Since this is Horrorthon, the "season of giving" means "giving" the gift of ultimate horror (unless there's something wrong with my logic). Anyway here's four minutes and forty-six seconds of pure unspeakable dread. I'd say the body count for this clip dwarfs every horror movie seen by every Horrorthon participant this year (and it takes less than five minutes). Whoever added the Floyd had the right idea. You won't even see bacteria again for a few million years. Merry Christmas!
15 comments:
Okay, that was amazing and scary as hell at the same time! I agree, the use of Pink Floyd was perfect. Imagine if you were on some sort of NASA mission and you were witnessing this from the shuttle. Shudder.
nice! i have a friend who obsesses over different doomsday scenarios, so i'll have to pass this one along to him. he probably won't sleep for a week.
And the first thing the people in "real America" will say is, "See I told ya that Obommy feller was the antichrist. Hope y'all are proud of yersells."
Sheesh AC, some friend you are! Remind me not to tell you about my fear of tarantulas. Oh shit...
I've seen this before but not set to Floyd. It's much better this way :)
There's something really fascinating about this clip, isn't there? It's hard to put into words. Basically it's the way the enormous scale of what's happening is made so realistic and easy to see. In particular:
1) The gentleness with which the asteroid strikes (emphasized by the Rick Wright piano and the fatalistic "Not frightened of dying" tape loop)
2) The way the circle of impact closes on the exact other side of the earth
3) The view of essentially intact London and Rome afterwards (a view no person would ever see)
4) The coastlines visible as glowing cinders at the end
5) The proverbial "mountains crumbling into the sea"
6) The tranquility of the final shots...it's over, and the universe doesn't bat an eye
7) It's worse for the asteroid than it is for the Earth
What freaked me out the most was the way the land masses just flipped like a paper boat on a raging river. It was like the ultimate car accident - I hated myself for watching but there was no way in hell that I was going to turn away. The mellow Floyd music juxtaposed with the end of the world as we'll ever know it is effective and very eerie.
Yeah, exactly. Because you can see it in detail, and because the details are recognizable, you grasp exactly what's happening and just how unpleasant it is. We've all seen the pictures of the earth from orbit and said, "Oh, it all looks so delicate and fragile...anyway, look, there's the Gaza strip" etc. but in this case it's just all gone and you're left with this cosmic existential dread.
Also, can we just take this opportunity to dismiss every "Dark Side of the Moon synchronizes with Wizard of Oz/2001/The Today Show" theory?
I mean, doesn't this clip make it obvious that Pink Floyd just synchronizes with whatever you play it over (because its slow, repetitive music with a lot of pleasing resolved suspensions in every measure) and that there's nothing more complicated or insidious going on than that?
"Also, can we just take this opportunity to dismiss every "Dark Side of the Moon synchronizes with Wizard of Oz/2001/The Today Show" theory?"
Thank you! You're exactly right, play Floyd (or any "dreamy" music) with any video and it will synch up perfectly some of the time. I hate it when people mistake coincidence as evidence for some sort of cosmic design. I could play The Cure's Wish album with The Wizard of Oz and it would be just as "amazing". It might be a fun experiment to demonstrate this point but I'm not techno-savvy enough to pull it off.
There are many nights when we just watch tv and listen to music over it. Find something interesting to the eye and pleasing to the ear and you're all set. I think JSP will remember doing this same thing when we used to hang out here.
Floyd is just one of the bands that works perfectly with almost anything although it does seem to add a somewhat ominous tone to pictures that would be quite opposite when viewed with their own soundtrack.
Floyd is formulaic in the best sense, and, perhaps most important, they have Nick Mason, who knows how to drum whatever kind of rock/blues/prog/? Floyd is. Bad sentence. I meant: from a compositional standpoint, Floyd is very hard to pin down. Nick Mason knows how to drum under those conditions. I'm increasingly paying attention to drummers as the DNA of bands. I've believed for years that Ringo is the secret sauce of the Beatles and that he's absolutely a genius. The "sluggish metronome" approach to rock drumming is overwhelmingly effective. The Radiohead guy also has this same talent (especially on Kid A: How do you drum those songs?) and it's really easy to miss how important the drummer's command of the whole thing is.
I happen to be watching "Live at Pompeii" right now.
That's so true, the drummer is so unappreciated in those bands. I'm guilty of not paying attention myself. Now that you've pointed it out I'm going to pay more attention, thanks.
Okay, I can't stop watching this thing but it's making me depressed!
Drummers. Pfft. Who needs'em! Anyone can bang a stick and/or press a button a synthesizer...
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