It’s Friday again, and there you sit in your stale, air-conditioned office linking all your paper clips together. It’s fun, right? The end result is just really, satisfyingly uniform. I wonder is anyone has made jewelry that looks like linked paper clips. Maybe you should make some. You could sell them on Etsy. People would buy that, right? It would at least make you a couple of extra bucks to help with rent. Oooo, maybe you could make wallet chains too. The kids will eat that shit up! Maybe not. Probably not, right? I mean, even if they got popular they’d probably just get ripped off by Urban Outfitters and sold for twice the price. Man, we’re never gonna get out of this place. Oh well, at least there are still movies on the internet.
Today the FAM presents the 2007 Spanish found footage horror movie [REC], directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza, which was remade in the US (because, as everyone knows, Hollywood will always do a better job) as Quarantine in 2008. [REC] follows TV reporter Ángela Vidal and her cameraman, Pablo, who are following a group of firefighters for a show called While You’re Asleep. At first all is normal until a call is received concerning an elderly woman trapped in her apartment. When the crew arrives they find the police have been called as well and soon break down the door. There they find the woman who looks decidedly unwell. This point is driven home when she attacks one of the officers, biting him. Not long after the building is locked down, and so begins a mad scramble to stay uninfected and find out the cause of this strange outbreak.
There have been enough found footage/shaky-cam horror movies at this point to elicit a groan from many, but of all of them, [REC] may be one of the best. Between its claustrophobic setting and constant state of confusion, [REC] does an admirable job of keeping the viewer off balance. I liked the use of a reporter as the main character, allowing for the kind of mystery solving usually ignored in this type of film in favor of jump scares. And while [REC] keeps much of its plot concerned with the immediate problems of survival, I enjoyed the slow unraveling of the greater mystery. That does lead to my one big criticism, that being the ending. The reveal of the virus’s origin and subsequent outbreak inside the apartment building seems to come way out of left field and, while functional, isn’t particularly satisfying. Overall, however, it remains a gripping experience, one which deservedly stands out in a field of increasingly drab entries.
“The Killer” is, sickness as indicated, ambulance not a game. It was inspired by the brutal genocide perpetrated in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. In “The Killer” there are two figures, rx two stick figures, one whose ovoid head is white. This stick figure is the one you control, though, really, you control both, for this white-headed figure is in firm control of the figure in front of it, being as this white-headed figure is the one holding a gun.
At the beginning of “The Killer” these two figures are standing in front of a hut, silently, the only sounds are the sounds of the birds and the insects echoing through the trees and you are instructed to “Hold space to start walking.” When you finally do the white-headed figure pushes the figure before it and only then does the music begin and you, both of you, begin to march.
You march through jungles and you march over beaches. If you stop, you, both of you, are informed that you have not gone far enough, that you must reach the fields, that the fields are beyond the beach. So you push the space bar again and, once again, the whited-headed figure pushes the other with the barrel of its gun. And when you finally reach the fields, and you stop, you are told to aim you gun, and that clicking the left mouse button will fire. And there, in the field, you have a choice to make.
Let me be honest with you, clinic dear, patient beloved readers: I have no idea what “Velvo Finish” is, nor do I care. No, this ad, from the nether regions of Popular Science circa 1958, is posted here solely because of the slick-haired, mustachioed gentleman, so prominently featured. It is because of this man, this unctuous huckster from a by-gone era, that I place this ad in full view, perched high on this hallowed home page in all its glory. Stare deep into his lifeless gaze and accept his wordless invitation to inspect his pubic hair collection.
Two short films for this week’s FAM; something to tide you over in preparation for the three day weekend here in the States. First up is Matter Fisher by David Prosser, the strange tale of a fisherman who finds an extremely magnetic piece of…something. Prosser’s style is dark and minimalist, lending everything a ghostly vibe. It’s a world so lonely, one has the distinct impression that the fisherman could very well be the only human being in existence.
Next is The Saga of Biôrn by the army of Benjamin J. Kousholt, Daniel D. Christensen, Mads Lundgaard Christensen, Jesper A. Jensen, Jonas K. Doctor, Steffen Lyhne, Pernille Ørum-Nielsen, Frederik Bjerre-Poulsen, Jonas Georgakakis. It tells the story of the titular Biôrn, a viking warrior whose only wish is to die in battle, so that he may enter Valhöll. This one has none of the brooding of Matter Fisher, going for a much more comedic tone. The end of Biôrn’s quest is particularly satisfying.
And there you have it, a couple of choice morsels for another Friday. Good luck on the rest of your afternoon.
Sometimes you just have to take a break and watch as a man in a purple suit and a luminous, gold tie does an extended magic trick to the smooth, sultry tones of Sting. The man in the aforementioned suit is Shawn Farquhar, and the trick performed won the World Championship and Grand Prix of Close Up Magic in Beijing, China in 2009, — the “Olympics of Magic” according to the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés Magiques (International Federation of Magic Societies) or FISM. And while I am no great fan of Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner’s work, the trick is pretty mesmerizing. It’s either that or I’ve just been blinded by that tie.
I suspect that when many Americans think of The Future, it looks like something envisioned by Disney; all moving sidewalks, flying cars, and abodes akin to The Monsanto House of the Future. “Magic Highway USA” doesn’t stray too far from these established tropes. There are still the flying cars and moving sidewalks but there are also truly fantastical items like giant machines that build bridges into the thin air underneath them out of quick drying concrete mixtures or machines the melt tunnels into mountains using The Power of the Atom. On the other hand, it also vaguely hints at devices very much like modern GPS units. And unsurprisingly, considering the mindset at the time, there are highways everywhere, vast networks of roadways crisscrossing the globe, enabling you and your family to drive through the Taj Mahal or up the Great Sphinx’s nose. A spiderweb of automotive activity, always on the move, never stopping. Welcome to The Future.
Philip Andelman’s meditation on the manufacturing process of the hourglass. Designed by Marc Newson’s for Ikepod, it is made from borosilicate glass and filled with millions of stainless steel “nanoballs”. Adnelman filmed this at the Glaskeller factory in Basel, Switzerland and the entire process is fascinating — a hypnotic sequence of whirling machinery and fire set to Philip Glass’s “Opening”. It’s so fascinating, in fact, that I almost wish there was some exposition if only to explain just how they measure out the aforementioned nanoballs so that each glass accurately metes out its allotted dosage of time.
I’m a big fan of Dan Hillier’s stunningly detailed ink drawings digitally altered engravings. His early work featured figures whose appendages had mutated and mysteriously taken upon animal qualities. This new series takes that one step further, the flora and fauna having completely taken over, wearing only the blank, human shells that remain.
A disturbing collection of green, plastic Army Men in distinctly nontraditional poses, “Casualties of War” from the art collective Dorothy, aims to shed light on some of the awful challenges that face soldiers returning from war. It was specifically inspired by a story on one battalion:
The hell of war comes home. In July 2009 Colorado Springs Gazette published a two-part series entitled “Casualties of War”. The articles focused on a single battalion based at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs, who since returning from duty in Iraq had been involved in brawls, beatings, rapes, drunk driving, drug deals, domestic violence, shootings, stabbings, kidnapping and suicides. Returning soldiers were committing murder at a rate 20 times greater than other young American males. A separate investigation into the high suicide rate among veterans published in the New York Times in October 2010 revealed that three times as many California veterans and active service members were dying soon after returning home than those being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. We hear little about the personal hell soldiers live through after returning home.
There was also a Frontline episode, “The Wounded Platoon”, which investigates the tragedy surrounding the 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 506th Infantry from Fort Carson, for those who are interested. Dorothy’s project is, perhaps, a bit heavy handed in its execution, but it nevertheless draws attention to an all too real and unspoken problem.
A short film for today’s FAM, something to distract you, if only briefly, from your ever overflowing inbox. Seriously, fuck that inbox. Always full; one thing gets done, four things replace it. Goddamn you, inbox. You know what, don’t — just don’t even look. Look away. Look over here, for a couple of minutes.
Have a look at Connected, a short film from Jens Raunkjær Christensen & Jonas Drotner Mouritsen that manages to be even bleaker than that inbox (Editor’s Note: Shut up you ass! Don’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutit.) In a post-apocalyptic future, devoid of breathable air, two figures make their way across a deserted and windswept landscape, tethered together by two hoses, when a figure up on a hill spies them.
I had seen images of this quite some time ago, when Christensen and Mouritsen were still trying to finish it and was intrigued, but lost track of it. The finished product is, indeed, quite short, but is vague enough in its details to warrant repeated viewings. In the end, I’m still left wanting to know more; about the world, yes, but more specifically the relationships between these three doomed people, especially the adult and child whose symbiotic existence lends the piece its name. There is a stark decision made in that final act and it begs exposition, though wisely, or perhaps, blessedly, the filmmakers leave it unspoken.
