The act of “sweding” a movie — creating an amateur version of a feature film — was coined by Michel Gondry in his film Be Kind Rewind and it is something that you may have seen popping up on the internet in the film’s wake. I can assure you that you have not seen anything approaching the surreal sensibilities of this version of Blade Runner filmed by “The Dokkoi Company”. Beginning simply with the words “2026. The Replicant ran away. The Bladerunner chases it.” what follows is a crazed, whirlwind tour of Ridley Scott’s film, replete with a strangely evocative score that sounds like it was created using kazoos, a toy car hanging from string, and the copious use of crude, paper masks. It’s a tour de force of interpretive reenactment, and they even went so far as to create a version for the more recent Final Cut. Worth it for the penultimate rooftop scene alone; not unlike the film it apes.
There can be no doubt that the fine folks at The Asylum are fans of the special breed of 50s era science fiction; an era in which the mysterious atom reigned supreme. So intrinsic to the conclusion of WWII, viagra a symbol of American dominance and ingenuity, healing and a portent of The Future the atom was also viewed with fear, and whole oeuvres were built around the concept of atomic energy run amok, creating vast, horrifying menageries of over-sized, irradiated monsters. What else but fanatical love for this bygone age could explain the existence of films like Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus or the soon to be classic Mega Piranha starring former pop icon Tiffany and former Brady Buncher Barry Williams? How else would one explain the decidedly sub-par visual effects except as a desire to retain the essence of those films? This, dear readers, is devotion. This is love. Now to patiently await the remake of Them!.
The Floria Sigismondi wet dream that is iamaiwhoami (Jonna Lee?) has finally taken the next step in her personal YouTube evolution, from feral avant garde video antihero to fully-fledged electro chanteuse, and she is lovely.
It’s fairly straightforward –albeit spooky– electronica. The song’s driving melody is even a bit reminiscent of those daffy chugging synths Limahl used for the Neverending Story theme song, with an added dash of Deep Breakfast. And yet? “o” is putting the same loamy glow in my bones that initial exposure to Goldfrapp, Julia Frodahl, Karin Dreijer Andersson, Björk, Julee Cruise and female surrealists like Dorothea Tanning and Leonora Carrington once did. I remain intrigued as ever.
Okay, you know the 2010 Media Kit and Big Coilhouse News that we’ve been promising you since last week? Well, turns out we’re going to have to make you all wait one more day (this news is worth the wait, though, we promise!). Tabulating the survey results has taken more time than we anticipated. Here’s a screenshot of what the process looks like in Excel. While we finish up the media kit, allow me to entertain you with six graphs and pie charts that we’ve created so far. Some of this will be in tomorrow’s media kit, some of it is a blog exclusive!
This was in response to the question “what country do you live in? Some fun facts:
Six respondents included their state in the answer. Two of them were from California, andthe other four were from Texas. No one else indicated a home state.
Six respondents wrote in “USA! USA! USA!” Three respondents wrote in “USA! USA!”
This was in response to the question, “do you have a creative pursuit that you’re extremely passionate about?”
116 creative pursuits were listed
The chart above indicates the Top 16 creative pursuits. The next most popular pursuits, in order of popularity, were: knitting, sewing, animation, blogging, singing, costume design, jewelry, videography, acting, electronic music, guitar, sculpture, baking, web design, book binding, cloth design, digital art, gardening, printing, theatre and aerials
Some of less popular creative pursuits included: ceremonial magick, spinning poi, papercraft, math (“pure mathematics is eminently creative”), hardware engineering, typography, haberdashery and swimming
This was in response to the “What are your favorite magazines?” question:
Most indicated that Coilhouse was their favorite magazine. Aww, you guys! *squish*
The graph above indicates the Top 12 favorite magazines. The runners-up that didn’t make it into the chart, in order of the number of people who indicated that they were favorite magazines, were: Filament, Adbusters, Edge, Esquire, Fortean Times, Zink, Cabinet, Der Spiegel, Dwell and Elegy.
Leeds-based musician Brett Domino and his buddies have been up to YouTube shenanigans for a while now, but this Justin Timberlake medley performed by Domino and Steven Peavis takes the cake, especially in terms of video editing and complexity of arrangement. Instruments featured: Stylophone Beatbox, iPod Touch (using the DigiDrummer Lite app), kazoo, thumb piano, egg shaker, stylophone, cowbell, recorder, ukulele, theremin, spoons, and Roland AX-Synth. NERD UP.
This weekend, Villa Sonsbeek in The Netherlands hosts O.K. Festival: 3 Days of Magazines, an event curated by O.K Parking. The weekend promises workshops, lectures, more than 100 independent magazines and a dance party at the event’s conclusion. The festival’s mission statement feels like coming home: “Under the title ‘Welcome Magazines,’ O.K. Festival presents the energy and the visual explosion of strange, beautiful and original magazines. One by one they present an answer to the uniformity of the mass media. The printed media are falling victim to increasingly strict formats. Sales figures reign. In the gaping hole they leave behind the independent magazine manifests itself. Everything that is excluded by the mainstream media finds its place here.”
Panels include “On the Value of Independent Magazine Culture,” “What Drives Magazine Makers?” “Editor vs. Designer,” “Ten Moments in Magazine History” and, of course, “Surviving in Print.” There are also a couple of hands-on workshops, such as “Making a Magazine with Stencilprinting.” If only we’d heard about this festival sooner! If we’re lucky, recordings of the panels might be available on the O.K. Festival Vimeo page, which currently houses a couple of interviews with festival participants.
Even if you’re nowhere near The Netherlands, the O.K. Festival website is still a fantastic resource for discovering new magazines. A couple of new-found brothers and sisters:
At first sight, Sang Bleu is all about tattoos, body modification and fetish, but Sang Bleu offers more than that. It provides a precise insight into modern urban society. That is why art, fashion, sociology and literature are also featured in Sang Bleu.
Dabireh is a Collective of young Iranian graphic designers who share a passion for calligraphy and typography and have a keen interest in the history and theories of Persian language and writing system.
Lumpen Magazine. lum·pen adj. 1. Of or relating to dispossessed, often displaced people who have been cut off from the socioeconomic class with which they would ordinarily be identified: lumpen intellectuals unable to find work in their fields. A member the underclass, especially the lowest social stratum. 2. Vulgar or common; plebeian
Yes, I know, damn it– every time we post a StoopidPetVideo, it “lowers the meaningful discourse.” Sorry, purists. Sometimes it can’t be helped; MUST POST OR HEAD WILL EH-SPLÖD. If you’re offended by unseemly displays of silly cat memes on Coilhouse, please avert your eyes now. May I recommend David Forbes’ latest rigorous serving of sci fi critical theory, located directly under this post? It’s a spicy meat-ah-ball.
For the rest of you, there’s this:
Which is, of course, of a riff on this. As longtime Coilhouse reader Tequila puts it: “Well, that’s it. There can be no greater win than this. Thank you, Internet, it was fun… time for you to rest now. Back to cave paintings for us all!”
I always thought danger along the frontier was something that was a lot of fun; an exciting adventure, like in the three-D shows.” A wan smile touched her face for a moment. “Only it’s not, is it? It’s not the same at all, because when it’s real you can’t go home after the show is over.”
“No,” he said. “No, you can’t.”
Story goes like this: there’s an emergency ship en route to a plague-ridden planet, carrying essential medicine. The pilot finds a stowaway; a young girl, Marilyn, who just wants to see her brother.
The pilot now has a problem: he has enough fuel to get himself to the planet, but no one else. Interstellar law is clear: all stowaways are jettisoned immediately.
But space captains are heroic sorts. Whatever harsh decisions the author puts in their background to prove their grit, this is still a story. This time will be different. Marilyn is the perfect, plucky sidekick-in-training; surely the pilot can figure out some way to save both her and the planet’s populace.
No. There is no solution. She says her goodbyes and is ejected, with “a slight waver to the ship as the air gushed from the lock, a vibration to the wall as though something had bumped the outer door in passing, then there was nothing and the ship was dropping true and steady again.”
The above is from Tom Godwin’s The Cold Equations. When it came out in Astonishing Science Fiction in August, 1954, it shocked the hell out of the magazine’s readership, used to the last-minute triumph of human ingenuity.
Godwin’s classic was only the beginning. The ensuing decades would see American sci-fi delve into realms unthinkable to its forebears. Desperate to shake off the genre “urinal,” as Kurt Vonnegut so succinctly termed it, writers first ditched one of the key assumptions: that the hero will always save the day. Maturity, in this view, meant uncomfortable truths. Often, it meant unhappy endings, not just for the protagonists, but frequently the entire world.
This is a scattershot story of how the bleak tomorrow came to reign, and how it changed our visions of the future.
First of all, just a quick announcement to say, we know we promised to post our 2010 Media Kit and some exciting news about Issue 05 here on the blog today, but, quelle surprise, it’s taking us a little bit longer than anticipated to tabulate the results of last week’s survey. Please do check back tomorrow for the stats and our big Issue 05 announcement. Also, warm, wet, sloppy thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out the survey. You’re wonderful. It’s been an honor to learn a little more about you. Especially your underwear habits. No, seriously. *filthy chortle*
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Damn, is Florence Welch one seriously glorious culture vulture in this video, or what?
Directed by Georgie Greville and Geremy Jasper. Edited by Paul Snyder.
From the production team’s official press statement: “Florence is the shamanic leader of a surreal orchestra where spiritual elation explodes into smokey psychedelic anarchy. Each musical element of the song is personified by a group of colorful characters that combine 60’s girl groups, Hinduism, gospel choirs, drum circles, paganism and pyrotechnics. Florence is a painted primal force of nature that whips a religious experience into a riot.” Yep. And those blue and gold Andorian Motown beehive girls definitely take it to the next level.
Major media outlets in the United Kingdom have been agressively touting Florence and the Machine‘s output for a couple of years now. More recently, Welch began capturing hearts around the world by touring internationally. Pairing her enormous voice with a rather intimidating bevy of musicians and couture wardrobe stylists, the art school dropout also exudes an earthy intelligence that’s both endearing and disarming. Currently, Welch et al are working on a second full-length album that she says is a lot heavier than their first record, Lungs. “A bit more fuzzy, a bit harder. If the first album was animal and anatomical, I think this one is chemical and elemental.” She’s also touring the UK next month.
Just for contextual kicks, here are some more tidbits that the cultural grab bag style of “Dog Days” is either vaguely (or directly) reminiscent of:
Today, in remembrance of the late Malcolm McClaren, who died this week at the age of 64, the FAM presents 2000’s, The Filth and the Fury. Directed by Julien Temple it is considered a response to Temple’s earlier film, The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle, filmed in 1978 and released in 1980. Swindle tells a fictionalized version of the rise and fall of the seminal punk band the Sex Pistols from the point of view of McClaren, who presents himself as an all powerful puppet master, using the band for his own ends. Filming began before the bands disintegration making the final product a disjointed — albeit entertaining — mess, with lead singer John Lydon and original bassist Glen Matlock only appearing in archive footage.
I’ll apologize then to those who have not seen it, as I could not find the film in its entirety to embed here. Instead, we have the film above which, as previously mentioned, represents a rebuttal to that 1980 release, specifically the band’s response. It’s a fascinating story but it also highlights the friction between the two parties, especially between McClaren and Lydon the two men at war over who harbored the creative spark that was responsible for this piece of music history.
The truth, no doubt, lies somewhere in the middle, and regardless of McClaren’s other achievements in fashion, film, and music, the Sex Pistols define his career in the minds of many. Whether he was a genius or a scoundrel depends on who you’re willing to believe.
