RSS Parrot

Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/09/03/steven-arnold-heavenly-bodies/

Published: September 3, 2025 15:30

One consequence of writing posts like this for the past 19 years is the blossoming into familiarity of previously unknown subjects. Such has been the case with the work of Steven Arnold (1943–1994), an American artist/photographer/film-maker whose…

Karel Zeman film posters

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/09/01/karel-zeman-film-posters/

Published: September 1, 2025 15:30

A festival poster from 2022. Zeman’s films are popular in Japan. Last week’s post about Czech film-maker Karel Zeman prompted me to see whether any more of his feature films have become available on disc. The international success of Zeman’s semi-animated…

Weekend links 793

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/08/30/weekend-links-793/

Published: August 30, 2025 18:00

Shinagawa, Tokyo Tower (Tokaido Station 1) (1967) by Sekino Jun’ichiro. • “The historical figures who interested [Cormac] McCarthy the most, judging by the number of books he owned about them, were Albert Einstein (114 books), Winston Churchill (88) and…

Inspiration, a film by Karel Zeman

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/08/27/inspiration-a-film-by-karel-zeman/

Published: August 27, 2025 15:30

I thought I’d written about this one before; I had but only a brief mention in a post about Czech film-maker Karel Zeman which links to a deleted YouTube copy of the film. More of a glass world than a crystal world, Inspiration (1948) is Zeman’s most…

Crystal worlds

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/08/25/crystal-worlds/

Published: August 25, 2025 15:30

The Crystal World by JG Ballard. An illustration by Virgil Finlay for the Summer–August 1966 issue of Things To Come, the Science Fiction Book Club mailer. 1: Crystal words JG Ballard didn’t have a pleasant experience with LSD when Michael Moorcock…

Weekend links 792

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/08/23/weekend-links-792/

Published: August 23, 2025 18:00

West Side Story (1961) poster designed by Joe Caroff. • “From the very moment of its inception, the Wound Man was an image intimately tied to actual practice. He was in fact many, many things at once: epistemic diagram, medical tool, affective muse,…

A Country Doctor, a film by Koji Yamamura

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/08/20/a-country-doctor-a-film-by-koji-yamamura/

Published: August 20, 2025 15:30

Writing about Koji Yamamura’s Parade de Satie a couple of months ago, I mentioned his adaptation of a Franz Kafka story, A Country Doctor (2007), and here it is. The Kafka adaptation was made a few years before Parade de Satie, and differs so much from the…

Evelyn Paul’s Myths & Legends of Japan

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/08/18/evelyn-pauls-myths-legends-of-japan/

Published: August 18, 2025 15:30

I don’t think I’ve encountered anything by British artist Evelyn Paul (1883–1963) before, but she illustrated a number of books before and after Myths & Legends of Japan, a guide to Japanese folklore which was published in 1912. The book by F. Hadland…

Weekend links 791

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/08/16/weekend-links-791/

Published: August 16, 2025 18:00

Cover design by Marian Bantjes for a 2009 series of Nabokov reprints. • “It is quite unlike the bland featurelessnesses of the current fiction in which dull creative writing students chat to dull creative writing students (there is today a generalised fear…

Engulfed Cathedrals

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/08/13/engulfed-cathedrals/

Published: August 13, 2025 15:30

La cathédrale engloutie by Claude Debussy. From Préludes pour Piano (1910). • La cathédrale engloutie performed by Daniel Barenboim. The Submerged Cathedral (1929) by MC Escher. La cathédrale engloutie (1950) by Ithell Colquhoun. La cathédrale engloutie…

Akihiro Yamada’s Lovecraftiana

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/08/11/akihiro-yamadas-lovecraftiana/

Published: August 11, 2025 15:30

Akihiro Yamada is a Japanese illustrator and manga artist best known for his work in the sub-genre of historical fantasy, as well as character design for video games and other media. All of this art is very accomplished—he’s great with lengths of billowing…

Weekend links 790

https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/08/09/weekend-links-790/

Published: August 9, 2025 18:00

Set design by Vladimir Pleshakov for the Ballets Russes’ The Firebird (1923). • The latest book from Swan River Press is A Mystery of Remnant and Other Absences, a collection of fictions by the late B. Catling. Copies include postcards with accompanying…