Some intense POV footage of an electrician free-climbing a 1768-foot-high broadcasting tower. (Warning: If you’re remotely phobic of heights, you do not want. DOOOOO NOT WANT. Skip it.)
In addition to pulling a heavy bag of tools up behind him on a cord, this valiant man is also undoubtedly laboring somewhat under the additional weight of his PENDULOUSLY ENORMOUS BALLS OF LIGHTNING-REPELLING STEEL.
Even if you’re not scared of heights, this has gotta be one of the most challenging commutes on earth. (Or, to be more accurate, away from the earth.) The narrator’s cheerfully stoic delivery adds an odd 50s educational film vibe to the clip. “It’s good to take a break, and take a look around while you rest.” Oh, is it? Personally, my butthole’s trying to climb into my ribcage just watching this, but I’ll take your word for it, sir.
Welcome to a Russian Roulette episode of The Friday Afternoon Movie, brought to you by my lack of functioning brain cells and a YouTube search for “documentary”. Today we present the kind of programming many viewers of FOX TV might remember in and around the time of the X-Files. Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? begs the titular question in the voice of an announcer for a monster truck rally with a smooth chaser of X-Files alum Mitch Pileggi to help lend an air of mystery and intrigue. This is all in the service of one of my favorite, inconsequential conspiracy theories — an elaborate hoax perpetrated by NASA in order to stick it to the Communists. Or not. I’ve never really been sure as to why NASA would go through such lengths to fake such an event; “Communists” is merely a solid go-to for any conspiracy taking place before the fall of the Soviet Union. Either way, it’s 40 minutes of “experts” with backyard bunkers explaining how the American flag could not flutter without an atmosphere and even hints at murder most foul. Enjoy.
BBC’s Horizon is a philosophical and scientific series that still runs today. Its opening episode in 1964 featured Coilhouse patron saint, Buckminster Fuller, along with the program’s mission statement:
The aim of Horizon is to provide a platform from which some of the world’s greatest scientists and philosophers can communicate their curiosity, observations and reflections, and infuse into our common knowledge their changing views of the universe.
Later that year, science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke was invited to share his visions of the future. Some are scary, warning us of the world becoming a giant suburb – right up there with the terror of Idiocracy, which still gives my nightmares. Some are encouraging, though yet-unrealized. My favorite speculations include: domed communities on icecaps, holidays under the sea, planetary engineering, and my top favorite remains recording directly onto the brain [please, yes?].
Though we’re running out of time to camp on either of the Poles, who’s to say at least some of us won’t be vacationing on the Moon in a fifty years? After all, Clarke’s prediction of us communicating instead of commuting was dead on, cryogenics are in full swing, and The Replicator exists, if only as 3D printing and spimes, for now. Watch the segment below in two parts, then see also:
All hail the caterwauling Carmen Orange. Venerated demigod of public broadcasting, mesmeric and disturbing in equal measure, she haunts the collective memory of multiple generations of Sesame Street-watching children. According to a couple of unconfirmed reports online, she was animated by Jim Henson himself.
Very sad news out of Japan yesterday as it was confirmed that visionary director Satoshi Kon had indeed passed away, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 46.
Kon began his career as a manga artist, working with Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo. He wrote a section of Otomo’s anthology film Memories entitled “Magnetic Rose” and in 1997 he made his directorial debut with Perfect Blue. This was followed by Millennium Actress in 2001, Tokyo Godfathers in 2003, the television show Paranoia Agent in 2004 (featured previously on Coilhouse), and finally Paprika in 2006. At the time of his death he was working on the film The Dream Machine which may be released posthumously.
Jack Horkheimer, beloved TV personality and executive director of the Miami Space Transit Planetarium, has died, age 72. Countless legions of us grew up watching the gruff-voiced, wide-eyed astronomer hosting Star Gazer and Star Hustler on public television. Week after week, decade after decade, he’d walk in front of that green screen and excitedly tell us what we could expect to see in the evening sky. His enthusiasm was deeply infectious. He taught us all sorts of things about the universe, and he made us smile.
Farewell, farewell fellow star gazer. We’ll keep looking up.
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.
Between 1976 and 1981, the saucy female dance troupe Legs & Co. reigned supreme on the BBC television series Top of the Pops. Sometimes their skits were impressively, lavishly corny. Other times, um, not quite so lavish, but still epically cheeztacular:
Via Dogmeat. (The highway is his only girlfriend ’cause he goes by so quick.)
That was their 1977 take on the incredible Mr. Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner”. It’s probably the single most atrocious discopunk mashup I’ve ever seen, short of this. (And yet, Leg & Co’s interpretation really isn’t that much more addled than the Sex Pistols‘ cover, is it?)
Silver lining: that TOTP clip just sent me on an two hour-long Richman/Modern Lovers binge on YouTube. They’re compiled below for your own viewing pleasure.
Below is an unforgettable and somewhat controversial piece of U.S. history. Commissioned in 1951 by the US government, Duck and Cover was distributed as a children’s safety education film that taught atom bomb preparedness.
This film is chock-full of alarming statements like, “There are two kinds of attack: with warning and with no warning” and “Tony knows that the bomb can explode any time of the year, day or night, and he’s ready for it!”, over striking footage of schoolchildren dropping to the ground in the middle of play, “enemy planes” dimming the skies, and the U.S. military at the ready. Made during the height of the red scare, Duck and Cover feels more like a Pinko-paranoia-induction tactic than a safety film, especially when we consider that all of the methods shown would be absolutely useless at ground zero. From the film’s Wikipedia page:
For those not at ground zero, there would be a delay between the flash (indicating the need to duck and cover) and the arrival of the blast wave, which could shatter windows and cause other blast or impact injuries (although electromagnetic radiation, such as infra-red and gamma rays, would arrive at the observer’s position at the same time as the light flash, leaving the observer no time to find cover from these particular aspects of a nuclear detonation). A newspaper would, at least in theory, block alpha radiation although skin does this anyway, provide some shielding from the heat (IR, visible and UV) radiation and small debris, though it would have no effect on the beta and gamma radiation or on the shockwave that would accompany an atomic detonation.
Watch Duck and Cover below and pay close attention. After all, you never know when the bright flash may come.
