Werner Herzog: 'Encounters at the End of the World' (2007)

Another stellar documentary by Werner Herzog: Encounters at the End of the World (2007). In it, we are led to meet various workers and other denizens of Antarctica. 

After seeing this, when I think of Antarctica, I dream these and similar images, many of them haunting -- a very strange and compelling impact: why I dig Herzog.

Memorable footage includes people, equipment, research stations, stunning under-the-ice sweeps, seals, bizarre below surface seal communications, penguins, a volcano, and ice-caves created by volcanic fumaroles. 

Herzog always seems to find the strange wherever he goes. Here, Antarctic neophytes awkwardly train for whiteout conditions by wearing plastic boxes over their heads. 

And here, a lone penguin heads into exile. By free choice or through some kind of madness? Herzog wonders.  

Encounters at the End of the World delivers on the promise of its title. It's dedicated to film critic Roger Ebert (1942-2013). 

Today's Rune: The Self. 

Antarctica of the Mind's Eye

A new library book has waltzed into consciousness: Gabrielle Walker's Antarctica: An Intimate Portrait of a Mysterious Continent (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013; originally published in Great Britain by Bloomsbury, 2012). Comparing British and American editions, which is groovier, or more effective, or more enticing? This one?

Or this one?

Or this one?

Why? Do any of these conform to the Antarctica in your mind's eye? 

Today's Rune: Signals.  

Michael Winterbottom: Nine Songs

Michael Winerbottom has made a variety of films, experimenting as he goes. One of my favorites of his remains 24 Hour Party People (2002), both for its wit and recreation of the Manchester music scene beginning with a visit by the Sex Pistols in 1976 and starring Steve Coogan as Tony Wilson; a lot of that one revolves around Joy Division and New Order.

Winterbottom's Nine Songs (2004) is a more stripped-down film -- literally and figuratively -- about a man and a woman who "see" each other in London, spend a lot of time at his flat, and see a lot of live music (quite a bit of it at Brixton Academy). Sex, drugs and rock and roll, more or less. Told from Englishman Matt's (Kieran O'Brien) point of view, the film is intercut with brief scenes from his later working life in Antarctica. His American paramour Lisa (North Carolina-born Margo Stilley) comes and goes as she wishes, while his attachment to her seems to grow. Dialogue is sparse, leaving the audience to connect the dots about their larger lives.

Upon its release, 9 Songs was the most sexually frank British movie ever shown on the big screen (outside of "blue" theatres, I suppose).  In context, you can see it as the culmination of an arc that begins with the controversial reception of Louis Malle's  Les Amants / The Lovers (1958), proceeds through Bernardo Bertolucci's Ultimo tango a Parigi / Last Tango in Paris (1972) and Wayne Wang's The Center of the World (2001) and arrives at 9 Songs.

Today's Rune: Signals. p.s. music by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and others is cool for context.
 

Ice Station Zebra

Get your melting ice while you can! Festooned with national flags, everyone wants a piece of the pie . . . Is the world just a pie for devouring, a giant sugar bowl?  Mineral rights, mineral wrongs, minerals be going going gone.

Hands across the water: grabbing for the drill points . . . 

Anybody seen a downed satellite around here?  Mexican Standoff in the Arctic. Ice Station Zebra (1968).

  

Claims on the far side of the globe: Antarctica. "Run Like a Villian to the sugar bowl . . ."  It ain't no "saccharine suburb in the mush!"*

                                                                                                        

Gang's all here -- guns drawn, as usual . . .

Today's Rune: Strength.  *"Run Like a Villain" -- Iggy Pop, "Zombie Birdhouse," 1982.