Category Archives: film

Youtube bricolage

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb_ZcfD-NRw ]

I love Youtube bricolage (the art of remixing “found” video clips and music) and while I’m not particular fond of the soundtrack to the clip above (a Brian Eno remix of the Lopez-track from 808 State’s album Don Solaris), I would still like to share it with you for the film snippets listed below. In case your wondering who 808 State are, here is a badly hissing clip from their best track: Pacific. (And here is a clip from The Beloved and “Sun Rising”, at the time a similar outfit to 808 State)

Film credits (not in chronological order): Belle de Jour 1967 Luis Buñuel La Sindrome Di Stendhal 1996 Dario Argento Merlin 1998 Steve Barron Lola Montes 1955 Max Ophüls Siren 2 2006 SCEI Discovery Channel La Frusta e il Corpo 1963 Mario Bava Les Yeux Sans Visage 1960 Georges Franju Pagan Poetry 2001 Nick Knight Blue Velvet 1986 David Lynch Suspiria 1977 Dario Argento Black Narcissus 1947 Michael Powell Possession 1981 Andrzej Zulawski Onibaba 1964 Kaneto Shindô Kumonosu Jô 1957 Akira Kurosawa Sennen Joyû 2001 Satoshi Kon Death Becomes Her 1992 Robert Zemeckis Die Büchse Der Pandora 1929 Georg Wilhelm Pabst Tanin No Kao 1966 Hiroshi Teshigahara Goh-Hime 1992 Hiroshi Teshigahara The Saddest Music In The World 2003 Guy Maddin Faraon 1966 Jerzy Kawalerowicz The Fountain 2006 Darren Aronofsky Solaris 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky Senso 1954 Luchino Visconti Viy/Вий 1967 Georgi Kropachyov & Konstantin Yershov Tristana 1970 Luis Buñuel La Reine Margot 1994 Patrice Chéreau Mulholland Drive 2001 David Lynch Hausu/House 1977 Nobuhiko Obayashi Inferno 1980 Dario Argento Profondo Rosso 1975 Dario Argento Yôkihi 1955 Kenji Mizoguchi

World cinema classics #2

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoVYXwMkr0U]

Before Sunrise (United States, 1995)

I had forgotten about this film, a love story, not cheesy. Aside from walking and talking, not much happens. The film starts with Jesse meeting Celine on a train to Paris. Celine is reading a Georges Bataille anthology: Madame Edwarda, The Dead Man, Story of the Eye. Jesse has actor Klaus Kinski’s autobiography, All I Need Is Love. They strike a conversation. Jesse is going to Vienna whereas Celine is on her way to Paris after visiting her grandmother. When they reach Vienna, Jesse asks Celine to accompany him in Vienna.

Sci-fi noir, or, on the longevity of generic categories

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx8ohP7qro4]

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lW0F1sccqk]

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i3jT95NExE]

Sci-Fi noir is a term coined in the 2000s to denote a category of science-fiction films. Milestone films generally cited in this category are Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville (1965), Ridley Scott‘s Blade Runner (1982) and Ghost in the Shell (1995). As an aesthetic category, it is very near to cyberpunk and neo-noir. The work of Tanino Liberatore‘s RanXerox deserves mention here. One wonders how long this freshly-coined neologism will survive.

This collection of Youtube vids inspired by The Rise of Sci-Fi Noir by Broken Projector.

Between Edie, The Science of Sleep and The Velvet Underground

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTpIUTLjv_I]

In our six degrees network this song occupies the interstice between Edie, The Science of Sleep and The Velvet Underground. I watched Sleep and A Scanner Darkly within the space of a couple of days and in a comparison, Sleep was fantastic and Scanner bland. Am I the only one or did Scanner feel like an update of Soylent Green?

Surrealism and cinema

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDu9EEIJltI&]

Funeral Parade of Roses is a 1969 Japanese film directed by Toshio Matsumoto.

Tip of the hat to Girish:

The first, historic path of surrealism and cinema must be (according to AM) broadly defined to include not just officially acknowledged ‘classics’ by René Clair, Germaine Dulac & Antonin Artaud, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, etc., but also certain films by Robert Benayoun, Ado Kyrou, Nelly Kaplan, Walerian Borowczyk, Toshio Matsumoto, Jean Rouch, etc. –Girish

I am currently reading Le Surréalisme au cinéma, which is often mentioned as the standard work on surrealist cinema.It is an excellent introduction to cult cinema tout court. Perhaps more on this later.

They Call Us Misfits

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFCy2xP3Vuw&]

Dom kallar oss mods (English title: They Call Us Misfits) is a 1968 Swedish documentary film directed by Stefan Jarl and Jan Lindqvist. The film, the first in what would become a trilogy, is an uncompromising account of the life of two alienated teenagers.

The Mods from the original title Dom kallar oss mods indicates that Mods in Sweden were not the Mods we know from British subculture. The youths depicted would have been described in English speaking countries as as hippies.