Although New York tempts me with its cinematic offerings, London is the city that really knows how to lure me in: the bookstores. Oh, oh, the London bookstores. Specifically, the London esoteric bookstores, with their pedigrees and their events and their shelves stacked high with obscure grimoires and dusty alchemical texts. Oh! It sets my bibliophile heart aflutter, just thinking of it!
Treadwell’s is top of my personal list, if only for the delightfully tempting list of titles and events listed on their webpage. They’re the newest of the lot, open less than six years now, but the owner has an academic background in medieval history and their selection seems both interesting and reasonably-priced (well, as far as antiquarian book collecting goes). Their lectures series is absolutely fascinating to me, and I’m likely to make Jim batty when we visit London by trying to plan our trip to accommodate some upcoming Treadwell’s speaker or event.
Next on the tour is Atlantis Bookshop, one of London’s oldest occult bookshops. It should probably be first, given it was founded in 1922 by a group of magicians that included Austin Osman Spare, Dion Fortune and Aleister Crowley, and they do run another impressive series of events, lectures and pub nights. Chalk it up to nostalgia: Treadwell’s was the first bookstore I fell in love with online, and I’m still a bit sweet on them as a result.
Finally, there’s Watkins Books, who almost got the top billing when I spotted the A.O. Spare book on the top of their Antiquarian page. (Then I spotted the price, which may well be reasonable for Spare’s extraordinarily rare works, but still!) Watkins was actually founded before Atlantis Bookshop, issuing their first catalog in 1987 and opening doors on their current location in 1901. W.B. Yeats used to shop here, and the original owner was a friend (and printer) for H P. Blavatsky, a key figure in the Victorian occult revival. Like I said, pedigree!
Londonist.com has some lovely photos of all three shops in their Biblio-Text series: Treadwell’s, Watkins and Atlantis.
Ah me. In lieu of an overseas trip, I’ll have to make time this weekend for a stop-in at The Monkey’s Paw, one of my favorite browsing spots in Toronto. They may not have a specific focus in esoteric/occult texts, but there’s always one or two books in their little glass shelf to make my heart go pit-a-pat.
As much as I adore my adopted hometown of Toronto, there are times when I wish I lived elsewhere. Usually New York, and usually because of some film-related event. Like right now, when I’m staring at the schedule for the upcoming MOMA To Save and Project film festival. Newly restored versions of NANOOK OF THE NORTH and Frank Capra’s FORBIDDEN on the big screen? A showing of HAXAN: WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES, a 1922 silent Swedish film that’s been on my want-to-see list since I missed out on the last Toronto screening years ago due to schedule conflicts*? And – gem of gems – a restored print of Lotte Reiniger’s THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED? What a feast of old-timey cinematic glee!
I’ve seen a few of Lotte Reiniger’s shorts, and outtakes from an unrestored version of ACHMED, but never the full film; hopefully, this new restoration will merit a DVD release (there’s one currently available, but I’ve been a bit hesitant about the transfer quality). Her life story is pretty interesting, and her influence resonates clearly among modern directors such as the Brothers Quay and Guy Maddin (in particular, the silhouette sequences in ARCHANGEL).
“I love working for children, because they are a very critical and very thankful public.” – Lotte Reiniger
* – oh, and it turns out HAXAN is public domain and thus available online; the quality won’t be as nice as a print, of course, but I’ll have to give it a try this weekend, just to see.
SYMBOL (Shinboru): my twitter review for this film pretty much sums it up: “never has one man’s surreal angst been so incredibly funny”. SYMBOL was definitely the weirdest film I saw at TIFF this year, and also the funniest. Funny in that hand-over-mouth,-faintly-embarrassed-to-be-laughing-so-hard-at-this kind of way. If you enjoy those odd Japanese game shows that pop up on Youtube once in a while, SYMBOL is probably for you.
The film starts with two plotlines: one follows a Japanese man who awakens alone in an all-white room with no apparent means of escape, the other follows a Mexican wrestler preparing for a match. The connection between the two isn’t immediately obvious, and even once it’s revealed, may leave some viewers scratching their heads. It gets stranger from there, building up to an ending that’s either jaw-dropping or totally pretentious, depending on your personal feelings about life, the universe and everything. I thought it was awesome, but I also saw it on the last day of the festival, so that might just be my sleep dep talking.
Also: this film is not for those who find male nudity uncomfortable. There is literally more angel penis in this film than I would have ever thought possible; it’s not obscene, but it is hilarious. And difficult to explain to anyone under 16, I’d imagine.
Valhalla Rising: I learned a very valuable lesson from VALHALLA RISING; never take your friends to see an art house film, even if said art house film involves a good deal of viking violence. They won’t enjoy it, and their obvious non-enjoyment is going to keep knocking you out of the film as well.
VALHALLA RISING is perhaps the most metal film I’ve ever seen; brutal, vicious, desolate and strangely powerful. I’m not really sure I can recommend it, but if you’re up for a curiously-paced exploration of inhumanity, faith and delirium, this would be a good place to start. The first 30 minutes play like a Hong Kong action film, loaded up with ugly yet compelling combat sequences; the last hour is a surrealist descent into increasing chaos and solitude, like watching a group of people slowly starve to death in the woods. Only with more axe fights and mud baths. The film is soaked in an unrelenting bleakness, from the characters and plot to the cinematography itself, a monochromatic palette that strips forest and ocean down to a stark, sad beauty.
Don’t let the trailer fool you, by the way, as to the amount of narrative explanation the film provides – about a third of the dialogue in the film is in the trailer, and the closer the film moves towards the climax, the less vocal everyone becomes, leaving the audience to puzzle out scenes and motivations on their own.
THE WAITING CITY: My viewing of this film was no doubt influenced by the terrible mood I was in the day I saw it, but it managed to strike all the wrong notes with me. The basics: uptight professional woman and her laid-back musician husband travel to India to complete a long-planned adoption; delays happen and their relationship starts to strain as a result. There really wasn’t much here that struck me as new or fresh; not the unraveling plot, not the oh-so-typical characters, not the “attractive white people exploring an exotic culture” motif. It’s competent enough, and probably worth watching if you have an interest in international adoption or India, but nothing groundbreaking.
Jos asked for weird movies, so weird movies it is! I still haven’t done anything longer than a Twitter review for any of the Toronto International Film Fest screenings I saw, so there’s plenty for me to catch up on. To be honest, I saw far fewer films this year than I usually cram in. A typical TIFF, for me, involves anywhere from 35 to 50+ films over 10 days; this year was a paltry 24, if you count the short film screening as a single movie. I also saw more “mainstream” films this year, which translates to anything hitting theatres in the six months following the fest. I missed out on a bunch of films I really wanted to see – AIR DOLL and MALL GIRLS I’m particularly sorry to have not seen – but hopefully I’ll have a chance to track those down, either at indie cinema showings or DVD.
HIPSTERS (Stilyagi): To be honest, I almost skipped this film based on the translated name alone. So I owe a massive thanks to Matt for recommending I check it out, given that it turned out to be one of my favorite films of the entire fest.
The core premise is classic musical with a Russian twist: during the height of the Cold War, a member of the Communist Youth Party falls for a rebellious girl and dives head-first into a forbidden subculture of jazz, flashy clothes and swing dance to win her heart, discovering himself along the way. Sappy as all good musicals must be, but leavened by the constant background of the oppressive Soviet regime and a slightly odd pacing that keeps it from being too pat. The dance numbers are a blur of color and joy, the acting is solid, and it’s a fascinating peek into a little-known youth subculture. The Stilyagi were a cultural palimpsest, an attempt to recreate a forbidden style with little clear information and lots of misconceptions to go on. It reminds me of a bunch of the Japanese youth movements, especially the rockabillies, who are a darker take on the stilyagi style: James Dean versus Chuck Berry, as it were. I’m fascinated by the way cultures borrow and rewrite one another (on that take, I highly recommend SUKIYAKI WESTERN DJANGO for a wild rethinking of the Samuri Cowboy aesthetic) and HIPSTERS has a great deal of fun exploring this area. The closing song sequence, in particular, is one of the most uplifting, glee-soaked bits of cinema I’ve ever seen.
Unfortunately, I can’t find any subtitled video clips online, but there’s a trailer here and one of my favorite numbers (when the main character gets kicked out of the Youth Group, a tribute to unity and conformity) online here to give you a flavor. Like the Stilyagi themselves, the film is a pastiche of musical and cinematic styles, blended together into an odd but satisfying whole.