A mindblower for Friday. We watched Herzog’s latest doc "Encounters at the end of the world" the other night, and it’s pretty darn great. There’s all kinds of amazing-ness going on in there, as Herzog takes a trip to Antarctica to see what the people down there do, and why. Perhaps not as mind-blowing for me personally as "Wheel of time", but still, just an absolute amazing trip into the wonders of nature, reality and humanity. Here’s a truly unbelievable part about the sounds of these Antarctic seals…
This is nice. While watching, I kept forgetting exactly what I was watching, getting caught up in the action, which is a testament to its storytelling I think. I may have to make a category just for "stop motion" because it seems like there’s so much of it out there these days…
I know I’ve posted stuff by PES before (the rubik’s cube stop-motion thing), but it’s just so good, and then there’s the making of, which is a great look into the mind of someone who would make little films like this that obviously take tons of time and effort…good stuff…
I forgot how great this scene from Delicatessen was…if I remember right, this trailer for the film was pretty much just this scene and my friends and I saw it and said "Yep, we’ll be seeing that." What a great film it is, I still think it’s better than their next films, City of Lost Children, or Amelie. I dug up this clip because I have to do promos for a show about a sexxxy hotel, and I’d love to replicate this somehow…I’m gonna try and show it in my brainstorming meeting…
While I was in the middle of my eye troubles, my parents were coming into town to take everyone to see an opera at The Met. My mom had booked tickets like last summer or something(!) and even though Max and I aren’t that into the opera, it seemed like something that would be good for us, so we agreed to go. The time came, and I was out of the picture due to my eye. So my parents were in town, and one Saturday night they met up with Maxine, my sister and some friends of theirs for dinner at a little French place and then the opera. By this point I had been in our living room for coming on 3 weeks, and was kind of going nuts. It was depressing me further that everyone else was going out and having this good time, and I was stuck at home. I decided to watch a movie.
Maxine had seen Revoultionary Road a few weeks ago and said it was good, so I figured I’d give it a shot. But damn. I was already depressed, and this thing was like a monster of a downer…I don’t want to give anything away, but let’s just say it’s pretty clear from the beginning that things aren’t going to go well. I couldn’t take it, had to stop it about halfway through, I was so down, it was a killer. Seeing a film about hopelessness was a bad bad idea. I needed something else. And then, like a ray of sunshine from the heavens, came Pineapple Express.
Now this wasn’t a perfect film by any means, the violence was kind of weird (everything really seemed like it really hurt, which is odd in a comedy), and the Mad Magazine style hijinks didn’t fully mesh with the filmmaking style. It wasn’t even the best dope film I’ve seen in recent memory (that award has to go to Happy Face). But damn was it funny! Maybe I was just in the right place where I really needed a pick-me-up, but I was laughing out loud, and having to play parts over again. It was a damn good time. This was one of my favorite bits, some of the dialogue seems so familiar. They’re in the forest trying to make sure there’s no way they can be traced to a roach Seth Rogan threw out the window…
Let’s see, this month’s banner photo was taken by Maxine, I’ll post some more tape mp3’s soon, my blog by camera phone plugin isn’t working (which is killing me), my eye is doing still better (good stuff) and I saw this which I really liked:
I knew I was going to save this one for Friday. So last semester of my senior year of college I had electives open and I took an Audio Production class. The teacher wasn’t that good, but I got a lot out of it and it was a blast. The projects the prof gave us were good, he just wasn’t very good at explaining things…i.e. performing the role of the teacher. Ask Dan R., he took the class with me. The good thing the prof did though, was make us learn all the analog ways of doing things before bringing us into the digital world. So we were splicing tape with razor blades, making tape loops that were held in place with pencils and so on. It was great. I have this experimental tape loop piece but it’s only on reel-to-reel 1/4 inch tape, so I’ll have to transfer that later.
Even once we made the move to digital, the system was so crash prone that you couldn’t do a very long piece, you’d have to stitch several short ones together. We used the system to "master" the first Raygun Theatre album (also on cassette) and I can remember it was a glitch-plagued nightmare, increasing Jack’s every distrust of the digital world.
But what I have for you is my final project for that Audio Production class. I can’t remember what other people did for their final projects, but here’s mine. It’s an 8-minute acoustic guitar rock opera of the story of Samson and Delilah.
My favorite part is the bit in their duet where they start singing at the same time. She’s going "Samson" and he’s going "Delilah, aww I love ya" — I’m still proud of that bit. Delilah was sung by Molly, the girlfriend (now wife) of my pal Pat H. She knocked it out of the park, the piece really comes alive when she enters. She even nails the absurdist ending that I tacked onto the story, she was great.
For some reason I think my sister is going to love this track.
It’s been so fun posting these, maybe I’ll continue a little into next week…
fun bit from "The Future is Unwritten:. Julien Temple’s solid doc on Joe Strummer…this clip is about Joe Strummer’s first band, and it’s told in a cool-looking pen and ink wash animated style…the film is def worth seeing, I came out of it wanting to know even more about Strummer…
sometimes I think about how fun it mus be to be Spike Jonze, have some crazy idea and then make it happen…but wait, I get that feeling sometimes (see that Charlie Kaufman promo)…there’s something so epic about this…taken via kottke’s best links of 2008 list which is worth a visit on its own…this is 6 minutes, so wait to watch until you can really drink in the slo-mo…(also maybe let it load the whole way and then skip in :44 past all the intro nonsense…I can’t get the seek pref to work with yt high quality embedding, anyone know why?)…
Let me tell you, it is fairly rare for me to make some promo at work that I feel really proud of. I mean let’s face it, most of the time promos are "tune in this Friday at 10" and that’s it. We’ve been doing some interstitials recently and that’s a whole ‘nother ball game ‘cuz you get some time to actually tell a story, which is great. And sure, if you get a good budget and time and creative approval, you can make a good promo, but those occasions are few and far between.
Which is why I’m so stoked to have made this last week (let it load fully before playing):
from the NYT review of "Australia" (a film my sister claims should be watched with gin & tonics (and I’m sure she’s right)):
“Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession,” Milan Kundera wrote. “The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.”
Gamera’s comment about Dave Kendall got me thinking about how much I didn’t like him when he was hosting 120 minutes. He always seemed smarmy and sycophantic, didn’t he? I remembered a bit where Sonic Youth were making fun of him, but I couldn’t find it on youtube (wha?!)…
a google search revealed it was from 1991: The Year Punk Broke, which I have a very fond memory of seeing at Grafton Stovall at JMU. A bit more hunting, and I couldn’t find the film anywhere…apparently Courtney Love is blocking them from releasing it on DVD for some reason…how can she do this? — they say it’s due to the fact that she has the rights (?) to K Cobain’s material? Maybe since she’s in it and would need to sign a new contract? Courtney = lame-o.
Anyway, thanks to the glory of the internet I was able to find someone’s upload of a VHS dub of it, so now you can check out the Dave Kendall bit, and a little ironic Courtney Love bit…
DK seems so nervous, and totally unable to handle Thurston’s vibe. Seeing him also makes me remember Matt Pinfield, 120 minutes’s brain (to DK’s heart)…and Lewis Largent, who I remember hating with a passion. One time he wore a shirt that said "Loser" (right around the debut of Beck) and Sean F and I referred to him as Loser Largent from that point on. I would tape 120 minutes and watch it the next day, so I could fast forward the vidz I didn’t care about, or that they had overplayed. And this was a good time, for a long time. But once Nirvana broke, and the rise of Alternative Nation took hold, they began to play the same tracks over and over and over. Even today if I see Green Day’s "Longview" I want to punch somebody (preferably Loser Largent). It got to the point where I was spending a half hour of fast forwarding to watch one or two videos. So I gave up. And then it went off the air.
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