* The big news of the day is that Stan Winston has died. Winston contributed make-up and special effects to some of the most iconic films of the past thirty-odd years of fantastic fiction, including The Terminator and Terminator 2, Predator, Aliens, The Monster Squad, The Thing, Jurassic Park, Iron Man and more. He was the most influential visualizer of horror this side of Jack Pierce and Ray Harryhausen. He’ll be deeply missed.
* Look, it’s the David Bowie sketchbook in action!
That’s Jason adding his contribution up top, and me (the person who isn’t Art Spiegelman or Dash Shaw) watching him do so down below. Via Mike Baehr at Fantagraphics and his MoCCA report.
* David Lynch talks to The Atlantic about where he gets his ideas, advancing the theory that they exist fully formed prior to his conceptualizing them and he merely catches them like a fisherman catches fish. If there is an artist who displays a bigger contrast between demeanor and creative output than Lynch, I have yet to encounter him. (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
* Jon Hastings apparently loved The Happening. So many people hated it that I’d be here all day rattling off links even just to people whose work I already like, but the first one I came across is BC of Horror Movie a Day. I hope to see it this weekend.
* Also from the “reviews of films I haven’t seen” files, here’s an absolutely enthralling roundtable discussion of…Krull? Oddly enough for someone who was as big a He-Man fan as I was, I never got into the sword-and-sorcery flicks of the early ’80s. This is probably because I was also a huge scaredy-cat. I do remember some well-meaning family member renting Beastmaster for me, and I started bawling uncontrollably when it looked like some sorcerer person was going to make some pregnant lady’s belly pop and they had to stop the movie.
* Here’s a review of a movie I actually have seen: My own review of The Incredible Hulk.
* Want to hear My Bloody Valentine’s first gig in over 15 years? (Via Pitchfork, who have pictures if you’ve been swoonily daydreaming about how Kevin Shields and/or Bilinda Butcher look these days.)
* Finally, your quote of the day comes from an episode of the BBC music special Sounding Out from (I’m assuming) 1972:
Every time you go to a gig, you have a cursory look at the audience, but you know what it’s gonna be like. They’re always, to a man, gonna be between 16 and 20, the young, white, affluent kids of the particular town you’re in. They’re all gonna have long hair. They’re all gonna have slightly tattier clothes than they need to wear.
–Bill Bruford, drummer, Yes. Plus ça change…
I often think it’s a tragedy that Phil Dick and David Lynch never got a chance to sit down together and talk about this art thing. I remain perpetually fascinated by Lynch’s desperate desire that the world be a nice place, and his perpetual sorrow that it isn’t, and his sense of duty to be faithful to what he experiences. It’s a fresh inspiration to me each time to try to be faithful to my own, too.
The fact that his official bio is simply the following:
“Eagle Scout, Missoula, Montana.”
…fills me with almost unspeakable joy and heartbreak.
Did I ever tell you about the time I hung out backstage/on the tour bus/in the hotel room with MBV’s Colm O’Ciosoig? And his girlfriend at the time (maybe still) Hope Sandoval (Mazzy Star)? Yeah.