pieces of tattered celluloid
RIP Nam June Paik 1932-2006 Here are some Nam June Paik links... Artcyclopedia... some recordings on mp3 from UbuWeb... a nice virtual exhibit of Paik's installations, from Italy... Paik's official site... his Wikipedia entry... and his New York Times obit.
"His Day Will Come -- 6-6-06"-- In perhaps the highest example of high concept marketing, the makers of The Omen remake probably went from the release date backwards to construct their movie. You can see the teaser trailer here.
An incredible array of movie advertising art, with hundreds (thousands?)of "the best original posters and lobby cards for classic and cult movies from around the world, focusing on poster artwork in general...." can be found at kinoart.net. Everything's for sale, but a lot of it's expensive. Still, it's a remarkable collection of some very rarely seen posters, mainly from Europe. You can search their database by film director. I typed in Buñuel, Godard and Jess Franco, and was not disappointed by a long shot.
Psychiatry in the Cinema: an interesting view (written by a psychiatrist) on how psychiatry, mental health and mental health professionals are portrayed in the movies. Here's Dr. Ben Green on a Jim Carrey comedy: "A special mention is very much deserved for Me, Myself and Irene (2000). This film was directed by the Farelly brothers, who also concocted depictions of excess in such films as There's Something about Mary (1998). Its depiction of a policeman with schizophrenia, played by Jim Carrey, is almost entirely devoid of accuracy, sensitivity and subtlety. His behaviour is clownish, obscene, violent and sexually assaultative. He is referred to as 'schizo' and 'psycho'. It was criticised by SANE Australia, the US National Alliance for Mental Illness and the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists amongst other organisations."
The Guardian brings us a fascinating snapshot of Rainer Werner Fassbinder at work in 1973, shooting the movie Martha Michael Ballhaus also reminisces about working with Fassbinder.
For a few dollars more! The sounds and images of the spaghetti western have so seeped in our international culture that TV admen didn't waste a second appropriating its iconography. Shobary's Spaghetti Westerns has a page devoted to commericals aping the Italian western. There's also a page of downloadable trailers and a nice gallery of poster art.
"Realized in the privacy of his studio or during performances,... conceived by covering the bodies of nude female models—his 'living brushes'—with ultramarine blue paint, which he named and patented as International Klein Blue (IKB). He then instructed these living brushes to produce body prints, radically challenging painting by conciliating it with performance.... Commissioned to be featured in Gualtiero Jacopetti’s film Mondo Cane (1962), the work was realized in front of a camera, through a large sheet of glass, with the artist’s mistaken belief that the filmmaker would do for him what Hans Namuth did for Jackson Pollock, what Henri-Georges Clouzot did for Picasso. Klein could not reconcile himself to the rude awareness that Mondo Cane was the first global exploitation film—a “shockumentary”—abusing his work dedicated to spiritual perceptions of the world. Publicly humiliated at the film’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 1962, he never recovered from the shock and died a few weeks later of a heart attack. Mondo Cane put an end to Klein’s blue revolution and Mondo Cane Shroud became the ethereal shroud of the artist himself. The Walker’s acquisition, which occurred after nearly eight years of searching, of this marvelous painting and accompanying wooden tub, encrusted with the IKB in which the models bathed, brings together the history of film, performance, and painting."One can see an image of the painting here. Mondo Cane has been released on DVD by Blue Underground as part of their Mondo Cane Collection, a collection of Jacopetti and Prosperi's documentary films (including the unreal Goodbye Uncle Tom). It's out of print, according to Blue Underground, but you can find it easily on eBay and Amazon (and possibly other retail outfits). Here are some reviews of the collection, from Kinocite, DVD Maniacs and Monsters at Play. Inspired by a post by The Dirtiest Thing in the Whole Wide World, a cool blog that specializes in old sleaze. The movie poster is from Poland. Click on the image on the left for a larger version. 541 K
Heads up, Angelenos! Today's the last day of a Sergio Leone exhibit, "Once Upon A Time In Italy . . . The Westerns Of Sergio Leone", at LA's Museum of the American West. Very nice site for the exhibit, with plenty of Quicktime movies and rare images.
There's more to Mexican superheroes than masked wrestlers, as pointed out in this Catalogue of International Superheroes. There are guys like Relampago (not to be confused with Relampago, the superhero from Corpus Christi) and El Hombre Mosca (the man will the remarkable powers of a house fly. Of course, you'll find the classic luchadores, of which La Mujer Murcielago (known here as Batwoman). This Batwoman is not to be confused with her rattier North American counterpart from Jerry Warren's The Wild World of Batwoman. Playing Batwoman in the Mexican version is curvy Maura Monti, who also played a Martian in Santo contra la Invasion de los Marcianos (the poster of which seems to be a blatant copy of Robinson Crusoe on Mars's, for what it's worth).
Nice collection of European genre movie art and comics from the 60s and the 70s on this German site. Some pretty cool galleries of Schulmadchen Report lobbycards, so maybe a bit too racy for worktime browsing. Also a nice Klaus Kinski collection.
Long before the days of morphine, grade Z thrillers and Brooklyn gorillas, Bela Lugosi lived large. Still warm (if not hot) from his first flush of Dracula success, when he began his claim as one of Hollywood's premiere bogeymen (and whose bogeyman skills eventually cursed him to the dusty backlots of Poverty Row), Lugosi maintained the simple and elegant lifestyle of a European sophisticate in Southern California, as evidenced in these remarkable fan magazine photos presented here and here by Greenbriar Picture Shows, a wonderful new blog that specializes in presenting publicity stills, art, and press books. Cool stuff presented in the last two months include some publicity for the Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard spook comedy The Ghost Breakers (including this remarkable image); a couple of trade ads from MGM at the start of the talkies ("Reach for a talkie instead of a squeak!"); and spending the day with Olivia DeHavilland.
An interesting quote from Lugosi: "Where once I had been the master of my professional destinies, with a repertoire embracing all types of men... I became Dracula's puppet."
Poster of the Week!- LSD-Flesh of Devil. Not only is today International Showgirls Day, but it's also the birthday of Dr. Albert Hoffman, Ph.D. The father of LSD turns a vigorous 100 today; he is the guest of honor at a LSD symposium in Basel, Switzerland. He refers to LSD as his "problem child", but it's unlikely Dr. Hoffman is aware of the "problem films" (or should that be problematic films?) his discovery inspired. And here, the inspirations should include not only LSD's mind opening effect on moviemakers and audiences, but also the exploitative angle pursued by hucksters (carny grads) who saw a vein of gold in the acid.
"Listen to the Sound of Love...Feel Purple...Taste Green...Touch the Scream that Crawls Up the Wall!" reads the tagline for Corman's The Trip. The tag for the film advertised by this week's poster is not as lyrical: "Five Dollars 'Trip' to the Moon". Perhaps, your passport to lunacy? A political statement on the concurrent billions of dollars and rubles spent on sending a man to the moon? Why do that if 5 bucks can offer you the same thrill? Well, maybe.
I have not seen LSD-Flesh of Devil, so I can't give you much more than what the poster offers. The IMDB has one user's comment, which is the only descriptive text I found about the movie. It's pretty good, actually: "The film postures itself as being anti-drug of course. The LSD trips represented are only somewhat hallucinatory using minor tricks of lighting or superimposition to portray the wild effects of the drug. There isn't much imagination (or money) spent on convincing us of the horrors of LSD so these sequences are unfortunately rather dull and repetitive which in turn makes the drug seem like a boring way to amuse oneself.... The best line in the film is spoken by the villain, Mister X, as he describes his international crime syndicate: `We're a secret organization with a strange name: ECHO."
Of course, click on the image on the left for a larger version. 499K
Haven't you heard? It's International Showgirls Day (the 10th anniversary of the Dutch premiere of Paul Verhoeven and Joe Ezterhaus's Showgirls... and, yes, Ezterhaus should get as much credit or blame as Verhoeven). I've been graciously asked to put in my own two cents, so I might as well toss in my little grubby pennies, although I don't know if I would have much to add to the fray. I saw the movie about 9 years ago on full-screen VHS (NC-17 version, though), and I don't remember much, but I do remember not liking it. In fact, I thought it was quite an ugly piece of work. That said, I would never venture to say Showgirls is without any merit. Indeed, I know there are many who love the shit out of it, and I'm fully (fooly?) aware of Verhoeven's reputation in some circles as a master satirist, subversively and jerkily baiting our notions and tweaking our perceptions of our grand American excess.
So, to flog a dead horse, yes sir, you're absolutely right, we are a goddamn mess; and thank you, Paul, for bravely providing the funhouse mirror to see our ourselves (darkly perhaps), in spite of ourselves, using every bone, screw and dye in your Dutch boy (done good)paintbox and seducing us all with your olive oil voice and European charm. Loud and stupid America (all of us!) salutes you, and now watches the legacy of your work on VH1 reruns.
Kudos to Flickhead for keeping it real.
Some blogs to note-- If you like Marilyn, or just pictures of Marilyn, head out to Sugarland, a French photo-blog that's been posting tons and tons of Marilyn Monroe photos, including this crazy collection of Marilyn animated gifs. Cool stuff!
Then there's GPod, which posts bit torrent links to off-beat and rare films. This week's torrent is Les Blank's short documentary Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe. Other entires include a Fench documentary on Orson Welles, and a Sergei Paradjanov short Kiev Frescos, a "film collage" made up of rushes and tests Paradjanov shot before the Soviet government shut down the project.
Disclaimers abound on Snowblood Apple, a fantastic site that specializes on the more extreme edges of Asian (particularly Japanese) cinema. Here's one: "PLEASE - If you are of a nervous disposition, or under the legal age limit to view the equivalent of NC-17 rated movies, do not proceed any further down this page. You will find images of an extremely graphic and violent nature on the Guinea Pig movie pages. If you do not wish to proceed, click here or on any link on the left to exit." It's a fair warning, and if you know anything about the Guinea Pig series, you'll understand why (I've never seen them, nor have any desire to see them, but for some reason I'm utterly fascinated --and almost appalled in a way-- that they exist). Of course, you can find all sorts of info on the Guinea Pig films on the web, but what's really fantastic about Snowblood Apple is an incredible collection of images and screenshots from tons of movies, including this visual comparison of the three version of The Ring (The Japanese, Korean, and Hollywood versions). Also, some screenshots and a review of the rare Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a documentary on a Japanese youth motorcycle gang from the mid-70s. A nice companion site to Midnight Eye, a site I also love.
Where else on the wild and wooly interweb would you find the delirious trailer for Rene Cardona's Night of the Bloody Apes (known in its native Mexico as La Horriplante Bestia Humana, which translates as The Horrifying Human Beast). Why, Classic Trailers, of course! "Half-man! Half-beast! All horror!" And dig the crazy electronic score! You can find it at their cult corner page. Tons of other cool stuff, too. Even classics, like my personal fave 2001. Fantastic site!
Med students have always been a jaunty, jaundiced bunch, even at the turn of the century (19th/20th, that is). From the Dittrick Medical History Center at Case Western Reserve University in beautiful Cleveland, OH, comes Haunting Images, an online exhibit of "Photography, Dissection, and Medical Students". Here are century old images, culled from a collection numbering about 200, featuring students dissecting cadavers, posing with them in group shots, or just clowning around. Interesting, if gruesome, stuff.
From an interview Steely Dan vocalist Donald Fagen had with great Italian film maestro Ennio Morricone, published in Premiere magazine in the early '80s, reproduced in the I Love Music forum.
Fagen: But isn't it true that the Leone films, with their elevation of mythic structures, their comic book visual style and extreme irony, are now perceived as signaling an aesthetic transmutation by a generation of artists and filmmakers? And isn't it also true that your music for those films reflected and abetted Leone's vision by drawing on the same eerie catalog of genres - Hollywood western, Japanese samurai, American pop, and Italian Opera? That your scores functioned both 'inside' the film as a narrative voice and 'outside' the film as the commentary of a winking jester? Put it all together and doesn't it spell 'postmodern', in the sense that there has been a grotesque encroachment of the devices of art and, in fact, an establishment of a new narrative plane founded on the devices themselves? Isn't that what's attracting lower Manhattan?
Morricone: [ shrugs ]
Obsessions! We all have them, but the great ones tend to have them in spades. Think Hitchcock and his icy, unobtainable blondes; Fellini's clowns holding up their crazy funhouse mirrors; Buster Keaton's outsized mad machinery. Quite possibly, these great obsessions (from great obsessors) retain their freshness (while others seem to be flogging a dead horse) because these obsessions (or, better said, motifs) are irrevocably tied to their obsessed parents' work or worldview, and, without this personal stamp, the work becomes, oddly, less unique. Or, this authorial preoccupation could be a crutch for budding auteurists everywhere (as some may point out).
More than other directors, the work of Luis Bu&tilden;uel is filled with such personal signposts and motifs. In an interesting experiment of film criticism (without any text except for film titles), El Centro Virtual Cervantes presents a collection of framegrabs from Bu&tilden;uel's films, categorized by motif and, yes, obsession. Here, you find them all, from his preoccupation about insects; faces at windows; the disfigured and handicapped; and the shapely turn of a woman's leg. And, not to mention, his benign obsession with women's shoes and his love-hate affair with the Catholic Church. There's a lot here, so have fun!
