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L'Inferno (Dante's Inferno) 1911
3 min read
- Credit: IMDB -
L'Inferno was probably amazing in its time (1911!), but is a little hard to sit through today. The film consists mostly of hefty intertitles interspersed with short action scenes. On the plus side, the special effects are quite stunning for the era.
Although Italy’s first feature-length film was never deemed lost, it suffered the usual fate of silent movies, losing scenes due to damage, wear & tear, faded colour tinting, censored nudity by conservative censor boards, plus its original score vanishing.
Raffaele Caravaglios’ only film score is lost, and is perhaps the mostly logical casualty of time and neglect, given it only existed on paper and had to be performed live, compared to the physical film print which contained Inferno’s images and story; it’s a circumstance that also befell Joseph Carl Breil’s score for Universal’s Phantom of the Opera (1925), of which no trace exists.
It’s somewhat understandable that little music survives from the Roman era – with no recordings and no standard form of notation passed down through centuries, there are no songs or larger scale compositions to sample – but the idea that a full score from 1911 didn’t survive even a century is downright absurd.
L'Inferno is based on The Divine Comedy, the iconic poem written by Dante Alighieri. Alighieri wrote it early in the 14th Century as an allegory of the search of God. The poem is divided in three parts, taking Dante from Hell, through Purgatory, and into Paradise. This groundbreaking film chooses to focus on the first part of the journey.
Dante’s story, as adapted and directed by Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, and Giuseppe de Liguoro, has Roman poet Virgil / Virgilio (Arturo Pirovano) encountering a wandering Dante (Salvatore Papa) in the forest, and escorting him on a journey that progresses to Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, closing the film on a happy / ‘comedic’ end that’s peaceful rather than amusing.
The mouth of a mountainous cave bookends the film, and the pair descend tunnels, wander through caverns, and climb down jagged rocks, eventually encountering the River Styx, which they cross before reaching areas perpetually scorched with fire, frozen by horrid temperature extremes, or smothered in toxic fumes.
As it is expected in early silent films. But what this film really succeeds in is creating multiple haunting visuals. The multiple depictions of sin and suffering are masterfully created, at least for the era, while keeping the film from feeling monotonous.Considered the first full-length Italian feature film, there are enough reasons to watch L'Inferno; be it for its iconic status, for the perspective of a cinephile, and for its unique and groundbreaking visuals.
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The Astronomer's Dream Review
4 min read
Alternate Titles: Le Reve D’un Astronome, A Trip to the Moon, La lune à un mètre
Director: Georges Méliès
Country: France
Camera: 35mm
Cast: Georges Méliès
Run Time: 3 Min, 15 secs
This 3 min Black & White movie short titled "The Astronomer's Dream" by Georges Méliès in the UK or in the US "The Man in the Moon" was released in 1889 in France,UK but in the US was released one year later in 1898.
The short starts out with a astronomer sitting out his desk writing in thought thinking very busy,after that the 3 min movie short by Melies gets strange but of course quite a few of his movie shorts are unusual but his movie shorts they are such a big part of cinema history.
Repeated in print, the films seems a mess, and in a sense it is. But just like modern action film directors use fast cuts and special effects to thrill a viewer, so did Méliès. In his first five years of filmmaking he more or less developed most of the tricks that made up the bulk of special effects up until the birth of computer graphics. These included double exposure, superimposition with a black background creating what would later be called “blue screen” or “green screen” photography, time-lapse photography, stop tricks, forced perspective with moving cameras and pulleys, dissolves, and early animation done by hand-painting directly on the film frames. To all this Méliès added beautifully realized sets, complicated and sometimes gigantic puppeteered props, extravagant costumes and stage effects like smoke and fire.
Méliès was also one of the driving forces behind the development of films as a storytelling medium. The first movies were simply short slices of ordinary life, produced as novelty items to show off the new medium of moving images. In the last years of the 19th century most commercial movies either showed ordinary lifes and trades, or people performing for the camera, such as strongmen, bodybuilders, dancers or circus performers. And even to many in the business, this was all that films were: cheap parlour tricks, something to amuse your friends with at a dinner party or show at a fair, next to the haunted house and the freak show. The Lumière brothers, the much hailed pioneers of cinema, who held the first public film screening in Paris, never quite understood the draw of the moving pictures. At the conference where the first screening was held, they mainly intended to inform the crème de la crème of the Paris photography scene of their new advancements in colour photography, and were dumbstruck by the fact that their little “sideshow” became the talk of the town. And despite the ever increasing popularity of movies, they were convinced that they were just a fad. In 1905 the Lumières left the film business altogether and continued their experiments with colour photography.
People sleeping and dreaming were a common theme in Méliès’ films. Later in 1896 he made a film called A Nightmare (Le cauchemar), in which he further developed the theme. The film is an early example of Méliès’ use of stop trick photography, as it depicts people appearing on or beside Méliès’ bed out of thin air. It also marks the first appearance of the moon as an antagonist. Just like in The Astronomer’s Dream, the moon at one point appears as a crazy face inside the protagonist’s room, and it even chomps on Méliès’ arm. And just like in The Astronomer’s Dream, Méliès punches the moon in the face, causing it to retreat back into the sky. Anthropomorphic celestial bodies became a sort of calling card for , who returned to them in several films.
Melies' fascination with celestial bodies as dream invading, devouring, constantly masticating alien faces is still profoundly horrifying to this very moment and a truly singular cinematic obsession & i know it's probably trite to say, but i am equally obsessed with the stone castles, corridors, hallways, and suggestively labyrinthine structures in which so many of his fragments take place, and esp. here the dissolving wall thru which the grotesque moon escapes some dark sky above a dark sea, the astronomer a kind of hermit wizard. the trappings fascinate me, as much as satan and ghosts in haunted castles. suggestion and dream.
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Thoughts+video
3 min read
My time here with DeviantArt has made some great fond memories I will never forget,but I have made mistakes and I had to atone for them by becoming a better person,no matter what anyone says about what bad things I did in the past even if they bring it up in my presence it doesn't matter anymore they don,t know me they never will.
By doing do they have petty vendetta's against others like I was taught "judge yourself before you judge others", there are users on DA who have forgotten that and try to bully others using there past mistakes to hurt them,I will not stand for this nonsense truly & those guilty of doing this should treat others with respect.
When am confronted when those try to pick a fight over petty things I keep quiet,karma will do it's job and the person will get every thing back to them 2 fold,sometimes being quiet I was taught is the best thing because that person will look like a total fool without fighting them back.
Bitterness and burden
Curses rest on thee
Solitaire and sorrow
All eternity
Save the Earth and claim perfection
Deem the mass and blame rejection
Hold the pose, fein perception
Grudges break your back
All you bear
All you carry
All you bear
Place it right on
Right on me
Die as you suffer in vain
Own all the grief and the pain
Die as you hold up the skies
Atlas, rise!
How does it feel on your own?
Bound by the world all alone
Crushed under heavy skies
Atlas, rise
Crucify and witness
Circling the sun
Bastardized in ruin
What have you become?
Blame the world and blame your maker
Wish 'em to the undertaker
Crown yourself the other savior
So you carry on
All you bear
All you carry
All you bear
Place it right on
Right on me
Die as you suffer in vain
Own all the grief and the pain
Die as you hold up the skies
Atlas, rise!
How does it feel on your own?
Bound by the world all alone
Crushed under heavy skies
Crushed under heavy skies
Atlas, rise!
Masquerade as maker
Heavy is the crown
Beaten down and broken
Drama wears you down
Overload, the martyr stumbles
Hit the ground and heaven crumbles
All alone the fear shall humble
Swallow all your pride
All you bear
All you carry
All you bear
Place it right on
Right on me
Die as you suffer in vain
Own all the grief and the pain
Die as you hold up the skies
Atlas, rise
How does it feel on your own?
Bound by the world all alone
Crushed under heavy skies
Crushed under heavy skies
Atlas, rise
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List Of Best Songs From Every Rush Album
6 min read
As you know Rush is releasing a lot of anniversary box sets 2112, Farewell To Kings, Hemispheres, those are some to name and that their 40th-anniversary box sets with a lot of stuff in them, I have Farwell To Kings already & 2112 one of there best features is the 3 record set that comes with the box sets there is some weight to both of them.
Source to Discog for the images used.
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Rush (Self Titled Album) - Working Man
Without this head-banging fuzz-rock anthem, Rush's debut LP would be an afterthought – a demo-worthy stepping stone to their prog destiny. But "Working Man," with its Black Sabbath-styled riffs and blue-collar lyrics, is a stone-cold classic. After a primal, two-minute pummel, they tease an ambitious streak with wild guitar solos, triplet drum fills and tempo changes, climaxing with Alex Lifeson's grandiose fanfare of string bends. Rush had only one flash of brilliance, but they harnessed its power to forge their hard-prog path.
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'Fly By Night': "Fly by Night"
Bristling with energy at a compact 3:19, "Fly by Night" packs more unbridled second-by-second fun than any other song in the Rush canon. Lifeson's crunching, descending guitar riff is instant joy – the sound of, well, flying by night and changing your life – and the rhythm section's torrent of proggy fills (Geddy Lee's chorus triplets, Neil Peart's splash accents) achieve a perpetual, cinematic tension, as you wonder when and how the next surprise will emerge. (Even the bridge is built on a quality hook, with Lee singing merrily through a trippy wave of phaser – an effect achieved by running his vocal through a Leslie speaker.)
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Caress of Steel - Bastille Day
This song is the sound of the titular battle, the hard-rock guillotine claiming her bloody prize. Surprises aplenty: the downbeat shift at 3:55, the climactic tempo slow-down and slow-mo guitar harmonies. Lee's voice is still high and shockingly shrill, but by this point he'd learned to utilize more restraint, picking and choosing moments to shatter glass with his high trills.
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To quote Geddy on that line in Far Cry that is how I feel at work sometimes. 
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Passing Of A DA Member,Unsaid Things
4 min read
I just hear of that SuicideBySafetyPin (Light) had passed away when I first came here to Deviantart I started getting into artwork I was on a good path, I made friends with other users from Aposhack then I made mistakes which I now know & admit were wrong really bad ones that cost me being friends,Light was very kind to me and others she was an amazing fractal artist if she was here I would say to her am sorry I stole your art and that we never tried to work things out so I knew I had to change so I could be friends again be her friend again and with the people I lost.
Now that she has passed I can't change what happened the damage is done now I can,t take back what has been done all I can do now is continue to go down the right path this time and not make the same mistakes over again like before. I still feel bad having to live with the mistakes with what I did but also to change, I promised myself I stop doing bad things and help people again like I use to do, helping others get back there stolen are before I went down the wrong path.
Why today am much different am still trying to change and get better, the abuse of trust that I made people have in me but I was deceptive, but now I want to be honest with people and my art as well. Am hoping one day that people can trust me again fully, I walked away from fractals because it was deceptive pretending I could do fractals when I couldn't, I was lying to people not knowing I was hurting them and because of the false trust I made people have in me and what I was doing by stealing.
I miss SucideBySafetyPin and my condolences to her family, I wish things could have been better between us and we could have worked things out before you passed instead of being on not such good terms.
I want to apologize to for stealing and those I was not so nice to and so many others I am truly sorry. 
Also apologies to Jimpan, I said some things outside of DA about you when I was stealing am not proud of that or the things I said that's why I erased them from my twitter am ashamed as a person to have said those things I see now it was very wrong.
Maybe it's just you get wiser as you learn right from wrong we are human and I have learned a big lesson about not abusing trust, I need to get this out cause this had bugged me what I did by stealing has bugged me and left a huge scar anger and stupidity at myself,I have never truly been able to get over what I did that was very wrong.
I wish I could rewind and take back all the nasty things I typed, posted in blogs, including stealing art for my own gain on my art page to hurt others I hated myself truly. I still hate myself even now when I think about all the despicable things I did I still ask myself now why did I do it?
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