Today the FAM presents David Lynch’s 1970 short film, The Grandmother. The heart warming story of a boy who — neglected and abused by his family — grows a kindly old lady to provide with the affection he craves. A silent film, the characters interact with abstract soundtrack cues. It’s strange and undeniably artsy; artsy enough to be mistaken as a parody of an artsy movie. And yet, whether for its brevity or Lynch’s youth, it is most certainly one of his most straightforwardly discernible films, devoid of the extraneous imagery woven throughout his later films, confounding and misdirecting the audience at every opportunity. Whether that is counted as being a good thing or not depends, I suppose, on how much of a David Lynch fan you are.
Graham Annable’s work exemplifies the best in animation. Devoid of dialogue, his films rely solely on the ability of their characters to convey emotion; their stories told with moving images, sometimes in conjunction with music. It’s animation distilled down to its most basic elements, devoid of the extra trappings that at best get in the way of story and at worst promotes plain old laziness.
In other words, Annable’s work is really good. You should take a look.
Caitlin Hackett’s work is a lush stew of the beautiful, grotesque, and fantastic; pulling from a wide spectrum of myths and fairy tales. Mostly rendered with ballpoint pens and watercolors, it exhibits a level of detail that I find irresistible.
Ahead of Tim Burton’s newest, Hot Topic flavored attempt to completely discredit his career as a director, the British Film Institute has released this restoration of the very first film based on Lewis Carroll’s classic, from 1903 directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow. At just over nine and a half minutes it is a “greatest hits” version, choosing to frame each scene based on John Tenniel’s famous illustrations for the book. In doing so, it features characters and situations that do not make appearances in most modern versions; namely the events concerning the Duchess. The BFI also points out that, like Burton, Hepworth also cast his wife as the shrill and psychotic Queen (although Burton casts his as the Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass and we can assume that here Hepworth’s wife plays The Queen of Hearts from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland), and even makes an appearance himself as the Frog Footman. Their cat also puts in some screen time as the Cheshire Cat; an effect that is at least up to par with the computer generated special effects found in the upcoming film. It’s a lovely bit of history, though one that requires a knowledge of the material to fully appreciate. Certainly much less to ask of your viewer than enduring Johnny Depp made up like a clown for two hours.
At the risk of offending the Soviets in the audience I present this gentleman to you with limited commentary; instead allowing his melodious singing voice and terrifying rictus to speak for themselves.
An excellent question and perhaps an unexpected one; but only to those that didn’t know Steve Peterson. The science teacher at Oblong High School and head of the A/V club, Peterson was a regionally-known expert on the subject of ancient cultures — specifically fish people from Sirius. Long after the school day would end, Peterson could be found, alone, recording an extraordinary body of work that cast a critical eye on the accepted theory of the origin of life on this planet. What arose from these tapes was a revelation, a vast series of clues including ancient Egyptian art and mythology, fish hats, the Pope, and Taco Bell. Also, breasts and penises.
Those who would dismiss Peterson as insane or a mulleted quaalude user are misinformed. In the days leading up to his mysterious disappearance, Peterson mentioned to many that he was being followed; his house staked out by individuals in a windowless white van. Peterson was last seen on March 5th, 1987. A student, James Whitlock, passed him on the street and grew concerned, describing Peterson as appearing “spaced out, more than usual I mean.” Whitlock approached him and asked if everything was ok, to which Peterson responded that indeed it was and that he “just needed a burrito.”
It should be obvious, then, that Steve Peterson was no madman. No dear reader, that is merely what they want you to think. The reality is that he was simply too close to the truth and the powers that be had him removed. This is all that remains of his life’s work; his revelation. All we can do know is carry on his memory and continue to ask: Who are these fish people?
Well, not all of it. 1979’s Life on Earth, made by the BBC and narrated by the incomparable Sir David Attenborough was a defining moment in nature documentaries and propelling Attenborough to international success; allowing him to build a massive oeuvre, whose most recent offering was Planet Earth a series almost more well known as a way to show off one’s high-definition television than as a documentary. His upcoming series, simply entitled Life, is set to debut on Discovery in March. Like Planet Earth, however, which excised Attenborough’s voice-over, replacing him with Sigourney Weaver, Discovery has this time chosen to showcase the narrative talents of the insufferable Oprah Winfrey. As Americans we are, apparently, incapable of bearing the horror of a British accent.
Back to Life on Earth. If anything, today’s FAM is merely an exercise in entertaining my own nostalgia. When my brother and I were children we watched this series to the point that the two VHS cassettes that comprised the official Time Warner offering were nearly useless, the stunning images smeared as they were with static and lines as the magnetic strips inside struggled to retain some semblance of visual fidelity. It is by now, I’m sure, a shadow of its former self. I can rest comfortably, however, knowing it gave us more hours of entertainment than should have been possible. In this case, it is lucky for me that one cannot wear out the internet.
If anything Henrik Sønniksen’s Vegeterrible enforces my hatred for and distrust of the Avacado. With skin like pleather and innards the color and texture of fetid library paste, they are a Horrid and Awful produce. Deep down they are all rotten. Deep down, they are all monsters.
Truly there is no one better to explain the cold, harsh reality of our favorite children’s classics than Werner Herzog. The famed German director is the ideal candidate to narrate George’s lesson in the nature of desire, plucked from the sprawling jungle that was his home. Who better to chronicle the affection Mike Mulligan has for his steam-shovel, an affection “out of proportion with social norms”? The director of Nosferatu the Vampyre and Fitzcarraldo that’s who. He possesses the cool, calculating eye required to look through the whimsical veneer of these tales and gaze upon the cruel truths within; to drag you kicking and screaming from the safety of childish innocence and in his melodious Deutsche tones, birth you anew.
I’ve been on a bit of a North Korea kick, if one can call wanting to learn about a impoverished, starving nation under the heel of a totalitarian dictatorship such a thing. Having recently completed Barbara Demick’s excellent book Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea I’ve since moved onto Bradley K. Martin’s Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, making for an interesting, though not particularly uplifting, reading marathon.
Along with that I have been trying to find as much as I can watch about North Korea as well, and thus far the most interesting, especially in relation to one another, have been 2001’s Welcome to North Korea by Peter Tetteroo and Raymond Feddema and Vice’s unsurprisingly slightly irreverent, The Vice Guide to North Korea. Both are fascinating separately but also in what they reveal as being the same. In the seven years separating them little to nothing has changed except, perhaps, the erosion of North Korea’s building and, of course, its people.
Little changed is the North Korean government’s control over information leaving the country. Tetteroo and Feddema perhaps have the upper hand here, relying less on anecdotal evidence and more on their surreptitiously shot footage. Vice, on the other hand, gives a more complete idea of the showmanship here and a detailed look at the facade erected to impress the few visitors allowed inside its borders. The images of Vice’s Shane Smith, alone in a banquet hall, set for hundreds who will never arrive, each plate carefully arranged with what he describes as “fried matter”, might be laughable but watching the workers carefully put away all the uneaten food and unused tableware, to be presented to the next, state-authorized guest, renders it terrifying.
The fascination, should there be any doubts, lies firmly in the lack of information, the mystery of this place. We live in a society that is awash in information. Right now you have, at your fingertips, more of it than you will ever be able to consume. Yet this country, it’s public image so meticulously (if futilely) preened, its infrastructure so decimated that at night it is seen by satellites as a great black pit above the glowing affluence of South Korea, allows only the smallest drips and drabs to escape, and then only under duress. The reality of North Korea is one that must be stolen. It must be secreted out of the country. It must be extracted from those who have escaped its sphere of influence, and having done so have banished themselves from their homeland. I hope that, in time, this will change. In the meantime I am thankful to those brave people have allowed me this glimpse into what is effectively a nation of shadows.
