via Whittles

You can thank David Lewandowski (lead animator on TRON: Legacy) for the nightmare juice. The Jean Jacques Perrey music makes it extra disturbing, capsule somehow.

Three day weekend coming up for us Americans, so this has to be a quickie, seeing as I have to amass the alcohol and ammunition that every holiday celebration here requires. Today’s FAM is “Inside the Labyrinth”, an hour long behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of Labyrinth.

Labyrinth, for the one or two readers who don’t know, is the 1986 Jim Henson film starring pre-rhinoplasty Jennifer Connelly, David Bowie, a whole mess of puppets, and David Bowie’s package. While short, the documentary does provide a look into the complexity of the creatures that Henson and company were building, exemplified by the image of a severed, yet moving Hoggle head speaking lines whilst perched on a wooden post. (Bonus for Star Trek: The Next Generation fans: Hey look, Dr. Crusher was also a choreographer.)

Thorough as it is, it does not address the decision to pour David Bowie into nut-hugging spandex for a children’s film; something that, for now at least, remains a mystery.

I almost loathe posting this video, purchase produced, sickness as it was, by a production company calling themselves The Viral Factory. It kind of makes me feel like a sap, duped into doing exactly what they wanted. Regardless of such inane, personal trepidation the video they produced for the soon-to-be open Westfield Stratford City is pretty impressive: A history of East London fashion over the last hundred years, set to music by Tristin Norwell. If it lacks anything it is, perhaps, some sort of indication of the decades as they rush by for the fashion ignorant, such as myself.

Via My Modern Met : The Daily What

For those of who who have always wondered how to master this arcane dance art, a helpful tutorial is included above.

For further cheering-up, see below. It’s like watching a dozen adorable Tamagothis hatch and grow in full-color, right before your very eyes:

Eeee! More Walter Potter goodies!

Via Morbid Anatomy/BoingBoing/Jessica Joslin, here’s the British Pathe‘s splendid ’65 tour of the now sadly defunct Walter Potter Museum in Bramber, UK, which, until recently, housed all of the famed anthropomorphizing taxidermist’s weird and whimsical work.

If you have a moment to explore, the British Pathe account on YouTube is entirely rife with ridiculous, charming, and occasionally sobering snippets of Ye Olde Infotainment. Pekingnese puppies dressed up as a wedding party; Mick the Mongrel climbing a ladder; “NO MORE BABIES“; flailing zombie-like Girl Water Diviner; “Buried Alive” Stunt Goes Badly, and many more!

Apparently, this reel has not been shown anywhere since it ran the con circuit in 1982; not in screenings, not on any of the DVDs.* And… it’s… guh… braingasm.

*I’ve been informed it is, in fact, included on a recent Blu-Ray/DVD edition.

“One of the Blade Runner Convention Reels featuring interviews with Ridley Scott, Syd Mead and Douglas Trumbull about making Blade Runner universe. This 16 mm featurette, made by M. K. Productions in 1982, is specifically designed to circulate through the country’s various horror, fantasy and science fiction conventions. ”

Via Ed Brubaker.

Impossibly skinny and perpetually bored, Finnish artist Laura Laine’s figures are the epitome of fashion illustration. Or, perhaps, they are a parody of it. I haven’t quite decided yet. (Judging by her bio and client list, however, it is probably the former.) Her line work is beautiful, regardless of the intentions behind it, with each morose scarecrow piled high in intricately patterned fabrics, some so heavy their fragile frames seem to buckle and threaten to completely collapse under the weight. They are the chicest of emaciated mannequins, topped off with a scowl.

Yesterday, after several difficult and painful production months, the final revisions to Issue 06 of Coilhouse Magazine were logged in. It is visually and thematically unlike anything we’ve attempted before– as beautiful and as sharp as a blade. Printing is imminent. If you, cherished readers, enjoy poring through its pages even half as much as we have, we’ll consider it a great success.

Thomas Negovan‘s wax cylinder player at the B&W&RAOB. Photo by Audrey Penven.

In addition to putting the finishing touches on #06, our crew is slowly recovering from the Category 5 whirlwind of throwing a massive fundraising ball in another city with less than a month of planning. (Wow… that was… did that actually happen?! One week later, it all feels like a deliciously manic, sweaty dream.) We’re working on a big ol’ shout-out post that will have all kinds of B&W&RAOB links and pictures in it, but that might take a wee bit.

Angeliska Polacheck & Kim Boekbinder at the Ball. Photo by Anna Fischer.

In fact, more generally, it may take Coilhouse Blog a while to get back up to its usual puttering speed. If you see a tumbleweed or two blow across this screen, don’t worry. We’re just getting all of the international auction item shipments and Issue 06 stuff sorted first, and then taking some much-needed time to recharge after one of the most grueling time periods in Coilhouse history.

Meantime, here’s a lolling, lazy Sunday song about those aforementioned moorless diaspores, courtesy of The Sons of the Pioneers. Enjoy!

Today the FAM presents John McNaughton’s 1986 low budget cult classic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Released in 1990 after years of battling with various censors over its content it is, perhaps, one of most effective horror movies of the past two decades, forgoing piles of gore for a documentarian approach to the genre.

The titular Henry, played by Michael Rooker, is a drifter, who just happens to leave a trail of bodies behind him. Indeed, the first thing we see is the body of a nude woman in a field, after which we see Henry as he goes about his day with scenes from other crime scenes interspersed throughout. It is only later, when our other two main characters show up, Becky (Tracy Arnold) who has left her husband to stay with her brother, the incredibly creepy Otis (Tom Towles) in Chicago, that we are formally introduced to Henry or, at least, the Henry that presents himself to the world.

Rooker’s performance here is excellent, displaying a strained awkwardness that serves as a mostly successful veneer for the terrifying person underneath. It’s a cover that completely disappears when he’s out looking for victims. Towles, for his part, manages to play a character who is actually creepier than the psychopath he is paired up with. Arnold may be the weakest link among the three. Her character is too direct, her dialog too on the nose, but there is just enough there to get the audience to care about her. Her penultimate scene in Otis’s apartment is completely expected and yet that makes it no less horrifying.

Made for a $110,000 in less than a month, Henry was inspired by real life killer Henry Lee Lucas who, at one time, was thought to be one of America’s most prolific serial killers. (It was later revealed that while Lucas had confessed to over 600 murders, most of them he could not have committed and was simply confessing to whatever cold case was put in front of him in exchange for improved accommodations in prison.) Interestingly, Henry’s story of his mother is surprisingly close to that of Lucas’s who also was a violent prostitute who often forced him to watch her while she had sex with clients. She would also make him wear girl’s clothing and dresses and his father actually did lose both his legs, after being struck by a freight train.

Due to the budget constraints, many of the actors were close friends of McNaughton. One of them, Mary Demas, appears as three different dead (or soon to be dead) people: the dead woman in the field, the dead woman in the bathroom, and one of the prostitutes Henry kills with Otis. The street scenes are devoid of extras as, again, there was no money to hire any, so the two men having an argument in front of the subway that Becky emerges from were not acting, they just refused to move. Rooker apparently stayed in character on and off set for the entire 28 days and was so unsettling to be around that his wife, after have found out she was pregnant, waited until after shooting had ended to tell him.

It’s a a tour de force of low-budget film-making. Shot in 16mm, it’s a film that feels strangely real. Watching Henry is like watching an unmarked video found along the road, evidence hastily disposed of. You are watching something you weren’t meant to see, and so are absorbed by it and, in some ways, complicit in the events that unfold. It almost feels like something you should turn in to the police.

It’s a sentiment very much echoed in the scene of Henry and Otis (having been taken under Henry’s wing) watching a video they shot (using a camcorder acquired earlier through less than legal means) of the pair during a home invasion in which they kill a man, woman, and their son. As the video ends, Otis hits rewind causing Henry to ask “What are you doin’?” To which Otis replies, simply “I want to see it again.” Watching it again he goes over the segment of himself assaulting the wife and mother frame by frame, as much an indictment of their voyeurism as ours.

Eran Amir creates a fantastic piece of animation by photographing 500 different people around Israel holding 1500 photographs. Set to “Malinkovec Valzer” by Maxmaber Orkestar.

Via Dangerous Minds