The opera world is in mourning. Edmea Tetua, the greatest singer of all time, has passed away. On a grande ocean liner, her friends, colleagues, admirers have come together to scatter Edmea's ashes near Erimo, the island where she was born.

“This is the funny thing abut sea voyages. After a few days, you feel as if you'd been sailing forever. You feel you've always known your fellow voyagers.”

During a tour of the ship, the passengers visit the boiler room where – urged on by the engine room crew – an impromptu operatic competition unfolds, all to the pulsating rhythm of the steamliner's bloated belly.

Simón is a stylite in the Syrian #desert on top of a pillar, close to God, #praying. People gather and pray to him, Simón. Simón prays for the people, the animals, himself.

“Come down off that column. Taste earthly pleasures till you've had your fill. Till the very word pleasure fills you with nausea.”

– The Devil

As with anyone who believes in the concept of #sin, or desires to be free of sin, sin comes to Simón.

Last Chants for a Slow Dance is shocking in its simplicity. Tom (Tom Blair) is out there looking for work. Out of the way of his wife and into the heart of Montana. On a slow moving road trip, as scorching and dragging like hot tar, we accompany him and some of the vapid interactions with others out there. The heat, pursuit of sex, and inter-human exchanges are endless.

 

Things do break.

In this #supernatural Filipino melodrama, it being a Filipino melodrama, the town's muse tragically drowns, taking her newborn child with her. The orphaned baby floats down the river then is picked up by an older, childless couple who gladly raise her as their own. The child has a strange attachment to the #Pasig river where at night, a mysterious spellbinding voice sings the #kundiman [traditional love song] Mutya ng Pasig.

 

While Mutya ng Pasig is a lovely, somewhat predictable mystery by Richard Abelardo, it's well worth your time on a slowly meandering, hot summer night.

Japanese author Yukio Mishima was, besides an aesthete, a fierce proponent of Japanese nationalism. In 憂國, based on his short 1960 story, Mishima plays palace guard Lt. Shinji Takeyama. Despite being one of the instigators of an ultra-nationalist coup, Takeyama decides he cannot overthrow the government as it would mean having to kill his friends and be disloyal to the Emperor. Returning home, he and his bride Reiko (Yoshiko Tsuruoka) perform #切腹 (#seppuku / #HaraKiri), as in line with Takeyama's #samurai heritage.

 

Yūkoku is a #SilentFilm that plays out like #Noh #theatre, with an extreme emphasis on the beauty and love of death and loyalty respectively.

 

After Mishima's own seppuku in 1970, his widow ordered all copies of Yūkoku to be destroyed. In 2005, in Mishima's house, a pristine copy was uncovered in a tea box.

Wild with today's eyes, it is not. Yet Rosemary's “very in” Vidal Sassoon #PixieCut was a shocking affair in 68. Director Roman #Polanski flew in Vidal Sassoon – the world's hottest hairdresser – all the way from London, to cut Mia Farrow's hair in a boxing-ring-turned-pressroom. All of a sudden, in her lunch break, Mia/Rosemary transformed from timid waif to women's lib.

“It's by Vidal Sassoon. It's very in.”

– Rosemary Woodhouse

Both the lady's movie husband Guy Woodhouse (John Cassavetes) and real-world husband Frank Sinatra were incensed by the bold move. Of course, in Rosemary's Baby the haircut is Rosemary's attempt to make sense of the changing world around her. Moving to a new city, an unexpected pregnancy, all those lovely new neighbours to socialise with… a girl needs to feel in control!

Like in Enrico Novelli's Un matrimonio interplanetario [A Marriage in the Moon] (1910), interplanetary romance blooms in Аэлита.

Through her #telescope, Queen Aelita spots engineer Los, a handsome Earth man, and he promptly travels to #Mars to be with her. There, Los uncovers an uprising by the Elders against his beloved queen that he vows to – in good proletarian fashion – stomp down.

 

Aelita*'s constructivist stage and costume design had an enormous influence on science fiction, as far as the late 20th century.

A Gen X-er, I grew up in a completely different world where so many films and TV that kids watched – if watched with today's eyes — were not particularly kid-oriented at all. I fondly remember Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and reenacting the Black Knight scene in the school grounds. Yul Brynner as a faceless, rampaging cyber cowboy in Westworld (1973)? Sure, bring it on! Not that the official kid's movies were “clean”. Did you spot the chicken decapitation in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)? Well, you will now.

“Once upon a time, or maybe twice, there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland. 80,000 leagues beneath the sea it lay, or lie. I'm not too sure.”

– narrator

Alright, I'll keep it clean and suggest a dose of Yellow Submarine. A fantastic adventure starring The #Beatles (well, their likeness mostly) who are summoned to save utopian, music-loving #Pepperland from the music-hating Blue Meanies. Trippy fun, and lots to discover the older you get.

#Cocteau's Orpheus – here the mythological poet and musician is personified by Jean Marais – accompanies a fallen young poet transported to the Underworld by car. The car radio plays fragments of poetry, interrupted by #MorseCode. When back in this world, #Orphée obsesses over the lines of radical poetry he heard and returns to the car's radio to retrieve them.

“Sleeping or dreaming, the dreamer must accept his dreams.”

– The Princess

Morse code and other industrial sounds serve as a soundscape for Cocteau's characters. They swerve in and out of it, sometimes fully aware of them (#Orpheus himself is attuned to the #poetry to be found in emergency radio broadcasts), by times passing through like a mirage.

John Hillcoat's deeply unpleasant debut is based on In the Belly of the Beast (1981), a collection of excerpts of letters between prisoner Jack Henry Abbott and author Norman Mailer. True to the book's format, Ghosts consists of disjointed vignettes of monologues, #CCTV footage, title cards, and prisoners' phone calls.

 

For the last 37 months, these filters inform the observer, the hypermodern #supermax Central Industrial Prison has been in permanent lockdown. The cast, a mix of professional actors and ex-cons, and the location, a clean factory-style hangar in the middle of the Australian desert, underscore the underlying raw brutality of the unfolding events.

 

“Officer, come here. I wanna spit in your fucking eye!”

– Maynard

The #industrial soundtrack is by Bad Seed Nick Cave (co-writer and starring as Maynard), Mick Harvey, and Blixa Bargeld from when they were still closer to being birthday boys than morose crooners.