Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods, directed by Patrick Meaney
Halo 8, 80 minutes, 2010

I suspect there are only a few kinds of people who’ll be interested in the documentary Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods – either serious documentary fans, devoted comic-book readers, or magical practitioners. Each of them will come away from this film quite happy.

Director Patrick Meaney largely works with a familiar pattern for this kind of celebrity documentary – one of mostly stepping back and letting the interviews (and, of course, editing) tell the story. There are several attempts to visually represent the psychedelic elements of the tale created by cinematographer Jordan Rennert, though the results are far less annoying than is often the case in such films! The perspective is mostly one which aims at the comic-reading audience, introducing them fairly gently to the core of occult thought that permeates his work.

The film opens with a montage of several comic-book writers and artists talking about Morrison’s reputation as a very successful comics creator who is also out as a practicing chaos magician who’s no stranger to psychedelics – and the usual kind of “drug-crazed madman” rumours that inevitably follow. Continue reading »

May 15th will mark the 53rd anniversary of Austin Osman Spare’s death. A short video depicting a posthumous “interview” with Spare has been produced by Jamie Gregory & Neil Dineen in commemoration.

The video is comprised of photographic stills and images of Spare’s paintings and sketches are interspersed throughout. Philip Glass‘ ‘Spaceship’ provides the soundtrack.

The “interview” is conducted via oracle, with a dice, playing cards, Beck’s and Zos Speaks!, and related through scrolling text on the screen. Questions are posed in places Spare had a connection with: the Royal Academy in Piccadilly where two paintings were exhibited in Spare’s youth, the British Museum which inspired Spare’s imagery, and the Goat Tavern he frequented with Kenneth and Steffi Grant.

For all that, the responses calculated to the questions are interesting, though this may be attributed more to Spare’s enigmatic style. Repeat answers, however, dull some some of the potency of this method for the spectator.

Amusingly, the oracle declined to answer the question “What really happened between you and Aleister Crowley?”

Following the “interview” two “new” automatic images are produced “via the menstruum of undines”, and a thankful toast of Budweiser is offered at Spare’s grave.

The twelve-minute video can be downloaded from LaShTAL.com at “An Interview with Austin Osman Spare – a commemorative video“.

It’s been interesting reading the responses to guest blogger Dr Dave Evans‘ review of the new Aleister Crowley film Chemical Wedding over the past week. In addition to responses posted here, there have been a number of positive (or at least amused) comments on private blogs and journals, and at several which have been more public.

Crowley forum LAShTAL.com has been collecting Chemical Wedding reviews from various media sources, comparing and contrasting them and commenting on what they find, including the one posted here. Dave’s replies to commentators on the forum explore the various positions from which he disliked the film.

Taylor Ellwood‘s response in his blog Experiments of a Magician struck me as rather odd. Rather than taking an interest in the film itself, Ellwood seemed pleased the movie received a terrible review because he hates Crowley. Continue reading »