The Mystery of the Golden Frame

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Late last night on SBS TV we watched the first half of the 2003 production of "The Mystery of the Yellow Room".
What fun, what wit!

The Mystery of the Yellow Room: Extraordinary Adventures of Joseph Rouletabille, Reporter (Le mystère de la chambre jaune) by Gaston Leroux, is one of the first locked room mystery crime fiction novels. It was first published in France in the periodical L'Illustration from September 1907 to November 1907, then in its own right in 1908.

It is the first novel starring fictional detective Joseph Rouletabille, and concerns a complex and seemingly impossible crime in which the criminal appears to disappear from a locked room. Leroux provides the reader with detailed, precise diagrams and floorplans illustrating the scene of the crime. The emphasis of the story is firmly on the intellectual challenge to the reader, who will almost certainly be hard pressed to unravel every detail of the situation.

( Wikipedia entry : click here )

CHAPTER VII. In Which Rouletabille Sets Out on an Expedition Under the Bed

Fabulous chapter headings. In this chapter, in the 2003 film version, we see reporter Rouletabille (Roulette Table? Roule ta Bille translates as Roll your Ball) examining his view of the world from under the bed. He is moved to exclaim, "The immensity of what we cannot see." (I noted it in my Moleskine (below): Rouletabille also makes notes in his Moleskine.)

Later, lest the import of this realisation might have escaped us, he repeats it to his photographer assistant. "The immensity of what we cannot see." What can a photographer of the visible do with that?

In Leroux's original, which can be read online here, this observation is given in the third person.

The reporter then reappeared. His eyes were sparkling and his nostrils quivered. He remained on his hands and knees. He could not be better likened than to an admirable sporting dog on the scent of some unusual game. And, indeed, he was scenting the steps of a man,—the man whom he has sworn to report to his master, the manager of the "Epoque." It must not be forgotten that Rouletabille was first and last a journalist.

Thus, on his hands and knees, he made his way to the four corners of the room, so to speak, sniffing and going round everything—everything that we could see, which was not much, and everything that we could not see, which must have been infinite.

Ah yes, the locked room genre : The Mystery of the Golden Frame

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Instruments of the Passion

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To those unfamiliar with commercial TV's late nite offerings of Instruments of the Passion, bLOGOS/HA HA proudly introduces this handy and indispensable revelator.

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MC Hammer

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The Doors took their name from the title of a book by Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954). That title was in turn taken from a line in a poem entitled "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" by the 18th-century artist and poet William Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite". (Wikipedia)

Track 1 and the first single from The Doors' eponymous first album was Break On Through (To The Other Side)

Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
Break on through
Break on through
Break on through
Break on through
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

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Held in high regard

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Edward Kennedy, "the liberal lion", dead at 77.
(Washington Post editorial here.)

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Theatre of the Actors of Looking : Shirin

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Again a follow-on from the theme of the previous blog, with an emphasis not so much on the given as on the activity of regard. Today the recent film by Abbas Kiarostami, Shirin : our regard of the faces of 113 women as (if) they watch a certain film.

bL has not yet seen Shirin - it was shown this year at the Sydney Film Festival but not at the Melbourne Film Festival - but has been reading about it. Here are some online articles:

Shirin as Described by Kiarostami
by Khatereh Khodaei

It may be an odd experience to sit in a dark movie theater, stare at the screen and see fellow audience members watching a motion picture. Personally, I believe the experience of watching a movie in which the sound of the story that we hear is different from the pictures that we watch can be more interesting.

Shirin is the latest feature film by Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami. It features simple close-ups of the faces of 113 actresses who are watching a movie.

After watching the film and talking with Mr. Kiarostami, I found out that the women, whose faces appeared in perpendicular frames in the film were not actually watching a movie at all; a few fixed spots had been installed above the camera and they were acting with Kiarostami’s special improvisational technique.

What makes the experience doubly interesting is to learn that the story was decided on after shooting was over. It is the love story of Khosro, Shirin, and Farhad, a masterpiece by the great Iranian poet Nezami Ganjavi. The work features effective editing and an attention to details which, as always, render Kiarostami’s movies simple, different and absorbing.

Abbas Kiarostami characteristically attaches a special significance to audiences. In his latest production, Shirin, he goes as far as explicitly suggesting that the silver screen would be non-existent in the absence of audiences.

“Shirin” is the story of the empathy of audiences—the audiences who are watching the empathy of the other audiences.

( click here for full article )

Kiarostami's 'Shirin': watching a movie about watching a movie
by Jeff Strabone

While the world waits for the second Iranian Revolution, it's important to recall that Iran is not just a place of political turmoil, nuclear ambitions, and theocratic dictatorship. It is also a place of great poetry and cinema, as the work of Abbas Kiarostami reminds us. How timely then that he has a new film out called Shirin that adapts—sort of—a twelfth-century romance and offers the world a stunning new achievement: a feature-length film whose narrative is made up entirely of reaction shots.

( click here for full article )

A Conversation with Kiarostami
by Arsalan Mohammad in Tehran
(A.K.): I just read an article today about Shirin – a critic who said, ‘I don’t understand what he wants to say, really, it’s complicated, I don’t even like it, but what I know for sure is that he is saying something. Let’s give him time, to see actually what he is saying – give us time, then we’ll understand what he is saying. I am sure he is saying something, he has something to say.’

( click here for full article )

P.S. 26 August 2009: By a happy coincidence, news just in that "Shirin" will receive a Melbourne screening this Thursday afternoon :

Presented as part of the Film and Television Studies UNDER CONSTRUCTION seminar & screening series – selected, introduced and especially subtitled by André Dias. Refreshments and discussion will follow the screening.

4-6pm, AUGUST 27 2009, ROOM S704, MENZIES BUILDING 7TH FLOOR, MONASH UNIVERSITY - CLAYTON CAMPUS. FREE ADMISSION. ALL WELCOME! BRING A FRIEND.

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It's other name is "Double Taker"

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Following on from yesterday's "Double Feature", this morning Petrus referred me to the 15 minute online presentation Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you. ( click here )

In it artist engineer Golan Levin ( website here ) succinctly demonstrates half-a-dozen playful works of his devising that use and reflect upon the performance activities of the beholder. Here are a couple of glimpses, the first is from Eye Code.

In another, Jaap Blonk performs Kurt Schwitters Ursonate with reactive real-time typography sub-titles mixed into the visual record.

"The idea behind this last project (Snout) is to make a robot that appears as if it's continually surprised to see you. It's other name is "Double Taker", taker of doubles. It's always kind of doing a double take."

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"Double Feature"

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Adrian Tomine titles his cover image for the latest New Yorker "Double Feature". ( here )

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It could be seen as a communal celebration of The New Yorker's own enigmatic house character, Eustace Tilley. He is usually depicted looking through his monocle at a butterfly.

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Our resident inspector Baby BlockOS/HA HA takes it one step less.

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����� P/L

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This poster scene of playful synæsthesia is by Uncle Charlie.

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The Re-emergency

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Hello again to regular readers. After a week confined to Sniffletown, your correspondent re-emerges in the role of cubo-muso Philip Lemarchand.

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Lulo Lo Lo Ks @

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View Mix

Lul0 lo lo ks at a guitar.

We look at Lulo side-on; Lulo looks at the guitar side-on.

The guitar looks at us front-on; we look at the guitar front-on.

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