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**Prompt :**
> Portrait cinématographique hyperréaliste d’une jeune femme intellectuelle à l’allure élégante et intemporelle, regard perçant et introspectif, yeux bleu profond éclairés par une lumière douce et dramatique. Son visage est composé de facettes géométriques complexes, style mosaïque cubiste moderne, mêlant tons chauds et froids : ambre, ocre, bleu nuit, turquoise et touches dorées.
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> Cheveux courts et ondulés aux reflets cuivrés et violacés, coiffés avec un mouvement naturel et sophistiqué. Elle porte des lunettes fines et discrètes, un col victorien raffiné, un nœud papillon artistique et des bijoux délicats évoquant l’érudition et la créativité.
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> L’arrière-plan est une composition abstraite riche et profonde : feuilles manuscrites flottant dans l’air, pages de livres anciennes, schémas, symboles scientifiques et typographiques, suspendus dans un espace quasi onirique. Le décor évoque une bibliothèque mentale, un univers de pensée et de savoir en mouvement.
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> Éclairage cinématographique volumétrique, contrastes maîtrisés, profondeur de champ subtile, rendu ultra-net 8K, textures extrêmement détaillées, peau réaliste, reflets lumineux précis. Ambiance intellectuelle, poétique et mystérieuse, mélange d’art classique et de modernité numérique, style peinture numérique hyperréaliste, concept art de film, chef-d’œuvre visuel, qualité musée, atmosphère dramatique et inspirante.
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**Prompt:**
> Hyper-realistic cinematic portrait of an intellectual young woman with an elegant, timeless presence, sharp and introspective gaze, deep blue eyes illuminated by soft, dramatic lighting. Her face is composed of intricate geometric facets, modern cubist mosaic style, blending warm and cool tones: amber, ochre, midnight blue, turquoise, and subtle golden highlights.
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> Short, softly wavy hair with copper and violet reflections, styled naturally yet refined. She wears delicate, minimalist eyeglasses, a refined Victorian-inspired collar, an artistic bow tie, and subtle jewelry that evoke intellect, creativity, and sophistication.
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> The background is a rich, layered abstract composition: handwritten manuscripts floating in the air, aged book pages, diagrams, scientific symbols, and typographic elements suspended in a dreamlike space. The setting resembles a mental library — a universe of thought, knowledge, and imagination in motion.
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> Cinematic volumetric lighting, controlled contrast, subtle depth of field, ultra-sharp 8K render, extremely detailed textures, realistic skin, precise light reflections. Intellectual, poetic, and mysterious atmosphere, blending classical art with modern digital aesthetics, hyper-realistic digital painting, film concept art, museum-quality masterpiece, dramatic and inspiring mood.
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--ar 3:4
--v 6
--style raw
--s 250
--chaos 8
--q 2
“According to Jungian analytical psychology, stepping on dog poop in a dream is interpreted as an aegis of incoming wealth.
In reality, however, stepping on dog poop just makes you curse: ‘Oh, shit!’
Yet in 21st-century cities, the chance of stepping on a bull’s dung is almost zero.”
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Kentmere 100 Film
We arrived early to base camp and I managed to sneak behind where the camels where and I took few pictures with them. They looked knackered because they have to do these trips twice a day and I can imagine that they are exhausted. So while they were resting I managed to take few snaps of them. Very gentle animals and very friendly. This picture came a bit funny as it seems that the camel in the middle realised that the other two behind him are talking about him...hehe.
This picture made photo of the day in Popular Photography.
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Day 25 of 365
When it comes to creative process, I have very little figured out. During these 25 days I've realized that I need creative process, and with 'process' I don't mean just some happy accidents here and there, but a system of thought that will output new ideas on a regular basis. I guess some sort of common thought about creative process relates to mental images of mixing and blending different kind of ingredients together - and creative accidents happen when unexpected things are put together. Interpreting it this way makes the term 'creative' somehow relate to a categorical mix-ups. It's a common thought and while I'm tend to do just that, I'm still not sure if it's fruitful approach to creative process.
For me creative thinking is more like a problem solving and it begins with a some sort fuzzy of idea where to end: a goal or an answer to some problem. It's just that many times goal is more abstract and less defined than in common problems. I might feel, for example, that I have something figured out, like few pieces of a puzzle, but then I need to find the puzzle where my pieces fit. To explain this further I'm tempted to bring an analogy from science here. In science you have two kinds of ways to solve problems (I'm generalizing pretty roughly here): reductionism which favors analytical methodologies , and holism where problems are approached more with hermeneutical way. If your train of thought is wired to reproduce analytical methodology, like most of us have at least to some extent, it is hard to shift away from it and start thinking with a more holistic approach.
I guess the mental image of mixing things up actually comes from the analytical methodology and favors this sort of splitting things to pieces just to try out different combinations. You can do it this way, and I do it all the time, but many times I feel that it's actually other way around: you start with an answer and try to find which question does it fit. When you're lucky you come up with a new question that guides your train of thought to new territories. And in the end, in true creative process, I believe, it's those new mental territories where the new and valuable things are found. All in all, it's a nice theory, but doesn't help me much when my plate is empty and waiting for a new idea to come up.
Year of the Alpha – 365 Days of Sony Alpha Photography: www.yearofthealpha.com
Mark this day as it's the day I managed to get 10 Million views on my flickr account. It's been really busy this year and I managed to get all this views in just under a year. Thanks all for your appreciation and for spending time looking at my pictures and liking them and commenting on them.
This is certainly a great milestone.
Thanks for all the views and the likes and keep spreading the love for photography.
I've created my own tool to monitor all the likes and views of my account. The tool is still under construction but you can follow progress here:
You can find my solution on Github.
If you want to raise any issue on the app, you can do it here:
github.com/JordiCorbilla/FlickrPhotoStats/issues
Description of the application here
Thank you all for your appreciation.
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Do not use any of my images
without permission.
New felt Puzzle Box is supposed to keep the cats busy by sensory and analytical multitasking. It defintely held their interest with a few toys inside and a few treats. (they were able to remove almost all the toys easily - it came with a rainbow fuzzy ball with a rattle inside ... that would NOT fit through any of the access holes.)
They came back to it here and there, as well. It held up pretty well, until Jet decided to demolish it to get the rainbow ball out. which video uploaded. It also demonstrates that Jet isn't quite the brightest bulb in the chandelier but hey, she succeeded in her goal. Vid doesn't seem the best thing for Happy Caturday though so I'm putting this in as my second photo for 21 February 2026, "Multitasking."
Look at this, a second post on here within two weeks of my last! That hasn't happened in a while, but I'm hoping to change that and be a little more active on here as I still love LEGO. I just haven't had much time for it recently, but I'll be trying to do my best to build more. Anyway, this is an older build, which was actually built for and displayed at Bricks Cascade 2018. I'm not happy with the picture, but they all turned out fairly meh and this has long since been scrapped. Hope you guys enjoy it despite that!
Pietro Longhi (Pietro Falca - Venice, November 15, 1701 - Venice, May 8, 1785) - The toilet (1760) - oil on canvas 61 x 50 cm - Museum of the Venetian Settecento Ca' Rezzonico, Venice
Pietro nasce a Venezia il 15 novembre del 1701. Dopo un’esperienza nella bottega di Antonio Balestra, è a Bologna, dove conosce l’opera di Giuseppe Maria Crespi che diverrà, in particolare per quel che riguarda la pittura di genere, fondamentale per gli sviluppi successivi della sua carriera.
Fino al 1734 si dedica a una produzione di carattere “storico” ma dalla fine degli anni Trenta decide di cambiare rotta, indirizzandosi in modo pressoché esclusivo a quella pittura di costume che lo renderà celebre non solo entro i confini della Serenissima. Sono scene di piccolo formato dedicate dapprima, sull’esempio crespiano, alla descrizione analitica e puntuale della vita dei contadini e dei ceti poveri veneziani, poi, dagli anni Quaranta, alla vita dei veneziani, fuori e dentro i palazzi. Il successo è straordinario, come dimostrano i nomi altisonanti dei suoi aristocratici committenti: dai Sagredo ai Mocenigo, dai Grimani ai Querini ai Pisani e molti altri; in pratica, il gotha delle famiglie di antica nobiltà, non escludendo peraltro alcuni “nuovi nobili” – ma soprattutto nuovi ricchi.
Born in Venice on November 15, 1701. After an experience in the workshop of Antonio Balestra, is in Bologna, where he knew the work of Giuseppe Maria Crespi that will become, in particular as regards the genre painting, fundamental for the subsequent developments of his career.
Until 1734 he devoted himself to a production of "historical" character, but from the end of the thirties he decided to change course, addressing himself almost exclusively to the painting of costumes that will make him famous not only within the borders of the Serenissima. They are scenes of small format dedicated at first, on the example of crespiano, the analytical description and accurate life of the peasants and the poor Venetians, then, since the forties, the life of Venetians, outside and inside the palaces. The success is extraordinary, as evidenced by the high-sounding names of his aristocratic clients: from Sagredo to Mocenigo, from Grimani to Querini to Pisani and many others; in practice, the elite of the families of ancient nobility, not excluding some "new nobles" - but especially new rich.
The moment you just think about your things and wonder about the future.
This time in a cinematic format. Using the live preview in the D750 it delivers this kind of shots where the format is different. I'm still not sure if I like it or not.
Thank you all for your appreciation.
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The Jack Welch College of Business and the Office of Alumni Engagement presented “Careers in Analytics” on April 10, 2019, at the Martire Forum. The alumni panel featured Justin Baigert ’05, vice president, Data & Analytics at GE, Joseph Lucibello ’11, senior manager, data scientist at WWE and Suzanne May ’13, research manager at Purchased. The moderator was Khawaja Mamun, associate professor of economics. Photo by Mark F. Conrad
The Jack Welch College of Business and the Office of Alumni Engagement presented “Careers in Analytics” on April 10, 2019, at the Martire Forum. The alumni panel featured Justin Baigert ’05, vice president, Data & Analytics at GE, Joseph Lucibello ’11, senior manager, data scientist at WWE and Suzanne May ’13, research manager at Purchased. The moderator was Khawaja Mamun, associate professor of economics. Photo by Mark F. Conrad
In this article im gonna share with you a deep understanding of the Instagram analytics.
Instagram is the most popular social networking platform these days.
If you want to market your products and services then it’s the best ever platform for you.
All you need to make a free account and start promoting your products and services.
www.coremafia.com/instagram-analytics-to-grow-engagement-...
From Vlichada port you can book a cruise that will bring you everywhere. It's at a reasonable price and you can enjoy one of the 2 cruises available every day of the week. We took the sunset cruise as it contains exactly the same as the morning cruise but with a stop for the sunset which is great for pictures. Here a snap of my wife while she was enjoying the trip.
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youtu.be/KcPcJ9ycEu4?t=2m22s Full Feature
Curse of the Demon / Night of the Demon
Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
1957/58 / B&W / 1:78 anamorphic 16:9 / 82, 95 min. / Street Date August 13, 2002 / $24.95
Starring Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Maurice Denham, Athene Seyler
Cinematography Ted Scaife
Production Designer Ken Adam
Special Effects George Blackwell, S.D. Onions, Wally Veevers
Film Editor Michael Gordon
Original Music Clifton Parker
Written by Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester from the story Casting the Runes by Montague R. James
Produced by Frank Bevis, Hal E. Chester
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Savant champions a lot of genre movies but only infrequently does one appear like Jacques Tourneur's superlative Curse of the Demon. It's simply better than the rest -- an intelligent horror film with some very good scares. It occupies a stylistic space that sums up what's best in ghost stories and can hold its own with most any supernatural film ever made. Oh, it's also a great entertainment that never fails to put audiences at the edge of their seats.
What's more, Columbia TriStar has shown uncommon respect for their genre output by including both versions of Curse of the Demon on one disc. Savant has full coverage on the versions and their restoration below, following his thorough and analytical (read: long-winded and anal) coverage of the film itself.
Synopsis:
Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), a scientist and professional debunker of superstitious charlatans, arrives in England to help Professor Henry Harrington (Maurice Denham) assault the phony cult surrounding Dr. Julian Karswell (Niall McGinnis). But Harrington has mysteriously died and Holden becomes involved with his niece Joanna (Peggy Cummins), who thinks Karswell had something to do with it. Karswell's 'tricks' confuse the skeptical Holden, but he stubbornly holds on to his conviction that he's " ... not a sucker, like 90% of the human race." That is, until the evidence mounts that Harrington was indeed killed by a demon summoned from Hell, and that Holden is the next intended victim!
The majority of horror films are fantasies in which we accept supernatural ghosts, demons and monsters as part of a deal we've made with the authors: they dress the fantasy in an attractive guise and arrange the variables into an interesting pattern, and we agree to play along for the sake of enjoyment. When it works the movies can resonate with personal meaning. Even though Dracula and Frankenstein are unreal, they are relevant because they're aligned with ideas and themes in our subconscious.
Horror films that seriously confront the no-man's land between rational reality and supernatural belief have a tough time of it. Everyone who believes in God knows that the tug o' war between rationality and faith in our culture has become so clogged with insane belief systems it's considered impolite to dismiss people who believe in flying saucers or the powers of crystals or little glass pyramids. One of Dana Andrews' key lines in Curse of the Demon, defending his dogged skepticism against those urging him to have an open mind, is his retort, "If the world is a dark place ruled by Devils and Demons, we all might as well give up right now." Curse of the Demon balances itself between skepticism and belief with polite English manners, letting us have our fun as it lays its trap. We watch Andrews roll his eyes and scoff at the feeble séance hucksters and the dire warnings of a foolish-looking necromancer. Meanwhile, a whole dark world of horror sneaks up on him. The film's intelligent is such that we're not offended by its advocacy of dark forces or even its literal, in-your-face demon.
The remarkable Curse of the Demon was made in England for Columbia but is gloriously unaffected by that company's zero-zero track record with horror films. Producer Hal E. Chester would seem an odd choice to make a horror classic after producing Joe Palooka films and acting as a criminal punk in dozens of teen crime movies. The obvious strong cards are writer Charles Bennett, the brains behind several classic English Hitchcock pictures (who 'retired' into meaningless bliss writing for schlockmeister Irwin Allen) and Jacques Tourneur, a master stylist who put Val Lewton on the map with Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie. Tourneur made interesting Westerns (Canyon Passage, Great Day in the Morning) and perhaps the most romantic film noir, Out of the Past. By the late '50s he was on what Andrew Sarris in his American Film called 'a commercial downgrade'. The critic lumped Curse of the Demon with low budget American turkeys like The Fearmakers. 1
Put Tourneur with an intelligent script, a decent cameraman and more than a minimal budget and great things could happen. We're used to watching Corman Poe films, English Hammer films and Italian Bavas and Fredas, all the while making excuses for the shortcomings that keep them in the genre ghetto (where they all do quite well, thank you). There's even a veiled resentment against upscale shockers like The Innocents that have resources (money, time, great actors) denied our favorite toilers in the genre realm. Curse of the Demon is above all those considerations. It has name actors past their prime and reasonable production values. Its own studio (at least in America) released it like a genre quickie, double-billed with dreck like The Night the World Exploded and The Giant Claw. They cut it by 13 minutes, changed its title (to ape The Curse of Frankenstein?) and released a poster featuring a huge, slavering demon monster that some believe was originally meant to be barely glimpsed in the film itself. 2
Horror movies can work on more than one level but Curse of the Demon handles several levels and then some. The narrative sets up John Holden as a professional skeptic who raises a smirking eyebrow to the open minds of his colleagues. Unlike most second-banana scientists in horror films, they express divergent points of view. Holden just sees himself as having common sense but his peers are impressed by the consistency of demonological beliefs through history. Maybe they all saw Christensen's Witchcraft through the Ages, which might have served as a primer for author Charles Bennett. Smart dialogue allows Holden to score points by scoffing at the then-current "regression to past lives" scam popularized by the Bridey Murphy craze. 3 While Holden stays firmly rooted to his position, coining smart phrases and sarcastic put-downs of believers, the other scientists are at least willing to consider alternate possibilities. Indian colleague K.T. Kumar (Peter Elliott) keeps his opinion to himself. But when asked, he politely states that he believes entirely in the world of demons! 4
Holden may think he has the truth by the tail but it takes Kindergarten teacher Joanna Harrington (Peggy Cummins of Gun Crazy fame) to show him that being a skeptic doesn't mean ignoring facts in front of one's face. Always ready for a drink (a detail added to tailor the part to Andrews?), Holden spends the first couple of reels as interested in pursuing Miss Harrington, as he is the devil-worshippers. The details and coincidences pile up with alarming speed -- the disappearing ink untraceable by the lab, the visual distortions that might be induced by hypnosis, the pages torn from his date book and the parchment of runic symbols. Holden believes them to be props in a conspiracy to draw him into a vortex of doubt and fear. Is he being set up the way a Voodoo master cons his victim, by being told he will die, with fabricated clues to make it all appear real? Holden even gets a bar of sinister music stuck in his head. It's the title theme -- is this a wicked joke on movie soundtracks?
Speak of the Devil...
This brings us to the wonderful character of Julian Karswell, the kiddie-clown turned multi-millionaire cult leader. The man who launched Alfred Hitchcock as a maker of sophisticated thrillers here creates one of the most interesting villains ever written, one surely as good as any of Hitchcock's. In the short American cut Karswell is a shrewd games-player who shows Holden too many of his cards and finally outsmarts himself. The longer UK cut retains the full depth of his character.
Karswell has tapped into the secrets of demonology to gain riches and power, yet he tragically recognizes that he is as vulnerable to the forces of Hell as are the cowering minions he controls through fear. Karswell's coven means business. It's an entirely different conception from the aesthetic salon coffee klatch of The Seventh Victim, where nothing really supernatural happens and the only menace comes from a secret society committing new crimes to hide old ones.
Karswell keeps his vast following living in fear, and supporting his extravagant lifestyle under the idea that Evil is Good, and Good Evil. At first the Hobart Farm seems to harbor religious Christian fundamentalists who have turned their backs on their son. Then we find out that they're Karswell followers, living blighted lives on cursed acreage and bled dry by their cultist "leader." Karswell's mum (Athene Seyler) is an inversion of the usual insane Hitchcock mother. She lovingly resists her son's philosophy and actively tries to help the heroes. That's in the Night version, of course. In the shorter American cut she only makes silly attempts to interest Joanna in her available son and arranges for a séance. Concerned by his "negativity", Mother confronts Julian on the stairs. He has no friends, no wife, no family. He may be a mass extortionist but he's still her baby. Karswell explains that by exploiting his occult knowledge, he's immersed himself forever in Evil. "You get nothing for nothing"
Karswell is like the Devil on Earth, a force with very limited powers that he can't always control. By definition he cannot trust any of his own minions. They're unreliable, weak and prone to double-cross each other, and they attract publicity that makes a secret society difficult to conceal. He can't just kill Holden, as he hasn't a single henchman on the payroll. He instead summons the demon, a magic trick he's only recently mastered. When Karswell turns Harrington away in the first scene we can sense his loneliness. The only person who can possibly understand is right before him, finally willing to admit his power and perhaps even tolerate him. Karswell has no choice but to surrender Harrington over to the un-recallable Demon. In his dealings with the cult-debunker Holden, Karswell defends his turf but is also attempting to justify himself to a peer, another man who might be a potential equal. It's more than a duel of egos between a James Bond and a Goldfinger, with arrogance and aggression masking a mutual respect; Karswell knows he's taken Lewton's "wrong turning in life," and will have to pay for it eventually.
Karswell eventually earns Holden's respect, especially after the fearful testimony of Rand Hobart. It's taken an extreme demonstration to do it, but Holden budges from his smug position. He may not buy all of the demonology hocus-pocus but it's plain enough that Karswell or his "demon" is going to somehow rub him out. Seeking to sneak the parchment back into Karswell's possession, Holden becomes a worthy hero because he's found the maturity to question his own preconceptions. Armed with his rational, cool head, he's a force that makes Karswell -- without his demon, of course -- a relative weakling. Curse of the Demon ends in a classic ghost story twist, with just desserts dished out and balance recovered. The good characters are less sure of their world than when they started, but they're still able to cope. Evil has been defeated not by love or faith, but by intellect.
Curse of the Demon has the Val Lewton sensibility as has often been cited in Tourneur's frequent (and very effective) use of the device called the Lewton "Bus" -- a wholly artificial jolt of fast motion and noise interrupting a tense scene. There's an ultimate "bus" at the end when a train blasts in and sets us up for the end title. It "erases" the embracing actors behind it and I've always thought it had to be an inspiration for the last shot of North by NorthWest. The ever-playful Hitchcock was reportedly a big viewer of fantastic films, from which he seems to have gotten many ideas. He's said to have dined with Lewton on more than one occasion (makes sense, they were at one time both Selznick contractees) and carried on a covert competition with William Castle, of all people.
Visually, Tourneur's film is marvelous, effortlessly conjuring menacing forests lit in the fantastic Mario Bava mode by Ted Scaife, who was not known as a genre stylist. There are more than a few perfunctory sets, with some unflattering mattes used for airport interiors, etc.. Elsewhere we see beautiful designs by Ken Adam in one of his earliest outings. Karswell's ornate floor and central staircase evoke an Escher print, especially when visible/invisible hands appear on the banister. A hypnotic, maze-like set for a hotel corridor is also tainted by Escher and evokes a sense of the uncanny even better than the horrid sounds Holden hears. The build-up of terror is so effective that one rather unconvincing episode (a fight with a Cat People - like transforming cat) does no harm. Other effects, such as the demon footprints appearing in the forest, work beautifully.
In his Encyclopedia of Horror Movies Phil Hardy very rightly relates Curse of the Demon's emphasis on the visual to the then just-beginning Euro-horror subgenre. The works of Bava, Margheriti and Freda would make the photographic texture of the screen the prime element of their films, sometimes above acting and story logic.
Columbia TriStar's DVD of Curse of the Demon / Night of the Demon presents both versions of this classic in one package. American viewers saw an effective but abbreviated cut-down. If you've seen Curse of the Demon on cable TV or rented a VHS or a laser anytime after 1987, you're not going to see anything different in the film. In 1987 Columbia happened to pull out the English cut when it went to re-master. When the title came up as Night of the Demon, they just slugged in the Curse main title card and let it go.
From such a happy accident (believe me, nobody in charge at Columbia at the time would have purposely given a film like this a second glance) came a restoration at least as wonderful as the earlier reversion of The Fearless Vampire Killers to its original form. Genre fans were taken by surprise and the Laserdisc became a hot item that often traded for hundreds of dollars. 6
Back in film school Savant had been convinced that ever seeing the long, original Night cut was a lost cause. An excellent article in the old Photon magazine in the early '70s 5, before such analytical work was common, accurately laid out the differences between the two versions, something Savant needs to do sometime with The Damned and These Are the Damned. The Photon article very accurately describes the cut scenes and what the film lost without them, and certainly inspired many of the ideas here.
Being able to see the two versions back-to-back shows exactly how they differ. Curse omits some scenes and rearranges others. Gone is some narration from the title sequence, most of the airplane ride, some dialogue on the ground with the newsmen and several scenes with Karswell talking to his mother. Most crucially missing are Karswell's mother showing Joanna the cabalistic book everyone talks so much about and Holden's entire visit to the Hobart farm to secure a release for his examination of Rand Hobart. Of course the cut film still works (we loved the cut Curse at UCLA screenings and there are people who actually think it's better) but it's nowhere near as involving as the complete UK version. Curse also reshuffles some events, moving Holden's phantom encounter in the hallway nearer the beginning, which may have been to get a spooky scene in the middle section or to better disguise the loss of whole scenes later. The chop-job should have been obvious. The newly imposed fades and dissolves look awkward. One cut very sloppily happens right in the middle of a previous dissolve.
Night places both Andrews and Cummins' credits above the title and gives McGinnis an "also starring" credit immediately afterwards. Oddly, Curse sticks Cummins afterwards and relegates McGinnis to the top of the "also with" cast list. Maybe with his role chopped down, some Columbia executive thought he didn't deserve the billing?
Technically, both versions look just fine, very sharp and free of digital funk that would spoil the film's spooky visual texture. Night of the Demon is the version to watch for both content and quality. It's not perfect but has better contrast and less dirt than the American version. Curse has more emulsion scratches and flecking white dandruff in its dark scenes, yet looks fine until one sees the improvement of Night. Both shows are widescreen enhanced (hosanna), framing the action at its original tighter aspect ratio.
It's terrific that Columbia TriStar has brought out this film so thoughtfully, even though some viewers are going to be confused when their "double feature" disc appears to be two copies of the same movie. Let 'em stew. This is Savant's favorite release so far this year.
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Curse of the Demon / Night of the Demon rates:
Movie: Excellent
Footnotes:
Made very close to Curse of the Demon and starring Dana Andrews, The Fearmakers (great title) was a Savant must-see until he caught up with it in the UA collection at MGM. It's a pitiful no-budgeter that claims Madison Avenue was providing public relations for foreign subversives, and is negligible even in the lists of '50s anti-Commie films.
Return
Curse of the Demon's Demon has been the subject of debate ever since the heyday of Famous Monsters of Filmland. From what's on record it's clear that producer Chester added or maximized the shots of the creature, a literal visualization of a fiery, brimstone-smoking classical woodcut demon that some viewers think looks ridiculous. Bennett and Tourneur's original idea was to never show a demon but the producer changed that. Tourneur probably directed most of the shots, only to have Chester over-use them. To Savant's thinking, the demon looks great. It is first perceived as an ominous sound, a less strident version of the disturbing noise made by Them! Then it manifests itself visually as a strange disturbance in the sky (bubbles? sparks? early slit-scan?) followed by a billowing cloud of sulphurous smoke (a dandy effect not exploited again until Close Encounters of the Third Kind). The long-shot demon is sometimes called the bicycle demon because he's a rod puppet with legs that move on a wheel-rig. Smoke belches from all over his scaly body. Close-ups are provided by a wonderfully sculpted head 'n' shoulders demon with articulated eyes and lips, a full decade or so before Carlo Rambaldi started engineering such devices.
Most of the debate centers on how much Demon should have been shown with the general consensus that less would have been better. People who dote on Lewton-esque ambivalence say that the film's slow buildup of rationality-versus demonology is destroyed by the very real Demon's appearance in the first scene, and that's where they'd like it removed or radically reduced. The Demon is so nicely integrated into the cutting (the giant foot in the first scene is a real jolt) that it's likely that Tourneur himself filmed it all, perhaps expecting the shots to be shorter or more obscured. It is also possible that the giant head was a post-Tourneur addition - it doesn't tie in with the other shots as well (especially when it rolls forward rather stiffly) and is rather blunt. Detractors lump it in with the gawd-awful head of The Black Scorpion, which is filmed the same way and almost certainly was an afterthought - and also became a key poster image. This demon head matches the surrounding action a lot better than did the drooling Scorpion.
Savant wouldn't change Curse of the Demon but if you put a gun to my head I'd shorten most of the shots in its first appearance, perhaps eliminating all close-ups except for the final, superb shot of the the giant claw reaching for Harrington / us.
Kumar, played (I assume) by an Anglo actor, immediately evokes all those Indian and other Third World characters in Hammer films whose indigenous cultures invariably hold all manner of black magic and insidious horror. When Hammer films are repetitious it's because they take eighty minutes or so to convince the imagination-challenged English heroes to even consider the premise of the film as being real. In Curse of the Demon, Holden's smart-tongued dismissal of outside viewpoints seems much more pigheaded now than it did in 1957, when heroes confidently defended conformist values without being challenged. Kumar is a scientist but also probably a Hindu or a Sikh. He has no difficulty reconciling his faith with his scientific detachment. Holden is far too tactful to call Kumar a crazy third-world guru but that's probably what he's thinking. He instead politely ignores him. Good old Kumar then saves Holden's hide with some timely information. I hope Holden remembered to thank him.
There's an unstated conclusion in Curse of the Demon: Holden's rigid disbelief of the supernatural means he also does not believe in a Christian God with its fundamentally spiritual faith system of Good and Evil, saints and devils, angels and demons. Horror movies that deal directly with religious symbolism and "real faith" can be hypocritical in their exploitation and brutal in their cheap toying with what are for many people sacred personal concepts. I'm thinking of course of The Exorcist here. That movie has all the grace of a reporter who shows a serial killer's atrocity photos to a mother whose child has just been kidnapped. Curse of the Demon hasn't The Exorcist's ruthless commercial instincts but instead has the modesty not to pretend to be profound, or even "real." Yet it expresses our basic human conflict between rationality and faith very nicely.
Savant called Jim Wyrnoski, who was associated with Photon, in an effort to find out more about the article, namely who wrote it. It was very well done and I've never forgotten it; I unfortunately loaned my copy out to good old Jim Ursini and it disappeared. Obviously, a lot of the ideas here, I first read there. Perhaps a reader who knows better how to take care of their belongings can help me with the info? Ursini and Alain Silvers' More Things than are Dreamt Of Limelight, 1994, analyzes Curse of the Demon (and many other horror movies) in the context of its source story.
This is a true story: Cut to 2000. Columbia goes to re-master Curse of the Demon and finds that the fine-grain original of the English version is missing. The original long version of the movie may be lost forever. A few months later a collector appears who says he bought it from another unnamed collector and offers to trade it for a print copy of the American version, which he prefers. Luckily, an intermediary helps the collector follow up on his offer and the authorities are not contacted about what some would certainly call stolen property. The long version is now once again safe. Studios clearly need to defend their property but many collectors have "items" they personally have acquired legally. More often than you might think, such finds come about because studios throw away important elements. If the studios threaten prosecution, they will find that collectors will never approach them. They'd probably prefer to destroy irreplaceable film to avoid being criminalized.
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Sydney Padua's cartoon effort here seems to be the world's only coherent effort to graphically visualize a full-scale Analytical Engine.
Illustration of a web analytics framework - data gathering, data reporting, data analysis - then the bonus stage of optimisation.
Inspired by a blog post by Avinash Kaushik (Occam's Razor)
www.kaushik.net/avinash/web-analytics-consulting-framewor...
Have you checked out Google Analytics? I have been using it for about two months on my blog, and it is very interesting to track...
Sure, it's not about quantity, but I do like the graphs :)
The Map Overlay may be my favorite of all! how many people visited the site from Sri Lanka? you can find it out with Google Analytics!