Four months. Four! Four whole months! We’ve been pushing out this nonsense for a third of a year now! Are we going to stop? Well, as you read this, prep has already begun on next week’s Cut so we guess the answer to that impertinent little question is NO WAY, JOSIE HAY!
This week we we join in with a bunch of aging ravers, see what an Earth without people would look like, check out film careers that finished before they really got started or ended too soon and offer up yet more stuff in that typical Cut vibrational headspace. If you’ve been here before you know what to expect.
Now is the time. Here is the place. This is The Cut.
Lockdown livestreams are part of our world now. We connect with our friends through Zoom, check out concerts and plays through YouTube and even do virtual festivals, which have distinct advantages to those of us who are mud-averse. The Guardian looks at another vector in our ongoing virtual communion—livestream raving. The participants are people who remember the first wave, and are really not that bothered about spending time somewhere in a field in Hampshire…
The Simpsons is a series that’s well past its best, but in the golden age little could beat it for the sheer quality of writing and performance. Mel Magazine takes a deep dive into a two minute segment that is still quoted and memed today—the “Steamed hams’ sketch. Aurora borialis indeed…
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/simpsons-steamed-hams-oral-history
We are living, according to the science, in a new kind of geological era—the Anthropocene, a time when the principal agent for change in the environment is humanity. But if for whatever reason we were to vanish, what would happen to the planet? What lasting legacy would there be? Livescience has some surprising answers…
https://www.livescience.com/earth-without-people.html
We have a big film section for you this week, which seems appropriate as cinemas start to properly reopen with the release of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. To start, a look at the sadly truncated career and unfinished projects of an animation giant—the director of Paprika and Perfect Blue, Satoshi Kon.
https://lwlies.com/articles/satoshi-kon-dreaming-machine-unfinished-meta-nightmares/
As a side-conversation to Kon’s incomplete oeuvre, AV Club has a fascinating list of directors who, whatever their promise, only managed to complete one feature. There are some very surprising names in here…
https://film.avclub.com/one-and-sadly-done-12-excellent-features-from-director-1798275039
Rob writes:
Any list of the best ever film trailer can never come up with a definitive answer. But it does make for a heck of an interesting discussion. My personal favourite? Well, when I was working at a post-production house in Soho in 1999, I was in charge of transferring film trailers to tape for TV ads. In May of that year, one passed into my hands that I watched, then stopped, rewound and called in as many of my colleagues as I could find to show them. It was, I knew, going to be a film that defined popular cinema from then on. That film was The Matrix. Even now, I remember my jaw dropping open in response to what I was seeing. Bullet time was a special effect that no-one had seen before, and I was one of the first people in the country to witness it. Even now, The Matrix remains a favourite, partially because of the buzz I got from that first taster.
So how about it, Readership? Do you have a favourite trailer? Let us know!
https://io9.gizmodo.com/whats-the-best-movie-trailer-of-all-time-1844786778
Don Corscarelli’s The Beastmaster is admittedly a cheesy heap of 80s exploitation—all swordplay and boobs (male and female) and gore. But it has a loyal following amongst the kids who came of age in that heady time (some of The Cut personnel included). We were delighted to hear that Corscarelli has regained the rights to his movie after years of legal wrangling. But there is a crushing twist to the tale, one which means we should be on the lookout for a particular seven cans of film negative…
https://www.whereisthebeastmaster.com/
To finish this section, a cool little listicle from Bored Panda which does exactly what the title describes. Some pleasingly dark takes in here…
https://www.boredpanda.com/unrelated-movies-described-same-sentence/
Moving on to the world of tabletop gaming—sadly a field in which we have no expertise. One of those ‘not for the lack of interest’ situations that never happened for us. However, we are interested in gaming as a character and plot creation vector. The new Dungeons and Dragons rulebook has new methods that address some worrying racial stereotyping baked into the old rules. This could lead the way to some much freer and open forms of creative gameplay. We strongly approve.
https://io9.gizmodo.com/with-d-ds-next-rulebook-character-creation-will-never-1844807934
Oh look, this is just a bit of silliness, but we couldn’t help but be charmed. Do you have a theme tune? Do you walk into the pub with the Indiana Jones music playing in your head? Maybe Cigarettes and Alcohol is more appropriate. Anyway. If you have a soundtrack for your day, then you are going to enjoy this clip as much as we did.
https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/idap5k/following_people_in_public_while_playing_popular/
We wrote last week about how graphic and comic techniques can make cookery books a much more straightforward proposition, particularly for the newcomer. It seems that this has been the case for a very long time, as Atlas Obscura notes. For a pre-literate society (or to clarify, one which communicates primarily in pictograms) this approach makes all kinds of sense…
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/ancient-egyptian-recipes
And finally, your Exit Music. It cannot have escaped the attention of an observant Readership that we are all about The Boss here at Cut Central. It would be downright negligent of us, then, were we to let the 45th anniversary of the release of his landmark album Born To Run go unmarked. It’s an iconic work of popular culture, endlessly quoted and covered.
We choose not to go down the obvious route when it comes to sharing a tune with y’all, though. Born To Run is more than its title track. Instead, please to enjoy She’s The One, the closest the album comes to a deep cut. Criminally marginalised, it’s a blast from the urgent piano-led beginning to the full on Bo Diddly-fuelled bangarang of the crescendo.
To put the icing on the cherry, we have a version for you from Bruce and the E Street Band’s killer 1975 Hammersmith Odeon gig, pimp-wear, woolly hats and all. If this don’t put a grin on your face then you already dead, pally. Crank this. It’s the future of rock ‘n’ roll, after all.
We will see you in seven.
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 