meshes of the afternoon

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

This week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees saw Alan continue his own Lord of the Rings trilogy, which started in May, this time writing about the choices made in creating the 1981 BBC radio adaptation. Alan’s a big fan of this version of Tolkien’s epic tale, and his post may just convince you to seek out the BBC’s take on The Lord of the Rings. But as there are no trailers for ’80s radio series, or at least none we could find, here’s a trailer for Ralph Bakshi’s animated Lord of the Rings instead.

Continue reading →

We’ve spent a lot of this year talking about the sadly departed David Lynch – but surrealist film doesn’t begin and end with Lynch, so we’re dedicating the October espresso podcast to one of the greats of experimental filmmaking: Maya Deren, who, aside from film, also was active as a choreographer, dancer, film theorist, writer and photographer. In particular, we’re focusing on her beautiful, enigmatic, eternally rewatchable “Meshes of the Afternoon”, a released in 1943, made by Deren and her husband Alexandr Hackenschmied (also known as Alexander Hammid). What makes this 14-minute short such an effective precursor to films ranging from Lynch’s Lost Highway and Inland Empire to more mainstream, genre cinema such as Inception and even arthouse video games?

P.S.: For anyone seeking out the films of Maya Deren: many of them can be found on YouTube, though not always in the original version and often with different sound/music. You can find one such version of “Meshes of the Afternoon” here.

Continue reading →