Tarkovsky

luka

Well-known member
That and bella tar the worst things in life. Just awful. Dull as ditchwater. Watch the matrix
 

catalog

Well-known member
OK, that's a pretty tenuous - just a throwaway line that he doesn't really dig into. I really think that they - like Tarkovsky - were attempting bigger things. Perhaps I'm wrong, I'd like to read more of their stuff to get a better idea.
Yeah, very tenuous. Another one I built up in my head! If you read the whole blog, there's a bit just before what I quoted, where he says one of their other books was a heavy influence on James Cameron's Avatar.
 

linebaugh

Well-known member
I guess they were a big deal (Lem too for that matter). Hard To Be A God was based on one of their books as well and I remember some Russians I knew being excited well in advance... hype around their name I guess is what I'm saying.
have you seen it/did you like it? pretty compelling trailer
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I've seen the version directed by Alexei German, it's amazing. I haven't seen the earlier version from the 80s (I think) which has Werner Herzog in it strangely.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
With Roadside Picnic, I been thinking that the idea of The Zone is too good for any story around it to live up to that - I sort of that the brothers recognised that and which is why the book spends so much time in the shadow of the zone and so little in it, they went for a more oblique approach - Tarkovsky kinda went "fuck that" and went straight at it like a bull at a gate, an approach that ultimately worked better.
 

kumar

Well-known member
i loved hard to be a god, its the most disgusting medieval caper ive seen, the whole film is covered in poo, very impressive
 

luka

Well-known member
It's the most boring thing I've ever seen. It reminded me of Maid Marion and her Merry Men but without the laughs
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
i loved hard to be a god, its the most disgusting medieval caper ive seen, the whole film is covered in poo, very impressive
Yeah it's all slimy and grim, just wallowing in literal filth. You feel like you need a bath afterwards.
 

version

Well-known member
What would you like to tell young people?

I don’t know… I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as possible by themselves. I think one of the faults of young people today is that they try to come together around events that are noisy, almost aggressive at times. This desire to be together in order to not feel alone is an unfortunate symptom, in my opinion. Every person needs to learn from childhood how to spend time with oneself. That doesn’t mean he should be lonely, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with himself because people who grow bored in their own company seem to me in danger, from a self-esteem point of view.

 

version

Well-known member
Which other books and films feature a "Zone"? GR's an obvious one. Annihilation has "The Shimmer".

The-Shimmer-Annihilation-600x279.png
Hidden deep in the south of France, practically untouched by the modern age, is a place known by many as 'the Zone'. In this space, the supernatural is an everyday reality of life. Magic is everywhere. It is reason. It is currency. It is unquestionable fact. Prepare yourself for a journey into life on the other side of the mirror. Legendary filmmaker Richard Stanley (HARDWARE, DUST DEVIL, as well as a string of stunning documentaries) has never been under spoken about his studies in mysticism and the occult. A trained anthropologist whose brain glows with secret knowledge and forgotten histories, Stanley has spent decades exploring the literal fantastic.
 

version

Well-known member
"The Otherworld is an attempt by Stanley to explain the place where he lives — the French Pyrenees — and a moment in his life that even his art has not allowed him to fully translate to reality. This area is known as "The Zone," a place of occult lore, thanks to ley lines, UFO sightings, and Rennes-le-Château, a church rebuilt by 19th-century priest Father Bérenger Saunière. The strange tales of his wealth and secrets — some of them celebrated in a 1948 article and others used by a local merchant to build tourist interest in the area — led to 1982's book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which postulated that Saunière had the true Holy Grail — proof that Jesus Christ had survived the Crucifixion, married Mary Magdalene and had children — and used that to build his wealth. Other claims were that he had the actual body of Christ's wife or a gateway to another dimension. Again — I could spend an entire website explaining more about Rennes-le- Château, particularly the insanity that the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail lost their plagiarism suit against Dan Brown, whose book The Da Vinci Code popularized these legends.

This area was also home to the Cathars, who the film postulates frightened the Christians that came here, as they placed women in positions of power, and the Knights Templar, mystical Christian knights that were burned at the stake for blasphemy (or political and economic regions). Any genre fan will tell you that the Knights inspired The Blind Dead films. Again, I urge you to study more and learn of their complicated history.

Stanley meets magicians, sorcerers, tour guides and normal folks who have all been impacted by the place he calls home, never commenting on just how good of a grasp on reality his subjects have. At the heart of the film are two incidents where Stanley himself met a female presence, told through his actual words (and those of his wife). The recounting of their second meeting are incredibly interesting, as Stanley almost breaks down in tears describing what happened."
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
This area was also home to the Cathars, who the film postulates frightened the Christians that came here, as they placed women in positions of power, and the Knights Templar, mystical Christian knights that were burned at the stake for blasphemy (or political and economic regions). Any genre fan will tell you that the Knights inspired The Blind Dead films. Again, I urge you to study more and learn of their complicated history.
The Bone Clocks....
In time, we discover that the Blind Cathar is a medieval heretic of supernatural power who founded a blackhearted cult of time- and realm-splitting body snatchers, the Anchorites.
 

luka

Well-known member
Idle Rich recommended the film to me. It's much better than the book. I haven't read the book.
 
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