Saturday, 4 September 2021

W.A.S.P. - Reidolized - The Film (2018)

W.A.S.P. - Reidolized
(The Soundtrack to The Crimson Idol)
Dir. Ralph Ziman

Even though I'll be referring to the album itself, the text below is primarily for the sixty-minute 'film' that accompanied W.A.S.P.'s re-recording of their fifth studio album, The Crimson Idol, which was originally released back in 1992. If ever I do a band discography post I'll give the new version of the album the kudos it deserves.

The 'film' is the album's songs with occasional v/o narration by vocalist Blackie Lawless; i.e., parts of The Story of Jonathan (Prologue to the Crimson Idol) track that was included on the 1998 remaster of the 1992 concept album.

Documenting the tragic rise and fall of a fictional rock star named Jonathan Aaron Steele, and incorporating such themes as abandonment, emotional need, addiction, ambition and, ultimately, self-worth, it's presented in grainy lo-fi B+W with frequent splashes of symbolic crimson. It's a conceptually interesting idea that nevertheless gets tiresome pretty quickly.

Saturday, 14 August 2021

ABANDONED POST: Star Trek Voyager TV Movies

Star Trek: VOY: The [In]Complete TV Movies
Dirs. Various / 12 feature-length TV Movies / 1008 mins (approx total)
I've no plans to cover the individual seasons of Voyager on The 7th and Last blog, but because I did the TV 'Movies' for both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, I wanted to finish that timeline. There are twelve VOY two-parters in all and once again this post will be longer than the usual length. For the record, I won't ever be doing the same for Enterprise or Discovery.

Thursday, 15 July 2021

Samuel Coleridge: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834 vers.)

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner 
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | 1834 vers.

The Argument: how a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

PART I

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?