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chiseler · 5 years

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Zontar: The Thing From Venus

Writer and director: Larry Buchanan

A study in microscopic paranoia, Zontar is one of the more outrageous products of mid-sixties UFO Fordism. Its roadkill ‘plot’ shoulders on Body Snatchers territory: An absurd papier-mache creature plans world domination by zombifying the Military Industrial Complex, beginning with a lonely SETI outpost in the Mojave. Most of the inaction takes place in clapboard rec-rooms, abutted to stock footage of missile silos and pans of a stark desert moonscape (the latter is actually a suburb of Dallas, according to the scholars). Inside their pre-fab hells, the inmates mix drinks and threaten each other, occasionally erupt in spasms of wild emotion, then settle down again to the demands of stage-bound budgeting and the confines of a constant medium-shot frame. In a performance that must have been deeply influenced by Milgram’s torture experiments, Tony Huston is especially manic and perplexing as Zontar’s first human dupe, a NASA egghead called Keith. There are hints of a deep-seated nihilism behind his near-hysteria, but seeing that he also wrote the script, maybe it’s just the glee of a strange and lonely pride. His foil is John Agar, an actor who always seems to take on the attributes of the furniture around him. He is a practitioner of Taoist wu, the necessity of presence – neither more nor less.

Zontar finally arrives on earth and sets up command and control in a cave, where he cuts a touchingly vulnerable figure. As he is quite immobile – perhaps because Agar’s salary ate up most of the budget – he is assisted by strange airborne skeet-creatures who zombify the local servicemen and townspeople by stinging them. Repetitive shots of these cardboard demons flying over telephone wires, suburban bungalows, and stalled trucks look like captures of today’s drones haunted-up in memorial black and white. This is indeed skeletal filmmaking at the margin of afternoon fever-dreams, and it has a genuinely purgatorial atmosphere of cramp and marginal reality. Zontar of Venus looks splendid: a Duk-Duk fetish, proud and pitiful in glaring fabrication and bad lighting, an abandoned nightmare decaying in front of overgrown children, waiting for the end like a Mormon angel.

Huston soon realizes that Zontar is an intergalactic fascist whose plans are not liberation but human slavery. In a climax more desperate than thrilling, he rids the universe of both Zontar and himself with something called ‘plutonium ruby crystal’ – yet one feels a terrible certainty that the ‘story’ will repeat in a never-ending informational loop. The living and the dead will again assume their places and carry out their tasks once more, until the last flickering of recorded time. This sense of cyclical production is perhaps the ghostly product of Zontar’s eternal run on rosy-hour TV for the last half–century, as if the film itself had taken on the substance of its own interminable repetition. Zontar is cousin to Milstar.

The film has an occult undercurrent of loathing and cynicism that is strangely difficult to convey or qualify to the uninitiated. Line-readings are deadened but feel deviously mannered when taken as an (un)dramatic whole; the dialogue ignores Victorian ideas of psychological depth in favor of old-world Manicheanism, typified by Agar’s Augustinian pronouncement of the seduction of evil ending in “death... fire... disillusionment... loss”. The awful boredom of endless scenes in interchangeable rooms is eerily hypnotic, resembling the cycles of Bioy’s Morel or a Marienbad motel. These interiors form a wheezing geometrical figure that holds the participants hostage rather than leading them to any dramatic resolution, despite the conspiracy and murder of the goings-on. It seems fruitful here to ask whether Zontar is a reactionary film. Is this Brechtian dramaturgy really a right-wing Modernism á la Marinetti and Lewis? Is its indictment of middle-class complicity with alien martial entities just xenophobia demanding a military coup?

Robert Alcott’s savant camera captures the séance-like proceedings in the naive manner of an ethnographic documentary, and the film is not so much edited as chronologically interrupted. I hazard that Larry Buchanan, the auteur behind this and other narcolepsies such as The Eye Creatures and The Naked Witch, may be the last unexplored property in the American cult terrain, perhaps because he is seen as the most unexceptionally wretched – if he’s seen at all. There are some encouraging signs that this has been a major critical miscalculation.

As evidence prima facie in the case, consider the film’s similarities to post-war German cinema: both Fassbinder and Buchanan are obsessed with the traumatic scars of inertia; Zontar’s documentary camera predicts Thomas Mauch's and its cheap look resembles Kluge’s futurist Marxian epics; the ensemble nature of Buchanan’s films puts him squarely in the avant-garde, while his workmanlike ethic is pure proletarian. The picture was actually made for television, which goes some way toward understanding its rat-like, neurotic presence, but not the choices of a director who embraces each limitation as a mark of personal obsession. On top of the humiliation of being small screen, Zontar is also a remake of Roger Corman’s junker It Conquered the World, churned out ten years earlier. So Buchanan’s film is therefore a de facto critique (but of what??), as well as a revision.

It is entirely beside the point that Zontar is a ‘terrible’ film, just as it is obvious that bourgeois questions of formal unity, technical proficiency and diegesis do not apply here. Rather, its 80 minutes are hard to forget and give, for my insomnia, more pure unheimlichkeit than any of the more respectable fantasies of the period. It also offers far more to us today than say, The VVitch or Heredity – to name two recent neoliberal swindles made by people who once read about art in college and dress groan-inducing ideas up in murky Silicon Valley blues.

by Martin Billheimer

Postscriptum:

The abysmal quality of copies of the film only add to its mystique, as if it has projected itself forward in time to wallow in its own pixilation. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e9Cs87gbwg

Excellent proof of this can be found here: https://www.braineater.com/zontar.html

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kendrixtermina · 7 years

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So, “Coco”

One of my sisters was visiting and suggested we watch it

First I wasn’t overly hot on a children’s movie but the point was to do something fun together with my sister and BF, and he likes CGI stuff

My sister pulled out a quick documentary video about “Dia de Los Muertos” and the whole symbolism & aesthetic of it; That’s when I genuinely started thinking that this may have potential... It’s kinda like goth but also the total opposite of goth

The movie delivered. The Aesthetic was top notch, thorough & unapologetic in the music, the cultural references, & the visuals

In itself it’s very straightforward, archetypical & simple without ever veering into overdone. Very basic fantasy (if taken from a different pool of myth than the usual castles & dragons), classic hero’s journey and a well executed Hegelian Dialectic where the apparent false dichotomy between following your dreams or sticking with your loved ones is crushed in t5he end because, family is supposed to support you & your loved ones can be your greatest inspiration

I kind of called it from the start that Hector was Miguel’s real ancestor (My sister, of course, got the “how” right) - an early hint that he’s a Dad shows up when he suddenly & unexpectedly turns all “reasonable adult-ey” when it turns out Miguel’s family is looking for him. And all along, he just wanted to see his daughter. Awww.

Lets just aknowledge that the idea of having an epic adventure with your ancestors and meeting all those people your parents and grandparents told you about is just really, really cool; Every family has some branches they know less off than others

Let’s appreciate the Derpy Dog Spirit Guiude with the ludicrous pidgeon wings

It had a neat little political commentary without being ham-fisted and staying within the boundary of “good life lessons for kids”, but there was a certain #MeToo subtext there... like, you can’t put something like molestation in a childrens movie, but the basic point of how your heroes can turn out to have done awful things is prolly a good message to show to little boys, especially with how it didn’t stay a secret in the end but got outed to the world by the old ladies’ words

How deep is it that it’s named for the old granny; Also, how in the epilogue you saw the baby cousin, kinda implying how the family tree/ history continues to grow

When the great-great-grandma sang it sounded just like my mom’s old records

The physical humor with the bones was neato. (as my sister pointed out, there was not a single lame fart joke, the humor was very organic rather than forced or annoying)

So pretty! I mean in the end film is a visual medium. My sister lost it over the look of the afterlife/purgatory place

With trump out there and so much hate mongering, its really good for Latin American kids to see their culture in a cool and awesome light

So, 8/10, but I like to reserve 10 for mindblowing stuff - If 10 is not “best movie imaginable” but “it did everything a [genre] movie is supposed to”, it would be more like 11/10. It’s good that this exists, especially in these times.

Bonus: Here are some impressions from my littlest sister, an actual grade schooler and hence in the actual target demographic:

music very catchy

She liked/ found relatable how the MC has a big family just like herself, which isn’t common around here; Same for them speaking Spanish (our parents grew up in Cuba so they speak it at home sometimes)

She thought it had a really cool adventure story (not something that occurred to me)

She went to the cinema 3 times to watch it, and now they’re gonna buy it on amazon, too. The other 2 sisters both stressed how much she loved it

#coco #disney #pixaredit

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iffeelscouldkill · 6 years

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Tagged!

I was tagged by the excellent @whelvenwings (as always 😉) to answer some fun questions, so here we go!

Nickname: I have various nicknames, which is great - I love a good nickname, the more unique the better. There was a whole group of friends at my old work who used to call me "Knees", or sometimes "Knee-bearer".

Why? Well, I'm glad you asked. We used to ask each other quiz questions on Slack to pass the time/stave off the crushing despair of working for that company, and one time someone asked the question: "What is genuphobia a fear of?"

Based on the French word "genoux", I guessed "knees". When the winner was announced my colleague said "The winner is... Rebecca with knees!"

And so I became Rebecca With Knees. Or Knees for short.

Zodiac: Ugh... Aries but I was born on the first day of it, and it doesn't fit my personality at all. I think I was meant to be a Pisces.

With that said, my Chinese zodiac year is the Ram, so I can say I'm a double Ram. Which is something we should all aspire to be.

Height: Not enough for high shelves

Last movie I saw: If we go with in the cinema, then it was the gorgeous wonder that is Into the Spider-Verse. If we're counting DVDs to cheer myself up because I have New Year's Blues, then it was Ocean's Eleven.

Last thing I Googled: ...genuphobia. To remember how it was spelt 😂

Favorite musician: My cousin Georgia, who is a flautist and plays a lot of experimental contemporary music and is generally cool 😊

Song stuck in my head: Whiskey in the Jar. I blame Starship Iris.

Other blogs: Eh... I have a couple of other Tumblogs I created for uni work (my data journalism project and my Masters final project, respectively) but nothing that I actually *use*.

Oh, and one that I created to boost a Peter Pan cyberpunk fanfic I was writing. I'd forgotten about that.

Do I get asks: 😂😂😂

no I do not

Following: 127 Tumblrs, which is way more than I thought. But I never really unfollow anyone.

Amount of sleep: n e v e r e n o u g h

Lucky number: 8!

What I’m wearing: A purple checked shirt (bought at a second hand sale thingy) under a grey sweatshirt with purple flowers embroidered on it. Dark grey jeans. Pink and black socks that don't match but they're like, the opposite of each other, so that's cool.

Dream job: Comics writer. I don't really care what kind of comics (well, hopefully ones I like) or what medium (digital or print), I just want to write comics.

But I've always thought it would be cool to write a whole variety of things, so like Visual Novels, games, short stories, novels, journalistic articles, maybe even a short film or web series. I want to write all the things! (And get paid for it preferably)

Dream trip: My dream/bucket list goal is to go and see the Northern Lights, so I'd do that with a few of my closest friends. From all over the world. And we'd have a really chilled out trip with lots of great conversations and lots of peaceful reading and everyone would get along super well and it'd be lovely.

Favorite food: Ugh, it's hard to pick. I'm eagerly awaiting a Chinese takeaway so I'm going to go with char siu bao which is fluffy, pillowy steamed buns with sweet barbecue pork inside. Mmmmmm nom nom.

Play any instruments: I play the French Horn (well, not actively, but I can play) and I tried to teach myself the ukulele years ago, which I keep meaning to come back to. And I would like to take the piano back up. I gave it up after Grade Four but it's so satisfying to play. I have a baby nephew whose parents own a piano (actually our parents' old piano) and I daydream about playing fun songs on it for my nephew to make him laugh.

Languages: I speak English (I... I think) and Spanish and Mandarin (when I concentrate). I learned French for many, many years but recently discovered how shocking my grammar is when I went back to France last year. I also used to speak Italian to a basic level but I also went to Italy last year and... I struggled. Actually, one of my plans for 2019 was to start learning it again. I'd almost forgotten!

Favourite songs: You want me to list like ... all of them?

Okay, let's have a selection.

A new love: Galvanize by The Chemical Brothers. I discovered it today and it's pretty long but it has a super cool electric violin melody in it.

An old favourite: Nemo by Nightwish

Favourite song to sing along to: One Way Or Another by Kate Voegele (no, not the Blondie song. A different One Way Or Another) or Pony (It's Okay) by Erin McCarley. Two very different songs to sing but both great fun.

Never get tired of: Dreaming by Smallpools. Did I mention I love that song?

Random fact: I'm typing this all out on a phone because I was too lazy to grab my laptop.

...I have some time to kill. (See above about the takeaway)

How to describe myself aesthetic: My aesthetic is strings of sparkly glass things hanging in windows, cute things with stars on them, dolphins and butterflies, purple and silver and turquoise, rainbows and windchimes. Whimsical clutter. Think a nine-year-old's bedroom meets a New Age shop.

I won't bother to tag anyone because no-one ever does these, but if you see this on your dash and want to do it, be my guest!

#and in case you were wondering #the takeaway just arrived #off to have some food!#whelvenwings #tagged #thank u that was pretty fun #haven't done one in a while #and a good workout for my thumbs

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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Crunchyroll Remembers Their Favorite Lupin the 3rd Stories

On April 11, Kazuhiko Kato—better known to his fans by the name Monkey Punch—passed away. Kato created many amazing works in his time, but the best known and most beloved of all was easily Lupin the 3rd. For many of us here at Crunchyroll, it was one of our earliest anime, if not an actual gateway series.

Today, we here at Crunchyroll News and Features are taking a look back at our favorite films and episodes, as well as what made us love this crazy series. We'd love to hear from the rest of you, too: tell us in the comments what makes you love the Lupin Gang and what story you loved most. If you're new to the series, we hope this encourages you to check out one of the standards of anime.

Thanks to everyone on the team who took part and shared their memories!

Paul: The true genius of Lupin III is that the characters are archetypal, and so they can map onto whatever story the writers and directors want to tell, from slapstick nonsense to hard-boiled, noir-style thrillers filled with murder and gratuitous nudity. Lupin, like Batman, means something different to everyone, and there is so much more to the character than simply “red jacket”, “blue jacket”, “green jacket”, etc.

My first experience with Lupin III was The Castle of Cagliostro, and I've got a lot of time for The Woman Called Fujiko Mine and Jigen's Gravestone, but I'm sure everyone and their cousin has some kind words to spare for those entries, so I'll devote a few phrases to the weirder animated entries: The Fuma Conspiracy, The Mystery of Mamo, and The Legend of the Gold of Babylon.

Although I own two different DVD releases of The Fuma Conspiracy, I remember almost nothing about the film itself except that it involves Goemon getting engaged, the entire film is basically an extended (and exquisitely animated) chase scene, and the AnimEigo release had to fudge Lupin's name as “Rupan” because of the lawsuit with Maurice Leblanc's estate.

The Mystery of Mamo has clones, a giant space brain, ridiculous cameos and product placement that got scrubbed from the Geneon release, like 6 different English dubs, and perhaps the single greatest visual rhyme in anime cinema history, which juxtaposes Lupin teasing Fujiko's nipple with world leaders pushing the Big Red Button for a nuclear missile strike.

The Legend of the Gold of Babylon is so goddamned weird that is makes The Mystery of Mamo seem “two bedroom one bath white picket fence in the suburbs” mundane by comparison. I haven't managed to sit through the entire film in one viewing, but it's co-directed by Seijun Suzuki and it's arguably the most divisive work in the entire Lupin III franchise, so it merits a mention.

But none of these wild and woolly adventures would exist without the original manga from Kazuhiko Katou, aka “Monkey Punch”, and while straight manga Lupin with no chaser is way too raw for me, it's the primordial essence from which all other interpretations of the characters spring, and the world is a smaller, meaner, and pettier place without Lupin's creator in it.

Carlos: I’ve always loved the phantom thief genre in any medium. I loved it as a Super Sentai, adored it when Persona 5, and of course, couldn’t get enough of it in the eclectic series of Lupin the 3rd.

Kazuhiko Katou’s legacy has truly been immortalized in Lupin’s escapades, being one of the earliest examples of the phantom thief trend in Japan and modernizing Arsene Lupin’s adventures for generations of fans to enjoy. The anime world has lost an old time visionary, but he left us with his timeless classic that I’ve loved for so long, and will enjoy for years to come. Whenever I sing “Memory of Smile,” I’ll raise a glass to Monkey Punch.

Noelle: My first introduction to the series was Castle of Cagliostro, having also grown up on Ghibli, and something about that was just so fun and enjoyable.

The Detective Conan crossovers are also a bit of lighthearted fun- Lupin exists everywhere!

All Lupin works embody the phantom thief sub-genre, but instead of being something heavy and ominous, they are free-spirited. Lupin, Jigen, and Goemon all have chips on their shoulders, but that doesn’t stop them from causing trouble and generally having a good time while doing so. Every installment is witty, clever, and I’m always eager to see how the gang will come out on top.

The truest Lupin installment that greatly stuck with me is of course, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, which ranks as one of my favorite anime series to this day. It doesn’t focus on Lupin himself but Fujiko, and her adventures of self-discovery and living her own life. This one was a far more serious series, especially compared to the far more carefree Lupin series that I’d been exposed to, but it worked.

I’d usually watch Lupin whenever I wanted something that I know I’d enjoy, but also makes me feel good. There aren’t many series that manage to do both.

Rest in peace, Monkey Punch.

Nicole: It’s been hard to reconcile with the fact that Monkey Punch is gone... My first encounter with Lupin came from Castle of Cagliostro, where I immediately fell in love with the Miyazaki directed version of Lupin as a dashing thief and the misfits that followed him around. I remember hearing from a lot of people when I first wanted to expand that “Oh that isn’t really Lupin, that’s a sanitized version of him,” and over the years I kind of find myself disagreeing with that more and more. Lupin is a lot of things to a lot of different people, and I think Monkey Punch really created a unique and amazing set of characters that various directors then worked with and left their mark on. I still find myself rewatching Cagliostro whenever I get a chance, and I find it an amazing ‘first anime’ movie to show to people who have never really seen much anime at all before.

The Lupin TV series are filled with so many amazing episodes, and when I originally drafted up a top ten list last year, I ended up starting to rewatch the whole thing again. Even though some adaptations of Lupin are a bit better than others, I would say that anyone who likes the idea of a master thief and his madcap capers will find a lot to love almost anywhere in this series, and I hope that maybe in this sad circumstance of Monkey Punch’s passing, people will get curious enough to investigate the series and fall in love with it too.

Some of my favorite Lupin memories and moments, aside from Cagliostro, have to be those dealing with Zenigata. As much as I love the Lupin crew, there’s just something charming and attractive about Zenigata’s character that always made him so much fun to watch. As I mentioned in my list, there are a lot of interpretations of Zenigata, but I always prefer the hard-boiled, semi-noir detective version of him that episodes like “Until the Full Moon Passes” or “The Woman the Old Man Fell in Love With” depict. I think the reason I always liked Zenigata so much is that he’s really important for Lupin to play off of, and without Zenigata, I don’t think you’d really enjoy Lupin as much as a character! The moments where the two of them really face off, or even work together, are some of the most magical moments in the series overall; on that note, I really recommend curious viewers to check out “The End of Lupin III”, another great pick.

Finally, I’ve come to appreciate the Miyazaki influence in Lupin more over the years, and realize that without Monkey Punch, we probably wouldn’t have Studio Ghibli today; those who are curious to see where Miyazaki got some of his original directing starts might want to check out his Lupin episodes, and of those, “Farewell, my Beloved Lupin” is amazing (and keen Miyazaki fans might see a lot of similar designs here to later movies!) and of course the amazing Miyazaki take on Fujiko in “Wings of Death: Albatross”! I’m sure there’s so much more I could talk about or recommend, but I’ll just say that Lupin, in all of his incarnations, is worth it, with something for everyone, from various movies and tv shows to spin-offs like the amazing Woman Called Fujiko Mine, I hope that creators will keep honoring the vision and memory of Monkey Punch and deliver us more amazing Lupin content in the future.

Joseph: Like many people, my first exposure to Lupin as a character was in Miyazaki's Castle of Cagliostro feature, which I still think is his best movie as a director. That characterization of Lupin, I would go on to learn, is just one of many, and I would soon see just how different his origins were when Tokyopop started publishing Monkey Punch’s original Lupin manga in English. Looking back, it's probably not the best representation overall, but it's still interesting to see how the character has evolved since those rough early days.

The next time I caught him in action was back when Part 2 would air on Adult Swim—*checks paper* almost SIXTEEN YEARS ago?—and I've kept up with him and the rest of the gang irregularly over the years. My favorite thing about the franchise is just how flexible it is in general. While the broad strokes of each character may remain along the same lines depending on the jacket du jour, Lupin offers up a distinct canvas on which artists can apply their own unique sensibilities. I especially appreciate stuff like 2012’s The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, which is about as decadently artsy as Lupin gets.

Kara: I spent two semesters in my college's anime club my freshman year being generally okay with anime. It was Castle of Cagliostro that got me all the way in. I remember when I finished watching it, I turned to my friend and said, "I'm actually kind of sad there's no more movies with these characters in them." I had no idea how ridiculously wrong I was.

I loved earlier specials and series, but what I'm loving now is the flexibility the characters have after 50 years. We had The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, which was downright surreal but ultimately rewarding when the other shoe drops. The new movies have been fantastic as they bring in a largely new cast. And for me, Part 5 was some of the most satisfying anime I've ever watched, Lupin or otherwise. It felt so in the spirit of Kato-sensei's original work, while still creating new riffs on it.

For me, anything Lupin is my go-to on a bad day. I know it's going to be funny, I know the "good guys" (whether or not Zenigata sees it that way) will win the day, and I know there's a lot of heart in every single version. It's hard to believe the gang's creator has passed on, but I'm also glad he got to see his work beloved by the world, and that it will continue strong for new fans.

Series available on Crunchyroll:

>> Part 1

>> Part 2

>> Part 3

>> Part 4

>> Part 5

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Kara Dennison is a writer, editor, and interviewer with bylines at VRV, We Are Cult, Fanbyte, and many more. She is also the co-founder of Altrix Books and co-creator of the OEL light novel series Owl's Flower. Kara blogs at karadennison.com and tweets @RubyCosmos.

Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: [email protected]

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!

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