#telepathia

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). Some of the action takes place on an island called Colossa where they fight a cyclops.

The baddie, Sokurah, summons from a magic lamp a genie who creates a barrier so they can all get away from the cyclops. The genie is a boy who speaks with two overlapping voices (which I think are just his own voice twice).

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973). Near the beginning of the second movie, Sinbad has a dream that's like a premonition of what's to come, set against a dark, cloudy sky.

This time the baddie is called Koura and one of the things he does is create these bat-like creatures and then send them off to spy on Sinbad. The vizier explains that it is Koura's watchdog, "a living homunculus, an extension of his eyes and ears, and with it he now knows as much as we". We are shown that Koura is indeed listening to them. When Sinbad captures one in his hands, it disappears in a puff of smoke. I was thinking they look like the small Spider shadows in ICO. Is it possible that Ueda thought of them as spies with a direct line to the Queen?

Koura also brings to life the figurehead of Sinbad's ship and is able to control it remotely, attacking the crew of the ship.

Sinbad and his men visit a temple, looking for 'The Oracle of All Knowledge'. It emerges from a well with engravings on it and tells them where to go and who their next foe will be: "Go north... North to barren lands of pagan places... The pagan barrens... Before a goddess cast with many limbs and death to all intruders is their whim". Then the oracle disappears back into the well.

Towards the end, a bunch of green guys grab Sinbad's girl, carry her away and dump her in the cave of a one-eyed centaur. Sinbad hops on the back of the centaur and kills it.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977). And finally, the one photographed on Ueda's shelf which I highly recommend people watch. If there'd been a Carry On Sinbad, it wouldn't have been so different from this movie. The antagonist is a witch called Zenobia. She transforms Prince Kassim into a baboon so Sinbad and Kassim's sister, Farah, need to go places and find people in order to restore him to human form. Zenobia goes after them, aided by her son who wants to take the throne and by an automaton minotaur called Minoton, who has a clockwork heart and does all the rowing. Groovy.

They come across a young woman called Dione who can communicate with her father via ESP. "My father taught me. He calls it telepathia, a Greek word for communication of the mind", she explains to Sinbad. Zenobia also has some ability to see things without actually being there. They have a fight with a giant walrus which stamps on one of Sinbad's men.

Zenobia giving chase, takes a shortcut through an ice tunnel. They float past structures that look like tombs and her son suggests that these could be 'the last of the Arimaspi', a society of mathematicians.

In the end, they manage to transform Prince Kassim from a baboon back into a human by putting him in a cage and hauling him through a column of light inside a shrine. I was getting major Shadow of the Colossus vibes at this point.

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Some other screenshots from the Sinbad trilogy -

                                                   HE WOULDN’T LET HER  KNOW  HE  WAS  AFRAID ,       although  fear  was  the   only thing on his mind.          he had to prove this was his    TERRITORY ,     that he had    adapted    to  this  kind  of  thing ,    yet  he was always    scared.     he walked side by side with his companion through a  notoriously     H A U N T E D    forest.           ❛          — this place also used to be a dumping ground for     bodies.    actually ,    i’m pretty sure  it    still    is...   ❜       fingers  tightened  around the flashlight in his hand.

this is georgina being a bully | @telepathia

       “you’re my sister, anna.” even, somehow, the words fall flat; eldon wishes he had more to say, to convince her, but no matter how hard he tries, she never believes it. he could promise her the world and she would take his word, but he can try to tell her she is good and his words will do nothing but ricochet off skin she has learned to thicken. even ‘i love you’s’ feel ingenuous and far from the truth.       ( he loves her, he does, but love feels too often like a foreign concept, another language he has not yet learned, and she never quite seems to understand what he is attempting to say when he tells her, eyes unable to meet hers and self heavy, that he loves her. )       he wonders how long it’s been since she heard it from someone other than her brother, who, no matter how hard he tried, would never be more than just eldon. 

       eldon, too often a synonym for what must be the world’s most mediocre brother and a kid who tried too hard. eldon, too often meaning a heavy heart and bloodshot eyes, and a mouth that only knows the lie ‘ i’m fine ‘. eldon, the kid whose mother never came home. they are the same soul split in two, the same person, but they could not be more different. eldon, despite how much he loves her and wants the best for her, could never do what she has done. the difference between them, their similarities aside, is he has managed to hide who he has become, and she has done everything but that.       ( he loves her, she’s his sister and he couldn’t not, but he will never not wish she was less like her and less like him, and more like the woman she so painfully resembles. )

he meets up with belle weekly to Gossip ab eldon and his wellbeing