Blood Tea and Red String, 2006

Described as “a David Lynchian fever dream on Beatrix Potter terrain”, Christiane Cegavske’s exquisitely-crafted stop motion tale Blood Tea and Red String is a macabre delight  and a labor of love that was 13 years in the making. The film, a dialogue-free, avant garde “fairy tale for adults” follows  two groups of anthropomorphic creatures in fancy costumes -the aristocratic White Mice and the rustic Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak – and the “struggle over the doll of their heart’s desire.”  This struggle, notes one critic, is so fascinating because the actions and emotions of these bizarre creatures “so uncannily resemble warts-and-all human behavior”. We find a “disturbing comfort” in these unconventional characters, and we see ourselves in this magic world that Cegavske creates.

This beguiling, nightmarish, deceptively whimsical world extends far beyond the phantasmagoric fable that is Blood Tea and Red String.  Cegavske, also responsible for the animation in Asia Argento’s The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, began dabbling in film making and animation at an early age (5th grade!) with an oddly satisfying-sounding claymation short about trick-or-treaters whose candy is stolen.  Not only is she an extraordinary film maker, but a talented artist in several mediums and a self professed “Creator of Many Things” with an Etsy shop full of delightful oddities  as well.

See below the cut for our recent tête-à-tête with Christiane in which we parley on the subjects of  muses and myths, future dreamscapes, and fancy edibles.

Thanks for sharing, Phoenix Marie Paris!

Eep. No doubt I’m outing myself as one seriously crusty-ass graverhippiezoomdweebie by admitting this, but –with all due respect for Stravinsky and his Firebird suite (indeed, with lifelong reverence!)– I’m finding it’s rather nice to revisit this gorgeous animation from Fantasia 2000 with a less bombastic score attached to it, namely Four Tet‘s “Love Cry”. I dunno, is that completely horrible? Should I lay off the Longbottom Leaf? Yeah, probably. Sorry. We’re all working crazy long hours over here (hence the sluggish blogging) on Issue 06, so it was either a half-baked ZOMGDISNEY post, or this animated gif of a tumbleweed…

One of the world’s most dearly loved filmmakers and animators turned 70 today. Otanjou-bi Omedetou Gozaimasu, Hayao Miyazaki-sama! Deep bows, and deep thanks.

When I experience genuine reverence for a band, it is my solemn duty to immediately share with the people of Coilhouse. Enter The Irrepressibles: a UK 10-piece that has combined all that is grand about glam, baroque, and pop, wrapped it into a beautiful, melodramatic performance package and released it into the world in early 2010 with an album titled Mirror Mirror.

Lead singer and chief saboteur Jaimie McDermott’s countertenor wails and whispers  amidst the accompanying orchestral rush in the video below. Recorded at The Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, the “Mirror Mirror Spectacle” presents the group as enchanted music-box ballerinas in origami ruffs, playing in mirrors and flickering lights.

Yes, he is singing his own name in the chorus, what of it?

Mc Dermott’s passion for the theatrical translates into performances so daring, in 2005 they cost him the entire first incarnation of the band. Fortunately, these days he seems to be managing his imagination [and his ego] more successfully. From a report in The Guardian UK:

Recently, they presented an “air spectacle” in Italy, which involved “1,000 balloons, LED lights, 21 fans and costumes made from plastic bags from Leylands”. They have performed in the middle of a lake at the Latitude festival in Southwold, and floated 10 metres off the ground at the Roundhouse in London. It’s reached a point, says McDermott, where “my band have written in their contract that they can say no to me. They’re scared about what I’m going to do to them next.”

Here’s hoping The Irrepressibles tour the world and record at least a few more albums before their leading man accidentally shoots the lot of them into space.  Meanwhile, we can buy Mirror Mirror, and keep up with them on Facebook and Twitter.

Well, dear reader, here we are on the cusp of Christmas, for some a yearly orgy of food and gifts in honor of the birth of Santa Claus and, for others, a terrible day which brings a visitation by the infernal Krampus. Regardless of whether you are gorging yourself or trembling in fear, we here at the FAM would like to offer you a few minutes of seasonal motion picture entertainment.

Today we present parts one and two of Finnish director Jelmari Helander’s thoroughly entertaining Rare Exports series, the third of which was released on December 3rd as a full length feature. Released in 2003 and 2005 they are presented as promotional/training videos for a company in Finland, Rare Exports, Inc, dealing with the tracking, capturing, training, and handling of Father Christmases for sale abroad.

It is an almost absurdly simple conceit and the entire exercise could have come off as completely banal were it not for the gravelly narration by Jonathan Hutchings and appropriately stoic performances from the main cast of Tommi Korpela, Jorma Tommila, and Tazu Ovaska, their grim visages a counterpoint to Otso Tarkela delightfully feral Kris Kringle. Jean-Noël Mustonen manages to capture both a stark beauty and palpable griminess with his camera, both of which do well to accentuate the moments of surreal humor throughout each film. For all the scenes of waving grass and abattoir-esque training rooms, these are still movies that feature three men chasing down a nude, 300 year-old Father Christmas and taking him down with tranquillizer darts, all in order to domesticate him so that he may have a child on his lap without having to worry about him eating them.

On another note, I must say that I really appreciated Helander using the same cast from film to film. Even the full-length release retains most of the original cast with the exception of Tarkela (for obvious reason) and Ovaska. Were this an American production, this may have not been the case, one need only look at the Finnish and American trailers of the new film to get a sense of how things could have gone horribly awry. It’s a small thing to be sure but I enjoy the continuity across all three films.

And that is going to wrap it up for this year’s Yuletide edition of The Friday Afternoon Movie. From everyone here, we wish you and yours a pleasant and Krampus free holiday.

image courtesy Fascination: The Jean Rollin Experience

Jean Michel Rollin Le Gentil, French film director fantastique and “gentle poet of sensual horror”,  passed away yesterday (December 15, 2010) at 72, after a long illness.

Much beloved by his fans and horror connoisseurs, lauded for his bizarre genius and the unique, intensely personal vision he brought to his films, Rollin leaves a legacy brimming with uncanny beauty and perverse, morbid delights.

Though his works contained elements of horror cinema,  Rollin insisted he did not make horror films; instead he prefers the label fantastique, which he described as “the opposite of the supernatural”.   His story telling, marked by “surreal sensibilities” and a “narcotic narrative drive”, made for mysterious (and at times maddening) viewing; but the imagery, oh, the imagery. Languid and melancholy, romantic and doom-laden, the dreamy atmospheres Rollin crafted were truly like nothing else in cinema: “…hermetically sealed worlds of desolate chateaus, solitary vampires and violent seduction”.

According to Rollin’s son Serge, who spoke with Fangoria shortly after his father’s death, “Jean was surrounded by his friends, and was looking at the photos of his two granddaughters when he died.”

Jean Rollin (via)

Rollin was calmly uncompromising and self-assured to the very end. The filmmaker’s own words about his work and perceptions of criticism are as fitting a closing statement as any:

“Honestly, I don’t care [what people call me]. Some people say I’m a genius, others consider me the greatest moron who ever stepped behind a camera. I have heard so many things said about me and my films, but these are just opinions.

I am perfectly happy with what I do, because it has always been my choice.”

The Impossible Girl is the glorious solo debut of Kim Boekbinder (previously of the duo, Vermillion Lies). Kim’s a quirky, funny, bravely vulnerable, electrifying lightning rod of a woman. Her music tends to reflect these traits in a most endearing fashion.

Video for “Impossible Girl #2” by Jim Batt. Song inspired by Kate Rannells.

She recorded the 18 tracks of her record in increments earlier this year at studios in Maine and Boston with Sean Slade (Radiohead, Dresden Dolls) and Benny Grotto (Aerosmith) and an assortment of talented session players. She’s also been traveling internationally on a shoestring budget, bringing her songs of love, loss, self-discovery, sex, drugs, and nuclear physics to audiences in Berlin, Melbourne, and New York City.

Photo by Heike Schneider-Matzigkeit.

The Impossible Girl is yet another wonderful example of how crowdsourcing hubs like Kickstarter are enabling creative people to self-produce art that would otherwise be very difficult for them to afford. It’s a brave new world full of, ya know… POSSIBILITY. And community. And rainbows. And unicorns. Yay!

Kim’s album drops today. You can buy a copy in MP3 or CD format (the packaging for which features an exquisite portrait of The Impossible Girl by longtime Coilhouse fave, Travis Louie), and she’s offering all kinds of fancy package deals that include posters, limited edition eye makeup kits by Sweet Libertine, and an Impossible Girl paper doll by (yet another beloved Coilhouse comrade) Molly Crabapple.

After a brief hiatus, David Forbes’ All Tomorrows column, your informal classroom on the glories of sci-fi’s Deviant Age, returns to Coilhouse. Welcome back, David!

Paul took a deep breath to still his trembling. “If I call out there’ll be servants on you in seconds and you’ll die.”

“Servants will not pass your mother who stands guard outside that door. Depend on it. Your mother survived this test. Now it’s your turn. Be honored. We seldom administer this to men-children.”

Curiosity reduced Paul’s fear to a manageable level. He heard truth in the old woman’s voice, no denying it. If his mother stood guard outside… if this were truly a test… And whatever it was, he knew himself caught in it, trapped by that hand at his neck: the gom jabbar. He recalled the response from the Litany against Fear as his mother had taught him out of the Bene Gesserit rite.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

Chilton published car manuals. So it must have come as some surprise, 45 years ago, when, out of nowhere, they released a lengthy, phenomenally strange science fiction novel by a nearly unknown journalist. The man’s agent wasn’t even enthusiastic about the manuscript and it had seen rejection from every reputable sci-fi publishing house before squeaking into the pages of Analog.

Dune, read the imposing cover, with its evocatively psychedelic sand swirls and tiny white figures straining against an implied storm. The John Schoenherr art revealed little about the plot or themes inside, other than to convey a sense of struggle and desolation in an otherworldly place.

Opening it up, the reader was plunged into a story of universe-shaking drugs, dynastic backstabbing and heterodox mysticism sprinkled with a tumble of words (Bene Gesserit, Kwisatz Haderach, Sardaukar, gom jabbar) so strange as to constitute a second language. Whatever the sci-fi readers of the day might have expected, this was doubtlessly not it. By all rights, this unexpected book should have sunk beneath the proverbial sands, awaiting rediscovery in a friendlier artistic age.

Instead, after a somewhat tepid start, it proved a runaway best-seller, sweeping every award sci-fi had to offer. Dune would go on to define the rest of Herbert’s life and ripple into the surrounding culture with an impact that no one, including its author, could have foreseen.

In many ways Dune was the epic Omega to the Alpha of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings; released about a decade before. It was sci-fi’s answer to fantasy’s magnum opus, and its only book that can rival Tolkien’s in terms of cultural influence. Herbert’s masterpiece proved tenaciously infectious, its tendrils stretching into all sorts of unexpected corners of the culture, with even its mantras showing up as warning or inspiration.

What is it about this ornate myth that keeps fascinating new generations, why has Dune outlasted its era with such influence?

…but Douglas Burgdorff had one of the best videos of all time. ONE OF THE BEST OF ALL TIME!”

The following clip is not safe for work or for the squeamish. For all the rest of you, no rx ENJOY.

Via Kitty Doom.

The PATH —– Launch Trailer from Tale of Tales on Vimeo.

Belgian avant-garde Game Developers Tale of Tales have made a name for themselves as an independent game development studio, creating genre defying art-games. Armed with ambitious vision and an unrelenting sense of artistic integrity, Tale of Tales co-founders Michaël Samyn and Auriea Harvey cater to an audience outside of mainstream gamers providing complex, meaningful gameplay experiences, and offering a “different kind of story” for “a different kind of people”.

One of their first offerings, The Endless Forest, is a multi-player game set in a soothing, bucolic landscape; there are no goals to achieve, or rules to follow – “just run through the forest and see what happens.”

The Graveyard, launched in 2008, is a short tale which places the player in control of an old woman traversing a straight and narrow path  across a gloomy graveyard. It is described as “an icon” of the studio’s work as a result of the game’s “apparent simplicity and vagueness”.

Tale of Tales next endeavor, The Path, is loosely categorized as “adventure-horror”  and was inspired from the classic fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood.  There is one rule in the game, which needs to be broken. There is but one goal. And when you attain it, you die. It is  “a  game about playing, and failing, about embracing life, perhaps by accepting death.” The legendary SWANS member Jarboe, along with multitalented co-composer Kris Force, provide an dynamic, unsettling narrative and score.

Based on Oscar Wilde’s Salome, a  play banished from the stages for over 50 years, Fatale is the studio’s latest gaming project.  An interactive 3D vignette, it offers the same sort of “observational immersionist” approach that Tale of Tales has become known for.  The player is encouraged to “explore a living tableau filled with references to the legendary tale and enjoy the moonlit serenity of a fatal night in the orient.”

2010 saw the release by Tale of Tales of Vanitas,  an app for iPhone and iPod touch.  Referencing the still life paintings from the 16th and 17th century, Vanitas presents one with a  3D box filled with “intriguing objects…to create pleasant arrangements that inspire and enchant”, and is touted as a “a memento mori for your digital hands.”  The app includes random quotations on the topic of life and vanity and music by avant cellist Zoë Keating.

Michael and Auriea graciously gave of their time to provide a thought-provoking look into the passionate philosophies behind Tale of Tale’s creative projects. See below the cut for the full interview.