"Stalker" -- Andrei Tarkovsky -- The Rain Room

"Stalker" (1979)

dir. Andrei Tarkovsky

Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" + NIN's "Tetsuo III: Bulletman theme"

Dangerously close to a week without an update from me.
So here's a link to a video I cut a while back.

(of course you can click it & get the HD version..)

"Metropolis" (1927)

dir. Fritz Lang

"Tetsuo III: The Bulletman theme" 

by Trent Reznor/NIN

video cut by Russ Kiel

Beyond Apollo Blog: "British Interplanetary Society, 1949"

image: R.A. Smith/British Interplanetary Society

retrieved from wired.com

The "British Interplanetary Society" or "BIS," founded in 1933, which may be the oldest existing space-flight program.  It's like something from H. G. Wells or Sir Arthur Doyle.

Read the full story at Beyond Apollo.

The Beyond Apollo blog (now hosted at Wired.com) is dedicated to space-flights which never happened; it's an amazing compendium of alternate histories and unrealized futures.

Certainly one of my favorite corners of the web to visit.

"First Men in the Moon" (1964)

Dir. Nathan Juran

Effects. Ray Harryhausen

Based on the novel by H. G. Wells

"Tube" -- Zilvinas Kempinas

"Tube" by Zilvinas Kempinas

(image:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zilvinas_Kempinas_Tube_2009.jpg)

"Tube" is an installation piece by lithuanian born, contemporary NY artist Kempinas.  The tunnel utilizes the magnetic tape within VHS cassettes.  The installation measures 80 feet long.

The visual effect is stunning, mesmerizing and hypnotic.  The placement of this sci-fi effect within a very classic and traditional architectural space is surreal, to say the least; it reminds you of a time-travel effect from old sci-fi movies, hence visualizing the feeling you might get just by walking into a space like that.

Kempinas's piece could be read into further.  These VHS strings superimpose a fantasy onto our reality, much like the escapism promised by what is recorded on the VHS's themselves; they play with our perception, affect our vision.  The old fallback of movies leading us into another world or dimension is realized twice fold here: one time in the form of the media, and again in the optical illusion of 'Tube.'

This also reminds me of just how wasteful the consumerist entertainment culture can be.

How much stuff-- real, physical stuff-- do we produce and consume daily?

How many more 'tubes' could be erected?

But aside from giving you some food for thought, 'Tube' is also plain cool to look at.

* * *

"... not Door to Heaven... but instead... Stargate."

-- Stargate, 1994

I wonder if any of the VHS's pillaged for this project happen to be an old copy of "Stargate," the Roland Emerich directed Kurt Russell & James Spader buddy-romp....

* * *

from "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968).

Dir. Stanley Kubrick

Effects:  Douglas Trumbull 

"Split Atom I" -- Russ Kiel

"Split Atom I" -- Russ Kiel

Cesar Velasco Broca -- "Avant Petalos Grillado"

"Avant Petalos Grillado"
dir. Cesar Velasco Broca (2006).