What Would Jesus Buy?

Trailer for ,
a documentary about Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping,
produced by Morgan Spurlock.
I’m not convinced that Spurlock is the man to spread a good message,
but I sure would go to any church where Rev. Billy showed up.
DRIVE THE DEMONS OUT OF THOSE CASH REGISTERS!!

Steven Ball – Snow Factory

snowfactory1
Snow Factory (2006, 6.41MB, 53 secs)

Lyrical whimsy, which sounds lightweight, but isn’t.
It’s beautifully made by Steven Ball and has a strange
gravity not unreminiscent of the less dread-saturated
(I hesitate to say “more playful”) end of Kafka…or
Ben Marcus, perhaps…

Bathtime in Clerkenwell – Alex Budovsky

Bathtime
Bathtime in Clerkenwell (2002, 15.3MB, 3:14 min)

Alex Budovsky aka Aleksey Budovskiy created this great animation
based on Stephen Coates ( aka (The Real) Tuesday Weld‘s) song of the same title.
This film is about The Great Revolution of the British Cuckoos,
who bravely took over London, forcing all the people to move
inside the cuckoo clocks.

Doll Face – andrewhu

doll_face
Doll Face (2007, 27MB, 4:12 min.)

Popular video from YouTube. 1,733,368 views (as of Oct. 29th)

Smolarski/Langager – <em>Robert Roth's 'Health Proxy'</em>

Robert Roth
Readings from ‘Health Proxy’ (2007, 32.7MB, 8:19 min.)

So..declaration of interest..Robert Roth is a friend of mine & I get mentioned in the book.
Nonetheless, if he was my worst enemy, I’d still say watch this, then .
Health Proxy is pretty much sui generis..the only comparisons I can think of being those fragmentary, diaristic things in the Japanese tradition:The Pillow Book or Essays in Idleness.
Of course Kenko & Sei Shonagon never wrote about baseball or AIDS,
nor were they animated by the massively warm oppositional & radical spirit we find here.
The video is a nice job too – not only is it elegantly made, but Langager and Smolarski
pass the documentary acid test of honouring their subject matter whilst still creating
something with a palpable sense of their authorship.

pouringdown – fever dream


pouringdown – fever dream (2007, 24.5MB, 3:42 min.)

Always truth in art from pouringdown.
If only we had more folks like this in the world.

Charlie Mars – 3 Musicians

guitarist
guitarist (2005, 7MB, 1:13 min)

drummer
drummer (2005, 7MB, 1:15 min)

singer
singer (2005, 5MB, 1:15 min)

from Charlie Mars. The -um – videomaker from outer space.

Mimi, Jack & Anna

mimi_jack_anna
Mimi, Jack & Anna (2007, 14.6MB, 2:09 min.)

‘About half way through this, I realised I was unconsciously structuring it with the work
of Jacques Rivette in mind. So it’s a kind of tiny tribute to a master.
The music is my arrangement for Tuba Quartet of the Pixies’
Is She Weird? played by Tubalat on their Hall of Mirrors CD.
Thanks to them & thanks to Anna, Jack & Mimi.’

from Michael Szpakowski.
a beauty !

Hal Hartley – Fay Grim trailer

Fay Grim trailer
Fay Grim trailer (2007, 10.7MB, 1:54 min)

In the case of Hal Hartley I feel so at odds with the world’s
apparent consensus that I fear for the balance of my mind.
Why is he not feted as one of the world’s smartest & most inventive directors?
Why did folk briefly seem to understand in the early nineties that something
special was going on, then bizarrely seem almost immediately to forget about it?
It beats me, it defeats me.
Here is the trailer for Fay Grim, touted by some as Hartley’s return to form
Me I think he never lost it.
Yes – it has moments that feel eggy, awkward and mystifying but
then so does La Divina Commedia.

Joseph Chomiak – point of view

pointofview
point of view (2006, 11.3MB, 2:06 min.)

A silent B/W short by Joseph Chomiak
a terrifying story of a man that finds a viewfinder that can look
into another time and place. From undergroundfilm.