Category: Art
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The BBC TV Shakespeare (1978 – 1985)
The BBC’s failed attempt to create the definitive set of the complete works of Shakespeare adapted for TV demonstrates just how hard to pin down the bugger can be. From his rediscovery at the end of the eighteenth century through to the middle of the 20th the received wisdom was that the Bard was the […]
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Abel Gance’s Napoleon – 1927
Looking at the practicalities of even showing Abel Gance’s Napoleon makes you wonder how on earth it ever got made. Not only is the full version five and a half hours long but at the very end the film goes tryptych – with three images projected simultaneously side by side to give a stunning split […]
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The Art of Jack Gaughan
Hot on the heels of Peter A. Jones, here’s my tribute to another great SF artist who, sadly, is no longer with us. The vast majority of science fiction art through the ages has been illustrative, which is not particularly surprising as book and magazine artists have usually either depicted scenes from whatever story they’ve […]
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The Art of Peter A. Jones
As part of my ad hoc trundle through the greats of 70s and 80s Science Fiction book covers I thought I’d turn my attention this time to the work of Peter A. Jones, or PAJ as he signed himself. Jones came slightly later to the scene than his contemporaries Chris Foss and Bruce Pennington, doing […]
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Eschatus – Bruce Pennington (1976)
One of the strangest books to come out of the 1970s fantasy art imprint Paper Tiger had to be Bruce Pennington’s Eschatus (1976). I’ve already briefly spoken about Pennington as one of the iconic science fiction book artists of the era, working largely with New English Library. His work stood in stark contrast to the […]
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Interview with Richard Mansfield of Mansfield Dark
As a companion post to my review of Mansfield Dark’s Count Magnus and The Story of A Disappearance and an Appearance, Richard Mansfield very kindly agreed to answer some questions about the movies: Why make M. R. James ghost stories as shadow puppet films? I think the medium lends itself perfectly for ghost stories. I’ve […]
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Count Magnus and A Disappearance and an Appearance – Mansfield Dark
Until now I’ve always been left a bit disappointed by film and TV adaptations of M.R. James’ stories. Even acknowledged classics like Jonathan Miller’s 1968 version of Oh, Whistle, And I’ll Come To You My Lad, starring Michael Horden lack the full sense of claustrophobic menace that characterises the original story. Partly it’s because the […]
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Cosmic Fire Clowns – Bob Haberfield’s Moorcock covers.
On the one hand it’s great that SF and Fantasy are more or less mainstream these days, and so every Waterstones has a huge selection to browse. On the other I do sometimes find myself looking at the shelves and feeling a bit ‘meh’ at the overall sameness of the cover art on display. I […]
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Why Terry Pratchett is not Great Literature
Jonathan Jones wrote an article in The Guardian in which he stated that he had never read Terry Pratchett and had no intention of doing so because the discworld novels lacked literary merit, unlike Jane Austen’s books. It had all the hallmarks of a throwaway space filler deliberately designed to whip up controversy and the […]
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Dante Deluxe
Funnily enough it was Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle who turned me on to Dante. Their decidedly odd libertarian take on the original, Inferno, came out in 1976 and had the Science Fiction author Allen Carpentier dying after falling out of window (Asimov’s fault) and being led through Dante’s hell by Benito Mussolini. I started […]
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The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage, and Logicomix
Comics again, this time with a couple of wonderful graphic novels that tackle similar mathematical themes but in very different ways. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitriou focuses on Bertrand Russell’s attempt to create a mathematical foundation for logical truth, while Sydney Padua’s The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace […]
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Lovecraft by I. N. J. Culbard
A while back I wrote about the H. P Lovecraft Historical Society’s film of The Whisperer in Darkness. It’s a great movie and by and large it does a good job of rendering a classic Lovecraft tale in the style of ‘40s film noir. Yet at the same time it highlights a lot of the […]
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Jodorowsky’s Dune – Documentary (2013)
In 1977 the film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky wrote an introduction to Dragon Dream’s monograph on the paintings of Chris Foss, 21st Century Foss (1977). The essay describes the artist as ‘a being who carried his drawings with the same ultra-maternal care as the Kaitanese Kangarooboos carry the children born of their self-insemination.’ Apparently Foss would ‘go […]
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Autun Purser – Fantastic Travel Destinations
I came across the wonderful Fantastic Travel Destination posters of Autun Purser at Dysprosium and immediately bought the complete set of cards and a print for one of my own personal favourite locations – the Lidenbrock Sea from Verne’s A Journey to the Centre of the Earth. He’s very kindly written a post about his […]
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Life on Uranus – Frank R. Paul, Fantastic Adventures April 1940
I came back from Eastercon 2015 with several pulp magazines, including a couple of copies of Fantastic Adventures carrying Frank R. Paul’s ‘Life on..’ series. This was a wildly optimistic attempt to extrapolate alien life on the planets of our solar system, based on the knowledge of the day. I thought I’d share my particular […]
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Interview with Jim Burns
Go here for my review of Jim Burns’ latest book The Art of Jim Burns: Hyperluminal. Can you talk us through one of your paintings from concept to finished image – both in terms of the idea and the practical execution. My choice would be Tea From an Empty Cup or Crucible purely because of […]
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Jim Burns – Hyperluminal
For me the golden age of science fiction and fantasy paperback illustration in the UK spanned the 70s and 80s. While 60s covers often favoured a minimalist Pop/Art approach the following decade saw an explosion of wildly imaginative and entrancing art, dominated by a handful of painters, each with a very distinctive style. New English […]
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Kate Bush: Before the Dawn.
Spoiler and bad language alert: If you are planning on seeing the concert and you don’t want any of it revealed then read no further. Also Kate Bush swears like a trooper. I planned on writing this straight after seeing the concert but it’s taken me about five days for my thoughts to marshal themselves […]
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Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For
Last night I went to a Sin City double feature where I watched the original followed by the sequel in 3D. Very entertaining and well made, the 3d enhances the unique visual style of the original and yet, and yet… My biggest feeling after seeing the movies, and 300 as well (I haven’t seen 300: […]
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Soviet Space Art
Last week I was working in Russia. I attended a conference in Tver, halfway between Moscow and St Petersburg where I was set on fire. I was also asked to be one of the judges for a final graduation film for one of the students at the All Russian Cinematography University (VGIK for short). As a […]