Mini Herzog-fest

It’s Werner Herzog’s 68th birthday today, so what better occasion to contribute a few more of his idiosyncratic and inimitable titles to Operation 101010? The next three days will constitute a mini Herzog-fest; I’m putting all of the Herzog DVDs I own but haven’t reviewed yet in a box and pulling out three at random. Look out for the first review in a few hours.

To get things underway, though, here’s some words of wisdom from the Bavarian maverick himself, as quoted in the indispensable Faber & Faber book Herzog on Herzog (ed. Paul Cronin):

“I have often spoken of what I call the inadequate imagery of today’s civilization. I have the impression that the images that surround us today are worn out; they are abused and useless and exhausted. They are limping and dragging themselves behind the rest of our cultural evolution. When I look at the postcards in tourist shops and the images and advertisements that surround us in magazines, or I turn on the television, or if I walk into a travel agency and see those huge posters with that same tedious image of the Grand Canyon on them, I truly feel there is something dangerous emerging here. The biggest danger in my opinion is television because to a certain degree it ruins our vision and makes us very sad and lonesome. Our grand-children will blame us for not having tossed hand-grenades into TV stations because of commercials. Television kills our imagination and what we end up with are worn-out images because of the inability of too many people to seek out fresh ones.”