OFF: Dark Star

[Carl Edlund Anderson]

On sön 17 maj 1998 16.15 -0700 "Stuart Hamilton" <xzx28 at DIAL.PIPEX.COM> wrote:
> And I still say that a small clique of influential people watching
> films made by their friends and puffing them up in the media has
> created a layer of people too scared to speak out against some unwatcheable
> bilge.  Thi is true of all methods of artistic expression.

     Well, I'd never heard of _Dark Star_ or anyone involved with it before I sat down and watched it, and thought it was quite trashy and good fun.  But then I like lots of things which I'm sure are complete bilge :)  I tend to like things that come across as honest trash better than those which aspire to greatness and fail.

     Which (to steer us back on topic) is why I think I like Hawkwind.  Music of great complexity and subtly is not really their forte :)  But they are, quite often, damn good at what they do.  And even if they were _trying_ to be prentensious, they come across with such awesomely campy pulp that it's difficult to notice.

     And so, on the other hand, middle-70s Floyd do very little for me, for all that its "better" constructed.  They just struck me as pretensious, whiny, and, truth to tell, not much _fun_ :)  That's OK in small doses, but Floyd seem to have just _wallowed_ in it ...

     [Dangerously similar to Brock's contributions to _DH_, actually ...]

     I can't imagine trying to hold _Dark Star_ up as a great artistic achievement.  I can imagine holding it up as quite good fun to sit down with a few mates and a few beers and watch, since that's more or less how I would hold it up :)

Cheers,
Carl

--
Carl Edlund Anderson
Dept. of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, & Celtic
St. John's College, University of Cambridge
mailto:cea20 at cus.cam.ac.uk
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~carl/