Near Dark(1987)

Very sad to hear of the passing of the brilliant Klaus Schulze, whose music I have enjoyed so much over the years. RIP.

Jean-Michel Jarre & Tangerine Dream - Zero Gravity (Above & Beyond Remix)

Yesss! This track is absolutely massive. Seven minutes and twenty seconds and it’s glorious. Old school vibes with that undeniable Above & Beyond touch to it. :)

Day 21

Reflections on Firestarter(1984)

• The music by Tangerine Dream is excellent, obviously.
• The cast is stacked! Tiny Drew Barrymore does a ton of cutesy baby voice, but it’s allowed because she’s only 8. David Keith plays her father and looks like a poor man’s Kurt Russell (see photos 3 and 9 above). Heather Locklear, in her first film role, plays Barrymore’s mother.
• Louise Fletcher, who is usually fabulous, kinda phones it in. Good for her.
• Freddie Jones plays a weirdly similar role here to his character Thufir in Dune (1984) - both are experts whose frustrations and concerns go ignored. Moses Gunn also plays a similar role to his character in The NeverEnding Story (1984) - both are scientists reluctantly in charge of the deteriorating health of important, powerful young girls. Wow! All 3 of these movies were released the same year. Weird. 1984 was a big year for Freddie and Moses and sci-fi in general! 
• Speaking of big, Martin Sheen seems so little but obviously compensates by having such TALL HAIR. 
• George C. Scott plays an unrepentant maniac in leather, sometimes an eyepatch, and a long grey ponytail. The first time his character is on screen it looks like he’s made of bronze. It took me until nearly the end of the film to realize that his character was supposed to be Cherokee :(
• Director Mark L. Lester was also responsible for such cinematic gems as Roller Boogie(1979),Class of 1984 (1982) and Commando (1985). This was probably better than all of those - which is impressive! If you haven’t seen any of these titles I recommend them all.
• This was shot entirely in lush, green, kudzu-covered North Carolina. The cinematography is gorgeous! Extreme wide angle lenses are used in many scenes which warp straight architectural lines in a pleasingly wiggly way.
• Excellent horse acting. One of the horses is named Necromancer. Nice.
• The film climaxes with a combination of frog, horse, and synth sounds. I couldn’t ask for anything more - except maybe that a white dude didn’t play an Indigenous man. 

electripipedream:

Tangerine Dream, Rock & Folk magazine, 1976

The Keep (1983)

Directed by Michael Mann

Doomsy’s Rating: 78/100

I think everyone that follows my blog closely at this point realizes I have certain directors whose body of work as a whole I absolutely adore. Michael Mann is, in my opinion, one of cinema’s true visionary geniuses, and has done more for the medium than nearly any director working today. Even The Keep,which most cinephiles would agree is Mann’s weakest film (not his fault, to be fair; studio interference led to a severely compromised vision) is so full of beautiful composition and highly unorthodox storytelling that you can easily lose yourself in the expansive gothic dream world the film lives in. It’s a strange inclusion in Mann’s catalog, as it remains the director’s only entry in the horror genre. Actually, calling it a horror film is to undermine its true nature — a spooky atmospheric, fairy-tale set in the modern day, replacing Philistines with Nazis and sort of re-imagining Jewish folklore for the neon-drenched, synth-heavy 80s vibe Mann pretty much invented. 

Gabriel Byrne (who I normally view as a subpar and irritating screen presence) and Jurgen Prochnow are sensational as two Nazi officers so swept up in their poisonous ideologies, so intent on enveloping everything in their path, that they are at a loss when they become absorbed themselves in a spiritual realm of something that to them is a sinister being, but for Ian McKellen’s professor character, is a creature whose mere existence results from the evil of the outside world. The story of the Golem, which was appropriated by the Nazis as a symbol of the retrograde culture of the Jews, is instead presented as a lonely creature trapped away from the world, whose humanity can only exist in the body of a man from nowhere. The physical manifestation of the Golem’s soul is in the form of leather-jacketed, motorcycle-riding Scott Glenn.

The Keep also has the distinction of containing one of Michael Mann’s only proper love scenes, impressive given his extensive filmography.The sex between the Golem (in Scott Glenn’s body) and Alberta Watson (as McKellen’s daughter) is as artsy, passionate and ethereal as any I’ve ever seen. It’s amazing how many colors Mann uses in this scene, starting in sepia and finishing in an almost cyan iridescence that drips off the screen and overwhelms the senses. 

I suppose one of the reasons this film is looked badly upon in Mann’s filmography is that he a) disowned it, and b) had very little say in what ended up on screen. It is here where I must disagree — while the film is effectively incomplete and over two hours were cut against Mann’s wishes, his stark and gorgeous world-building is on full display and almost everything goes right for me by the end. If I have a reservation about the film in totality, it would be a lack of proper character development, although again, this is not the actors’, nor Mann’s fault.To me, in the form it exists today, The Keep is still an essential Mann film, featuring all his trademarks and boasting some of his most luscious and sensuous production design to date. A must watch. 

Also, make the effort to listen to the pulsing, phantasmagoric Tangerine Dream score on YouTube, it’s a perfect sound for a quiet night.

Thief (1981)

Directed by Michael Mann

Doomsy’s Rating: 94/100 (on my Great Films list!)

Thiefis one of the loneliest films ever made. The peak of Michael Mann’s pulsating vaporwave crime thrillers, it’s a film of longing, trances, and nights on the edge of the word. Frank (James Caan) is a thief, and like all Mann protagonists to come, is a wounded, emotionally unavailable dreamer crushed by a cynical world kicking him out and forcing him to adapt to a life of crime. His luck is poor, but his aim is unmatched as he attempts to blow his way out and finally be free of this dangerous profession. The thunderous, reverb-drenched Tangerine Dream score dictates the mood of every scene, letting Frank’s world come to life, as his own demise will eventually follow. Caan’s performance is extraordinary, but the real shining star of the piece is Willie Nelson (!) as a prison-bound lifer with a moral compass and a heartbreaking subplot. He gets a handful of scenes but makes his mark in a pathos-laden part right from the school of Greek tragedy. Mann’s color palette is dark blue in almost every scene, as Frank wanders through car parks, diners, and rainy Chicago skies that proffer the washing away of his many sins. There’s not too much plot at work here, and modern viewers will be reminded of the tone and style of Refn’s Drive, but this is an absolute masterpiece of a tone poem and it’s hard to believe this is Mann’s debut! A beautiful gem in the crime genre.

Watched on Criterion Channel.

On sale FRIDAY! “SORCERER” Original Motion Picture Soundtrack by Tangerine Dream! >>> waxworkrecords.com 

“I change cars like some guys change their fucking shoes.”

Thief, 1981

Directed by Michael Mann

Cinematography by Donald E. Thorin

THIEF

dir. Michael Mann

design/illustration: DRW.mov/Drew Phillips

Tangerine Dream
Zeit
1972 Ohr
—————————————————
Tracks Disc One:
1. Birth of Liquid Plejades
2. Nebulous Dawn

Tracks Disc Two:
1. Origin of Supernatural Probabilities
2. Zeit
—————————————————

• Peter Baumann
• Christopher Franke
  
• Edgar Froese

*Long Live Rock Archive