I recall enjoying the ADD-inducing tunes of Australian vinyl sampler kings the Avalanches when their first record Since I Left You was released several years ago, but I’d never seen this stupefying video for “Frontier Psychiatrist” before tonight. I’m now having what can only be described as an “it’s comforting to know that no matter what you do in life, it will never be as awesome as this video” moment:
Whatever happened to the Avalanches’ follow-up album? Anyone know? According to their Wiki entry, the last word from the band came in early ‘07: “one day when you least expect it you’ll wake up and the sample fairy will have left it under your pillow.”
I am the fly in the ointment. Accept the next dose of disease.
Okay, so we’re a little late to the Green Porno party. But what we lack in punctuality we more than make up for in enthusiasm for these warped short films.
Isabella “Put Your Disease in Me” Rossellini outdoes herself (and actually does herself) in this eight-part series about the sex lives of various insects, arachnids and molluscs. Produced by Sundance expressly for smaller digital screens (computers, cell phones, etc) the whole series is just dirty, filthy, good clean fun. Try to imagine a Children’s Television Workshop-produced interpretation of that transcendently horrible pterodactyl pr0n and you’ll be somewhere in the ballpark. But not really.
As its final scene, featuring the recently departed Charlton “from my cold dead hands” Heston, has become iconic, the rest of Soylent Green is frequently forgotten. That’s a shame, as there’s a damn good dystopian tale in the rest of this oft-referenced 1973 classic too. I, like so many others, had heard about, but never seen, the full movie. Until now.
Observe then, the entire film, loyal readers, for your viewing pleasure. Observe how you’ll know the rich by their bitchin’ ’70s decor and access to hot water. Witness an astonishingly effective combination of whodunit crime tale and dystopian nightmare! See riot cops in football helmets! Thrill to the scarf-wearing sweaty wonder that is Heston in his stilted prime! Wonder how dated-yet-oddly-relevant our own visions of the future may look in 35 years!
There’s a new movie coming out with Eiko Ishioka’s costume design in it! The film is directed by Tarsem, who previously collaborated with Ishioka on The Cell. Events take place in a 1915 hospital, where a bedridden patient befriends a little girl with a broken arm and offers to tell her an adventure story about five men - an Indian adventurer, an African ex-slave, a masked bandit, an Italian bombmaker, and Charles Darwin (what? yes!). The girl is enthralled by the exotic tale, and waits eagerly for every new chapter. But the storyteller, a broken man emotionally and physically, has a dark motive for telling the tale: he wants her to steal something at the hospital in exchange for the story’s conclusion. Here is the trailer:
I did a quick Google search on when the film is coming out: nothing. I did a search for it on IMDB, and learned that it was completed in 2006. Hmm. That’s when I started digging into the YouTube comments. One guy writes that he saw it at a private screening in LA a week ago, and that they asked the audience to critique for the purpose of determining whether it will go on the big screen or on DVD. Another person writes that they have not yet found a distributor. And then there is this comment by Khan Higou:
I spent a year working on post-production of this movie (in Paris); I know every single image of this feature and believe me, it IS beautiful for sure. And you Americans are not lucky about this independent movie (self-produced, directed, even self-distributed, no big studio logo in front of this trailer, did you notice…) ’cause I heard it has been rated R in the US; a way to punish Tarsem everybody thinks here ’cause the movie is not that violent
Further research turned up one review that indicates that the film has not been sold for distribution due to scathing reviews at the Toronto Film Fetival. The reviewer writes that Zoe Bell (Death Proof) was the president of the jury that year. “(She was) seated two seats away from me quite enjoyed at least from what I could get from her reactions to the film while it was being shown.” Maybe she didn’t like it so much after all.
Maybe the ending is a little predictable, but the visuals look stunning! I want to see this - and I want to love it. Thanks to Paul Komoda for the tip.
Update: Obviously I’m not very good with The Google! Looks like it’s finally coming out May 9th. Thanks, Rachel!
Before Val Lewton died of a broken heart (a figurative and then literal one), he produced a string of nine films for RKO Pictures from 1942 to 1946. None of them cost more than $150,000 to make. None ran longer than 75 minutes. All of them were saddled with lurid, focus group-tested titles like Isle of the Dead, The Curse of the Cat People, and The Ghost Ship. “They may think I’m going to do the usual chiller stuff which’ll make a quick profit, be laughed at, and be forgotten,” he told writer DeWitt Bodeen, “but I’m going to fool them…I’m going to do the kind of suspense movie I like.”1
The kind that I like too. Atmospheric2, stylish, literate—I might squeeze two of his films onto an all-time Top Ten list of horror favorites. So the news that Twisted Pictures (the people responsible for the Saw franchise) is in the process of re-making four of Lewton’s RKO classics—including my favorite, I Walked with a Zombie—makes me nauseated. I’m finally old enough to appreciate why critics bemoaned the oversexed Cat People remake in 1982. That film, at least, had a twenty-year-old Nastassja Kinski going for it. All we have to look forward to now is snuff porn. So, rather than look ahead, I thought I might take a look back—at Lewton’s meteoric career, and at a few scenes from his movies that still haunt me. The past is no vaccine for the future, to be sure, but in the here and now it can act as a topical salve.
Thus opens visionary Béla Tarr’sWerckmeister Harmonies. The innocent hero Janos orchestrates a model of the solar system inside a bar. With this hypnotic scene the viewer is pulled into the frozen [though snowless] terrain of a poor Hungarian town. Based on The Melancholy of Resistance - László Krasznahorkai’s 1989 novel, Werckmeister Harmonies is a journey through the bleak lives of some rather unhappy people among whom a romantic has the misfortune of existing. People whose sadness, suppressed anger and animal nature need but a trigger to explode into a hurricane of frenzied destruction.
When a circus claiming to have with it a whale carcass and a prince arrive in town square, suspicion and hysteria emerge. As if on queue, townspeople gather around like a pack of hungry dogs, no one daring to actually see the show, their collective agitation growing louder. Curious Janos is the first to enter the exhibit which turns out be no more than an enormous crate just big enough to hold the whale. He’s enthralled by the sight of the sea creature, enamored with its construction. We see his continued attempts to expose his cantankerous neighbors to the mystery and beauty of the world and be treated with patient condescension in return. Rumors about the prince spread, tension inflating until the unforgettable breaking point.
Nothing can top the excesses of royal 17th century France. The fashion, the banquets, the art - everything radiated king Louis XIV’s obsession with opulence. This grandiosity is captured in Vatel, Roland Joffré’s film starring Gerard Depardieu and Uma Thurman. Julian Sands plays Louis XIV with Tim Roth is his impeccably sleazy right hand man Marquis de Lauzun. Vatel tells the true story of a famed master chef ordered to feed, entertain and impress the capricious Sun King over a weekend at Chateau de Chantilly.
The costumes are, naturally, spectacular. To draw parallels between today’s rock stars and 17th century royalty, when choosing the materials for all the magnificent gowns and frocks Joffré took the costume designer to a Parisian shop specializing in dressing famous musicians. He also advised that the actors listen to rock music in their dressing rooms to get them in the proper mood. The cast is excellent as is the acting, there is intrigue, fireworks and brazen displays of food throughout. The set are appropriately pompous and droolworthy. For all these reasons I dub Vatel required viewing.
Though the film ultimately denounces the corruption and arrogance of the nobility, I find myself shamefully enchanted by the lavish design, best showcased in the clip below the jump [enigmatically in Spanish].
Spaniard Teruel Segundo de Chomón y Ruiz (1871-1929), a lesser known film pioneer with a particular fondness for hand-tinting his work, came to renown working for the Pathé brothers in the 1900s. While much of his work is directly informed by Méliès, Chomón’s distinctive aesthetic and deadpan humor set him apart and set a precedent for the surrealists Buñuel and Dalí. He also invented the film dolly.
The Golden Beetle (1907) is Chomón at his most delightfully innovative:
I learned of Chomón while watching the fantastic Landmarks of Early Film, Vol 1 collection, which also includes shorts by the Lumières, the aforementioned Méliès and some very early Kinetoscope movies. You can pick up a secondhand copy on Amazon for 20 bucks.
Brothers and sisters, I have a terrible confession; I was once A GAY. Lord have mercy! Lucikly, my parents had the good sense to ship me off to Love in Action, an ex-gay recovery camp for teens in Memphis, Tennesse. I learned many things at this camp; that homosexuality doesn’t exist, that men with bios like this and this make great mentors for kids, and that a 4-week course called WIVES’ TRACK can change your life forever. The reason I’m telling you all this is because I recently re-watched the 2000 film But I’m a Cheerleader and I was outraged. Outraged! How dare they ridicule something as holy as conversion therapy?
The entire cast is going straight to Hell: RuPaul (as camp counselor, completely out of drag), Clea Duvall (thou shall not tempt me!), Mink Stole, Natasha Lyone (damned since ‘86 for appearing in Pee-Wee’s Playhouse), Bud Cort (Harold from Harold and Maude - here in a dad role, and I can’t believe how much he’s aged), and all the rest of them. Inspired by that filthy pervert John Waters, the film’s mockery of gender identity and the sacred institution of marriage is unforgivable.
The team that created this film has a new film out called Itty Bitty Titty Comittee. Lord Jesus, it hurt to even type that! As soon as I get the chance to see this one, expect an angry write-up. In the meantime, I urge you all to focus your anger at Singapore for frowning upon cosmetic products that promote Our Lord. For shame!
The late Sydney Guilaroff was Hollywood’s most beloved and trusted hairdresser. Credited with making the unforgetable Lucille Ball a redhead, he was friend and confidant to some of the biggest stars in history.
In Roy Del Ruth’s Du Barry was a Lady Gularoff is reunited with Ball, indulging in all that is glorious and flamboyant with sky-high powdered wigs. His talents coupled with Gile Steele’s costuming prowess produce some enticing and hilarious hair concoctions, tricorn hats, ostrich feathers and all.
