Department S

This is a great entry into the ITC collection of slick, sophisticated adventure series from the mid 1960s. A trio of agents work on cases too puzzling or far-out for Interpol. They are supervised by a worldly African diplomat (Dennis Alaba Peters). There's an American in charge (Joel Fabiani), and an attractive female computer expert (Rosemary Nicols- who has the finest legs ever seen on television). But the real reason to watch is Peter Wyngarde as Jason King- a hedonistic mystery novelist with a brilliant mind and the grooviest wardrobe ever. King is outrageous and the perfect cap to the string of vibrant guest appearances Wyngarde had made in shows like The Avengers and The Prisoner. Watch a couple of these and all the earnest TV series on the air seem quite laughable. This is from a time when people smirked a lot and had reason to. Jason King was later spun off into his own series. It wasn't quite the treasure that this is. As the 60s wore on the formula started to evaporate (as it did in The Persuaders). Highly recommended.

A Place For Everything (sort of)

I only recently made the effort to organize and catalog my video collection. It was getting a bit out of control. First I physically went through and sorted what I had, then I filed them (roughly) by genre onto my shelves. A lot of this effort comes down to getting boxes (thank you, Ebay) and labeling things. I had spindles of mismatched discs, so all that had to be dealt with. The next step was finding a program to enter what i had so that I could create a database. This was accomplished with DVDpedia, which is a great little shareware program that interfaces with imdb.com as well as the various Amazon sites across the world (nice touch that, as I have many foreign-origin DVDs). It's still quite a task finding room for all the titles and having them in a rational order. Haven't gotten to British sitcoms yet. Or all my conspiracy-oriented titles (boy do I have a lot of Kennedy assassination material). Fitting everything into order is probably something akin to what someone with an apartment in Tokyo deals with for everything.

Something Weird Video: Lifestyles USA Vol. 1

This is amazing stuff. There's a slew of amusing retro industrial films on this disc. A real standout though is a mid-50s GM short devoted to designers. It's all an excuse to wax on about their auto product. But there's some fantastic shots of mid-century home designs: furniture, housewares, appliances. and so on. And there's some cool sequences in an idealized design studio at GM. For all lovers of the MCM era this would do nicely. Highly recommended.

Anna (France 1967)

What can you say about this mod musical fantasy starring the delicious Anna Karina and featuring Marianne Faithful and Serge Gainsbourg (Gainsbourg also wrote the songs)? It's sort of wobbly in the narrative- but hey, it's the 1960s. My guess is it was hard to stay on task when you were shoving in all the great photography and ideas that went into this. Silly and light, the whole thing is enormously enjoyable. I searched for years after learning of the existence of this. What I've got is a very good copy with nice image quality and good subtitling. It's ripped from a Japanese VHS apparently. How do you say "fun" in french?

La morte viene dal pianeta Aytin (Snow Devils) 1967

This was the missing piece in my collection of Italian space operas directed by Antonio Margheriti (namedropped in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds of all things). This one is part of the Gamma 1 Quadrilogy. That sounds impressive, but these are low-budget films that get by on charm. There's beautiful women, futuristic space cars, and ambitious miniatures that are shakily photographed. This is by far the strangest and silliest of the lot. I had never seen this, whereas the earlier films (Wild, Wild Planet, War Of The Planets, and War Between The Planets) were all staples of creature feature and late night movies from the early 70s on. Many thanks to my Flickr-friend Poletti for my copy!

Last Year At Marienbad (Criterion Collection)

This is a film I remembered well but hadn't been widely available on DVD until the excellent Criterion edition that was recently released. The VHS release was of horrendous quality, with illegible subtitling. A DVD release did occur, but it was withdrawn almost immediately and was way too expensive for proles such as myself. This affordable release is of the quality one would expect from the Criterion folks. The print is excellent and now one can read the subtitles. Not that it will help solve the puzzle of the film itself. I just read the memoirs of Bob Dylan's early 60s girlfriend, Suze Rotolo. In the book she tells of seeing the film with Dylan, who remarked that a shot was missing from the end of the film- that the camera should pull back to reveal a sign that says "Marienbad Insane Asylum"!

Raumpautroille Orion

I've been watching Raumpautroille Orion, the excellent 1965 West German television programme. I had earlier found this gem, but only recently discovered a subtitled set of the seven episodes. Filmed in black and white, the series is an enjoyable mix of serious science fiction and subtle humor. It's easily the equal of productions then offered in the US and Britain. If anything, the production design is impressive. The sets and spaceship configurations are elegant and aesthetically adventurous. The special effects are a mixed bag. Some are primitive, but taken in context they seem fine, and often ambitious.

We're not too far here from the sort of future imagined by Gene Roddenberry in the original Star Trek. There's a mysterious threat in the form of "frogs". A silly name, but the visualization of the aliens is quite spooky. The quasi-military Raumpautroulle (Space Patrol) is cautious and no more barbaric than Starfleet. The central character, Major Maclane (not too teutonic a name, that), is a rebellious hero. His crew is a nice collection of characters that are not too broadly drawn and nicely played by capable actors. There's plenty of goofy elements derived from the era in which this was produced. The crew spends most of its time in Starlight Casino- a sort of nightclub where drinking mixes with strange dancing beneath huge sealife (people live on the ocean floor in the future). One of the best elements is the fab musical score by Peter Thomas. Highly recommended on all counts.