“Decrucify the Angel…or I’ll Melt Your Face!”

Welcome to the final entry into
Ivanlandia’s The 47th Minute Project--
On January 16th, we posted this frame (above), and it was correctly guessed as the 47th minute of Barbarella!

It’s been fun working on the 47th Minute Project, but with the moving of the Embassy, as well as other stuff, like the death of my Endpoint column (sniff!), I’ve lost interest (for now) in 47th minutes.
But who knows?





Barbarella (1968)
Directed by Roger Vadim
Produced by Dino De Laurentiis
Screenplay by Terry Southern and Roger Vadim
In collaboration with Claude Brule, Vittorio Bonicelli, Clement Biddle Wood, Brian Degas/Tudor Gates, and Jean Claude Forest
Based on the comic book by Jean Claude Forest
Cinematography: Claude Renoir
Production designer: Mario Garbuglia
Editor: Victoria Mercanton
Special effects supervisor: August Lohman
Optical effects: Charles Staffell
Special animation effects Gerard Cogan, Thierry Vincens-Fargo
Cast: Jane Fonda (Barbarella), John Phillips Law (Pygar), Anita Wallenberg (The Great Tyrant), Milo O’Shea (The Concierge/Duran Duran), David Hemmings (Dildano), Marcel Marceau, Ugo Tognazzi
98 minutes/released by Paramount

Why is Barbarella a favorite of The National Film Board of Ivanlandia?
The flick’s got a very unique ANTI-REALISM that I find very appealing.
The movie is also witty, kinky, weird and very stylish:
It has a gentle loving spirit--without hammering you over the head about it--the flick is all about “love.”
It’s a groovy, psychedelic love universe, baby.

And the perfs are all top-notch, perhaps helped by so many actors being dubbed in later (a good dubbing job can hide a multitude of sins), but
acting kudos are especially for Jane Fonda, who’s very game throughout the flick--the movie only succeeds because of her deft balancing of virtue and naivite, as well as some great comic timing/delivery.

I like how her introduction to “barbarian sex” turns Barbarella into a little horndoggette, but she’s still focused on her mission to find Duran Duran--she’s like James Bond: love ’em and leave ’em--but with a smile, natch!






Barbarella may be naïve, but the film’s most innocent character is Pygar, the blind angel (angel is love, angel is blind, love is blind? Angel has no memory: love always forgives?), who even saves the evil queen.

And the casting of Anita Pallenberg was very cool (even though she’s dubbed), bring a cache of decadence to the Tyrant of Sogo: meow!




Barbarella was re-released in 1978 or ’79 (during the winter shared by the two years) to cash in on Star Wars mania, when there wasn’t enough product to satisfy the masses--
Around this time Starcrash,
Message From Space and
Laserblast were rushed out,
and Paramount took their sexy space adventure out of the vaults (home video wasn’t the behemoth it later became, and some movies, like 2001 or James Bond flicks, as well as Disney’s collection, were routinely re-released at second run theaters),
gave Barbarella a new Boris Vallejo poster and the subtitle, “Queen of the Galaxy.”
(As well as removing the wings from the angel, Pygar: huh?!?)

That’s when I first saw the movie, at the now-no-longer-a-movie-theater Oceana Theater in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

Even as a kid, I liked the flick’s cool/weird/sexy design and the rampant anti-realism in style and content.

Psychedelic star-swirls were
a change of pace, and a breathe of fresh air (to me) after the dirty-space-junk look of Star Wars, Space: 1999, 2001, Silent Running, etc.--not that I don’t love that look, but I’ve always appreciated “different” views of space:
A sort of Anti-Realistic artistic interpretation of the whirling cosmos--




Dino De Laurentiis routinely eschews the “realistic hardware” look of movies like Star Trek or Star Wars--
In Dino’s Barbarella, Flash Gordon and Dune, space has the pallete of a madman--Barbarella’s universe is a lavalite!
But if anything, Barbarella owes more to the De Laurentiis-produced/Mario Bava-directed super-their cult favorite Danger: Diabolik!, than to any space operas---which may mean that Barbarella is more of a spiritual parent of Star Wars than 2001 (let’s face it, Star Wars is goofy space fantasy, while 2001 is a thoughtful mediatation on the development of human evolution)--
And two of Diabolik’s screenwriters contributed to Barbarella’s script (Tudor Gates and Brian Degas)!

The very Italian production designof Barbarella reinforces the fever-dream atmosphere--like The Kuchar Brothers with unlimited funds! But why not? It’s life in the year 40,000!
[Seeing this during it’s orginal 1968 release must’ve been wild; director Roger Vadim really knows how to use the wide-fram Panavision screen, and it’s a visual feast.]
Although campy, it’s never condescending, neither to the audience or to its characters.



Barbarella’s plot is a simple structure (very Perils of Pauline; but where Barbarella saves herself as often as she‘s saved by others) that allows a lot of strange details to be hung on it,
from Jane’s witty, almost post-modern asides (“What a poetic way to die”) to all the costumes and situations (a giant hookah containing “Essence of Man,” with Jane’s awesome “Hmm…not bad” expression after trying a puff)

And it has a very happy ending: The Angel, the Great Tyrant and Barbarella, a trio of beauties flying into the universe for a groovy and cosmic menage a trois: Wow!

Barbarella has a pace that is its own, and yet, even when things seem to stop cold--like the endless trippy effects during the Queen’s Dream Chamber--I cannot complain: I’m absolutely enthralled by this movie.
Barbarella is not just a movie, it’s an experience!

Barbarella wasn’t a financial or critical hit, but it most definitely is a
Cult movie
And as such, has its share of dedicated followers.
For an incredible essay/tribute to Barbarella, go HERE at Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For…

And for the Ultimate Movie Guide to Barbarella (a truly impressive piece of work and dedication), go HERE to the studs at Black Hole Reviews!

“You are so good, you made the Matmos vomit.”

Francis Bacon’s Starship Troopers (The 47th Minute Project Number Six!)

Touchdown! Yay team! Go 47!
Rock ’em to the east
Rock ’em to the west
Everybody knows
The 47th Minute Project is the best!
Gooooooooooooooooo Ivanlandia! Yay!
(and the crowd roars)


The Latest Installment of the 47th Minute Project

Enough editorializing!
Let’s start the next contest of
The 47th Minute Project—

(The rules are simple—I post the 47 minute—and since video cycles at 30 frames-per-second, I try and catch the cycle at the beginning of when the DVD counter reads “47:00”—and you try and guess, posting in the comments section—and I apologize to everyone who tries to post and the weirdness of feuding software systems makes us just that more disconnected with each other, but what can I say? Bill Gates laughs at my pain while eating caviar on his private train):

If you can't identity the 47th Minute of this movie below…
I’m giving up.



Please leave your answers in the comments section below—

As for the last entry’s three different 47th minutes—



This was the 47th Minute of the movie
H.O.T.S.,
which I should have screened by
The National Film Board of Ivanlandia
just to have an opinion
because I did originally post this image in, what? June 2009? Jeez, that’s plenty of time.

But I haven’t screened H.O.T.S.
I’ve been busy, okay?
But I was willing to put up a pic,
for good Darius,
and besides,
I had to watch Don Siegel’s recently-released to DVD The Lineup instead.
There it is. I’m a loser.

Several people recognized this as the 47th minute of Sunset Blvd., absolutely one of the greatest films ever made; we will hear no criticism of the film (okay, maybe some, but you have to admit, the great stuff outshines any potential weaknesses the flick may have).

Our friend Toestubber once wrote of Sunset Blvd.:

Great music, one-of-a-kind cameos, shockingly great performances in the service of a brilliant, biting script.

The hardcore humanism in its complicated characters, to me, contradicts the misguided "camp" label that people often slap on this classic picture.

Modern fans of the mystery genre looking for an offbeat, dark, psychologically rich drama should definitely check it out.

If Old Hollywood had to die, it couldn't have asked for a more enduring tombstone.
Sunset Blvd. is as perfect as a movie can be.

One thing I noticed the last time I watched Sunset Boulevard I noticed something in Norma’s sunglasses…

Yes, Miss Desmond, it is time for your close-up…

Why, what have we here?
Look, there’s the crew! Hi, Mr. Wilder!
I think Kiss Me Stupid is great!
(Yes, I know: Kiss Me Stupid was made way after Sunset Blvd. So sue me.)

And this? Ahhhh, my ace in the hole:
I doubted anyone could guess it.

It is the 47th minute of Starship Troopers (1997)
—from “the meteor almost crashes into Carmen’s ship scene.”

About a nano-second earlier, her stunt double’s hand smashed the glass around the SHINY RED BUTTON to, you know, power up and save the ship.

My opinions of Starship Troopers is that it is a brilliant subtle joke, and that most people don’t get jokes unless they’re hit over the head or broadly winked at.

If the flick had ended with a reveal that the movie we’ve just watched was actually a movie being watched by another audience,
like a bunch of troopers at a PX,that this is a propaganda flick—
that this is the movie Star Wars would have been if
INSERT NAME OF FAVORITE DICTATOR HERE
had won the war (hot or cold)—
then I think mainstream critics might have gotten it.

But then the flick would be obvious.

Yes, I think that the gorehound’s delight/splatterpunk’s fever dream that is Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers is a subtle movie.

The movie is then the “degenerate” art that a society like the one in the film would probably disapprove of.

Speaking of which….

And when you watch Starship Troopers frame-by-frame, you often wind up with some of Francis Bacon’s paintings (see above).




Francis Bacon (1909-1992) is a brilliant artist, and a master of the macabre.

I first learned about the late born-in-Ireland/worked-in-England painter through my obsession with Ridley Scott’s Alien.

Like a lot of other nerds, after seeing the 1979 sci-fi/horror masterpiece (screened at the Avalon Theatre on Kings Highway in Brooklyn),
I picked up
The Book of Alien: an incredible find for a young geek in 1980—
it was a beautifully organized “making of”/behind the scenes collection—
dealing mainly with production design
(lots of illos by Giger and Ron Cobb;
not so much about post-production or scoring),
and I really hope I still have it somewhere,
either in storage or at my mom’s place….

And speaking of Alien:
In early December, Dan O’Bannon died. Crap.

For those who don’t know, O’Bannon is credited as sole screenwriter of Alien, from a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett.

Reportedly, producers (and screenwriters themselves) Walter Hill (an Ivanlandia fave and a vastly underrated filmmaker) and David Giler extensively rewrote O’Bannon’s script (the “Ash is an android” subplot is one of Hill/Giler’s contributions, I’ve been told), but that WGA arbitration gave O’Bannon sole screenwriter credit.

This may be because Hill & Giler were trying to take sole writers credit, and stiff O’Bannon with a “story by” credit—
and while they really did revamp the first script, if you compare versions, much of O’Bannon’s original stuff is there.
I guess nobody wanted a three-way credit, like “Written by Dan O’Bannon, Walter Hill and David Giler.”

Since then, the late writer receives credits on all the subsequent films in the Alien franchise, usually a “based on characters created by.”

Whatever the writers’ credits hoo-hah Alien went through,
O’Bannon deserves heaps of credit for contributing to the American horror/sci-fi landscape, for not only Alien, but Dark Star and Return of the Living Dead
(and Lifeforce has its supporters, that’s for sure, it definitely has a cult following),
as well as Blue Thunder and several other flicks, which, while they may not be of the highest quality, are all entertaining.

And speaking of death:
If the flags weren’t at half-mast at Pomona College for alum, 1998 honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree recipient and brother of the Alpha Gamma Sigma fraternity Roy E. Disney, then they should have been.

While Ivanlandia may time and again mock the products of the Haus of Mouse, The National Film Board of Ivanlandia LOVES animation, and so did Roy.
He was a big supporter of the CalArts animation program, and he fought hard against the corporate bean counters in the 1980s to keep the studio’s animation wing alive.

So, getting back to Francis Bacon:

Some initial production designs for the monster from Alien were inspired/copied from some of Bacon’s paintings.
Or at least that’s what The Book of Alien said.

So then I searched out Bacon’s art.

I’m really kicking myself hard for missing the last summer’s Bacon show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But as I said, when you freeze-frame Starship Troopers, you get yourself a variety of potential Francis Bacon paintings.

I’ve picked a smattering of his paintings, and variety of framegrabs—personally, I like the way the shots off the TV screen are extra-grungy, like 16mm film footage blown up to 35mm—and mixed them up.

Compare and contrast.
Essays should be between 50 and 200 words.
Submit to comments section.


Three Studies for a Crucifixion, (1962)



Head VI (1949)




Painting (1946)





Head I (1947-48)




Portrait of George Dyer Talking (1962)



I still haven’t seen Starship Troopers 2—most people seem to hate it, but Friend Of Ivanlandia and Ambassador from Irish Bronx, Ed S., says there are some good qualities in it.
But we still haven’t seen it. And unless it’s on TV, we might not. We’re willing to watch it—if it’s put on a silver platter before us—
but not at the expense of other, probably better DVDs.

However, If you like the sick, cynical tone of the first Starship Troopers, you should like
Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (2008).

The tonal similarities are probably due to Starship Troopers (and RoboCop) co-screenwriter Ed Neumeier’s promotion to writer-director in Starship Troopers 3: Marauder (ST3:M).

It’s a terrific and satirical B-movie/genre flick that really captures the crazy, resourceful and sometimes transgressive low-budget spirit of Roger Corman’s New World productions and Charles Band’s films from the 1980s.

Some of ST3:M’s effects aren’t up to snuff compared to the first film, and there isn’t enough gore (IMO), but the flick overflows with ideas – often controversial ones –
and that’s a rarity in today’s sci-fi action films.

The Federation is first shown using pop music to keep the populace fired up, and then finding that religion is even better for mind control.

Meanwhile, the flick goes the distance and finally presents Heinlein’s trooper suits as they were described in his novel (yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m a nerd): armed-to-the-teeth armored robotic exoskeletons—that, while the CGI may not be as up to snuff with something over-budgeted and pretentious like Avatar’s, still deliver the excitement and thrills.

There’s a new H.P. Lovecraft-inspired super-brain-bug that I found wonderful as a concept, and its effects were executed with as much aplomb as possible—I got it, and any movie-viewer who can still suspend disbelief (remember when everything on screen wasn’t more real than real?) will get it, too.
(That’s why I think ST3:M is similar to Corman and Band’s flicks: heavy on ideas and action, and brought together with dime-store ingenuity.)

And I’ll admit to a weird fascination with fembot/cyborg-love-doll Jolene Blalock and her pneumatic lips—yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m a nerd and I still live in my mom’s basement.
Fuck you.

Back to the movie:
If ST3:M was not some direct-to-DVD B-movie exploitation flick, it’s doubtful it would have been allowed to even broach the subject of religion in the movie’s fascistic future.

And I’m sure some folks are annoyed by the flick’s thinly veiled references to the Iraq War and the resulting protests at home, but ST3:M never states that the bugs are interested in peace and cohabitation:
they want us dead and won’t stop until it’s done.

In its (weird and sick) examination of what the Federation is doing about the bugs, ST3:M is more inventive and less shrill or preachy than most “serious dramas” about the Iraq conflict (with the exception of The Hurt Locker, which succeeds by not taking the controversial war head on).

ST3: M messes with your head!
And is therefore highly recommended.

And to the folks who would never bother renting ST3:M because it was a direct-to-DVD release, you’re idiots.

Direct-to-DVD is the contemporary equivalent of the drive-in, grindhouse or second-run movie theater. If you praise the flicks that used to appear at those venues, yet still pooh-pooh direct-to-DVD, you are a hypocrite.
Direct-to-DVD is often the only chance some flicks have to be seen.