Danger Beach’s “Apache” is a beautiful instrumental with a simply fantastic animated video, directed by Ned Wenlock, featuring a guitar wielding Native American — accompanied by a bison and a Sasquatch, also equipped with guitars — playing the melody through a constantly spiraling and shifting landscape. It’s really, very well done and Mr. Wenlock has taken the time to explain how he did the whole thing here, for those technically minded people who may be interested. I’ve watched this three or four times since first finding it and it gets better every time.
As the Japanese continue their misguided forays into the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, we can, no doubt, expect to see more scenarios like the one played out here, in this video. What chance does a human being stand against the cold, steel mind of the insidious Machine? If a man can’t even flip a switch in peace in the presence of one of these things, what hope is there for our future?
This is what happens when our creations rebel. This will be the end of us.
What a week, huh? Yeah, pretty crazy. It’s Friday though, so it’s almost over. And since it is Friday, how about some FAM?
Today we have 1992’s Man Bites Dog (French: C’est Arrivé Près de Chez Vous, It Happened in Your Neighborhood), directed by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde. A mockumentary, the story follows a crew of filmmakers, including director Rémy (Belvaux) and cameraman André (Bonzel) as they record the day to day adventures of Ben (Poelvoorde), a prolific serial killer. Ben brings them along on his excursions, introduces the crew to his friends and family, and discusses the ins and outs of his “craft”, as well as pontificating on subjects ranging from philosophy to architecture. Soon, however, the crew is drawn in to participating in Ben’s increasingly random and violent crimes.
I recently re-watched this with someone who had not seen it previously and it is definitely a movie of two halves. The first half of Man Bites Dog can be very funny, in a way that only dark comedies can be. There’s even an homage to the running gag in Rob Reiner’s seminal mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, with the crew losing a number of sound men during filming (due to “occupational hazards”), with each receiving the same eulogy from Rémy. It is a cynical humor to be sure. The shift occurs 2/3rds through the film (Editor’s Note: Oh for— You said this was a movie of two halves and now you’re speaking in thirds. What is wrong with you? Must you be terrible at everything?), with a brutal scene that heralds the active participation of the film crew. It’s a powerful moment and it works by both removing the distance the crew afforded themselves from what they were filming, as well as removing the distance the viewer was afforded from what they were watching. In that moment, all the laughter sort of gets sucked out of the room.
Watching it again, over a decade since I first saw it, I was struck by how well it still holds up. The cast is superb, especially Poelvoorde who plays Ben as a man simply making a living, regardless of how monstrous the means may actually be. It is a manic, bizarre movie; violent, cruel, and funny. And yet, despite that last bit, it never feels like it condones what is happening on screen. In the end, all involved are judged guilty, and all pay for it.
There’s something misleading about the title Hambuster. Vaguely obscene, it feels like it should be referring to something far more profane than a film about killer hamburgers. And yet, that is exactly what we’re talking about here: man-eating, sentient fast food. Directed by the quintet of Paul Alexandre, Maxime Cazaux, Dara Cazamea, Romain Delaunay, and Bruno Ortolland, Hambuster tells the story of what happens when our food rebels against us.
The animation here is fantastic, and the directors wear their influences on their sleeves, even going so far as to put some great, B-movie homages in the credits. The story is simple enough, one could almost say well-worn, but the team is talented and well versed enough in the tropes of over-the-top horror/comedy to do it justice. The diner scene, in particular, is a highlight, featuring a wonderful attention to facial expression and an absurd amount of viscous, red fluid. At the very least, it holds the distinction of being one of the few films featuring a protagonist in the possession of multiple, swaying chins.
Hell yeah, muthafuckas, it’s Friday, time to get drunk and break shit, amiright? WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Huh? No? Well…I mean…ok. Fine. I was just joking anyway. Whatever. It is Friday, though, so at the very least it is time for the FAM, your weekly stop (Editor’s Note: Semi-weekly, really. Lazy jerk.) for afternoon entertainment in film form (Editor’s Note: That was the worst thing. You are literally the worst.)
Today the FAM presents King Corn, Aaron Woolf’s 2007 documentary about two friends, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who move to Iowa to farm an acre of land and investigate where America’s food comes from; specifically addressing the question: How and why do we eat some much damn corn?
I liked King Corn for two reasons, really. The first being, of course, that I found it informative. The second reason was a feeling of level-headed objectivity. The alarmist, Michael Moore style documentary, is certainly popular and while, perhaps, effective, they are a bit off-putting when it comes to presenting an actual argument, busy as they are in trying to drive home the point that the WORLD IS GOING TO END AND THESE PEOPLE ARE EVIL AND GET MAD! It’s exhausting. So I appreciated King Corn calmly laying out the facts for me and presenting a history of America’s obsession with corn as well as a snapshot of a Midwestern town. It was a pleasant experience to watch the credits roll on a documentary and not feel like I should flip over a cop car or just kill myself.
What happens when dialog taken from MTV’s “Jersey Shore”, the nadir of current American culture, is filtered through the lens of Oscar Wilde, one of the greatest wits the world has ever seen? Magic, that’s what. Playbill — with the help of Santino Fontana and David Furr, current cast members of Wilde’s most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest — presents a grand experiment: “Jersey Shore” Gone Wilde. This is, perhaps, the best thing I have seen this year.
Before finding these illustrations I had never heard of the Slovak illustrator, Albín Brunovský. It was unsuprising to learn that he was quite well-known, and well-regarded, in his own country. This series of women with fantastical heads pieces, some of them growing out of their owners’s heads, features a perfectly surreal juxtaposition of the absurd and macabre.
To his children everything seemed fine: chasing them around the house when he came home from work, helping them with their homework, acting out the books he read them before bed as always. His wife, on the other hand, had noticed an ever so slight change in Bill. Those nights spent reading in the living room after the children had been put to bed, in quiet co-habitation, punctuated by short bursts of conversation, a brief exchange over a particular news story or a bit of neighborhood gossip — the usual discussions that make up the mundane nights of married life — they were different. Now there was something else.
It was the silence. It had always been there, but now that silence had a strange quality, a cold weight to it. It had a density Agnes could feel pressing in on her. These moments were fleeting, but often she would look up when they occurred, only to find Bill staring off into space, at some point far outside the walls of their house. When asked if everything was alright, he would assure her that it was, flashing his goofy grin at her to drive the point home and send her back to her book.
But everything was not alright. Bill had endured the smirks and the sniggering for too long now, and it was wearing on him, eroding a great rut in his spirit. Who were these people to sneer at him? All he wanted was to make them gay and the best way he knew to do that was to clothe them in the most resplendent fabrics he could find, which he also knew, as should any fool with half a brain, came from the rainbow. What was so funny about that? What was the goddamn joke?
Maybe, he thought late at night, his wife sleeping soundly beside him, maybe they didn’t deserve to be gay. Maybe, he thought, gritting his teeth until they ached and his gums bled, maybe they didn’t deserve to be gilded in the fruits of his labor, those hours spent toiling on that fucking rainbow. Maybe, he thought, his fists clenched, a white hot fire burning in his brain right behind his eyes, maybe they don’t fucking deserve to be here on this beautiful, gay Earth at all.
And maybe he was going to do something about that.
The draw of Lucas Camargo’s work, I think, is its density. Packed into each drawing is a cacophony of tiny details, jostling to make themselves known. They’re almost like those once ubiquitous Magic Eye images, at first they’re a mess of lines until, suddenly, their long-faced subjects unveil themselves.
I cannot definitively say that, as the title suggests, everything will be ok. It is all together possible and, perhaps, probable — depending on your bent — that everything will not be ok. That’s not what this is about. No, this post is about Everything Will Be Ok, Don Hertzfeldt’s award-winning short, which celebrated its 5th Anniversary last month. The first of a planned trilogy (the last of which is set to be released this year), Everything Will Be Ok follows the story of a man named, simply, Bill. We see Bill awkwardly greet a man he recognizes on the street, Bill at home, Bill spending time with his ex-girlfriend, Bill having a dream about a giant fish head, eating away at his skull. Its a story that concerns itself mostly with pseudo-existential shoe-gazing, filtered through the twisted mind of the man who brought us Rejected, and it is wonderful.
