The first in a three part series, legendary visual effects artist Douglas Trumbull talks about the inspiration and process that led to the creation of one of the greatest dystopian landscapes in science fiction: the opening sequence of Blade Runner. (via Daring Fireball, via Coudal)

This video, found over on William Gibson’s blog this morning made me immediately nostalgic for my old Tokyo ‘hood.

“Ingmar Bergman…in 1966 demanded that stills for Persona be taken from the negative – and, moreover, reproduced with their sprocket holes; proof that one was seeing the whole image as he conceived and shot it.”
A fascinating essay by John Baxter on William Gibson and the Garage Kubrick. via Coudal’s inimitable “Stuff about Kubrick”.

“Maybe what she was feeling now was what her civics program had called culture shock. She felt like everything, every little detail of Tokyo, was just different enough to create a kind of pressure, something that built up against her eyes, as though they’d grown tired of having to notice all the differences: the little sidewalk tree that was dressed up in a sort of woven basket, the neon-avocado color of a payphone, a serious looking girl with round glasses and a gray sweatshirt that said *free vagina*. She’d been …

One of my favourite writers, William Gibson has poked his head back into cyberspace after an extended sabbatical from his blog with an article in Wired magazine that compares beat writer William Burroughs’ “cut up method” of writing with Lee “Scratch” Perry and the origins of music sampling. It really does not get much better than this.