2025-01-05

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting
dir. Raúl Ruiz 1978
Watch if you want: A Borgesian helping of formalism-flexing tableaux vivants
If you like it, check out: Welles' F For Fake is the most obvious comparison, but if you want to keep it to fictional secret history paintings, try on Schalcken the Painter

This is the kind of thing that, after reading the synopsis and a few reviews, I knew would be 100% my hyperspecific shit if it even remotely executed on the premise. Which luckily it does with aplomb; like I mention in my review on letterboxd, this is basically if F for Fake from a neighboring reality where Borges wrote Foucault's Pendulum, a faux-documentary on a series of paintings from a fictional (but never treated less than real in the film) painter. Through oblique symbols and subjects these paintings, we're told by two narrators (one off-screen, one on) that these paintings are connected with a secret ritual handed down by the Templars, and each painting is examined in depth by a series of tableaux vivants in which Ruiz flexes killer formalist chops. Mirror shots, incredible composition and blocking, incredible interplay with lighting and shadow including one where the lights and shadows are reversed mid-scene, all are on the table to explain the mystery. There is no action nor really any characters, but this was so perfectly my kind of thing that I really couldn't help it immediately becoming one of my all-time favorites. Also it's 66 minutes. I'm in love

UFO Mushroom Invasion
Marina Shirakawa, 1976
Read if you want: Old-school 70s manga that's a total blast
If you like it, check out: In all honesty, I'm not that versed on older manga, and I still haven't seen Matango which seems like a natural connection. Rec me something?

This is at once pretty goofy, surprisingly mean, and altogether a lot of fun. A crashed UFO brings down space mushrooms in 1976 Japan and things proceed to go downhill pretty damn quickly from there. The charming art style juxtaposed with how few punches are pulled make this super entertaining, and I really enjoyed the inclusion of non-diagetic, essentially unrelated weird mushroom folklore stories; great stuff.

H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness
Adapted and Illustrated by Gou Tanabe, translated by Zach Davisson, 2024
Read if you want: Handily the best visual adaptation of Lovecraft I've seen
If you like it, check out: I haven't read them yet but it's a sure thing that Tanabe's other Lovecraft adaptations are killer too

Gou Tanabe absolutely kills it with this manga adaptation of At The Mountains of Madness; just phenomenally detailed illustrations that really, really do it for me. The whole thing is great, but the sections detailing the history of the elder things' time on Earth is astoundingly good. I'm very, very eager to pick up his adaptations of The Dunnswich Horror and The Call of Cthulhu.

Short stories I read

I saw Orrin Grey mention something about doing a "read at least one short story a week" thing last year and continuing it this year, and I liked the sound of that, because my reading habits in 2024 were virtually non-existent. I'm starting with the Clark Ashton Smith collection The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies, put out by Penguin Classics. I'm sure I've read some of his short stories in anthologies over the years, though I couldn't tell you which, but I've always really enjoyed his poetry. I wanted to get more into his prose work, so here we are. Also, big shoutout to Eldritch Dark, which has had an absolute ton of his poems and many stories online for a super long time! Very much appreciate what they do over there.

I had a lot of fun with "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros", a really humorous first-person account of how a thief in Smith's Hyperborea setting lost his hand (and how his companion lost his life). This was a great opener to the collection, Smith immediately shows off his wonderfully deep vocabulary and expertise with language while also being very funny.