[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_2qjzj73Y]
“Theme from S’Express” (1989) – S’Express
This is from the period when house reached the public consciousness in Europe. It was released one year after Coldcut’s Doctorin’ The House. Both tracks featured nervous “acid” bass lines. A similar track from that same era is Stakker by Humanoid.
See previous entries in this series.
[Youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=A_jXxHeVpMQ]
If… (1969) – Lindsay Anderson
Go on. Look at me. Look at my eyes. I’ll kill you. Sometimes I stand in front of the mirror and my eyes get bigger and bigger. And I’m like a tiger. I like tigers. Rrrrah!
Previous “World Cinema Classics“
Jupiter and Io (c. 1530) – Correggio
It would appear that the dynamics of the two married protagonists of Greek and Roman mythology Zeus (Jupiter) and Hera (Juno) is one of a jealous wife chasing a promiscuous husband.
In order to conceal his escapades, Zeus constantly makes use of his shapeshifting abilities. Thus, he transforms himself into a cloud (he hid himself within a cloud with Io), a golden shower with Danae, a swan with Leda, a bull with Europa, depending on whether he needed to be charming and beautiful or powerful and frightening in his conquest.
See also: divine jealousy
Yesterday evening, I attended David Toop’s presentation of his forthcoming book Ways of Hearing. Toop’s music theory is very much about hearing. I will write more about the presentation in a future post. But for now: a documentary film on Christian Marclay, which illustrates Toop’s stance on music well.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yqM3dAqTzs]
Christian Marclay mini documentary
If you known where this documentary originated, please let me know.
Why women love apes by Stine Jensen
Dedicated to my friend M______. A belated happy birthday.
Twentieth-century western culture is full of examples of erotic relationships between dark-haired apes and blond women: there is a striking connection between woman and ape not only in movies and novels, but also in scientific practice of primatology. In this fascinating study, literary theorist Stine Jensen shows how the roles of ape, woman and man, too, have changed fundamentally throughout the last century.
For example, the famous film classic King Kong from 1933, was born of the nineteenth-century obsession with the rape-ape, but at the same time it presented the ape as an ambiguous creature – both malicious and gentle. Thereafter, mostly female researchers, such as Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey and Biruté Galdikas, ensured that the image of the primate changed from killer king to gentle giant. In their endeavours to make primates seem milder these women pushed such issues as the killing of younger troop members and other violence within ape society into the background.
See previous posts here and here.
Diario di un vizio (1993)
Fiction is consumed by the hours or days. People cocoon entire weekends to watch six seasons of Sex and the City. With an average length of 22 minutes per episode and a total of 94 episodes this comes to about 34 hours for the whole series. Talk about killing time.
I ask of the current media outlets to publish box sets of anthologies or series I want to watch. On demand. WYWWYWI, which is analogous to WYSIWYG, and stands for “What You Want, When You Want It.”
In my current mood, I’d like to order the box set of the complete oeuvre of Marco Ferreri. I’ve only seen two of his films: La Grande Bouffe and Tales of Ordinary Madness. I sadly missed a retrospective [1] of his work last December in London. Marco Ferreri has made about 27 films, with an average running time of 90 minutes each this gives a total viewing time of 40 hours. Slightly higher than the total time of Sex and the City. But a lot more satisfying.
About the photograph at the top of this post. It’s a screen cap from the 1993 Ferreri film Diario di un vizio starring Sabrina Ferilli. The nude female/dressed male motif is explored in it.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JpD5skqGOo]
Knights of the Jaguar (1999) – DJ Rolando
See previous entries in this series.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKtRmBZPmPg]
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) by Wes Anderson
When the kids ask if the split is their fault, he replies: “Obviously we made certain sacrifices as a result of having children, but no. Lord, no.”
Tip of the hat to Cactus.
Previous “World Cinema Classics“
Nessus rapes Deianeira (1898) by Arnold Böcklin.
Arnold Böcklin (16 October 1827 – 16 January 1901) was a Swiss painter known for his grotesquely comic work. His best known painting is the macabre The Isle of the Dead. Most recently his work has been celebrated at the German traveling exhibition Comic Grotesque. He was born 180 years ago tomorrow.
I’ve always considered the ambivalence of the grotesque an essentially Western sensibility but I guess I’m wrong if you consider the work of Yue Minjun (Googe gallery) Yue Minjun is an artist based in Beijing working in painting and sculpture. His style is ambiguous in that it is very Chinese, yet at the same time very Western, and very political, satirical and humorous to the point of the grotesque. Last Friday, his painting “Execution” became the most expensive work sold by a Chinese contemporary artist.
As further ‘proof’ that the grotesque and fantastique (two very related sensibilities, in the sense that they both rely on ambiguity at their core), there is the anthology of stories Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, which Franz Kafka described as “exquisite” and the painting below:
One of the dragons from The Nine Dragons handscroll , painted by the Song Dynasty Chinese artist Chen Rong in the year 1244.
Tip of the hat to Doms.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V16K6yMWprk&]
I viewed Enki Bilal‘s film Immortal (starring Charlotte Rampling) over the weekend and liked it, although story-wise it’s not a very good film. It rendered the graphic novels which I was so crazy about when I was in my early twenties quite beautifully: the sense of futurism mixed with decay, high tech mingled with dirt which you will also find in Tanino Liberatore‘s RanXerox. The feeling of loneliness and of alienation, the wide open spaces and futuristic, multi-level cities, the cast of humans mixed with “non humans” make for interesting viewing. However, if you can spare the time and the money, go for the original graphic novels.