Nnnf. No words, really. Well, except perhaps to remind readers that this is a woman who demanded that Max Factor sprinkle half an ounce of gold dust in her wigs to keep them sufficiently glittery, sucked lemon wedges between takes to keep her mouth muscles tight, and whose make-up artist once divulged that Marlene Dietrich kissed so hard, she needed a new coat of lipstick after every smooch. The tuxedoed “Queen of the World” is as commanding and stylish today as she was when Morocco was filmed in 1930.
Heads up, Pennsylvanians. Cabaret noir performer Nicki Jaine will host an evening of Dietrich’s music in honor of the singer/actress’ 106th birthday on Thursday, November 8 at the Stockton Inn.
Nicki Jaine’s velvety contralto is sure to thrill Dietrich fans to their very marrow. Talk about two great tastes that taste great together. Just like strawberries hotdogs and champagne (once said to be Marlene’s favorite meal) only decidedly less zaftig.
This vengeful cult classic starring our beloved Vincent Price has got it all. Art Deco by way of the 70s. Clockwork orchestras. A creepy, yet relentlessly stylish assistant named Vulnavia. (Yes, I said Vulnavia.) Bats. Bees. Deadly frog masks. A killer musical score by Basil Kirchin. Rat-induced plane crashes. Unicorn impalement. (Yes, I said unicorn impalement.) And the list goes on.
Perfect Day of the Dead fare. Watch at your peril.
By the way, if anyone wants me to name my secondborn after them (my firstborn shall be called Vulnavia, natch), all they have to do is give me an original mint condition copy of this poster:
As far as I’m concerned, Grace Jones was the It Girl of the 80s. Her partnerships with Jean-Paul Goude and Keith Haring yielded some of the most iconic, otherworldly images of the decade.
photo by Jean-Paul Goude
She was valorous, donning multiple personas that confronted racial and sexual stereotypes, her “jungle cat” performances lampooning primitivist readings of the black female body in much the same way Josephine Baker‘s send-ups in banana/tusk skirts had half a century earlier. She played a mean accordion, rocked a buzz cut like no other, was witty and elegant, but did not hesitate to smack a bitch when the occasion called for it.
I didn’t even know there was such a thing as industrial music when I stumbled onto Janet’s Rhythm Nation 1814 film in my pre-teens, but I knew that I’d made a very important discovery. Later there would be the mix tapes and the radio shows that exposed me to my favorite music in its true form, but until then, isolated in suburbia and still learning English, Janet’s video was my first glimpse into the aesthetics of my favorite musical genre.
Having re-watched Rhythm Nation today, I have come to a very important conclusion: Janet Jackson is even more ÜBER than I initially thought. Here’s why:
The uniforms! God, the uniforms. Those gloves with the riveted metallic plates? Hot.
“We are a nation with no geographic boundaries, bound together by our beliefs.” NSK State, anyone? Laibach, take note: Janet beat you to it by 4 years.
The entire clip takes place in a steamy factory that recalls Test Dept’s Total State Machine.
Despite the strong percussion and electronic elements, I’d be pushing it if I claimed that this awesome song was industrial. But you know what? Janet created this socially-conscious record on her terms, in the face of a record company pressuring her to only sing about love and relationships. Who knows what this could have been, had there not been that pressure at all?
Hideaki Anno is still best known for Evangelion, but of no less significance is his gorgeous live action film “Ritual”. Unknown to me at the time of viewing, Ritual is based on a novel written by the female lead Ayako Fujitani – Japanese daugher of Steven Segal, and the Director is played by an actual indie director Shunji Iwai. The cinematography is absolutely jaw-dropping, and the plot is wonderful as well. While some of the film’s trailers seem to have marketed it as a horror film, this is not the case at all. Instead, Ritual explores human nuance.
After a chance meeting a jaded filmmaker finds inspiration as he documents a strange girl who dresses up in costumes, paints her face, calls every tomorrow her birthday and lives alone in a huge abandoned warehouse she’s made her world. He communicates with her through his video camera, drawn slowly into her psyche and her fantasy life. Without giving away too much, I propose you stay away from too much research and reviews, and see this film with fresh eyes, as I did.
Yes, you read that headline correctly. The Bloody Digusting News website reports: “last night at the 2007 Scream Awards Paris Hilton was nearly booed off the stage once again, but by the time they finished showing the first ever footage from Darren Bousman’s Repo! The Genetic Opera all of the boos had turned into cheers.” This rock opera about organ repossession takes us to the year 2056, in which a worldwide epidemic causes organ failure on a massive scale, enabling a biotech firm called GeneCo to begin renting out genetically-perfect organs to those who can afford them. The nature of the program is similar to a car lease, and the firm sends out a repo man if the recipient can’t make payments. In addition to Paris Hilton and Nivek Ogre, other talents involved in the project, on and off the screen, include singer Poe, Daniel Ash from Bauhaus, Yoshiki Hayashi from X Japan, Bill Mosely and Sarah Brightman. Ogre plays Pavi, the younger son of the evil mastermind behind GeneCO, and Hilton is cast as Amber Sweet, a “sexy aspiring opera diva and scalpel-slut will stop at nothing to get her moment in the spotlight.” Is this to be the Rocky Horror Picture Show of our generation? I sure hope so!
At this very moment, in my hot little hands, I hold a copy of 80s scream queen Linnea Quigley‘s ineffably rad “Horror Workout” video.
Much to the disappointment of B-movie fans everywhere, this pinnacle of home fitness instruction has yet to be made available on DVD. The VHS cassette sells for anywhere between 50 and 100 clams online.
Here’s a taste of what you’re missing…
EDIT 05/29/2009: Good news, boys and ghouls! You can now buy an autographed DVD-R of Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout on the scream queen’s website, www.linneaquigley.net.
Honestly, I hadn’t been missing NYC at all since I moved out west last May. Then the autumn equinox hit. Ever since, I’ve been aching to take a long bike ride through the fiery foliage of Prospect Park.
Gordon and Morrison previously worked together on Morrison’s full length movie Decasia. Both pieces build around a very simple premise; film is a fragile medium. Nearly all of that old nitrate-based film stock is too grimy and scratched, rotting and stinking of vinegar to be of much use to film preservationists. Morrison salvaged 70 minutes of archival footage from someone’s rubbish bin, stitched it together and re-shot film that showed decay or was actively decaying, frame-by-frame, using an optical printer.
The cumulative effect is breathtaking, and for reasons that are difficult to articulate, will always remind me of New York in the fall.
I always hated the writing of Lovecraft – how many tedious descriptions of shrubbery can you bear? – but paradoxically adore everything that’s inspired by his work, from Cthulhu Sex Magazine to the song “Colours Out of Space” by Evil’s Toy to stories like “Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar” by Gaiman to the Tigerlilies/Alexander Hacke Mountains of Madness project to Hello Cthulhu to, most recently and hilariously, to LOLCTHULHU macros. Like a bad song that reveals itself to be a masterpiece after a good remix, the Cthulhu Mythos lend themselves to brilliant interpretation time and time again.
In its most recent incarnation, Lovecraft’s work is to become a film called CTHULHU. The film deals with gay themes, anti-Bush sentiments, the Apocalypse, an it features – get ready for this – Tori Spelling! As some fans have already commented, sadly and quite surprisingly Spelling does not play Cthulhu. Go watch the trailer right now.
I can’t have been any older than 8 or 9 when my brain was permanently warped byThe Adventures of Mark Twain. My folks though they were treating me to fluffy kid’s fare. They were quite wrong. A full length feature directed by claymation innovator Will Vinton, the film follows the existensial journey of Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher as crew members aboard the funky, Verne-inspired flying machine of a very suicidal Mark Twain.
It’s been well documented that Twain –who was born and died with the arrival of Halley’s Comet– was a deeply depressed, reclusive misanthrope in his later years. In the film, disgusted with the human condition, Twain is determined to hunt down the comet and crash into it. “I will continue on doing my duty, but when I get to the other side, I will use my considerable influence to have the human race drowned again, this time drowned good. No omissions. No ark.”
Worried about their own fate, the kids plot to hijack the ship. With the aid of an inter-dimensional portal aboard, they meet several characters from Twain’s various short stories, including Captain Stormfield, the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and The Mysterious Stranger (this last sequence has got to be one of the impressive displays of clay animation around, not to mention the creepiest):
