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Tag: film

8sep26

Published September 8, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Didn’t get enough nailed down yesterday. I have the full shape of two stories, but I really wanted to get into scripting and to firm up the scripts on two other jobs. Possibly I was being ambitious, but there’s little point in not being ambitious. Anyway, one artist has a rough pitch for a piece, and I’m a few hours away from finalising the style for the other, and then I’m into scripting up from notes and bones on those two other things. I don’t get bored.

Which is a pity, really, because sometimes boredom is when the backbrain starts assembling pieces of things to amuse itself. However, that is also why I take a notebook and a music player to the coffee shop. Something I’ve done since the age of the Walkman, except in the early days it was pubs or all-night burger shops.

Ended up buying more Silvine record cards, a mini clipboard and a card holder for the desk. Committing to the bit. Not going full Zettelkasten, though. Zettelkasten articles make my head hurt.

ACCESSIONS:

The one film missing from The Fassbinder Collection that I wanted to see was IN A YEAR OF 13 MOONS, and I finally spotted a copy on blu-ray for a tenner.

Seems to be only on DVD in the US.

New issue of NEURAL magazine just showed up.

OPERATIONS: already moved 8pp out of the office, am two pages into another thing, working across two other scripts today, broke ground on Sunday’s newsletter
STATUS: it’s raining!
READING: re-reading ANTWERP, Roberto Bolano (UK) (US+)

We were on the edge of the reservoir and the sky was very blue. A few fishermen were visible in the distance and smoke from a chimney rose over the trees. Green wood, for burning witches, said the old man, his lips hardly moving.


LISTENING: DUST OF STARS: LANDSCAPES OF HOLLOW, Angela Winter

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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22aug26

Published August 22, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Offline day: finishing up in the office and then out for lunch, shopping and then a gig.

We’ve learned to crave feeds that impose a steady stream of unconscious, dreamlike images we struggle to forget, but also to fully remember. In the millisecond interval during which we might practice perception, a “reconstructive doing,” another image already enters into our view. The patterns of digital media extinguish this interval, though they don’t make it impossible.

Once Terence McKenna suggested the most sought-after drug we could invent would be one that allows us to remember all of our dreams. We may have built something close, except the dreams aren’t ours, and we can’t quite wake up from them.

But the only way out, as McKenna might say, might be through.

OPERATIONS: marking up the boards AGAIN and setting a proper schedule for next week, I need to move sixty pages out of the office in the next week and it’s going to be a grind.

LAST WATCHED: SISU 2: ROAD TO REVENGE (2025) is, sadly, a more conventional film than the original. Still lots of bloody fun, but too similar to the original in its beats to be as enjoyable, trying harder to be “emotional” while losing some of the little textual depth that made the first film surprising. But there are a couple of good jokes in there – the bit with the spoon in the final fight is a nice touch, as is the last weapon our man used. Which is, as the film itself leads you to say to yourself, legendary.

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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20aug26

Published August 20, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Did you ever think about the number of films you don’t get to see because you’re self-harming your own brain cells with aggressively mid streaming shows?

I remember when the binge watch was a new and often joyous thing. I cleared a day to watch an entire season of the US HOUSE OF CARDS, and that was a good show in its first two seasons. Now a weekly release schedule is treated like a novelty. It occurred to me the other evening that the bingewatch and the doomscroll are the same thing: a symptom of having given up control of your life. But I had been drinking mead, so…

OPERATIONS: marking up the boards and laying down notes
STATUS:

The date window on the Ingenieur is being cranky!


READING: IN HER MIND A DARKNESS, LS Johnson
LISTENING: THE MODERNS ep 430
LAST WATCHED: I’ve been looking forward to watching IS GOD IS (2026) and it didn’t disappoint. Twins mutilated by a house fire are sent by their mother on a mission to kill their murderous shitbag of a father. The filming is a little bit Tarantino, but more literary, more heightened, more emotional. It is VERY well written, even though the top of the third act derails a touch. Some terrific acting. Cameo from Janelle Monae playing against type and killing it. Hell of a finish. The writer and director is Aleshea Harris, and it’s based on her play, and she is now on my list of instant purchases. Prime Video.
DRINK: some random sparkling white

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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19aug26

Published August 19, 2026 by Warren Ellis

AirPods with cameras in is a good thing because for a year they’re all anyone will want and proper earbuds will get cheaper. And then there’s a fair chance that anyone with camera AirPods will be shunned as unnatural and there will be a whole Conversation about them and I can ignore it all and read a book while listening to music over IEMs. Which I had no idea even existed until around 2013, when Fred Armisen was sitting in the airplane seat opposite me and using IEMs to review footage on a tablet, and when he took them out I leaned over and asked him what the hell those weird earbuds were.

OPERATIONS: I need to nail down a long essay today.
STATUS: I should be thrilled that it’s temperate again
READING: finished THE KILLER’S MARK, MW Craven (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: CELLOSCAPES, Emma Caterinicchio & Pete Swinton


LAST WATCHED: FLUX GOURMET (2022), which probably hits a bit different if you DON’T go and see a lot of experimental and improvised music gigs. And I’m not sure how many people can relate to third-division writers with gastric issues, but I personally wanted the ailing protagonist, a bad writer with a bad stomach documenting the performances of sonic artists exclusively using culinary techniques to make sounds, to win everything and become king. The film is actually very good, earthy and jagged and trippy with a marvellously gross ending. It’s just an incredibly niche satire. Sonic catering. Double-barrel it with THE MENU, made in the same year, or, perhaps more fittingly, Peter Greenaway’s THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER.

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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18aug26

Published August 18, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Me too, mancub, me too.

Herself incubated what may possibly be plague at Bloodstock and is therefore in the Plague Cell (our daughter’s old room) once again. The internet is acting like an elephant is sitting on it. The humidity continues to be fucking terrible. But I am not ready for summer to end. I still need to get down to Old Leigh!

(Nightmare scenario: we are already talking about Xmas planning)

OPERATIONS: script/dev/essay/newsletter
STATUS: breathing soup
READING: THE KILLER’S MARK, MW Craven (UK) (US+)

‘Agreed. You want overt or covert surveillance?’

‘Surprise me.’

‘Covert it is then. Having a scrap with a bunch of Bruce Lee wannabes will let the boys vent some of that pent-up anger.’

‘Who you gonna use?’

‘Best you don’t know,’ Towler said. ‘But rest assured they’re fucking animals. Half of them still eat with their feet.’


LISTENING: IF WE COULD HEAR, Natalie Beridze

Yes, I am playing it in the CD drive! Like an Old!


LAST WATCHED: LET THE CORPSES TAN (2017) on MUBI, a Belgian film which roughly approximates what you’d get if you stuffed Sergio Leone full of speed and told him to direct a Seventies crime drama. With Saul Bass in the back yelling ANTS ANT ANTS and Ben Wheatley close by whispering spells from A FIELD IN ENGLAND.

It is drunk on style and very fun.

DRINK: herself brought some vile cherry “soda” home, which I saved with a shot of O’Donnell’s Very Cherry Moonshine like an hero

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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17aug26

Published August 17, 2026 by Warren Ellis

Imagine a story where the events in our lives that happen online are never depicted or mentioned. A day would seem twelve hours long and the protagonists would spend two thirds of that time asleep.

I was gifted this Panerai Table Clock by a client a few weeks ago. I should be keeping it in its box, as it’s crazy expensive. But what’s the point in having things and not enjoying them? So it lives on my work desk, sitting on top of the little box containing a medal I was given in Ireland years ago. It’s a reminder to myself that I need to stay disconnected from the internet. Testing a site blocker on the laptop today.

Had dinner at the local haute restaurant on Friday night and it was as ever fully insane. There was a mushroom risotto with walnuts, walnut ketchup, fresh Parmesan and riced mushroom in place of the rice that was simply MAD and they made it just for us. We also got experimented on with a few dishes and god damn please keep doing that. We have been informed that we are Regulars now, and that is delightful.

I had an Idea on Saturday and realised I’d lost the day to sitting thinking about it, which was annoying, so I’ve booked myself a gig for next Saturday to make sure I leave the house. I am naturally so bad at leaving the house and I really need to.

ACCESSIONS:

MAIGRET IN VICHY, Georges Simenon (UK) (US+) was on sale, and it’s one I haven’t read.

MUD DUCK, Travis Malone (UK) (US+), because the author emailed me yesterday and since it’s currently free on Kindle (in the UK at least, I dunno about the US right now) it was easier to just grab a copy there.

Recently divorced and having drank himself to unemployment, Iain McHughes has no idea who he wants to be anymore. When his former rehab roommate offers him a second chance he hasn’t earned by way of a business opportunity he can’t afford to pass up, he loads everything he owns into his car and points it west on I-10.

Somewhere between San Antonio and Las Vegas, in the miles of nothing between the man he used to be and the man he hopes to become, mania, anxiety and a CB radio are the only tools left at his disposal that can help him rewrite his eulogy. Mysterious towers dot the countryside, phantom voices bleed through his radio, and Iain struggles to ascertain whether his mind is deteriorating or the world around him is. When Iain’s new business partner inadvertently pushes him into the middle of a dangerous business transaction, Iain must finally determine the legacy he wants to leave, and what it will cost him to leave it.

OPERATIONS: updating the boards, getting into scripting with one hand and story development with the other
STATUS: slow to get started.
READING: THE KILLER’S MARK, MW Craven (UK) (US+)
LISTENING: THE REGYKLA VARIATIONS I-III, ASHTORETH & ONSTURICHEIT

LAST WATCHED: PORTH TRETHEK, Mark Jenkin (2020)


DRINK: Black Cherry Mead.

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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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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