“Secret Cinema is a growing community of all that love cinema, experience and the unknown. Secret audience. Secret locations. Secret worlds. The time is now to change how we watch films.”
It’s like an elaborate cosplay event, a midnight screening of Rocky Horror and a candle-lit Cinespia cemetery screening picnic got thrown into a blender together with tens of thousands in sponsorship funding from Windows Phone (?!), and the incredible clip above was the result. Yellow snakes, white doves, retina I.D. testing stations, dancers wearing hockey masks, streetside noodle bars, even a passage with artificially-created rain. How I wish we could’ve all been there.
What’s 26 inches long, weighs three pounds, and would be immensely fun to lube up and brandish menacingly at pumpkin-smashing, house-egging Halloween vandals, preferably while wearing a bloodstained chicken suit? Why, the World’s Largest Gummy Worm, that’s what!
The precocious online shop Vat19 is currently sold out of all five dual flavors of this 4000 calorie candy, but never fear– they’ll be back in stock very soon. Meantime, there’s always The World’s Largest Gummy Bear.
Guest blogger Olga Drenda writes about war crimes and home-made drugs for a living, but it’s fluffy rodents who are her true love. She hails from the land of pierogi, supermodels and death metal bands, and is an editor at seelebrennt.com.
Veteran of experimental cinematography and the main injector of Thelemic mysticism into the realm of film, Kenneth Anger, goes fashion. The director of Lucifer Rising and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome filmed a delightfully trippy promotional video for the renowned brand Missoni, starring members of the Missoni family who find themselves in the roles of shamans in rapturous visions.
Created in the signature Anger style, this multi-layered and otherworldly ad is a brave move in terms of fashion advertising as the Fall/Winter knitwear collection isn’t especially showcased, with the focus on visuals, instead.
The haunting soundtrack was recorded by French sonic artist Koudlam, who surprisingly fits here even better than classic occult troubadours, Current 93 or even Coil themselves might.
For those who miss a hint of ecstatic psychedelia in modern advertising, this is a must see. As a post scriptum, here’s another example of this re-emerging trend: in Chrissie Abbott’s ceramic design for Jaguar Shoes, you can find enlightened kitties of wisdom. Scroll down for cats! 93/93!
Here’s another Cronenbergian nightmare for you! Been meaning to roll this one out for a while now, but Ross’ Yeasayer post and last week’s focus group scene on Mad Men reminded me to finally get on it.
This Nokia N900 commercial came out late last year, and leaves me a little puzzled even after third and fourth and fifth viewing. The scene opens with a view of a focus group, as seen through glass by the observing parties. A few guys brainstorm desirable phone features, while one – a black-clad, scruffy type – doesn’t seem to be interested in participating. When asked to speak up, he begins to twitching and screaming at his collaborators. Panic ensues. Then, after a series of incredibly cool-looking and terrifying man-becomes-machine contortions, he transforms into a phone. Yep. It’s an insane, abusive man-phone. Enjoy!
Witness the nerdy buffoonery of the trailer for Frank Miller’s commercial for the new scent from Gucci, Gucci Guilty. Certainly, this is not the first director-driven television spot we have featured on Coilhouse, Nadya having previously spotlighted David Lynch’s sixteen minute ad (Film? Vignette?) for Christian Dior. Gucci, however, is playing this one up as an event. The actual commercial hits a little under a month from now at the MTV Music Awards, no doubt preceding the long awaited Lady Gaga/M.I.A. Fish Slapping Dance Battle to the Death.
Entitled “Friendly Fires” “Frank Miller’s Gucci Guilty”, it stars Evan Rachel Wood and Chris Evans in a wire-frame world of imposing, CG skyscrapers and a distinct lack of color. Wood plays a femme fatale in a slinky outfit piloting a futuristic Jaguar XK120on fire while Evans plays a gentleman involved with the aforementioned seductress. It is all very tried and true ground for Miller, a man whose greatest crime has been to take his credit as a director on Sin City seriously enough to convince people with money that he actually is a director. No doubt I will be accused of various degrees of hipster posturing due to this bit of nerd rage but Miller’s green screen chicanery is truly a film-making nadir — managing to take a style that produced some excellent comic books and turning it into a tired, vapid cliche. On the other hand, those same qualities might work well for pimping an over-priced, designer fragrance and indeed “Guilty” seems to share many of the same qualities that made Calvin KleinObsession ads from the 1980s so absurd (and, some would argue, effective). It may be that Miller has finally found his niche.
Update: As BaggerMcGuirk notes in the comments, the ad’s title is not “Friendly Fires” as originally written in this post. Friendly Fires is responsible for the music in the ad.
Last month marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Czech artist Alphonse Maria Mucha, father of Art Nouveau. In celebration — and to advertise some, no doubt, absurdly priced wristwatches — photography studio Mierswa-Kluska put together a shoot chock full of decorative borders and swirly, tendril-like hair entitled “Temp Nouveau” for Plaza Watch a magazine dedicated, obviously, to the aforementioned timepieces. It’s mostly successful in replicating Mucha’s ornate style though when juxtaposed with a flesh and blood person some of his trademark design elements can seem a bit jarring. Mucha’s figures always felt integrated with his decorative flourishes and that feeling is lost here. Still, niggling criticisms aside, it’s a wonderfully imaginative concept. You can see these images and the rest of the set at a much higher resolution at the link below.
Corporate patronage does not equal crappy art, even if said art is associated with a stupid campaign. That statement may be literally true in the case of this short film commissioned by Diesel:U:Music:
The concept for “Ritalin” (a Dancing Pigeons music video directed by Tomas Mankovsky) is based on Diesel’s theme for their spring jeans collection, Fire & Water.It’s easy to see how the gonzo style of the short dovetails nicely into Diesel’s recent, polarizing “Be Stupid” commercial campaign. Still, “Ritalin” stands on its own as a feisty, snarling gem of a short film.
In this hilarious Sunsweet commercial from 1967, stylish space mod people frolic through a seri3z ov to0bz, and an indignant Ray Bradbury finds himself hawking The Prunes of Tomorrow. (Tomorrow being the year 2001, natch.) Prune fart-powered jet-packs are not envisioned in this scenario BUT THEY SHOULD BE, DAMN IT.
So… any Mad Men fans in the ‘haus? No spoilers in the comments, please, because I’m not sure if Mer and Zo have had a chance to catch last Sunday’s Season 4 premiere. But without giving away any plot points, I just want to ask: what was up with Don Draper pulling a Dov Charney with his horrible Jantzen pitch? Our colleague Copyranter eats this kind of American Apparel shit for breakfast. The Portland-based swimwear company was portrayed as a stodgy, conservative business to whom Draper declares angrily, “you’re too scared of the skin your two-piece was designed to show off.” I guess he (and/or the show’s writers) never saw Jantzen’s Vargas-inspired campaign, which ran in LIFE in 1947 (below). Dear readers, I proudly tag this post “Stroke Material” and present you with my stash of vintage Jantzen advertisements from the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. Sun-kissed beauties with Bettie Page smiles and space-age swimsuits – as well as a few clever parodies – after the jump.
