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Tag: film

JUDEX On Blu-Ray

Published June 18, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I have always wanted to see this, and it popped up on sale while I was trawling through the bottom of Amazon the other night.

Judex (real name Jacques de Trémeuse) is a fictional French vigilante hero created by Louis Feuillade and Arthur Bernède for the 1916 silent film serial of the same name. Judex (whose name is Latin for “judge”) is a mysterious avenger who dresses in black and wears a wide-brimmed hat and cloak. He was possibly conceived as a heroic version of the criminal character Fantômas, about whom Feuillade had directed the popular 1913 serial Fantômas. The character has since appeared in other films, in novels, on stage and in comic books. Judex may have been an inspiration for the American pulp hero The Shadow, who was himself an inspiration for Batman

A 4K restoration of a black and white film serial that’s over a hundred years old. That is an amazing thing. UK only. But if you have a multiregion player you can probably figure it out.

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morning computer ocean days

Published June 16, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Xie Lei.

Viceroy Los Cabos.

Sea levels are just the start of how climate change will upend the ocean. Rising temperatures are also threatening a critical artery that runs through the ocean known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC. This current, in short, sends warm water northwards and dumps colder water southwards in a giant loop, massively influencing the world’s weather systems along the way. 

If temperatures keep soaring, scientists fear that AMOC could collapse — and with it, climate patterns across the globe. Temperatures in Europe would plunge without the injection of warm water it brings. Rainfall in the tropics would be disrupted. And sea levels on the US east coast would rise.

To save AMOC from demise, two researchers have proposed a daring Hail Mary: building a giant dam across the Bering Strait, the channel that separates Alaska from Siberia, to stop the proverbial bleeding. As outrageous as it sounds, the megaproject could in theory stabilize the ocean current, according to the findings of a new study they published in the journal Science Advances. 

20th Century Studios has released the first trailer for Whalefall, the adaptation of Daniel Kraus’ novel coming to theaters in October.

The film — which stars Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elisabeth Shue, John Ortiz and more — is described as The Martian meets 127 Hours, centering on a scuba diver in search of his deceased father’s remains. The diver gets swallowed by an 80-foot, 60-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.

https://deadline.com/2026/06/whalefall-trailer-austin-abrams-josh-brolin-daniel-kraus-1236950810

wtf

morning computer: some useful things first thing in the day.

My free weekly newsletter is at https://orbitaloperations.beehiiv.com/

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HAXAN On Blu-Ray

Published June 15, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I had this on VHS about a million years ago. HAXAN is a lovely little thing, genuinely strange, and I am looking forward to discovering the ton of extras they’ve bundled in here.

This is the UK only release: the US+ has a different version on Criterion.

CONNECTED:

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waiting for the drop

Published May 30, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Will Stovall.

There is, for me, a weird pleasure in taking a night to wait for an idea to drop by touring the mental terrain I’d like it to drop in. It’s somewhere between setting intentions and going for a walk in a space where I hope to see something wonderful – and if I don’t, then I’ve still had a nice walk.

TELEMETRY:

Alice Rohrwacher, one of the best filmmakers working today, has started production on her adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s bestselling novel “Three Incestuous Sisters,” with Ottessa Moshfegh co-writing the script with her.

The cast includes Dakota Johnson, Saoirse Ronan, Jessie Buckley, Josh O’Connor, Mick Jagger, and Isabella Rossellini.

We were wondering if this was, in fact, the black-and-white silent film Rohrwacher has been teasing for well over a year. Now, The Film Stage has confirmed that it is indeed that movie. Hélène Louvart is the cinematographer.

Yes, in an era when blockbuster cinema gets louder and more chaotic, Rohrwacher is moving in the opposite direction — toward muteness. A silent film in 2026 sounds like a provocation.

Recent trend pieces I’ve read on the return of grunge style mostly highlight the source of influence as the 90s because it’s the closest available shorthand. But what’s happening now feels more specific than nostalgia alone. The aesthetic gaining ground is less Kurt Cobain and more a compound of faded Japanese denim, cracked leather, oxidized silver, washed-black everything, oversized knits with visible wear, military and workwear references, and old band-shirt textures.

Think: Archival vintage crossed with distressed luxury crossed with a deliberate refusal of perfection.


READING: THE REVOLUTIONISTS, Jason Burke (UK) (US+)
LAST WATCHED: Started NOUVELLE VAGUE but got too distracted by work thoughts to follow the subtitles haha
DRINK:

This subtle hint about cocktail delivery schedules was placed in the kitchen yesterday:

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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dead internet: 11mar26

Published March 11, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Dead internet theory says that the majority of actions and interactions on the net are performed by bots now. I saw a note the other day saying that Instagram and TikTok are testing tools to automatically offer people shopping recommendations based on stuff seen in their feeds or their own photos and videos. That basically kills the influencer market. Agentic shopping doesn’t work properly yet, but when it does, that’ll be another human action layer gone. I’ve looked at the Substack and Reddit apps this week, and half of those posts seem to be written by bots too. I tried being more connected for a while, but I seem to have just opened slurry pipes.

Around 1897, the French director Georges Méliès made a silent short film that, until last month, hadn’t been publicly viewable for more than a century. “Gugusse et l’Automate,” or “Gugusse and the Automaton,” is a 45-second slapstick piece featuring a magician and a Pierrot-styled robot as they duke it out.

OPERATIONS: prose day
STATUS: when i refused to wake up to get his breakfast, the mancub switched the radio on and then slapped me around the face
READING: THE BOOK OF COMMENTARY / UNQUIET GARDEN OF THE SOUL, Alexander Kluge (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:


LAST WATCHED: MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: THE FINAL RECKONING. Not as joyless as the one before it, but the ending didn’t quite stick for me.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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fish weather: 15feb26

Published February 15, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Hieu Chau

It is pissing down outside and the garden, waterlogged by weeks of rain, is starting to flood. I still have to plant and re-plant dormant trees and am fast running out of time.

I decided to get the Substack app and poke around in it last night, and fuck me did I underestimate the number of newsletters out there right now. It seems to me to be roughly equivalent of those days when most people seemed to be on blogspot. I’m going to need to delete that app immediately, because I was reading on my phone for three or four hours.

And it was on one of those newsletters that I discovered that Maya Deren wrote a short book on filmmaking. And there’s a PDF linked at the bottom of that page.

OPERATIONS: finishing touches on a script, then rewrite the newsletter template
STATUS: rrrreally just want to curl up somewhere with a book for ten hours
READING: Picked up a sample of BLANK SPACE by W David Marx

Related:

If artists can only make art while standing in the middle of the town square, you’re going to get more boring art.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/book-review-blank-space

That feels flat-out brilliant.

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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It Stopped Raining Briefly: 4feb26

Published February 4, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Day 6 of the death plague. Not remotely at even half-power.

TODAY:

There’s a new Shackleton record. I thought he’d retired.

OPERATIONS: managed to get a script out yesterday, need to get 8pp out today, but I suspect the day will get in the way. Had to process some foreign right and film-related stuff last night and follow up on some production schedules.
STATUS: apparently I am going out for lunch, presumably so I can infect the outside world with The Death. I’ve ordered a case of beer as therapy.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+) (this book is going on forever)
LISTENING: Monument Waves 008 : Atomic Moog (live) podcast

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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26jan26

Published January 26, 2026 by Warren Ellis

1236pm and I still haven’t eaten, so I have failed at the day already. Remarkably little of interest on the RSS today. The dollar continues to crash against the pound, and of course I have a payment in transit right now. I fully intended to go out for coffee this morning but it was cold and I had things to do early on – including trying to fix the fact that my newsletter header image is somehow vanishing in Beehiiv after years of working perfectly.

You ever have one of those days where you just know from the get that nothing is going to go well? Happy Monday.

TODAY:

  • A list of some of the current smart glasses options. I still wonder if glasses aren’t a dead end. In The Economist today, I read: “HSBC, a bank, estimates there are 15m users of smart glasses worldwide; Apple, which reports its latest quarterly earnings this week, is thought to have sold 250m iPhones last year alone.”
  • The film version of PROJECT HAIL MARY is going to be two hours and forty-six minutes long! I actually liked the book, but I’m going to be curious to see if Drew Goddard addressed the underlying autistic note in and the apparent asexuality of the protagonist.
  • And an IG carousel of bookshops in London, a few of which I know personally, some of which I’ve never heard off, so I’m off to look at websites:

OPERATIONS: scripts, foreword, prose series development, outline, newsletter template fixing, running out of month very very fast now
STATUS: made a venison goulash from scratch last night that turned out very well. Secret weapon:


READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING:


MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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20jan26

Published January 20, 2026 by Warren Ellis

I found a weird little object online – a USB reader for floppy discs. I still have a few boxes of floppy discs from way back when that I didn’t throw out. There’s a fair chance they’re all as corrupted and rotted as shit now, but I picked up said weird little object and I’m going to see if any of those disks are recoverable. Chances are they have a lot of old Marvel, DC and Wildstorm stuff on, and while it’s not crucial to have copies of those old scripts, and they would be painful to look at, I feel like it would be kind of nice to possess them again. I’ve had so many hard drive and storage issues over the years, so many lost scripts and documents and emails, that I’ve gotten used to considering it all volatile and ephemeral and have learned not to be upset at losing things and to let go of things. To be able to recover just a handful of old pieces would have its pleasures.

In retrospect, I should have printed off literally everything and gotten filing cabinets and, I dunno, a full library system or a zettelkasten index or something, and stayed analogue. I have this memory of a bit in the old MAX HEADROOM show where Blank Reg tries to sell a cyberpunk kid a book on the grounds that it’s a “non-volatile storage medium.” Oh, bugger me, the clip’s on YouTube-

TODAY:

Accessions:

CUTS BOTH WAYS, Ed James (UK) (US+)

The 9th Rob Marshall book. I have a great fondness for these less than cosy Scottish crime novels. This one seems to be in the nature of a put pilot for a new series, so it’s probably not the one to start with.

OPERATIONS: script, foreword, prose series development, outline, newsletter
STATUS: what is this outside world you speak of
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: Night Tracks
LAST WATCHED: GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.

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