Wish You Were Here Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Fran Rubel Kuzui – 1988 – US, Japan – Cert. 18 – 99m

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A girl singer, fed up with being sidelined by the music business in New York, relocates to Tokyo and falls in with local rock band hopefuls there – select UK cinema screenings from Friday, April 25th prior to its Blu-ray release on Monday, May 5th

“Hey, Mike, when do I get to use my song?” asks the band’s disgruntled, leather-clad back-up singer, feeling redundant as she stands on stage holding a tambourine. Her music career in New York stalling fast, Wendy (Carrie Hamilton from Cool World, Ralph Bakshi, 1995; Shag, Zelda Barron, 1989) receives a “Wish you were here” postcard from her friend Jane in Japan and shoots back a reply: “Hope you meant it – ‘cos I’m coming.”

In Japan, a band does an English language cover of Blue Suede Shoes. When Wendy arrives in Tokyo, her girlfriend has moved on to Thailand. Barely speaking any Japanese, Wendy winds up in a cheap hotel in Itabashi the space of a small Japanese apartment where footwear is removed on entering and, as an Aussie resident tells her, everything operates on credit card and a shower is Y100 for ten minutes.… Read the rest

Squaring The Circle:
(The Story Of
Hipgnosis)

Director – Anton Corbijn – 2022 – UK – Cert. – 101m

*****

The story of the visual creatives behind album sleeves, for Pink Floyd and others, who revolutionised the field from the late 1960s and through the 1970s – now out on Blu-ray/DVD combo and various streaming services plus BFI Player following its release in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on Friday, July 14th

Everyone who bought LP records from the late 1960s through to the very end of the 1970s knows the name Hipgnosis. As one interviewee points out, you would go in to the centre of your town to buy the latest album and mull over all the written information on the sleeve on the bus coming home to find out who played on it and who was responsible for the cover. Many of the most memorable sleeves were designed by Hipgnosis, the name coming from ‘hip’, meaning ‘cool’, and ‘gnosis’ meaning ‘secret wisdom’.

Director Corbijn made his name in black and white photography and album sleeves for such bands as U2 and Depeche Mode in the 1980s, so has a background in the album cover world in a later decade. He is therefore extremely well placed to tackle the subject and chooses to film many of his interviewees in trademark black and white.… Read the rest