As a part of my ill-advised development of a virtual book look for this site, I dug out some of the older books I have here and there about the house. The pages that made it into the final product came from an 1894 copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island published by Charles Scribner’s Sons as pat of a multivolume compendium of the man’s work. I didn’t notice as I scanned the book, but there is a two-color facsimile of young Jim’s map just prior to the frontmatter. Maybe I’ll share that here too.

One of the other books I found is an intriguing edition of William Morris’ unreadable utopian fantasy, News from Nowhere. As I flipped through it, I didn’t see a page or type worth cribbing from, but then I remembered that I’d purchased it because of the very faded, illegible reproductions of four agitprop drawings, presumably by Morris, probably from the 1880s. The drawings are intriguingly hard to see in the book, when held in the hand and peered at. They appear to have been printed in yellow ink on what may have been at one time faintly lavender paper. The inexpensive stock has faded to the familiar manila of old paper, nearly exactly the same shade as the yellow ink. I recall thinking as I bought the book that it would be an interesting challenge to work on scans of the endpapers.

Well, I’ve done so, and you may view the results by clicking on the banner at the top of his entry. The drawings are interesting because Morris is such a gifted draftsman; they are also somewhat odd to our post-Soviet eyes in the manner in which they idealize and fuss over images familiar from both later patriotic art and socialist poster design.

[crosspost from the Siffblog]

This is the first year that I had the opportunity to take as full an advantage of my SIFF press pass as I have wanted to, and for the first two weeks of screenings, I was very diligent about seeing every film shown, about three a day for two weeks.

I had been warned by others that when one is viewing films for review in volume, it becomes crucial to take extensive notes, something that I try to avoid when viewing films one at a time for review. I’ve found that If I’m taking notes as the film screens, I’m much less likely to experience the film like a casual viewer and therefore may miss the quality of emotional involvement in the film which is part of he aim of many commercial films.

The reason it’s important to take good notes in viewing lots of films for review is that after a couple of days, your memory breaks down, and you’ll inadvertently find yourself mixing up characters, scenes, and situations. The notes help ensure that what you turn in represents what you saw.

Despite this, not only do the films blend together in one’s mind, to a certain extent the memories become dissociated: you may find yourself recalling how nice it was to sit by the river with James Garner, or what a pretty girl that French chick is that you met the other day, or how good that food looked in that Chinese family’s roadside lunch counter. The films’ depictions of experiences begin to occupy the places that are normally used to store personal experience.

This effect renders everything slightly dreamlike, because you learn to distrust your memory.

Adding to the strangeness is the emotional effect of being absorbed by the narratives that you’re being presented with. Generally, filmmakers aim for the maximum emotional and visual persuasiveness that they can accomplish. They’ll do anything to involve you in the emotional rhythm of the story, and that means there are certain tricks that are used over and over again. Over swelling strings, the actor’s eyes widen as her head tilts back, mouth opening, and a gentle rain spatters her face. The camera pulls back, swooping away, and the rain becomes a torrential downpour as brasses enter the soundtrack.

Despite the recognizable and mechanical nature of many of these tricks, they remain effective rhetorical tropes, even after sitting through many movies. It’s possible that they become even more effective over time through repetition. As audience members, we’re conditioned to respond to these gestures, slavering when the bell sounds.

This operant-conditioning effect (the reward is produced within our bodies as endorphins are released in response to the emotive cues) has a cumulative effect. After achieving that critical mass of film-viewing where one’s memories break down, the emotional pummeling has a stronger effect, rendering even hack films capable of carrying a wallop. It’s like being slightly drunk all the time, off balance and easily swayed.