This makes me so happy I could shit bats:
Via Eliza G. at Ectomo.
Bet you didn’t know the Bird of Death was such a funky chicken. Or a Criss Angel fan. More toothsome tidbits over at his YouTube channel. FANGTASTIC. WOULD BITE AGAIN A++++.
Sheesh. There sure are a lot of cynical snarkmuffins out there, rolling their eyes, quick to dismiss an entire genre out of hand: “Oh, that whole zombie thing? So over, man. Played out. Vampires are the new cosmonauts are the new ninjas are the new unicorns are the new zombies are the new pirates. NEXT FAD, PLZ. KTHXBYE.” Jaded much? Bite me, guys. You shall pry my love of the living dead from my cold, dead, grabby hands.
Decades before movies like 28 Days Later and the Dawn of the Dead remake reanimated the genre, before the rise of zombie flash mobs, or the obvious necrotization of Joaquin Phoenix, an immense zombie canon had long been informing, inspiring, and most definitely infecting swarms of Fulci and Romero obsessed nerds the world over. And just because the culture at large has had their fifteen-minute-fill of brain-eaters doesn’t mean we have!
A still from I Love Sarah Jane.
In my opinion, the visceral metaphors are as culturally relevant now as they were back in 1968, when “they’re coming to get you, Barbara” first became a household phrase. It’s deeply sad that due to short attention spans and media over-saturation, a lot of potentially fascinating zombie-related films have never gotten off the ground. For instance, the scrappy, long-struggling DIY project, Worst Case Scenario. (Check out these stunning trailers, sporting undead nazi balloonists and an original score from J.G. Thirlwell!) The producers of “the greatest zombie movies never made” finally conceded defeat in May 2009.
Why write something off just because it’s a certain genre? “Oh, I’ve seen it all before.” What if you haven’t? Hell, what if I haven’t, and I don’t want you cockblocking me?! Besides, if the tale being told is engaging, who cares what overused pigeonhole it goes in? At the heart of good storytelling, whatever the medium, is a solid narrative and compelling cast of characters. Case in point, the following short indie film from Australia, I Love Sarah Jane.* It’s a riveting coming-of-age vignette with a richly implied back story that just happens to take place the middle of a zombie apocalypse. The wonderful cinematography, AD, editing, and truly disgusting gore effects are all gravy:
I Love Sarah Jane. A short film from Australia, written by Spencer Susser & David Michôd. Directed by Spencer Susser.
While it stands well on it own merit, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing the story of Jimbo and Sarah Jane expanded. Or those of Max Brooks’ World War Z characters. Shit, just give us a proper a theater re-release of Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, and we’ll call it a day!
*Thanks to Ed Brubaker for the heads up. Speaking of great storytelling, Ed’s pulp thriller webseries, Angel of Death, is now available on DVD. Go get some. Y’know, unless you’ve had your fill of Zoe Bell kicking ass and cracking wise. In which case, you must be brain dead.
July 31st: untold years into the future. The incept date of a mysterious being known in this dimension as Zoetica Ebb. Deep in the dank, aromatic depths of the Coilhouse Catacombs, we’d all been wracking our brains as to how to best celebrate another year of the glorious Zobogrammatron’s dalliance in our own space/time.
We know she likes shiny baubles. And pure electricity. And raw meat. So, for weeks, we all pooled our modest resources, collecting them in a special porcine receptacle with the intention of taking Z out for sushi tonight, followed by dancing and Jacob’s Ladder-licking at the Edison Lounge. Also, Nadya and I spent countless nights sneaking away to a top secret, tucked-away laboratory alcove of the Catacombs. Combining our formidable thaumaturgical and soldering skills, we crafted a Rundell Tiara facsimile from unclassifiable, glittering glassine fragments found lining the deep crater in Siberia where Zoetica was said to be discovered.
The ominous crown was finally completed in the wee hours of this very morning. So very proud we were, and so very tired, we forgot to engage the Catacomb’s alarm system before passing out cold in our cots. Or to feed Ross Rosenberg (our brilliant but pathologically ill associate whose cage office is also located here) his daily can of uncooked Spaghettios.
A few hours later, we were awakened by the sound of maniacal cackling. Rushing into the central chamber, we caught a glimpse of Ross clambering out of the jimmied escape hatch with our piggy bank tucked under one arm and the precious Doom Tiara perched askew upon his malformed cranium. “I’M A PRETTY PRETTY PRINCESS. SAY IT!”
“Yes, Ross! You are! You’re the prettiest princess in all the land! Please, just put down the pig!”
“NO. I’M GOING TO SPEND IT ALL ON WHIPPETS AND PTERODACTYL PORN AND THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP ME. MOOHOOHAHAHAHAHA.”
“Ross! Nooooooooo!”
“SEE YOU IN HELL!!” With that, he slammed the escape hatch shut, leaving us bereft in the moldering darkness. But let it never be said that we are not resilient, resourceful gals. At the very last minute, through the magic of some hastily cooked up bathtub MDMA, Ross’s discarded balloon stash, and the Craigslist strippergram directory, we are still going to be able to observe Zoetica’s special day with an appropriate degree of sexiness and aplomb.
Ready? TA DAAAAA:
Happy birthday, Z. Love ya.
According to Fall On Your Sword, stuff Captain James T. Kirk wants nothing more than to make love to the mountain. (This, after ingesting too much LSD and wrapping his penis in pure alcohol.) Thanks, internet.
(Via Neil Gaiman. Cheers.)
Does anybody else who wore a flannel tied around their waist in the mid 90s remember the band Whale? Anyone? Kinda? Barely? Yeah… I know most of the hissing, static backwash of post-grunge era MTV Alternative Nation had all but evaporated from my palate. But to this day, there’s a place in my heart (and pants) for that frizzy-haired “Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe” and her mouth full of braces. In the Venn Diagram where silly and sexy intersect, stands Cia Berg.
Years after Whale had receded into distant memory, I stumbled across the above video of a super young, extra svelte Cia goofing off with her first band, Ubangi. I’d never heard of ’em before, but it was love at first listen. The guys in the group are hilarious; they reminds me of a low-rent, less dignified DEVO (if they’re derivative it’s in the best possible way!) and baby Berg looks quite fetching without the punk rock perm.
A few more adorable Ubangi clips (including a ditty called “Where Have All the Good Sperms Gone”??!) after the jump.
As mentioned previously on Coilhouse, I happen to think DJ Earworm is one of the most creative and engaging mashup artists out there. His latest offering, “Backwards/Forwards” is a sublime distillation of Annie Lennox’s most fabulously demented/dementedly fabulous moments in music and videography. Enjoy.
Hey, can we all pool our resources and send fresh bouquets of snapdragons n’ dafferdillies to British ballet choreographer Frederick Ashton every day for the rest of his life? Seriously:
Piggy pas de deux! Jemima Puddle-Duck on pointe!
Must. Stop. Squealing.
The original film version of Tales of Beatrix Potter, shot in 1971, has twice been staged by the Royal Ballet, once in 1992, and more recently in 2007. The score –arranged and composed by John Lanchbery– delightfully interweaves melodies from old vaudeville ditties with more classical forms. The masks, costumes and production design are all so squee-inducingly adorable as to border on the demented. But it’s the incredible range of expression and dynamicism of Ashton’s choreography that brings beloved characters like Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, Squirrel Nutkin and Hunca Munca so vibrantly to life. I’d give just about anything to see a production of this at the Royal Opera House. Here’s hoping it comes back sooner than later! Meantime, there are tons of clips to watch online, and a DVD to buy.
(Still squealing. Can’t be helped.)
Jimi Hendrix performs “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Woodstock Festival in upstate New York, 1969. You can hear the bombs, screams and ear-splitting jetfire of Vietnam in that guitar.
At first, I just figured I’d take a minute to mark the occasion of this country’s birth with the above clip of Hendrix’s string/mind/soul-bending rendition of the U.S. National Anthem. It’s been almost exactly 40 years since the footage was shot at Woodstock, during late summer, in the astoundingly eventful year of 1969.
Then I got to thinking a bit more about 1969. Egads, what a dense historical American nerve cluster! Over the course of those twelve months, one seriously heavy, snaking cultural current swept humanity in some exhilarating and alarming directions. Countless aspects of life as we now know it were irrevocably changed, and it all happened overnight.
In a piece written recently for USA Today, cultural anthropologist Jeremy Wallach called 1969 “the apotheosis and decline of the counterculture” and Rob Kirkpatrick, author of 1969: The Year Everything Changed said: “I don’t think it’s even debatable. There’s an America before ’69, and an America after ’69.”
To give me and mah feller ‘Merkins something to chew on today besides corn on the cob, here’s a list of just a few of the country’s more momentous occurrences, circa 1969:
The whole world watched, breathless, as the lunar module Eagle landed and Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the Moon. Dr. Denton Cooley successfully implanted the first temporary artificial heart in Texas. Four months after Woodstock, the infamously violent, miserable Altamont Free Concert was held at the Altamont Speedway in northern California, ostensibly bringing an end to the idealistic sixties. In NYC, the Stonewall riots kicked off the modern gay rights movement in the U.S. Members of the Manson Family cult committed the Tate/LaBianca murders, horrifying Los Angeles and goading a prurient media circus. The first message was sent over ARPANET between UCLA and Stanford. L. Ron Hubbard had his organization’s name officially changed to The Church of Scientology, and they started litigating. Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography and the Thoth Tarot Deck were both republished, and Kenneth Anger shot his lesser known –but deeply resonant– film Invocation of My Demon Brother. Barred from reentering the states to hold their planned New York City “Bed-In”, John Lennon and Yoko Ono relocated the event to the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Quebec, where they recorded “Give Peace a Chance”. Everybody got nekkid in the Broadway muscial production, Hair…
Photographer unknown.
Pina Bausch died on Tuesday, aged 68, less than a week after being diagnosed with cancer. Dozens of eloquent and heartfelt obituaries honoring the Queen of Tantztheater and her incalculable influence on modern dance are going up all over the web. Mark Brown’s eulogy over at The Scotsman contains some especially incisive remarks:
She was one of a select few modern artists – such as James Joyce, Pablo Picasso, Ingmar Bergman and Samuel Beckett – whose work can be truly described, in the most profound sense, as transcendental.
Bausch’s immense influence extended – and will continue to extend – far beyond her fellow dance and theatre makers, into film making and the visual arts. She was described so often as a “revolutionary artist” that the term became almost a platitude. Yet there is no other phrase which quite captures the impact of her deeply intelligent, humane, fearless and iconoclastic aesthetic.
Hell to the yes. It’s very rare to find an artist (in any medium) who strikes such a perfect balance of craft, grit, and grace; laughter, tears and squirminess. That “Pornography of Pain” label bestowed derisively upon Bausch by the New Yorker years ago may have stuck, but considering the emotional commitment and complexity of her work, it just doesn’t ring true.
Photo via the AFP.
Obviously, I’m no expert, but based purely off my own intuitive response to her stage and screen work, I’d call Bausch’s vision one of compassionate absurdity. Life and death, male and female, joy and grief, discipline and abandon are all presented with courageous honesty. She didn’t just break down boundaries between the mediums of theater, dance and film; she challenged our perceptions of performance itself. Stanford lecturer Janice Ross nails it:
In a Pina Bausch dance, the invisible divide between the real person and the stage character seems to collapse so that one often has the sense of watching barely mediated real life events. This isn’t art rendered as life so much as living rendered as art.
I’m not sure if it’s a blessing or a shame that Bausch died when she was still so actively, splendidly creative. What a tremendous gift that she was ever here at all. In her honor, I’ve added “Revolutionary” to the list of Coilhouse category tags. Long may her dance live on.
Funereal excerpt from Wuppertal’s Die Klage der Kaiserin.
Several more clips after the jump.
SAMPARKOUR, directed by Wiland Pinsdorf, featuring Zico Corrêa. (Via William Gibson, thanks.)
Commercial/music video director Wiland Pinsdorf’s SAMPARKOUR is “a short that reveals the city of São Paulo (Brazil) under the look of Parkour. Where people see obstacles, Zico Corrêa visualizes new possibilities.”
Shot in HD with a 35mm lens adapter, the short is simultaneously dizzying and becalming, presenting Corrêa’s death-defying feats in a breathtaking rush of carefully framed shots and well-paced edits. Today –perhaps more than most days– it is deeply satisfying to witness a collaboration (between filmmaker and athlete, city and gravity) so vital, immediate, and perfectly alive.
