What better day than Thursday for some marionette flavored nightmare fuel? Behold the mad weirdness of Patrick Sims and Les Antliaclastes’ Hilum. I’m at a loss to properly describe this one, but fortunately the London International Mime Festival website described it thus:
A micro comic-tragedy based on the cycles of the washing machine and set in the basement of a rundown museum of natural history. Orphaned and cut off from the ordered kingdom of curiosities upstairs, the cast of nursery rhyme characters, cartoon images, and mischievous urchins turn playtime into a theatre of cruelty. Whites mix with colours, delicates get hot washed, and a monstrous big toe devours holes in the socks.
So there is that. I’m not sure if that is really very helpful at all. Two minutes, really, is all you need to decide if this is up your alley or not.
Nelson Boles freely admits that this short piece is a trailer in name only. And that’s really too bad because after having watched it I desperately want more of Orfeu. Noles’ painterly style is quite beautiful and even though it is a patchwork of imagery aborted abruptly at the finish it shows great potential. Potential that might be realized should enough people take notice.
I’ve spent, I think I can say, an inordinate amount of time browsing through the fetishization of the most mundane activities in order to provide you, dear readers, with interesting material. Yes, it was for you that I watched dozens of Japanese YouTube clips of earwax removal, trapped in a horrific, personal grooming K-hole, desperately trying escape only to do so and realize that most, if not all of the people who would be interested in such a thing are already ensconced in a vast, virtual library of such material. Alas, such is the life of an internet spelunker.
We are not here to talk about earwax removal, however, (though, if you want to I have some videos to show you) no, we’re going to briefly discuss Konapun. Konapun is a Japanese cooking toy that allows the you to create realistic, miniature food with the use of chemicals. It’s like molecular gastronomy — a practice in which people who are bored by food and the idea of it as nourishment torture it into funny shapes and forms with needles and eyedroppers — but without the pretense of being edible.
On Saturday, LA townsfolk will be able to feed their Twin Peaks obsession at Clifton’s Brookdale, a cafeteria extraordinaire brought to you by Andrew Meieran – the very man who birthed our beloved Edison. Curated by Good Apple in celebration of Twin Peaks’ 20th anniversary, In the Trees will feature art by Coilhouse friend and contributor, Jessica Joslin, who created a a beautiful owl of brass and bone named “Cooper” for the occasion.
Cooper will be shown alongside the work of Glenn Barr, Tim Biskup, Scott Campbell, Amy Casey, Paul Chatem, Ryan Heshka, Stella Im Hultberg, Alice Lodge, Chris Mars, Elizabeth McGrath, Margaret Meyer, Brooke Weston, Eric White, and Ashley Wood. Get all that? Good. Additionally, the show will include art by Grace Zabriskie (Sarah Palmer) and Richard Beymer (Benjamin Horne), as well as a map of Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch himself.
The recently-reopenedClifton’s, known for its comfort food and strange, woodsy interior, is the absolutely ideal location for this event. “It’s reminiscent of the show’s creative universe and captures the spirit of the show perfectly”, says developer Meieran of his new baby, which makes this recently-initiated Twin Peaks fiend anticipate In the Trees with even more vigor. I bet there will be coffee and pie!
FYI: this exhibition only runs from Saturday, February 12 to Sunday, February 13 – don’t miss it!
Good morning, heathens! Here’s a nice hot cup of atheist-approved parody to start your day off with a big bang. It comes to us courtesy of Ben Hillman (apparently the same man responsible for animating Anthony Mackie’s sperm for Spike Lee’s infamous 2004 dramedy, She Hate Me):
Via our own dear S. Elizabeth, who is still giggling over the lamprey.
Tura Satana as Varla in Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965)
Iconic cult actress and femme fatale Tura Satana passed away last week, at the age of 72. The death was announced by her longtime manager, Siouxzan Perry, who said the cause of death was believed to be heart failure.
Born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi in Hokkaido, Japan, to a father of Japanese and Filipino descent and a mother who was Cheyenne Indian and Scots-Irish, Ms. Satana had been a gang member, martial artist, burlesque dancer, actress, stunt woman, nurse, police radio operator, bodyguard, wife and mother – but it was her breakout role as the “brazenly violent but unapologetically feminine” Varla in Russ Meyer’s 1965 exploitative girl gang saga Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! that earned her an enduring cult following.
Renowned film critic Richard Corliss called her performance “…the most honest, maybe the one honest portrayal in the Meyer canon and certainly the scariest.”
“A woman, like my character, was able to show the male species that we’re not helpless and not entirely dependent on them,” Satana said of Varla, in 2008. “People picked up on the fact that women could be gorgeous and sexy and still kick ass.”
Also worth watching is this short making-of documentary, detailing how the production team managed to pull everything together on next to no budget. “It was just a group of folks who got together and made this through sheer will.”
Wow. Huge admiration for musician Ben Lovett, director Christopher Alender, producer Kris Eber, animator Wes Ball, and their entire crew. UR DOIN’ IT RIGHT.
My apologies but I’m unable to embed today’s film. Above is the trailer. The playlist with the film is here.
The FAM is ever ephemeral, dear readers. It is the nature of finding films posted on the internet. Sooner or later they shall be found and, no doubt, taken down. That said this movie’s time may be shorter than some, so get it while it’s hot. Today the FAM presents 2008’s Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) the Swedish vampire masterpiece directed by Tomas Alfredson, based on the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist who also wrote the screenplay.
I’m posting this today mostly because I finally got around to reading the original novel so the details are still fresh in my mind and, thus, this will be more of an examination of some differences between the film and its source material (though by no means a thorough one.) For those who haven’t seen it, Let the Right One In takes place in 1982 and tells the story of 12 year old Oskar who lives with his mother Yvonne in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm. He is a shy, meek boy who is tormented at school by bullies. One night he meets a young girl on the playground by his building. Her name is Eli and she has moved into the apartment next to his with an older man, Håkan, who Oskar assumes is her father. Oskar will soon learn, as you no doubt guessed, that Eli is not who she seems.
Spoiler Warning: I usually don’t do these as I assume that most people realize that these posts are bite-sized analyses and expect spoilers. However, I will also being discussing the book in some detail, and the thought of ruining two forms of media for the unsuspecting reader makes me feel that a warning is necessary.
“Walking around SOMA, we find this little gem. Stay classy Kennith Cole.” [via Flickr]
Earlier today, Kenneth Cole twatted, “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC.” After a massive Twitter outcry, Cole hastily scrubbed the tweet and attempted to backpedal. “I’ve dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues,” claimed the designer in a two-sentence apology on Facebook, admitting that posting the tweet as unarmed protesters in Cairo were getting shot was, perhaps, “poorly timed.”
However, this morning at 2 AM, San Francisco residents spotted this mysterious and super professional-looking decal on the window of Kenneth Cole’s SOMA location.
Are any Coilhouse readers in other cities perhaps encountering similar window displays at Kenneth Cole store locations? If so, please send pictures. We will gladly update this post with images of Kenneth Cole storefronts from around the US.
Asian cities and communities the world over rang in the Chinese New Year today — or yesterday depending on your time zone — ushering in the Year of the Rabbit, 4708 on the Chinese calender. The celebration will go on for 14 more days, making the Western New Year’s tradition of one alcohol fueled night of shame look truly pathetic in comparison. To celebrate the occasion and honor the passing of the Year of the Tiger the duo of Benji Davies and Jim Field, a.k.a. Frater, put together a short, beautifully animated New Year card, almost like a moving woodcut.
