The Brown Bunny

An update on Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny. Apparently it's been recut and it's won a critic's prize at the Vienna Film Festival. Here's Chris Fujiwara's take.

Forbidden Periodicals

I remember these kinds of forbidden periodicals spied from the corner of my eye at squeaky magazine racks--at the bottom, next to the detective magazines more than thirty years ago. More than likely it was an Eerie Publication, which specialized in horror comics (in magazine format, in order to beat the Comics Code) with especially gruesome covers. Sometimes, the art directors at Eerie got a little lazy. See (1) See (2)... Sometimes they added way too many monsters.

Sometimes Jawdropping

A great and sometimes jawdropping collection of cool but sleazy pulp cover art of the fifties and sixties from Hip Pocket Sleaze, including this oddly prescient cover of a cheap sixties paperback.

Dr. Wertham Presumes

Dr. Wertham Presumes. A selection of the "worst" in comic books up until Frederic Wertham wrote his silly book. Then again, if it wasn't for the un-Jung Wertham, we would never have known the lowdown on Batman and Robin.

Keep Hope Alive

Thanks a lot, Bob. Unlike today's pampered overcompensated stars, who feel they're above shilling product unless they're whoring themselves in Japan, in earlier and simpler times, big time celebrities like Bob Hope had no compunction with hawking razor blades, cigarettes, and chocolate. He also had no compunction about doing an anti-gay bashing PSA in 1988.

Pee Movie List

"The Pee Movie List is intended to be the world's most comprehensive and thorough guide to urination in the cinema." It's a form of scholarship, at least.

Next Stop: Nowhere!

Next Stop Nowhere was the the title of the infamous Quincy Punk Rock Episode. It aired in December of '82, but everyone spoke of punk rock as some sort of new fad. Dig the prefab nihilism of Mayhem and their stirring balls out "Get Up (I Want to See You Choke)". Note the embarassment and sly ridicule of actual fans being employed as extras to lend some local color.

Ingmar!!

A photo gallery featuring the work of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. Also, an interesting article from Bright Lights Film Journal on how Bergman has undeservedly fallen in favor with critics and scholars.

More Werewolf, More Vampire Woman

Here's an addendum to the latest movie poster essay on The Werewolf vs. Vampire Woman. I rented out a ratty looking VHS copy that, based on the condition of the cassette and the cover art, must have been at least 15 years old. The version was called Blood Moon, though, and the copy, considering its age, was in pretty good condition, probably because no one's watched it in those 15 years. Which is a shame, because while by conventional criteria, it's not a good movie at all (the usual suspects: Naschy's casual acting style, where he gives El Santo a run for his money for expressiveness and emotional shading; the murky day for night photography, the bane of the zoom; the old saw narrative; half-there filmmaking). But it's not bad either. I would even venture to say that there are moments in La Noche de Walpurgis that approach pure cinema poetry, in the sense that filmic poetry is an instant in a movie that's more unwieldy than any string of words can explain, obfuscate, conceal, or replicate. There was a complication of dumb emotion and clinical eyeballing, a frisson and derision that I experienced watching two vampire women play ring-around-the-rosies in slow motion (in a dream sequence no less). It was an odd moment within the context of the film; but those 15 or so seconds of cinema made the rest of the 90 minute movie seem worthwhile.

It's About Time

Another silly sitcom from the 'sixties's, It's About Time dealt with astronauts breaking the time barrier and landing on prehistoric earth. Despite its fast and loose interpretations of Einsteinian physics, it played for only season on CBS in '66-'67, and never made it on syndication as far as I know. I seem to remember it vaguely, especially it's theme song.

New Poster Essay

It's about time...it's about space...about strange people in the strangest place... actually it's about the new poster and essay which you can find here. Took me a bit longer than I expected, but that's what happens when you subject yourself to self-imposed deadlines.

Unused DVD Commentaries

Unused DVD commentaries from McSweeney's: Ann Coulter and Dinesh D'Souza on Aliens

COULTER: It's not Hicks's fault. It's Gorman's. Hicks has a shotgun. And I have to say, my heart sort of pitter-patters when he cocks it. I just like the sound. Oh, my. Here the Corporation Marines have stumbled across a wall-implanted nest of dead and near-dead colonists. My question about this sequence, though, is this: If a woman is pregnant with an alien, does she have the right to an abortion? D'SOUZA: That's a tricky one. COULTER: Because we see here that some of the colonists have, in fact, been impregnated by aliens. D'SOUZA: I'm going to make an uncharacteristic admission for both of us: this is a tough, complicated issue. On the one hand you have these unborn aliens, and their lives are sacred. But really, these humans are in no way equipped to take care of them adequately once they're born. COULTER: So they should go ahead and give birth to the alien, but destroy it immediately afterwards? D'SOUZA: I think so, yes.

Also, Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky on The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Bunny's Brown

Is Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny as bad as everyone's making it out to be? Its Cannes Festival premiere welcomed by catcalls, boos, and a litany of the most scathing and virulent pans, many critcs (stately, plump Roger Ebert among them) considered it the worst feature in the entire history of the Cannes International Film Festival. After the movie's less than frosty reception, Gallo apologized for the film and vowed never to make another. The next day, Gallo fervently defended his film. "I'm still very moved by it," he said.

There are other defenders of The Brown Bunny, but one wonders if it will even see a small and narrow theatrical release, considering that the climax of the film consists of a graphic ten minute fellatio sequence starring, of course, Gallo, and his co-star Chloe Sevigny. The first film maudit of 2003.

Call me perverse, but I would really like to see this (and not just for the blow-job either). We need more outlandish ideas, Russian roulette with a movie camera --not being afraid to fall flat on your face, not falling victim to the fear of failure, not giving a shit. Vincent Gallo, a lot of people consider you a prick, and you may well be, but you decided to make the movie you really wanted to make and pissed off a lot of people in the process. For that I salute you. I think I'll be watching Buffalo '66 tonight.

Elephant Wins!

Some quick news about the awards at the Cannes film festival. Gus Van Sant wins big with his Columbine inspired Elephant with both the Palme d'Or and the best director's prize.

Groovy Film Music

Looking for some groovy film music? Look no further, and direct your browser to Exploitika! 60's & 70's Soundtrack Radio, where they have two streams running (under the auspices of Live365), Cinegroovin', which dedicates itself to the groovier '60's and '70's movie sounds, and Bloodstream, which specializes in horror film soundtracks from the '60's to the present. If it's any indication, I've been listening a lot to the Cinegroovin' stream. A lot funkier and jazzier. If you're into prog, you might dig the darker sounds of Bloodstream ( a lot of Keith Emerson, Rik Wakeman, and, of course, Goblin.

For more streaming sounds, head over to A Fistful of Soundtracks which, maybe not as esoteric as Exploitika, carries a lot of cool movie sounds, complete with back announcing like a college dj! Then you have Streamingsoundtracks.com, while more mainstream than the others I've listed, has a choice of streams based on bandwidth, and, independent of Live365, carries no advertising. It also has the largest library, so it probably won't be prone to repeating itself as the others.

For info on some of the groovier tracks, check out Score, Baby!, where you can find audio samples and cover pics of '70's Six Million Dollar Man and Kojak kid comic book/records, which I saw when I was a kid, but was of course too cool to ask my parents to buy. Stupid! Movie Grooves, out of the UK, specializes in selling this lind of esoterica, like Kosmos, a collection of cues from '60's and '70's East German science fiction films.

Intertitle-o-Rama

Intertitle-o-Rama is a wild and very interesting collection of the oddest intertitles found in silent movies. Be warned: some of the expressions used in these old (80 to 90 year old) film intertitles are quite quaint and silly, while others would nowadays be quite scandalous and downright insensitive. No doubt, in 90 years time, much of the expressions of our popular culture would seem as dusty and incorrect.

Here's one I particularly like, from Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 version of The Ten Commandments:

"I told you I'd break the Ten Commandments - and look what I've got for it, SUCCESS! That's all that counts! I'm sorry if your God doesn't like it - but this is my party, not His!"

Here's another beauty, from The Thief of Bagdad:

"You shall add joy to the wedding festival by being boiled in oil."

Dylan by Scorsese

Seems rather odd that it should be the BBC backing a Bob Dylan career retrospective-interview-documentary directed by Martin Scorsese, rather than an American media conglomerate. Wouldn't this be the coup to end all coup de graces? I mean, aren't these two men, no matter how they would place (or not place) on your own personal pantheon, the most influential American artists in their own particular fields still living? It'll be on PBS here in the states, but it'll probably be on during pledge time. I'll probably be watching in any case.

Pimpadelic Wonderland

I grew up during the 'seventies, but I didn't see any of these when I was a kid. Maybe as a jaded adult in the 'eighties and 'nineties, but that's thanks to home video. A lot of wacked out stuff here. Some worthy of tracking down. From Pimpadelic Wonderland, a fine sight indeed.

Film Noir Posters

The one spot of color in the otherwise monochromatic world of Film Noir was probably it's advertising. The guns, the painted faces of femme fatales, the garish green and reds suggesting menace, the violence of the typography, promised the cruelty, but none of the moral ambivalence of the best of the Noir films. This is not a slam against the posters, but, rather, an acknowledgement of the peculiar artform of the movie poster, whose very existence is inextricably linked (perhaps subserviant) to another work of art, but can also carry its own aesthetic rules. Which is to say that the movie posters are very cool in and of themselves, and can be appreciated without knowing the film they're promoting (perhaps even more so, as if the weight of the film's content and reputation has been lifted from the viewer's mind and the eye can fully concentrate on the pictorial elements of the poster). But a very good poster for a very good movie can be sublime, complimenting each other, adding meaning and context.
Here's the introductory essay by Eddie Muller for his book The Art of Noir: Posters and Graphics from the Classic Film Noir Era, published by Overlook Press, complete with a few examples. It looks like something to get.

Corndogs

The Minutemen were one of the best rock bands in America during the 'eighties. There are many times I feel they were the best, period: brittle insurgent jazzfunkpunk for the workers; aural samizdat for the less than zero 'eighties; less than perfect revolutionaries whose lyrics emphasized personal testimonies and pothead poetry over polemics, bathroom wall slogans over sliced and diced dialectics, but with a warmth, humor, and, above all, a palpable heartfelt sincerity that belied their self-description as "scientist rock". And, no, the Minutemen are not responsible for nu-metal.
In 1985, SST Records were set to release Corndogs, a video history and document of the band. Legend has it that the master tape was stolen from the van that was heading for the duplication plant where it would be manufactured. Unbelievably, this was the only copy. Cheap dupes did exist and circulate, but they were more than several generations away from the original, contained gaps in the continuity, and had a time stamp on the lower lefthand corner. These were the only copies around.
One of these copies was posted on the Corndogs.org which compiles "live and rare audio and video form various Mike Watt incarnations", which, of course, includes the Minutemen. It's a great site, with tons of audio stuff. And it also includes about all that's available from the Corndogs video. It's pretty crappy looking, but it's the best we've got, plus it's the Minutemen. Quicktime format.

Drakula Istanbul'da

Long believed lost, Turkey's Drakula Istanbul'da ("Dracula in Istanbul") is considered the first non-western film version of the Dracula story, and oddly one of most faithful to the Bram Stoker original. With Dracula scaling the castle walls, implied infanticide, and the ceremonious end of the vampire, with first the staking, then followed by a beheading, and then stuffing the mouth with garlic (as per the instructions in the novel), this movie adaption contains more of the creepier elements of the book than higher-budgeted and more pedigreed productions. Perhaps it's the proximity of Turkey to the Eastern Europe setting of the first part of the novel, or perhaps sharing similar legends and folklore, but Drakula Istanbul'da, in all it's threadbare grace, seem to have an authentic and maybe innate feel for the myths of the region that cannot be found in any Hollywood backlot. A connection is made in the film between the Count Dracula in the story and the real Vlad the Impaler, who, of course, impaled mainly Turks.

The film has been frequently written about, but very rarely seen, but now you can, courtesy of Turk Sinemasy, right here. Windows media required.

El Monje Loco

I've been scouring the internet, and invaded warm and sweet-smelling newsstands in Tamaulipas, Mexico, asked people whom I thought were in the know, looking for any information about the radio host and comic book character El Monje Loco. A sort of Crypt Keeper from south of the border, "The Mad Monk" was a mainstay of Mexican comic books from the 'fifties until the 'seventies. I first read about him in the Headpress zine from the UK, although, unfortunately, an online version is not available. Any info coming my way would be greatly appreciated.

Werewolf Page

Found this one quite by accident, but it's a good one, werewolfpage.com. All sorts of wonderful illustrations, from movie stills to weird medieval engravings. It also deals with the myths and legends of lycanthropy, and also adds some case histories, such as the odd story of the African were-crocodile.

Martin Scorsese's Guilty Pleasures

Everyone has guilty pleasures. Even Martin Scorsese.

Akuma Kun -- Mr. Devil

Who the hell is Akuma Kun -- Mr. Devil? A slice of Japanese TV obscurantia from Monster Shindig. Dig the mad magician with curly Sinbad shoes and 1966 VW Bug behind him.

Jandek

I've never been able to listen to a Jandek album all the way through. It's jarring and noisy stuff, and I like jarring and noisy stuff. But it's not just the atonal noodlings and rhythmic miscarriages that leave me exasperated, frustrated, drained, even depressed, but the emotional nakedness, the brittle honesty in the songs. It's a lonely, sometimes scary music, childlike in a lot of ways, if the child was a precocious hyperactive shut-in. An intriguing, unique artist. Funny thing is no one knows anything about the man: who he is, where he's from (although Houston would be a good guess), his philosophy of music, his philosophy of life, his favorite color...anything. Which makes him the perfect subject for a documentary, Jandek on Corwood. You can see the 2 min. trailer here. This is definitely something I will be looking for.

Updates!

Yes, this site hasn't been updated a lot, but I think I'm going to give it another shot. I've updated the design, made things look a little bit cleaner, and I'm hoping to post more frequently. If anyone's interested, here's what the old design looked like. I must admit I like the Kiss Me Deadly logo. Here's one based on L'Age D'Or.

New Poster!

The new poster's up and you can see and read about it here. I hope to update it weekly, although bi-weekly seems more plausible. I really don't have a set format for it yet. Essentially I'll be posting interesting looking movie posters and I'll be writing about them or the movie they're promoting. Some of the commentary may be short, and some may be considerably longer. I may have gone a bit overboard here, but I enjoyed writing it and I also like the movie a lot. Need to exercise the writing muscles anyway. They've become fatty, thick and dull, and my pen hand's been all thumbs.

Daredevil Banned!

The Malaysian Film Censorship Board bans Daredevil over ‘unhealthy elements’.