, the mysteries of Mars are still being explored in 2012.

Today's Rune: Signals.         

Cars on Mars



Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The surface of Mars. Looks like some remote part of Earth . . . How cool is that? And we've only just begun . . . Curiosity killed the cat / Satisfaction brought it back . . .

Today's Rune: Possessions.

The Ray Bradbury Chronicles

The big push in my Ray Bradbury absorption came as "extra reading" during the year of Mrs. Barlow's Ninth Grade English class, with R is for Rocket, S is for Space and The Martian Chronicles, all of them from home. Before that, I devoured Something Wicked This Way Comes, Fahrenheit 451 and The Ilustrated Man. With friends, there were repeat showings of the movie versions of the last two named books, and a final flourish in 1979: the TV mini-series broadcast of The Martian Chronicles, featuring Darren McGavin of The Night Stalker. I loved it all!

Having not reread any of the books nor rewatched any of the adaptations since the mini-series, they've all remained floating around in my psyche like phantoms, right back to the very first Bradbury book I picked up, Something Wicked This Way Comes. If all books were burned in the near future, these would all be good tales to pass on orally to the next two or three generations. 

The original order of publication hardly mattered to me at the time, but for what it's worth and out of sheer curiosity, I looked them up and found that it goes like this:

The  Martian Chronicles, 1950 (including stories first published in the 1940s).
The Illustrated Man (1951).
Fahrenheit 451 (1953).
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1962).
R is for Rocket (1962).
S is for Space (1966).
Fahrenheit 451 movie directed by François Truffaut, with Oskar Werner and Julie Christie (1966).   
The Illustrated Man movie directed by Jack Smight and starring Rod Steiger (1969).
Michael Anderson's The Martian Chronicles mini-series (1979) -- same director as for Logan's Run (1976 -- a good deal of it, by the way, filmed in Fort Worth, Texas).

Has Ray Bradbury (RIP) done anything similar for you over the years?

Today's Rune: Fertility.  

1968: Where Do We Go From Here?

Things have certainly changed since 1968, "Revolutionary Year Zero."  Social and cultural diversity.  Morphing of the Cold War. Deployment of new technology and more interactive communication.  An increase in world population from 3.556 billion people in 1968 to 7.000 billion today.  It's 1968, where do we go from here?  No, man, it's 2012, where do we go from here?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.      

1968: Turn On & Tune In

Bill Cosby of Philadelphia was big in 1968, here via his To Russell, My Brother, Whom I Slept With album. We had some of his records, and I still remember whole sections of his routines decades later.

Gore Vidal's anarcho-satirical novel Myra Breckinridge has sold more than two million copies since its debut in 1968. I've only seen bits from the 1970 movie version starring Raquel Welch -- atrociously bad ones.  

Alien life, life on Earth, space travel, computers: it's all in Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey/l'Odyssée de l'espace. Clarke worked on the text version at the Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan.

A seriously grim future is glimpsed in Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The movie variation, directed by Ridley Scott, came out in 1982 as Blade Runner, and has since become a classic, especially with the Final Cut version released in 2007.  

Among others, Bill Cosby covers the Rolling Stones in Bill Cosby Sings Hooray for the Salvation Army Band! (1968).  Let's not forget his rendition of "Funky North Philadelphia."

Among other things, Woody Allen tells moose jokes in the 1968 Standup Comic compilation, which was orginally released as three records. Nowadays, after a huge international hit with his 2011 film Midnight in Paris, he's working to bring out Nero Fiddled in 2012.   

Let's not forget Janis Joplin. Not only is January 19th her birthday, but 1968 was her heyday. By 1970 she was gone.

Today's Rune: Strength.  

The Long Art

"Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult." Hippocrates (ca. 460 B.C.-377 B.C.)

Or, as Gore Vidal has compressed it, "Life is short, but the art is long."

Some things have persisted through a lifetime, and remain there seemingly as always. Cuba. Israel-Palestine, North Korea/South Korea. James Bond. The Rolling Stones. Bob Dylan. Space shots. Civil rights, human rights, gender issues. China. 

Some things have morphed. Vietnam. Ireland/Northern Ireland. Germany. The Cold War. The Soviet Union. Eastern Europe. The Balkans.

And the ball keeps spinning. Some plots thicken, some plots thin. Cuba is changing. Korea will, either in a violent spasm or in some unexpected manner. Palestine will become a nation.

In my lifetime, though these things seem slow, they have changed, even as the population has increased, half again as big in the USA alone (though half as small in Detroit and, probably, New Orleans). South America has changed, Africa has changed, and both continents will change at a quicker pace. All of Africa, not just North Africa, perhaps following the Arab Spring, may begin throwing off dictators. Who knows? What will happen in Mexico? How will the drug wars end? How about Iran, India and Pakistan? And so on. I remain as curious as a cat about all of it, but with vegan meals added. 

Today's Rune: Wholeness.

Emotion, Leashed and Unleashed

In Emotion: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003; originally published as Emotion: The Science of Sentiment, 2001), the author posits that, because they apparently have no emotions, Mr. Spock and the Vulcans would not have been able to survive for very long. There's a backstory, though, and the Vulcans of Star Trek do have emotions -- they just suppress them like those on-duty guards in full dress uniform marching around Buckingham Palace in London, rarely cracking a smile. Culturally, Vulcans tend to keep their emotions under wrap, even to themselves when possible, as if they're always on self guard duty. But sometimes it's not possible, such as during the seven-year "Pan-farr" mating cycle, going "deep in the Plak-tau." The Vulcans present a good, albeit fictional, case study of ritualized cultural response in keeping instinctive emotions from running amok most of the time.

"Amok Time" (1967) is the main episode of Star Trek referenced here. Thanks to Charles Gramlich for inspiring today's post header, derived from a comment he made on yesterday's: "Emotion is a hard dog to control once it gets hold of the leash."         










As for the evolution of the character of Mr. Spock, in the original pilot (The Cage, 1965), he is an excitable Martian, not an emotionally restrained Vulcan!

Interesting twist, considering how things turned out. 

Before Spock's reconception as a Vulcan, the character on Star Trek who displayed no emotional affect was Number One (shown here). A lot of science fiction stories play around with this idea, with characters ranging from gynoids to Invaders to Stepford Wives. 

Today's Rune: Strength.   

That Was the Year That Wasn't: Year Zero

I. So, I'm born into this calendar system and have been using it for as long as I can remember, the one that says this year is 2011. That is, Anno Domini 2011, A.D. 2011, 2011 A.D., In the Year of the Lord 2011. It often strikes me as weird and a little off-putting. I faithfully date checks, documents, diary entries, blog posts and so on using this scheme, because most of the people I interact with use it, too. But what's it all about?

II. Where's a calendar to start? With the emperor's ascension to the throne, the queen's coronation day, the start of the Revolution, the birth of a religious figure, or from the date of some Earth-changing event?

III. One thing to note about the A.D./B.C. (Before Christ) dating system is that it's off kilter. Almost nobody (among scholars and religious experts) believes that Jesus Christ was born on this coming Christmas Day 2011 years ago. In fact, there is no exact consensus of birth date. Estimates now range from 2 "B.C." to as far back as 18 "B.C.," with death (in human form) dating to between 29 and 36 A.D.  In other words, "all that seems solid melts into air" once carefully considered. No wonder, as the cliché goes, ignorance is bliss! 

IV. In the B.C./A.D. system, there is no Year Zero. As constructed, the years flip from 1 B.C. to 1 A.D.  This is truly a strange system for thinking about -- or even trying to grasp -- chronological time.

V. How often do we deliberately "do" a countdown in modern life? 

a. New Year's Eve, countdown to the next year. 
b. Sporting events.
c. Medical/scientific events.
d. Ultimata (ultimatums).
d. Blasting off: rockets and spaceships.

The last image has me imagining the countdown from B.C. to A.D., to the moment when Jesus blasts off into the Heavens!   (The Ascension pictured above: circa A.D. 1410, Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry)

3 B.C., 2 B.C., 1 B.C.
We have lift-off . . .

Except the Ascension is estimated to have occurrred somewhere between A.D. 30 and 36.

VI. I was earlier imagining Jesus blasting off by jetpack, but it turns out there's already a Jetpack Jesus action figure!  Besides which, neither God nor the Son of God need technology to perform miracles, right? 

"It's Christ who climbs to the sky better than any pilot / He holds the world record for altitude" -- Guillaume Apollinaire, "Zone" (trans. Charlotte Mandell) from Alcools, 1913.

VII. Today's Rune: Harvest. 

One Giant Leap for Humankind

Take heed unto Paul Gilding's The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World (Bloomsbury Press, 2011): "So this is your story. There is no one else. We are the people we've been waiting for. This is the time. This is our time" (page 8).

And again: ". . . humanity, the economy, and the planet's ecosystem operate as a single interdependent system and . . . this system is in serious trouble" (page 30).  

My question: on a personal basis, now what?  Shall we "go with the flow" and see what happens, responding as necessary, or shall we try to think into the future, planning ahead?  On a practical level, what will each of us do from this moment onward?  Same old, same old, or something radically different?  

So far, I've put a lot more thought into cuisine, shifting consiederably into seeking more organic vegan meals. Not in a dogmatic way, but in a moderate way. One has to start somewhere. Water is another basic consieration. So is air. The old status quo of "unlimited economic growth" is over. Certain political candidates may promise $2/gallon gasoline or aim to "pray away" droughts and disasters and economic turmoil, but I wouldn't count on their vision or actions to be very helpful. Talk is cheap and nonessential, but basic essentials like air and water are not cheap any longer.

Today's Rune: Defense.

Martian Chronicles: Mars-500

How long will it take for human beings to make it to Mars? To set up a base? A colony?

Work is being done toward preparing the way for people to go the distance to Mars. Check out, for instance, the Mars-500 project (diagram above):

http://www.imbp.ru/Mars500/Mars500-e.html

and:

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars500/

And also, check out the Mars Society:

http://www.marssociety.org/home

If you could, would you want to go to Mars? 

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Today the Future, Tomorrow a Forgotten Dream

Another library acquisition evokes Joyce Carol Oates: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" It's a book by Gregory Benford and the editors of Popular Mechanics, The Wonderful Future That Never Was: Flying Cars, Mail Delivery by Parachute, and Other Predictions from the Past (2010), that recalls dozens of predictions and images of the future from the perspective of a time now in the past. Some were visionary, pragmatic and now do, indeed, exist in the visible world. Others persist only in the invisible world, at least for "now."

I'm supposing the biggest shifts of the last ten years have been the arrival of a near universality in communications and information synergies and quickening ecological change. In the words of a Detroit man at a yard sale, "What else you got?" 



Today's Rune: Signals.  

The History of Time: A Very Short Introduction

After proceeding at a rapid clip through Leofranc Holford-Stevens' The History of Time: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005; audio, 2011), it's hard not to muse a little about the nature of time. What is time all about?

Time is gravity.
Time is ever-present.
Time is odd.

Dreamtime and awake time loop around each other, go through each other.

Time is space.
Time is on my side.
Time waits for no one.
We could have a real cool time tonight.
Love you long time.
Hot time on the town.
Time is place.
Time is a Zone.
Time is an Interzone.

Time is a Jumble:
Astronomy. Fate.
Solar, Lunar.
Astrology.
Julian, Gregorian.
Old Style, New Style.
1751/1752.

Time is Light.
Time is an Envelope.
Time is an Antelope.
Time is a Cantaloupe.
Time is a Half-Life.
Time is an Afterlife.

Time is a Note I can't Read Even in my Own Handwriting; Time revolves around Easter according to some Christians.

Time is a Season.
Time is a Festival.
Time is a Month.
Time is a Doing and an Undoing.
Time is a Life.
Time is an Epoch.
Time is a Millennium.
Time is a Century.
Time is a Decade.
Time is a Year.
Time is a Month.
Time is a Week.
Time is a Day.

Time is an Hour that's getting Late. Two Riders was
Approaching . . . and the wind began to howl . . .

Time is a Minute.
Time is a Split Second.
Time to go Now . . .

Today's Rune: Movement.

Terrence Malick: The Tree of Life

Coming soon, having just been awarded a Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival and making its way back to the USA, where it was filmed (much in Texas, where Terrence Malick hails from): The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn.

At this point, it's worth noting that Malick's The New World (2005) was beautifully shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, cinematographer for The Tree of Life as well. Interesting and wondrous and far out in the way Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey was received in 1968, I'm guessing. 

Today's Rune: Movement.  

Can You Tell Me the Time, Mr. Ed?

What's the time?

According to Albert Einstein: "The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." A Buddhist might agree. However, we seem to be moving in one direction as we age, while our memory reaches back, searching through lost time. 



How often do you check the time? What sort of artifact or method do you employ?

I like watches, but rarely wear one anymore. The cellphone seems to do the trick, except when flying on an airplane. As for clocks, I prefer a mix of analog and digital. One can guess by the position of the sun in daytime, adjusted to each season, but that's a pretty rough calculation. In modern society, work and school usually revolve around a tight episodic series of time slots, and we often seem to be calculating time, velocity and distance. We must time ourselves well, lest we be too late or too early.

http://vimeo.com/2128575

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).