“The first image he spoke to me about was the one of the three chil­dren on a road in Ice­land in 1965.
He said that for him it was the image of hap­pi­ness and also that he had tried seve­ral times to link it to other ima­ges, but it never wor­ked.
He wrote me:
one day I’ll have to put it all alone at the begin­ning of a film with a long stretch of black; If they have not seen the hap­pi­ness in the image, at least they will see the black.”

“I think of a world where each memory can create its own legend.”

I really can­not think how to put into words my sen­ti­ments towards this part docu­men­tary, part fic­tion, see­mingly science fic­tion mosaic of stun­ning and obs­cure foo­tage that is accom­pa­nied by an easy-to-listen to narra­tion ques­tio­ning time, memory and space and the ins­tantly recog­ni­za­ble Isao Tomita accom­pa­ni­ment. Once more my inte­llect and inte­rest has been sti­mu­la­ted by dia­lo­gue and stri­king, impac­ting visual ima­gery that I shall fore­ver carry with me. The sin­gle fra­med direct stare of the girl on the street, the Ice­lan­dic conc­lu­sion, the Zone, the man from 4001 where total recall is memory anesthe­si­sed and the bob­bing heads of the slee­ping Japa­nese com­mu­ters that are para­lle­led with the Asian con­fron­ta­tion of Horror in film. 

Sans Soleil is a work of lin­ge­ring and subtle beauty that per­co­la­tes through my bloods­tream, infor­ming the hours and days, chan­ging the things and ways I see… — Jonathan Rimorin.

For dis­cus­sions and a script write up head here.

Here’s a collec­tion of artist ima­ges collec­ted from last​.fm:
Artist Ima­ges (1890)

Terres­trial has upda­ted his track info mod com­po­nent to allow quick and easy image rota­tions, upon my request and within an hour of making that request which is quite asto­nishing. Any­way, these new found super powers ena­ble us to create sexy image reflec­tions which fade out using a sim­ple trans­pa­rent to black (or wha­te­ver colour) PNG overlay.

My latest design efforts see a sca­la­ble ver­sion of this with top left artist ima­ges. The art­work itself acts as a Play or Pause but­ton, unless the cover art does not exist, in such a case the but­ton action calls up a Cus­tom Run script Cover Down­loa­der which uses Ama­zon to find album art ima­ges and save them to the audio file direc­tory. Simi­larly, when artist ima­ges do not exist a cus­tom run GetAr­tis­tImg script that I crea­ted down­loads the image and saves it as %artist%.jpg etc.

I’m always adding func­tions and twea­king it so it’s not quite done yet, but here are some screenshots:

The Seventh Seal, or Det Sjunde Inse­glet in its home ton­gue, is the first of Bergman’s fea­tu­res I have encoun­te­red after I deci­ded to take it out on loan from the uni­ver­sity library. Within it a man seeks ans­wers about life, death, and the exis­tence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Rea­per during the Black Pla­gue. The You­Tube video above shows their first mee­ting and the com­men­ce­ment of the game, sadly there are no sub­tit­les so you bet­ter go away and learn Swe­dish. Or:

KNIGHT:Who are you?
DEATH: I am Death.
KNIGHT: Have you come for me?
DEATH: I have been wal­king by your side for a long time.
KNIGHT:That I know.
DEATH:Are you pre­pa­red?
KNIGHT:My body is frigh­te­ned, but I am not.
DEATH:Well, there is no shame in that.
KNIGHT: Wait a moment.
DEATH: That’s what they all say. I grant no reprie­ves.
KNIGHT:You play chess, don’t you?
DEATH:How did you know that?
KNIGHT: I have seen it in pain­tings and heard it sung in ballads.
DEATH:Yes, in fact I’m quite a good chess pla­yer.
KNIGHT: But you can’t be bet­ter than I am.
DEATH :Why do you want to play chess with me?
KNIGHT: I have my rea­sons.
DEATH: That is your privilege. 

The assort­ment of cha­rac­ters and their theo­lo­gi­cal and phi­lo­sophi­cal argu­ments com­bi­ned with quirky, humo­rous and inte­res­ting inte­rac­tions crea­ted within me the exact same sen­ti­ments I had when I read Voltaire’s Can­dide. That fee­ling of dis­co­ve­ring, through rea­ding or watching, something utterly bri­lliant and enligh­te­ning whilst being tho­roughly enter­tai­ned both through humour and inte­llec­tual stimulation. 

Matt Huls’ review at IMDB encap­su­la­tes my fee­lings in a nice pac­kage of four para­graphs:

The mys­te­ries of reli­gion and death have long been a popu­lar focus among artists of all media, inc­lu­ding film. And while many films ques­tion these mys­te­ries, they sel­dom pro­vide any real insight into the world of the unk­nown. In Ing­mar Bergman’s THE SEVENTH SEAL, these mys­te­ries are not only ques­tio­ned; they are dis­sec­ted, spla­yed, and scrutinized.

THE SEVENTH SEAL could very well serve as sort of a mani­festo for exis­ten­tia­lism. Its deep acuity and haun­ting ima­gery is power­ful enough to jar even pas­sive vie­wers out of their com­pla­cency and force them to exa­mine their own rea­lity. The deli­ca­tely craf­ted story cen­ters around a 14th cen­tury knight named Anto­nius Block and his ongoing game of chess with a sha­dowy, hoo­ded figure: Death. Berg­man uses this alle­gory not just to per­so­nify death, but to illus­trate the lengths man will go to in order to avoid it. In the end, howe­ver, Death is a much bet­ter pla­yer than any of us, and though he may humor some of his oppo­nents by let­ting them think that they have the advan­tage, the end result is ine­vi­ta­ble: Death always wins. No mat­ter how skill­fully we plan our moves or how deter­mi­ned we are to win, we can never beat Death.

In Antonius’s search for ans­wers, he encoun­ters a variety of very uni­que cha­rac­ters, each with their own out­look on life, death, faith, fear and love. Their com­men­tary on such mat­ters is often dryly funny and always bri­lliant, con­ti­nuously and effec­ti­vely cha­llen­ging our per­cep­tions of the world around us. For me, the dia­lo­gue was defi­ni­tely the high point of the film, as it was extre­mely thought-provoking and care­fully cons­truc­ted throughout. Almost every line spo­ken is, in one way or another, daun­ting and unfor­get­ta­ble. Jöns’s desc­rip­tion of love as “the blac­kest of all pla­gues” is a quote that will fore­ver be engra­ved in my mind.

THE SEVENTH SEAL truly is a remar­ka­ble accom­plish­ment in the world of cinema. It is a deep, mes­me­ri­zing, and darkly beau­ti­ful work of art. More impor­tantly, THE SEVENTH SEAL is one of those rare movies that doesn’t just enter­tain, but also has the power to change the way one thinks.

I have now pic­ked up Wild Straw­be­rries to watch ASAP.

I caught this last Fri­day in a sell out scree­ning at War­wick Arts Cen­tre. Gui­llermo Del Toro has really crea­ted something quite spe­cial, com­bi­ning a mag­ni­fi­cent and pro­vo­king tale of civil war with the fan­tasy realms of a trap­ped young girl, Ofe­lia. Not for the faint of heart, but drag them along anyway.