Nature is a cruel, twisted bitch; the overseer of a vast menagerie of strange and awful things. These creatures were put on this Earth to inhabit our nightmares. Witness then, the horrible distended jaws of the appropriately named Slingjaw Wrasse, filmed in excruciating slow motion so that one may fully appreciate the powerful thrust of this fish’s disgusting (or, perhaps, just lazy?) eating habits. Yes, for now they are feeding on insects, but it is only a matter of time (or a matter of a massive dose of radiation) before they develop a taste for the human brain. Evolution will take care of the rest, no doubt bestowing upon them appendages not unlike our own legs, allowing them to walk upon the land — looking every bit like a Hieronymus Bosch creation come to life — if only for long enough to crack open the soft, eggshell-like skull of a child and slurp out its contents like so much jelly. Mark my words: The time is nigh; best to wipe them out while they can only swim!
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.
The folks over at A Journey Round My Skull were so kind as to scan a 1923 copy of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination, illustrated by Harry Clarke. Clarke, an accomplished turn of the century stained glass artist and illustrator, relished anatomy and minutiae, obsessively rendering every refined cheekbone, elongated toe, hair follicle and fabric fold. I spent at least an hour poring over this Flickr set in wonderment, pausing to view each hyper-detailed image at high resolution.
Though Clarke was Aubrey Beardsley’s contemporary, and they share a fondness of stylization and monochrome, I think he surpasses mister B. not only with the amount of detail packed into his illustrations, but also with the darkness radiating from each plate. There is something inherently unhinged about these characters and a certain demonic unrest dances behind their thin, sallow faces, even in moments of outward tranquility. These haunted faces, fragile silhouettes, and rich patterns have earned Harry Clarke a spot among my top favorite illustrators of all time, right next to Von Bayros and, of course, uncle Vania. Hit the jump for a few more.
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.
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.
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.
The 1935 edition of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) by the Italian illustrator Carlo Farneti. There’s nothing that says crazed fever dream like a dejected figure facing a gauntlet of monstrous, crimson-eyed owls or a crowd, their faces twisted in fear, gathered around a towering casket.
I’ve been walking through this forest for some time now. I came here after I left work. I shut my oyster off, placed my paperwork in my squid and got on the elevator. It brought me down to the forest, and now I’m walking home. It seems like it’s taking a lot longer than usual. I begin to worry that it may be taking too long. If I’m not home in time for dinner, the terrorists will kill my girlfriend. This cannot happen. I begin to run, but it’s no use. I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. I frantically look around, trying to regain my bearings. To my left, I hear a noise. Whipping around, I notice that the brush is rustling. Suddenly, a nyala with a man’s face emerges from the brush. We stand there for a moment, staring at each other. Or maybe we stare at each other for a long time, I’m not sure. I am sure, though, that we stare at each other. Then the man-nyala slowly opens its mouth and in a deep, lugubrious voice says, “The mother’s milk is poisoned by the quiche.” Then it begins to scream. And then I wake up.
New Yorkers with a taste for the deeply weird and gorgeous and ridiculous, you owe it to yourself to go see Hausuplaying at the IFC Center this week. Actually, y’know what? Correction– you owe it to ME to go, since I live thousands of miles away and won’t be able to.
Comrades, we’re talking about something unprecedented: a high-end screening of an actual print of what was long considered one of the most legendary horror bootlegs in existence. As far as I know, this fantastical film has been nigh-impossible for Westerners to view any other way. Until now.
Kudos to comics/film guru Ben Catmull for turning me onto this raging brilliant nutterfest.
Shot in 1977 by experimental Japanese director Nobuhiko Obayashi (and based on a story written by his 7 year old daughter), Hausu is one of the most riotously demented movies ever committed to celluloid. There’s plenty I could tell you about it (and there are tons of rabid, frothing film geek reviews online if you want to go exploring) but my instinct tells me it’s best to go unprepared, and just give yourself over to being repeatedly tit-slapped by the technicolor Japanese KRAY ZAY. My own virgin viewing experience was similar to seeing The Forbidden Zone or Eraserhead or The Billy Nayer Show for the first time– mindblowing, seminal, beautiful, and fucked up as all hell. Seifuku Koo Koo!
Come to think of it, there are a lot of wonderful things happening in New York imminently: Throne of Blood (a completley different flavor of Japanese cinematic genius) is showing at Film Forum, BAM is celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King on Tuesday, and tomorrow there’s the Knickerbocker Orchestra’s WFC performance of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, with Neil Gaiman narrating. Plus, two ultra high-concept Coilhouse Issue 05 photo shoots that have been in the planning stages months are finally happening. We’ll divulge more about those shortly.
Meanwhile, seriously, DO NOT miss seeing Hausu in the theater. GO, GO, GO. If my fervent urging hasn’t yet convinced you jaded bastards that this screening is not to be missed, click below for several more clips and stills.
I’m not sure if it’s telling that Takashi Miike’s best film is also, by all accounts, his most conventional. It may be more telling that, considering the content of today’s FAM, Audition, it is one of the director’s less bizarre offerings.
Based on the novel by Ryu Murakami, Audition is the story of a single father looking for a wife. Shigeharu Aoyama’s wife has been dead for seven years and, urged by his son Shigehiko, he begins the now alien process of dating. To help in this matter, Aoyama’s film-producer friend Yoshikawa concocts a grand plan, in which they will hold mock auditions, telling applicants that they are vying for the role of Aoyama’s wife in an upcoming film. In the course of the auditions Aoyama becomes entranced by Asami Yamazaki, a seemingly soft-spoken and reserved 24 year old. He will learn, in due course, that she is anything but.
Audition really shines in its pacing, and thereby, its atmosphere. Something is not right with Asami. When we first see her on her own she is sitting in her apartment. It is an empty apartment, furnished only with a sack and a telephone. Asami sits in the empty apartment, staring at the phone and when it suddenly rings she does not move. Not even a twitch. The sack, however, is a different story.
This scene sets the tone for the rest of the film. We know that something is going to happen. We are waiting for it, mulling it over, guessing at it, and yet we could not have imagined what would finally happen and that terrible occurrence happens in one explosively brief moment of release, so brief that we are barely given time to understand its entirety before it is over and done and, in the end, we are left just as clueless and hurt and bewildered as Shigeharu Aoyama. This, then, is the genius of Audition and Miike, a director whose oeuvre, so rife with a frenetic insanity, belies the talent required to maintain such a perfect cadence. I look forward to the day when he tops it.
