tiredNextly, Spooky and I have been on something of a Guy Maddin kick this week. We watched Twilight of the Ice Nymphs (1990) on Monday night, then Archangel (1997) last night. Tonight, it's Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary (2002). Someone described Twilight of the Ice Nymphs as the Gotterdammerung meet's Pee-Wee's Playhouse, which was surely as inept a comparison as ever I've read. The film is quite wonderfully surreal and dizzyingly colourful, however. Shelly Duval, Alice Krige, and Frank Gorshin make for a wonderful cast. But I loved the hauntingly black-and-white Archangel even more. There are curious elements uniting both films: wooden legs, lost husbands, fatherless children, mesmerism.
And I've been trying to catch up with news of things astronomical, such as the 2,175 mile-wide electrical storm rasging on Saturn. I was especially taken by the photo below, captured by the Cassini imaging system on January 27th, with the storm assuming a configuration eerily reminiscent of a Celtic triskele or triskelion. Charles Fort would appreciate the similarity, and Jung would appreciate that it's a bit of a "meaningful coincidence" for me. Regardless, it's an awesome, beautiful sight.
Also, click here for an astounding rotating composite infrared image of Titan, more of Cassini's handiwork. Note that, and I quote, Titan has numerous areas of light terrain with some large areas of dark terrain visible near the equator. Small areas of brightest terrain might arise from ice-volcanoes and have a high amount of reflective frozen water-ice. What fascinating worlds we are just beginning to glimpse, these mini-solar systems orbiting Jupiter and Saturn!
Okay. I was going to write about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but Spooky's calling me to dinner, so that shall have to wait until tomorrow morning. Did everyone get there copy of SD #3 okay?