Category Archives: strange

Brantley Jones – Dead Plants

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Dead Plants
Dead Plants (2009, 36 MB, 1:24 min)

Another from the seemingly inexhaustible (but always pleasantly individual)
film seam at the School of Athens.
This is a lovely understated little study of ..er..dead plants, which fuses quirk,
a certain menace and a strange found beauty into something very satisfying.
Brantley Jones seems to live a double life – his website contains much more
“well made” stuff.
It will be interesting to see where he heads, eventually.

PS Also, how can you not warm to someone who lists the late great
David Foster Wallace as inspiration?

For Little Girls

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beautykit
Beauty Kit (2005, 4.2MB, 2:16 min.)

This is a very dark take on advertising and cult of beauty
made by the talented video makers at Pleix.

By Mica Scalin.

Logarilla >> Masks by Derek Larson

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logarilla
Logarilla >> Masks (2009, 148MB, 1:33 min.)

By Derek Larson.

Data Moshing with Eddie Whelan

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caralion
caralion (2009, 10 MB, 1:03 min)

metalbear
METALBEAR (2009, 11 MB, 44 secs)

atlasbear
atlas bear (2009, 9 MB, 54 secs)

There’s a wonderful strangeness and abandon to Eddie Whelan’s work.
Here he indulges in some rather winning datamoshing.
It all looks garishly gorgeous but the icing for me is his choice
and use of music/sound, which resonates very effectively with the visuals.
The lion piece, in particular, seems to me to be deeply melancholy, lovely
and pretty funny, all at the same time.

Dom Cheverti – Throwing Chamberlains

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bowl
Bowl (2009, 2 MB, 1:52 min)

bowl/glass
Bowl/Glass (2009, 2 MB, 1:01 min)

bowl/flower/vase
Bowl/Flower/Vase (2009, 3 MB, 57 secs)

little river
Little River (2009, 2 MB, 1:00 min)

Recommended to us by the sublime Sam Renseiw who,
when he speaks, we listen.
Nonetheless I had some difficulties in coming to grips with this.
Sam tells me it relates to some current You Tube thing whereby people
throw ping-pong balls into various receptacles with a high degree of accuracy.

Clearly I should stay in more.

So…in this case the balls are substituted by a species of cookie, apparently
known in Denmark as ‘chamberlains’.
(I asked Sam exactly what a chamberlain was.
He says:
“Chamberlains is an odd translation of ‘kammerjunker’ that
can both be a chamberlain and danish cookie/biscuit.
It is usually consumed in summer with “koldsk

The Yes Men Fix The World

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fixtheworld
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.

More vids here and here.

More School of Athens – Eddie Whelan’s James Burke

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James Burke (2009, 168MB 5:53 min)

There’s something -I don’t know –insouciant about these School of Athens folks.
That’s one of the definite links, a kind of throw away, thrown together quality, that teases
because I’d be equally unsurprised to learn that every second was laboured over mightily.
(Think not though, but of course that’s not a criticism. )
Of course the styles of the various “members” differ somewhat too.
Eddie Whelan seems to specialise in a rather garish but fetching pop surrealism.
I like the somewhat in your face and worn at the edges motion graphics as much
as I find genuinely evocative the appropriated beach (eclipse?) footage.
Also, what’s not to like about a movie featuring a minor BBC cult
science reporter of the 80s…
Whelan’s idosyncratic way with spelling engages rather than irritates
which for me at least is a bit of an acid test.
Good.
More from Eddie the Wheel in the next days and weeks.

I Can’t Deal With This Stupid Ringing Forever – Donna Kuhn

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I Can’t Deal With This Stupid Ringing Forever (2009, 56MB 2:29 min)

Donna Kuhn has joined the little pantheon (Sondheim’s another, as is Sam Renseiw)
of people whose work I’m just going
to post regularly because they are great.
No apology, no argument.
If you can’t see it, the problem is yours.
Great. Great. Great.

Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority

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NNS
Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority (50’s, 15MB, 1:35 min.)

Stumble upon this funny 50

Marianne Moore – The Fish

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The Fish (date unknown, 754KB, 1:12 min)


The Fish

wade
through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like

an
injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side
of the wave, cannot hide
there for the submerged shafts of the

sun,
split like spun
glass, move themselves with spotlight swiftness
into the crevices