my dark horse is horny (2008, 18MB, 1:23 min.)
Disturbingly hilarious and weird video from Jaron Albertin.
Category Archives: narrative
Pencil Face by SCADshorts
Picot et al – Dr Hairy & the London Hospital
London Hospital ( 2010, 49MB, 9:59)
Writer & artist Edward Picot doubles as an administrator
in the UK health service & lets his hair down with this
deeply odd but amusing bit of lo-fi puppetry made in
collaboration with Julian Le Saux & Dr David Hindmarsh.
Just in case there are any knuckleheads out there
(and of course this is unlikely as you have the good taste
to read DVblog) who imagine this is an attack of any sort on
socialised medicine, the authors have kindly provided the
following statement:
“The creators of this piece would like to point out that they all work in
the National Health Service and are completely devoted to it.”
Paul Rodriguez – Flowers
Flowers (2010, 52 MB, 3:16 min)
I really hated this piece, a music video for Former Ghosts,
the first time I saw it, although I’d previously enjoyed work
by Paul Rodriguez and posted some here.
My first impressions were confirmed by a trawl through
the publicity material surrounding it:
“A naked dude gets peed on in this disturbing clip from the electro-goth
project led by Freddy Ruppert. Director: Paul Rodriguez….”
which seemed a tad..er..calculating
I was so bemused by how much I took against the piece
that I watched it several times over to try and analyse my reactions
and the more I looked at it the more the sheer deftness,
care and feel for the medium with which it is made began to
prevail over my dislike of the content.
Rodriguez confirms himself a filmmaker of real talent, with a great eye
and superb attention to detail.
I’m not sure someone possessed of his gifts needs to work so hard to
make us look his way but I remain very interested to see where he goes next.
Ed Day – Hats
Hats (2009, 123 MB, 10:54 min)
A first film from young UK actor Ed Day this made me laugh quite inordinately.
It was “was filmed over a few weeks in Jersey and Guernsey with the cast from
Oddsocks Theatre Company’s 2009 summer tour of Richard III”.
Apart from the humour what strikes home is the sheer technical ability,
wit and
‘Plane Days’ by Benjamin Kracun & Ewan McNicol
Plane Days (Excerpt, 2009, 6 MB, 1:22 min)
“Old friends. Young friends. Lovers and loners.
They all wait, hoping, to see something they
The Commoners – by Jessica Bardsley & Penny Lane
The Commoners (Excerpt, 2009, 37 MB, 1:25 min)
“In 1890, one man had the idea to collect every bird ever mentioned in Shakespeare
and release them into Central Park. The only bird to survive in the New World was the European
Starling, now one of the commonest birds in America. Its introduction is now widely considered
a major environmental disaster.
The Commoners is a moving image essay about starlings, poetry, and the purist rhetoric used
to describe “invasive species.” It is also about the paths people forge through history, intentionally
or not, as they attempt to change the natural world.”
Written & directed by Jessica Bardsley & Penny Lane.
From video_dumbo 2009.
Robert Croma – Night Impromptu
Night Impromptu (2009, 50.9 MB, 5:19 min)
Despite being a very fine still photographer there’s something
paradoxically counter-photographic about Robert Croma’s
video work.
Of course, as one would expect from a photographer, he’s extremely
sensitive to finish and the care which is lavished on the working over
of each of his movies is humbling and astonishing but what struck me,
getting this post ready, is how difficult it is to extract a poster image from
these that really prepares us for the coming movie as movie.
(Believe me – mostly this is not so hard, so many people semaphore
from every frame)
Then it further struck me that this a mark of the most profound cinematic
thinking, that despite the pieces’ great visual beauties they are conceived
austerely, with the greatest economy & most of all holistically; that is, entirely
at the level of the final moving image.
Of course here, as so often with Croma, finally it’s also a very moving image.
Dave Milner – Redmires to Hillsborough and Back
Redmires to Hillsborough and Back (2008, 274MB 21:09 min)
I love this piece, partly for sentimental reasons in that it
features the town (and in fact at two points the street)
of my birth and upbringing, but it’s not simply that.
I like the formal device upon which Dave Milner hangs this austere
& accurate portrait of a greyish October Sheffield.
Austere, but not without warmth or humour: Milner’s tussle with his SatNav,
his under the breath impatience at the traffic & the various other small
en-route mishaps lend a three dimensionality and a narrative forward
motion to what could be easily have been either a dry exercise or simply
a bit of ,for want of a better word, internet folk art…
Milner’s site, with both contemporary and (slightly) historical photos
of Sheffield and other places is compelling too.
Again, I plead guilty to a personal interest in the places times and
themes but it’s the thoroughness devoted to an evocation of place
and time that is both effective and moving.
Two tiny Sporkworld loops
A Small Spork Lumiere (2009, 3MB, 9 sec silent loop)
Fireworks (2009, 2MB, 43 sec silent loop)
Two from the ever reliable, delightful, and in its quiet & unassuming
(but frequently deadly – it’s the Columbo of art blogs) way, mould-breaking
Sporkworld Microblog, which if you don’t follow religiously, you should.
Ironically, given the setting, A Small Spork Lumiere could constitute a kind
of ostensive definition of dryness.