Comet Atomic
Author's posts
Nov 26 2023
Norbert Schwontkowski: Strange Landscapes, Cosmic Loneliness & Dark Humor
A lone figure stands beneath an enormous sky. A road disappears toward nowhere. A building looks familiar until something about its proportions begins to feel wrong. A man confronts an absurd situation with no obvious explanation. Somewhere between melancholy and comedy, an ordinary landscape quietly slips into another reality. That uncertain territory belonged to Norbert …
Nov 22 2023
Soviet Film Wednesday: Andrei Rublev
A man rises above medieval Russia in a primitive flying machine, suspended beneath a great balloon while fields, rivers, churches, and tiny human figures spread beneath him. For a few astonishing moments, he sees the world from a perspective nobody around him is supposed to possess. Then the flight ends violently. Andrei Tarkovsky begins Andrei …
May 20 2023
Tak Shindo: Brass, Bamboo & the Complicated Sound of Exotica
A koto begins to shimmer beneath a wall of brass. Bamboo flutes weave around trumpets and trombones. Japanese drums meet the polished swing of a Hollywood studio orchestra, while familiar American standards suddenly seem to occupy a musical world halfway between Tokyo, Los Angeles, a nightclub, and somebody’s highly imaginative idea of the Far East. …
May 18 2023
Janet Fish: Light, Glass & the Joy of Looking
A row of drinking glasses stands on a table, but the glasses are almost impossible to separate from the light passing through them. Reflections break into streaks of turquoise, violet, yellow, green, and orange. Water bends the background into fragments. One transparent surface overlaps another until the objects seem less solid than the light moving …
