Since we are now halfway through October, it only seems appropriate to share what may be the most famous (and perhaps the most covered) song about witchcraft, Donavon’s Season of the Witch!
This song was originally recorded in 1966 and it’s gone on to become a Halloween mainstay. One fan of the song was future director Martin Scorsese, who originally planned to borrow the song’s title for one of his own films. However, George Romero beat Scorsese out the gate with a film called Season of the Witch and Scorsese ended up renaming his film, Mean Streets.
Since I’m going to be rewatching Suspiriain a few hours, it only seems appropriate to share what may be the most famous (and perhaps the most covered) song about witchcraft, Donavon’s Season of the Witch!
This song was originally recorded in 1966 and it’s gone on to become a Halloween mainstay. One fan of the song was future director Martin Scorsese, who originally planned to borrow the song’s title for one of his own films. However, George Romero beat Scorsese out the gate with a film called Season of the Witch and Scorsese ended up renaming his film, Mean Streets.
Continuing today’s Atlantis theme, here’s a song about the lost continent from Donovan.
It’s kind of a silly song. I mean, just listen to Donovan’s opening monologue. But that chorus is next to impossible to get out of your head and, even more importantly, the song is iconic due to its use in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas. Try to listen to this without thinking about Billy Batts and that night at the club.
Today, the Shattered Lens wish a very happy birthday to American filmmaker David Lynch! Today’s music video of the day was directed by David Lynch and originally released on the 75th birthday of singer Donovan.
Lynch and Donovan are both practitioners of transcendental meditation and, along with celebrating Donovan’s birthday, this video does end with an appeal for donations. Personally, I’m not really into meditation. I find my peace through making to do lists and then striking through each item listed throughout the day. My combination of attention deficit and hyperactivity pretty much makes it impossible for me to clear my mind. (That’s also why I can’t be hypnotized.) But to each their own, I suppose. David Lynch is certainly a strong advocate for TM.
Today we wish a happy birthday to one of the most important figure in American music and American culture in general, Mr. Bob Dylan.
This music video was shot as a promo for the ground-breaking documentary, Don’t Look Back. It was filmed in an alley near the Savoy Hotel in London. The cards that Dylan flips throughout the video were written by Donovan, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Neuwirth and Dylan himself and, of course, both Ginsberg and Bob Neuwirth can spotted standing in the background of the video. (Considering that Don’t Look Back features a famous scene in which Dylan absolutely humiliates Donovan, I always found it interesting that he played a role in the production of this video. Did Donovan help write out the cards before or after the It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue incident?) In typical Dylan fashion, the cards feature intentional misspellings and occasionally they don’t actually match up with the lyrics. For instance, the song may mention needing “eleven dollar bills” but the card reads “twenty.”
Dylan filmed two other versions of this video, neither one of which was officially released but which can both be found in Martin Scorsese’s Dylan documentary, Don’t Look Back. One was shot at a nearby park while the other was apparently filmed in the Savoy Hotel itself. All three of the videos follow the same basic theme of Dylan flipping cards while Ginsberg and Neuwirth wander about in the background.
This song, which was inspired by the writings of Beats like Ginsberg and Kerouac (as well as, according to Bob Dylan, by the music of Chuck Berry), was Bob Dylan’s first top ten single in the U.S.
– Bob Dylan, in the liner notes from the 1965 LP “Bringing It All Back Home”
Bob Dylan has been put under the media microscope, bisected, dissected, and trisected for the past six decades, with everyone and their mother trying to interpret the essence behind the enigma. Documentarian D.A. Pennebaker doesn’t go that route in DON”T LOOK BACK; instead, his cinema verite, free form style adheres to the old adage “show, don’t tell”, as he and his camera crew follow the troubadour on his 1965 tour of Great Britain, culminating in his historic set at the Royal Albert Hall. This would be Dylan’s final tour as a solo performer with guitar and harmonica – the album “Bringing It All Back Home” would soon be released, featuring electric and acoustic sides, and later that year he’d plug in with his band…
I have to write this review quickly because I have a feeling that, in another 30 minutes or so, my body’s immune system will succeed in destroying any trace of Season of the Witch.
In Season of the Witch, Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman play two Crusaders who eventually get disillusioned with killing people so they desert the army, end up in a small village somewhere, and are informed that the town is being destroyed by the plague because a curse has been put on the town by a witch. Cage and Perlman are then recruited by the local town’s cardinal (Christopher Lee, who is pretty much wasted under all of this really nasty plague makeup) to take the witch to a monastery that is located somewhere else. You’re never really sure where any one location is in relation to another in this film, which is a bit of a problem since the majority of the film is taken up with the journey to the monastery.
Anyway, the Monks at the monastery have this ancient book that apparently contains all these incantations that can be used against evil. This book is the only one left in existence which leads to the question of why nobody ever bothered to make more than a handful of copies of all of these amazingly important books. I mean, seriously, people. So the idea is to take this witch to the monastery and read this book which will end the plague.
So, we go through the whole journey thing and a few unimportant characters are killed off along the way and Cage and Perlman discuss the meaning of life and faith and, at first, we’re led to doubt whether or not the accused witch is actually guilty but then she starts causing all of these supernatural, witch-like thing to happen so I guess the filmmakers got bored with that whole subplot early.
Then we reach the monastery and a whole other movie starts. Seriously, I cannot begin to put into words just how massively the tone of the film changes once they reach the monastery. The film actually becomes good in a kind of silly, over-the-top way as soon our knights are dealing with all of these flying demons and there’s disfigured monks all over the place, and the priest gets to say, “We’re going to need more holy water,” at one point. (“Yay!” I nearly shouted out in the audience, “Catholic action movie one-liners!”) The tone changes so massively that Season of the Witch actually becomes a really fun and entertaining little action movie but, unfortunately, just as soon as things start to get really fun — bang! Movie is over. Thank you for coming out tonight, folks. Now get the Hell outta here.
Season of the Witch is, to put it politely, a mess. This isn’t all that surprising as the movie is being released in January and January is, of course, reserved for either Oscar contenders going into wide release, films starring Jason Statham, or movies that are being released because the studio is contractually obligated. Ron Perlman, being a veteran of both Guillermo Del Toro and Jean-Pierre Jeneut, knows exactly how play his role but Cage just rides around on his horse looking like he’s late for Halloween party. Director Dominic Sena appears to have a mancrush on Zack Snyder and does the whole speed up the camera randomly then go into slow-mo even more randomly thing but it doesn’t really add up to anything more than just confusion.
Finally, I left this film feeling very betrayed because, seriously — how can you call your film Season of the Witch and not feature the classic Donovan song?
Through the Shattered Lens 