All Articles Tagged '1970s' (10)

Richard Williams' A Christmas Carol

Animated by hand in a dark Victorian style, this Dickens Christmas classic has almost fallen into obscurity due to age. It was directed by Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), produced by Chuck Jones (Warner Bros, Looney Tunes, The Grinch, etc.), and primarily drawn by Ken Harris. It tells the familiar tale of Scrooge, but lights it in the gaslamp style of Victorian ghost stories (which it is). In…

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“Eyes on Paris” is a photography exhibition currently shown in Hamburg. One featured photographer is Jean-Claude Gautrand (born in 1932). In 1972, he shot a series of images of the deconstruction of a famous market hall in Paris, the “halles de Baltard”. The series is…

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The PRR GG1 is a class of electric locomotives that was built for the Pennsylvania Railroad for use in the northeastern United States.

The GG1 was designed by the Pennsylvania Railroad based on the need for a locomotive that could pull more than 12 to 14 passenger cars. The railroad thought it had designed the perfect electric passenger locomotive, the P-5a (shown below), but as the P-5a…

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Dieselpunk was born long before anyone bothered to invent a name for it. Born in the most inappropriate year: 1963.

First manned space flights; Caribbean crisis; JFK killed in Dallas; nuclear warheads threaten to eliminate our civilization... And Brooks Stevens presents a retro-car design, heavily based on the famous Mercedes-Benz SSK. The body was fitted on a Studebaker Lark Daytona chassis and used a supercharged 289 cu in. (4,750 cc) 290 hp… Continue

The German Makina was a unique strut folding roll film camera with inter-changeable film holder backs, interchangeable lenses and double extension bed.

The Plaubel Makina story goes a long way back.

The "Baby Makina" was born at in 1911, a year after the Plaubel company, founded by Hugo Schrader, started the camera production.

A couple of words about the strut cameras (known also by…

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My wife and I just watched Cabaret on DVD. In many way I would say that it's dieselpunk. It seems to have the three elements that I mentioned at my blog (contemporary, decodence, and irreverence). An excellent movie. Joel Grey as the Master of Ceremonies was wonderful and Liza Minnelli was just so sexy. And the ending was so ominous. A dieselpunk masterpiece.

My wife just watched Inglourious Bastards on DVD and I can say that it's very dieselpunk. In addition to having the two mandatory elements I mention in my blog it has a heavy dose of irreverence (the Spaghetti Western theme is great) but it also rewrites history (certainly a feature found in a lot of Punk genre). While it's rather violent (which one should expect from a Quentin Tarantino movie) it's very, very good. …

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Popular Science has made bunch of their Back Issues Starting in 1926 available at books.google.com.

The covers on some these are really amazing, chock full of dieselpunk goodness. I've listed a few issues below.…

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Superman's legendary friend, colleague and (maybe) lover could be naive, tough or anything. First and foremost, she was oh, so romantic...

But she was also a star of hyper-cynical comic books series, full of black humor and all things that would not fit into your politically correct closet - and could not fit even half a century ago.

Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane,… Continue

A wonderfully quirky retro British film on the future of telephones and… Continue