Badass Paperbacks

Found these paperbacks at Cinema Books on Roosevelt recently. Hammett is an old favorite. This Ivor Montagu one looks interesting. He covers all aspects of filmmaking, circa 1964. Champion ping pong player, Soviet spy during WWII, editor of Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger (1926)... interesting guy. I like how they join an image of Étienne-Jules Marey's photogun with Antonioni and Eisenstein stills.

Working the Big Works

More scans from Independent Video by Ken Marsh (1974).

Golgo 13 No. 1: The Impossible Hit (1989)

This is a weird artifact from my childhood. I bought this comic book while visiting family friends in the Upper Peninsula. I remember buying it with change. And it blew my mind while I sat in what I now remember as a haunted, Victorian mansion, but was probably just a slightly older, bigger house than ours. Now I can't help looking at it and thinking of Jean Pierre Mellville's Le Samouraï. I must have been remembering it, in a way, when years later I loved Mellville's film. 

The comic book format here is interesting because this is basically an advertisement for a Nintendo game, with gamer tips in the back. It looks like they took the original Japanese Manga-size pages and blew them up to comic size, and sold that as tie-in merchandise. This makes it both lame and cool. Lame because, it seems like a cheap way of going about it, in more than one way. Cool because it looks like an 80's bootleg comic version of Manga.

What is a Watching Patch?

I was going through some old books today and found the passage from John Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer that inspired the name of this blog in 2009, and eventually my production company name. In this part of the book a young girl, Ellen, is wandering through Central Park and sees a man wearing an eye patch, and Dos Passos writes this stream-of-conscious passage...

The man on the bench has a patch over his eye. A watching black patch. A black watching patch. The kidnapper of the Black Watch, among the rustling shrubs kidnappers keep their Black Watch.

The complete works of Nathanael West

Came across this 1957 copy of The Complete Works of Nathanael West over the weekend. I've had it for a while, always thought it had a pretty bad ass cover. I apparently bought it at the long gone Recycled Books & Music in the Prospect Mall, Milwaukee. I'll have to revisit these novels, was a big fan of Miss Lonelyhearts back when I picked this up.

Watching Patch Tumblr

I started a Watching Patch Tumblr account this week, sort of as an experiment, and ended up liking it. It'll be a more photo/scan-centric version of this blog, with stills, book covers, and film-related posts by myself and others. This blog will continue to function as before, with production notes and videos. But please visit The Watching Patch tumblr for a purely visual experience with images like below...

V.I. Pudovkin's Film Technique & Film Acting

Haven't posted a book cover in a while. This one I've had for a long time, and is barely holding together. It's a paperback from 1978. I remember liking the text as well as its minimalistic cover. A more technical treatment of film technique, as opposed to Eisenstein's more theoretical writings. I've been looking at it today because of the colors, it being similar to what we're using for Speed of Sound materials. Kind of. It also seems to glow when you're holding the book in person, kind of like the Citizen Kane title card. You can't really see that from the scan.

Illustrations by Norah Borges de Torre + page 86

These wonderful illustrations are by Norah Borges de Torre, the younger sister of Jorge Luis Borges, and are in the 1964 copy of The Invention of Morel that was used as an important prop in Speed of Sound. 







And I thought I would the below screen shot here, too. Also from the copy of Invention of Morel. It's from a part cut out from the movie, when this footnote was read out loud by Dave (Zach):

Adolfo Bioy Casares & Ray Bradbury

Check out my homeboy Adolfo Bioy Casares hanging out with Ray Bradbury, presumably in Argentina, where, Bradbury says, he meets all his lovers. Seriously, Ray?

Sleep

I've been reading this old Pelican book in preparation for an album I'm possibly writing the lyrics for this summer, to be recorded in Brooklyn. An album about sleeping, not sleeping, and beds. It's from 1966. And it's full of cool linguistic imagery and inspiring phrases. It also has some fascinating and useful information like this:

"If, in fact, something is present which is of a monotonous character, but which is at least potentially of interest to you, you are more likely to fall asleep than under conditions of meaningless uniformity."

Also, did you know that the rocking motion we give babies to calm them and make them sleep is a motion that, in a way, never leaves us, in the form of turning in our sleep, something that's universal? The cover shows a detail of "Pink and Green Sleeper" by Henry Moore.

Cinema Books: Film World, Hitchcock, Focus On Seventh Seal

Julio Cortázar Talks Cronopios and Famas

Nosferatu Czech Poster (1922)

Like this one for instance. Czech poster art is incredible. I'm crying. Tears of joy. Just look at those rats! And his teeth. I love it.

Horrific Poster Art

I just got these books from the library today. And they are full of super great imagery. I've been looking at horror film posters lately for you poor thing design, and I'll share some favorites in the coming days...

Italo Calvino: Se un giorno d'estate un narratore

Okay. So here's an interview with Italo Calvino in Italian with no English subtitles. But there are reasons to watch this even if you, like me, don't understand Italian. I don't want to spoil the neat stuff. It's relatively short.

The eye talks to the brain in a dotlike language

This morning I was working on some new collages for Special Treats posters and came across these neat images...

Wim Wenders by Jan Dawson

I recently found this book by Jan Dawson. It's an interesting little book, about magazine size, 32 pages long. Published by New York Zoetrope in 1976.

Hollywood the Haunted House

Jean Renoir, The World of His Films by Leo Braudy

Sergei Eisenstein: Film Form

This one is from 1977, but it seems all cinema books about Soviet-era films have awesome soviet-era style graphic design. I haven't read this yet, and I've had it for years. Maybe its because any time I pick it up I just want to stare stupidly at its awesome cover.