If Joseph Merrick had solved the Lament Configuration.
“Dear Coilhouse,
My name is Katarzyna Konieczka, I am an avant-garde fashion designer from Poland. I have been browsing through your website and while reading the blog I came across photos of Joseph Merrick’s head sculpture. I would like to take the opportunity of inviting you to consider some of my work which took his inspiration from his life and condition. In particular, one of my models from the ‘Very Twisted Kingdom’ collection. The costume depicted in the attached illustration consists of a metal ruff and other elements resembling orthodontic medical equipment in reference to his illness which had not been diagnosed at the time.”
SOLD. Ten minutes later, I’m still picking my jaw up off the floor after perusing Konieczka’s site. Many more images, after the jump. In addition to the images on Konieczka’s page, many more images can be found in Marcin Szpak’s portfolio.
It’s all about robots and sugar cubes this afternoon. A crunchy animation with a ’60s space age feel, Une Mission Ephémère was crafted in 1993 by Polish animator Piotr Kamler and scored by experimental/musique concrète composer Bernard Parmegiani. The best part of this clip is watching the way the robot’s facial expressions change as he sculpts playthings and conducts experiments while floating in his little bowl. More clips by Kamler – including Chronopolis, which was his first and only full-length feature – can be found at UbuWeb. Chronopolis and Kamler’s work is often characterized as “science fiction,” but have more in common with Borges than with Star Wars, as one excellent write-up on Kamler notes. [Another hat-tip to Wobbly.]
The music video for “Le Petit Train” by ’80s duo Les Rita Mitsouko was an elaborate production filmed in Bombay. Dancing her way through the infectiously upbeat tune, sari-clad frontwoman Catherine Ringer asks, “Petit train où t’en vas-tu? Train de la mort, mais que fais tu?” The lyrics speak of serpentine trains passing through the countryside, carrying children and grandparents “to the flames through the fields.” As the song reaches its climax, Ringer – whose father was an artist and a concentration camp survivor – trades the fixed smile of her Bollywood dance routine for close-ups that reveal tears flowing down her face while she continues to sing. Ringer’s background in avant-garde theater can be glimpsed in many of Les Rita Mitsouko’s music videos, which appear after the jump.
Les Rita Mitsouko was formed in the early 80s by Ringer and guitarist Fred Chichin in France. Early in their career, Ringer and Chichin had the fortune of working with two great producers: their eponymous first record was produced by Conny Plank, famous for his work with Kraftwerk, Neu and other various bands associated with krautrock. Their second album was Tony Visconti’s top pop project after David Bowie. A year later, the duo was featured in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Keep Your Right Up.
Many band biographies omit the fact that prior to her musical career, Catherine Ringer was an underage porn actress. If you Google this fact, you will find some shiiiit (literally) that’s highly NSFW. I bring this up because I find it empowering that Ringer went on to become one of France’s biggest pop stars (though they were arguably more popular elsewhere in Europe). Had they been an American act, would Les Rita Mitsouko have reached the same level of success? I think back to the heartbreaking interview that Marilyn Chambers gave a few years before she died, recounting with sadness a life of failed attempts to break into “straight” film, and have my doubts.
In remembrance of Dennis Hopper, who passed away on May 29th, The FAM presents David Lynch’s 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet, a film that did perhaps just as much for Hopper’s career as it did for Lynch’s. I would imagine that most, if not all, Coilhouse readers have seen this film at least once. Starring the aforementioned Mr. Hopper as the psychotic Frank Booth as well as Kyle McLachlan, Laura Dern, and Isabella Rossellini, Blue Velvet is the story of a small town that hides dark and terrible secrets. It’s a classic Lynchian theme by now, but coming after the disaster that was 1984’s Dune — a film that I must admit, I like very much and a book, I must admit, I dislike as equally — it was a revelation.
Much of the film’s success must be placed at the feet of Mr. Hopper who, after accepting the role of Frank Booth (he was Lynch’s third choice for the part) was said to have exclaimed “I’ve got to play Frank! I am Frank!” His portrayal of Booth: impulsive, unpredictable, and terrifically violent, makes for one of the scariest characters in all of film. His constantly shifting moods and disturbing, recursive, Oedipal-tinged sexual proclivities, combined with his iconic nitrous oxide kit, are the perfect foil for McLauchlan’s naive, amateur detective. It’s a truly masterful performance.
In many ways Blue Velvet may be Lynch’s crowning achievement, and part of reason for that, I would maintain, is due to its relative simplicity. The imagery he uses here is powerful, but it is also far less obtuse than he has a tendency to be. In other words the signal to noise ratio of meaningful symbols and Stuff David Lynch Thought Looked Pretty is fairly low, making for what I feel is a much more complete and perhaps enjoyable experience.
At the very least, it’s a chance to see Dennis Hopper at his crazed, drug-addled best, every line spewed wild-eyed, frothing, and peppered with profanity. He shall be missed.
Ellis Nadler’s fictitious deck of divination cards is a perfect combination of woodcut aesthetic and Hieronymus Bosch insanity; the tools of fortunetellers from some far-off, imaginary realm. Beautifully rendered they are the kind of work that begs to be made into a physical object.
Update: Reader Fritz Bogott contacted Mr. Nadler and posted his response in the comments:
“‘They are currently being made as a hand-printed fine art limited edition (details available later this year). However, due to great interest from people visiting my website I have now made them available to buy online as high quality digital prints. Just follow this link.’“
I think that any fan of David Lynch’s cult-classic television series Twin Peaks will agree that what the show’s legacy has really been lacking is a hip-hop tribute. Luckily, nerdcore rapper MC Chris has stepped up to the challenge, dropping an Autotuned ode to one of the most amazingly strange shows to ever appear on the magic picture box, presented here with fan-made video.
In an effort to flesh out its library, today the FAM presents Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), the 1928 film by surrealists Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí and the quintessential “art film”. Most famous for its opening scene, in which a man, played by Buñuel, slices open the eye of a woman with a straight razor, Un Chien Andalou is an almost perfect summation of the Surrealist movement. Things happen in Un Chien Andalou, their relationship to one another dictated by the logic of dreams. Scenes lurch violently along in time and characters exhibit a confusing, rapid-fire succession of emotions. It’s a movie that is open to a vast range of interpretations, and in true Surrealist form Buñuel rejected every one of them, stating, “Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis.”
Despite the director’s expectations — they supposedly attended the premier with pockets full of rocks should a horrified audience become violent — the film was well received. In a sad twist, both of the leading actors of the film eventually committed suicide. Pierre Batcheff overdosed on Veronal in a hotel in Paris in 1932, and Simone Mareuil doused herself in gasoline and burned herself to death in a public square in Périgueux, Dordogne in 1954. In the ensuing years since its debut Un Chien Andalou has been recognized as a seminal moment in the history of cinema, a staple of any film buff’s diet. Now the FAM can rest easy, knowing that there is at least some modicum of credibility found herein should it be placed under the glaring eye of some future, internet historian.
One mustn’t get too put out by who one’s friends choose to play with.
So goes the story of Ian Worrel’s short animated film, Second Wind featuring an old man and his giant feline traveling companion. It’s a beautiful six minutes, rife with expressive animation and a haunting score. Just the thing to perk up a boring Wednesday afternoon.
A gripping masterpiece of neo-noir psychological suspense. A mesmerizing meditation on the mysterious nature of identity. An inscrutable, profoundly unsettling fever dream, issued from deep within the director’s anguished psyche. A phantasmagorical family saga that ends in murder and betrayal.
Via Jo Weldon‘s fascinating Formspring page comes this lo-fi snippet of Dada neo-burlesque, courtesy of the cheekily brilliant “reigning Cheese Queen of Coney Island” a.k.a. “The Girl With The 44DD Brain”, Miz Nasty Canasta:
(NSFW, and if hysterical cackling and/or car alarms set your teeth on edge, better skip it.)
The Brooklyn-based Canasta, who’s an inveterate pop culture geek, first came to my attention when io9 covered one of her gigs as a co-producer and performer in the whip-smart Pinchbottom Burlesque, which regularly features theatrical nudie shows based on sci fi to Biblical to classical literary references from Doctor Who to Dickens to Star Trek. Whenever she takes the stage, Canasta strives to “create a dazzling spectacle of perplexing proportions.”
Perplexing to say the least! And irreverent, and sexy, and hilarious. If you think the car alarm steez is outre, wait until you get a load of her signature Groucho routine! (For the sake of our darling worker bee readers, it’s after the jump.)
