to the max (2005, 37.9MB, 3:30 min)
sleeping is the only love (2006, 7.2MB, 2:54 min)
From The Silver Jews.
Category Archives: cinema
Subterranean Homesick Blues – Bob Dylan
The Yes Men Fix The World
The Yes Men Fix The World (2009, 37 MB, 2:30 min)
Coming to theaters in October, The Yes Men – Fix The World.
They have an unusual hobby: posing as top executives
of corporations they hate. Armed with nothing but thrift-store suits,
the Yes Men lie their way into business conferences and parody their
corporate targets in ever more extreme ways – basically doing everything
that they can to wake up their audiences to the danger of letting greed run our world.
THE HERETICS – the story of the Women
THE HERETICS (2009, 124 MB, 10:08 min)
THE HERETICS, A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics
Punk Pacino
Deadlock
Deadlock (1970, 7.7MB, 46 sec)
from Roland Klick’s Deadlock with music by Can.
Listen to the title track here.
What a remarkable film.
What a remarkable band.
Kurosawa trailers better than most entire films…
Scandal – trailer (1950, 7.7MB, 1:38 min)
The Idiot – trailer (1951, 6.3MB, 1:22 min)
Don’t know whether these are the original, or re-edited, trailers
but they’re wonderful, wonderful.
Watch and marvel.
I know neither of these films but I can’t wait to get my sweaty
palms on the DVDs from Eureka Cinema’s Masters of Cinema series.
A Scanner Darkly by Richard Linklater
A Scanner Darkly (trailer) (2006, 3MB, 1:15 min.)
“A Scanner Darkly” movie was filmed digitally and then animated
using interpolated rotoscope over the original footage.
by Richard Linklater.
Stepback
Stepback by Lisa Lindley-Jones – WIZ (2007, 24.4MB, 3:27)
Music video for “Stepback” by Lisa Lindley-Jones.
By WIZ via Factory Films
Soft Cinema – Interview with Lev Manovich
lev_interview_1 (2003, 2MB, 2:12 min.)
lev_interview_2 (2003, 2MB, 2:08 min.)
lev_interview_3 (2003, 2.5MB, 2:14 min.)
lev_interview_4 (2003, 2.7MB, 1:45 min.)
A 4 part interview on Soft Cinema with Lev Manovich –
the Mecca of new media arts.
DEAF 03, Rotterdam.
Also: “On Database Driven Movies”.
Kevin Smith – Clerks 2 – the Movie
When Clouds Clear
When Clouds Clear (2008, 15.3MB, 2:26)
Directed by Anne Slick and Danielle Bernstein,
When Clouds Clear is a remarkably intimate portrait
of a tiny Ecuadorian village’s struggle against
mining companies that seek to take over (and destroy)
the land they have long cultivated as their home.
Shot on a lovely mix of Super 8, 16mm, and video
to show the complexities of different viewpoints, the
film is one of the most beautiful I have had the
privilege of viewing this year.
“Assembled Cinema” – G.H. Hovagimyan
Assembled Cinema (2006, 28.9MB, 5:19 min.)
“You walk into a room and a film/video is projected on a wall.
The scenes played are not in any particular order yet they make sense.
What occurs is that a computer is picking sequences in a random order
and playing them. Your mind and your imagination fill in the story.”
From – G.H. Hovagimyan.
DVblog will eat itself
mouth study (2005, 7.8MB, 3:40 min)
Using footage from the ‘cutting edge cinema‘ thing
we posted here before Lewis LaCook,
created an utterly exuberant & assured piece of appropriation
video with 186,000 ideas per second.
My Name Is Oona – Gunvor Nelson
Gunvor Nelson – My Name Is Oona (1969, 26.9MB, 9:12)
Historic piece from the Swedish filmmaker about her daughter.
Typical of Gunvor’s work, this film addresses themes about
nature, childhood, and maintains an ethereal quality.
Excellent early piece from a uniquely talented woman.
Erik Bunger – the Allens
Erik Bunger – the Allens (2004, 23.3MB, 3:19)
Absolutely clever piece by Swedish artist Erik Bunger,
drawn from his experience moving from Sweden to
Germany, where many films on TV are dubbed. As
language can be so central to a character, Bunger
started thinking about people like Woody Allen, who
always play the same character but also one so
connected to his whiny, nervous New York accent.
For this installation piece, a computer program
continuously changed the dubbing of Allen between
his various vocal incarnations. Totally delightful.
Nicolas Provost – Bataille
Bataille (clip) (2003, 1MB, 32 sec.)
“In Bataille, fragments from the Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon
are subject to a mirror effect. A scene in which two samurai fight
each other becomes a cosmic field of monsters where horror and
pain evoke beauty and joy.”
from Nicolas Provost.
Steve Bishop – Behold a Pale Horse
Behold a Pale Horse (2007, 6MB, 2:26 min)
I love this piece, originally posted to the currently very lively & interesting
Rhizome front page, quite extravagantly, almost unreasonably.
Reader: Well! -what is it then?
Me: er..well it’s.. a very lo-fi mash up of film studio idents
Reader: and?
Me: ..well..um..that’s it.
Reader: Harrumph! (gets on bike to go)
but you would be so, so wrong, to go that way, dear reader.
I burbled something on Rhizome in a comment on this about the
transfiguration of the banal & it is precisely there
that it seems to me the magic lies. Bishop makes us examine
every pixel as if ( & of course he makes it so) it mattered.
In a kind of strange way the film is rendered archetypally
‘painterly’.
There’s more, though. In the way he estranges & hence makes us look
anew at the imagery of the idents, he recovers some of the mythic force
that was being tapped into by their makers before familiarity rendered
those images banal.
Tremendous work!
Jillian Mcdonald – Screen Kiss
Screen Kiss (clip) (2005, 3.1MB, 1:00 min.)
Jillian is trying to make Billy Bob Thornton jealous, inserting
herself into existing film clips and getting kisses from Daniel Day Lewis,
Vincent Gallo, Johnny Depp, and Billy Bob
Creation Myth by Robert Todd
Robert Todd – Creation Myth (2007, 39.3MB, 5:46)
Robert Todd is a master of 16mm. With an enormous
catalog behind him and no sign of his work ceasing in
the near future, Todd is slowly migrating his work onto
his personal website.
What a treat for us.
This piece, Creation Myth, is one of several I will repost
here over time, to show respect for these subtle, moving
visions.
Todd says: “Love of sky, love of earth and air, with
water helping us along form the backdrop to this
reflection of life-essence and its evolution.”
And, full disclosure: Rob has previously been my
professor, and I personally consider him one of
the kindest, most knowledgeable and professional
working artists under whom I have had the privilege
of studying. I wish I had been better able to absorb
his teachings at the time. He is truly a Bolex genius.
On Database Driven Movies – Interview with Lev Manovich
Interview with Lev Manovich (excerpt) (2006, 8.8 MB, 4:23 min.)
Lev Manovich is a Professor in Visual Arts Department, University
of California -San Diego and the author of The Language of New Media
which is hailed as
Boxers
Shotgun Stories
Jeff Nichols – Shotgun Stories (2008, 10.3MB, 1:50)
Shotgun Stories tells the tale of two families with the
same father. One, in which the children are named
Kid, Boy, and Son, came before dad sobered up and
found Jesus. The second, his marriage to a beautiful
woman who had four more boys, was his do-over.
After his death, an explosive feud breaks out between
the grown half-siblings.
It opened to rave reviews, and from the chilling
trailer alone, I can see why.
Jillian Mcdonald – Me and Billy Bob
Me and Billy Bob (2004, 22.7MB, 7:04 min.)
Jillian inserted herself into existing film clips as the recurring
object of actor Billy Bob Thornton
Standard Operating Procedure
Errol Morris – Standard Operating Procedure (2008, 11.2MB, 2:00)
We don’t hide our love for Errol Morris – see here
and here – but there’s no need for us to apologize.
The man is a genius. His latest feature, Standard
Operating Procedure, interviews Abu Ghraib prison
guards and tells the story behind the now-infamous
photographs of abuse from the prison, uncovered in
2003. Dubbed a “nonfiction horror film” by Morris,
this investigative film, much like A Thin Blue Line,
helped Morris once again dig deeper into a crime
file, this one just more contemporary.
When you see a picture, you don’t see outside the frame.
With the frightening pictures as a jumping off point,
Morris interviews those involved with the scandal to
get the whole story.
Can’t wait to see this one.
LOOK
Trailer for LOOK, the movie, which is composed
entirely of surveillance camera footage.
LOOK asks (and attempts to answer) questions about
security versus privacy, highly relevant in modern,
legitimately paranoid times.
Are you always alone when you think you are?
No Country For Old Men
No Country For Old Men (trailer) (2007, 15 MB, 2:30 min.)
“Based on the acclaimed novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy.
The film simultaneously strips down the American crime drama and broadens
its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily
contemporary as this morning�s headlines.”
From – Miramax Films. directed by the Coen Brothers.
Tinjail
Still Project 07 (2007, 5.7MB, 1:29 min)
Half of the splendid & indispensable MTAA, whose work we feature here
whenever possible – conceptualist pranksters with a rare (for the territory)
& self deprecating human warmth – Mark River makes interesting video stuff
(amongst other things) on his Tinjail site.
A lot of them are kind of multi-channel (go look) & don’t fit the dvblog format.
This one does & is excellent too..
Here’s his preamble to it:
‘The wild blue yonder, the decent, la jetee, fearless, street fight,
loud QUIET loud, a sound of thunder, enemy at the gate, so wrong they
Quiet City
Quiet City (2007, 11.2MB, 1:52)
Stunning, reflective trailer for Quiet City,
a movie by Aaron Katz, available from Benten Films.
These are my favorite kinds of films.
I love living in – being in – cities, but I prefer them
when they are their most silent and empty.
Text loosely taken from the Apple trailer site, edited by me:
Together, Samantha and Charlie, two somewhat aimless youths,
share twenty-four hours drifting from late night diners, to city parks,
to abandoned apartments, to a party and art gallery deep in the heart
of industrial Brooklyn. Delicately realized with generous humanity,
Quiet City offers hope for intimate connection in a world that grows
larger by the day.
Almodovar – Volver trailer
Volver trailer (2006, 30 MB, 1:38 min)
A long time ago I sat stony faced and unmoved through the much lauded
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown & concluded,
quite wrongly, that Almodovar was not for me.
In 2006 about him by Bob Light in the UK Socialist Worker
prompted me to go & see his latest movie, Volver,
& I’m so glad I did – it’s simply magnificent.
Since then I’ve done a bit of catching up.