Does 2001 have a place here
― passé aggresif (darraghmac), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 12:05 (six years ago) link
not sure how "cosmic horror" it is
lovecraft's elder god names / pantheon are the interpol to lord dunsany's mythic nomenclature's joy division imho
― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 12:19 (six years ago) link
William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland is batshit and fantastic
― i know kore-eda (or something), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 12:27 (six years ago) link
Dripping death astride a bacchanale of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial? Don't mind if I do (a weird fiction thread)
― scott seward, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 13:39 (six years ago) link
Dunsany views man's insignificance in the grand scheme as a somewhat benign thing, imo; cf that awesome story that begins with the narrator being buried alive for some unnamed crime and then kept alive through decades as the world changes. Sounds grim as fuck written down like that but the story is actually kinda peaceful, reveling in the glory of nature that outlives us all. Lovecraft saw no beauty there.
I mean, what's the camera gonna pan away to (literally and rhetorically)?
Theoretically at least, I reckogn a lot of German expressionism was about highlighting man's insignificance, not in the face of cosmic horror but of authority/bureaucracy, but the visual shorthands they came up with for that could still be applied?
― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 13:40 (six years ago) link
I feel like sound design has often been the way to do this? Even just with something highly spiritual like Kiarostami, where off-screen voices abound, to Son of Saul that deliberately keeps the most horrific thing (the gas chamber) heard but unseen. A cosmic horror film would work with sound as much as image. And coincidentally, Twin Peaks The Return does this a lot :)
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 13:46 (six years ago) link
i dont really think David Lynch is a good fit, he is too spiritual, too optimistic. he may play with horror but there is clearly an underlying order to things.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 13:55 (six years ago) link
just never found "it turns people insane" to be all that interesting a concept in and of itself. people go insane over money, jealousy, etc. people go insane from their brains failing in the natural course of time.
― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 13:58 (six years ago) link
I mean, there's a couple of things. One is cosmic horror as a philosophy. No, Lynch probably doesn't fit. But if we're talking a possible cosmic horror visual aesthetic, I would say you should learn from Kiarostami and Lynch, rather than Carpenter. Even though Carpenter, philosophically, might be closer to cosmic.
― Frederik B, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 14:06 (six years ago) link
XXP don't think that holds up at all tbh, at best there's a layer of order laid over things
― passé aggresif (darraghmac), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 14:08 (six years ago) link
anyone else read adam roberts' the thing itself? touches on lovecraftian cosmic horror pretty cleverly by tying in kant, artificial intelligence and the thing - i liked it quite a bit
― frankfurters take on new glamour in this gleaming aspic (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 14:37 (six years ago) link
i don't think so - while the motives of the aliens behind the monoliths aren't expressed directly they seem pretty keen to help bowman have a good death and then return to earth to move evolution forward for the second time, which suggests a level of care that cthulhu is just not into
― frankfurters take on new glamour in this gleaming aspic (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 14:39 (six years ago) link
which is not to suggest that 2001 isn't scary, cuz i find it genuinely unsettling
― frankfurters take on new glamour in this gleaming aspic (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 14:40 (six years ago) link
shout-out to The King in Yellow, well used in True Detective
this book is great but I ended up resenting how it got dropped into TD tbh
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 16:06 (six years ago) link
One detail missing from the Brian Aldiss obituaries was that he coined the term "Shaggy God Stories"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaggy_God_story
― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 23:20 (six years ago) link
Event Horizon i think fits in here, insofar as films go. whether or not you find it successful or even not-terrible (i think it's pretty solid) is another matter.
― nomar, Wednesday, 30 August 2017 23:25 (six years ago) link
event horizon is such a frustrating missed opportunity - that cast and production design with a better script and director could have been great
― frankfurters take on new glamour in this gleaming aspic (bizarro gazzara), Wednesday, 30 August 2017 23:29 (six years ago) link
David Lynch probably captures the mood of "basic wrongness" the best, but his stuff is dependent on people and their relationships to one another. I'd love to see him take a crack at a Ligotti story, though.
― Devilock, Tuesday, 29 August 2017 18:09
Lynch optioned an adaptation of "Last Feast Of The Harlequin" but I think he would have just been the producer if it had gone ahead.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 31 August 2017 01:02 (six years ago) link
Have no idea how you'd create a satisfying Lynch tribute anthology but I'd like to try this book, but I don't have high hopes http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/8190Uq0CTJL.jpg
Music on the other hand would be quite doable.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 31 August 2017 17:58 (six years ago) link
Anyone else spot Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror In Literature in Nanjiani's book pile in The Big Sick? It's the most important piece ever written about horror stories.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Thursday, 31 August 2017 18:29 (six years ago) link
Just realizes H.P. Lovecraft's "Nemesis" has the same meter as Billy Joel's "Piano Man." pic.twitter.com/Oty5JxoHWW— Captain Video (@OurWorldcomic) January 14, 2018
https://m.soundcloud.com/julianvelard/hp-joelcraft
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Friday, 19 January 2018 14:27 (six years ago) link
Revive as I've recently started listening to the great Weird Studies podcast, which takes a completely serious analytical approach to aspects of "the weird" in popular culture(topics including Twin Peaks, Philip K Dick, Robert Aickman, Under The Skin, Shirley Jackson etc). It can get a bit heavy into the philosophical side but it's always interesting.
https://www.weirdstudies.com/
The episode on Crowley and magick is a bit of a headspinner, in which both hosts basically conclude "Yeah, it shouldn't work but it completely does."
― Brainless Addlepated Timid Muddleheaded Awful No-Account (Pheeel), Sunday, 14 April 2019 10:01 (four years ago) link