Coming soon?

Add this one to your list of must see vinyl inspired documentaries and movies. Director Jony Lyle gives a quick teaser of his upcoming film entitled To Have & To Hold, which Lyle describes as “a ‘musicmentory’ to celebrate the age of vinyl records.”

The film promises enough archive footage, records rooms, music collections, pressing plants, and rare vinyl to satisfy even the most die hard physical music addicts. In addition to its irresistible collectible eye candy, To Have & To Hold, which is scheduled for a 2010 release, features interviews with such notable vinyl aficionados as Questlove, Chuck D, Bobbito Garcia, DJ Amir, Bruce Lundvall, Christian Marclay, and Paul Mawhinney.

(via Nerdcore )

 
Photorealistic David Lynch head by contemporary sculptor Jamie Salmon. From the artist:

I like to use the human form as a way of exploring the nature of what we consider to be “real” and how we react when our visual perceptions of this reality are challenged. In our modern society we have become obsessed with our outward appearance, and now with modern technology we are able to alter this in almost anyway we desire. How does this outward change affect us and how we are perceived by others?

(via Nerdcore)

New Weird author Jeff VanderMeer unleashed a long-forgotten pile of shlock on his blog… TENTACLES, an Italian rip-off of Jaws featuring, yep, a giant octopus. This seems ripe for a comeback. Disturbingly, I actually remember this movie.

Yesterday, while doing our taxes, we followed up Pandorum, Dune, Moon, and Alien with a movie on cable…Tentacles. From 1977, clear rip-off of Jaws.

I have a feeling that everyone else already knows about this D-movie, but we were just aghast, watching winters, Huston, and others do their best impression of stink-o-rama. In one scene a killer whale trainer embarks on a long monologue aimed at convincing the whale to fight the killer giant octopus.

Here’s more of it, for masochists…

More clips at the original link.

(Jeff VanderMeer: Tentacles!)

(Empire of the Ants/Tentacles)

(Jeff VanderMeer: City of Saints and Madmen)

. 
Forget about Twilight or that lame True Blood series, this is how vampire should be done! The insanely brilliant opening moments—featuring Bauhaus performing Bela Lugosi’s Dead—from Tony Scott’s 1983 film, The Hunger has lost none of its power over the years. The film stars Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon and if you haven’t seen it, it’s a sexy, smart delight. The unlucky goth chick who is the recipient of Bowie’s vampiric intentions in this scene was played by none other than Dangerous Minds pal, singer/actress Ann Magnuson.

This is one of the great opening scenes of any movie ever made if you ask me. I actually saw this in a theater all by myself—or so I thought—and the effect was electrifying. I was 17 at the time and I’d just gotten massively baked in the parking lot. I walked in, sat down to THIS and just when things calmed down a bit onscreen, I was scared witless by an extremely elderly woman, who had been sleeping two rows in front of me, suddenly darting up and staring straight at me and wagging her finger in my face!
 

 
Looking for the Chrome video posted below, unsurprisingly I was also shown various YouTube clips from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Check out this trippy trailer for the film. Nice. Also, take a gander at the various posters for A Clockwork Orange at Posterati or look on Google images for book covers. I especially like some of the minimalist Eastern European posters and covers you can find out there. What a great project to be thrown if you’re a designer.
 

 
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein first came to life on celluloid one hundred years ago this week, with the monster’s appearance in what has become known as “Edison’s Frankenstein.” Although the great inventor had no direct involvement in the making of the silent short, it was made by the studio that bore his name and using his film process, the Edison Kinetogram. Made in 1910, it was the first horror film in cinema history.

It’s interesting to note that Boris Karloff was actually the fourth actor to play Frankenstin’s monster.

More on the silent Frankensteins at the Frankenstein blog

The entire 13 minute film:
 

My friend Shaun Frenté is screening the Japanese classic “Funeral Parade of Roses” this Wednesday at Show Cave in LA—now the greatest venue in the city!

Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no soretsu)
Black and White. 1969. Japan. 105 minutes.
Directed by Toshio Matsumoto

Unequivocally the best Japanese 60s avant-pop tranny tragedy I’ve seen, Funeral Parade of Roses is a must-see time capsule (I only wish the future Thetans who sift through my ashes hope this is what the 20th century is all about). Part self-conscious art film, part exploitation film, and part gonzo documentary on Tokyo’s underground scene – though where the zones overlap is up for grabs. Even on DVD, the black and white dazzles, as one quotable image supplants another. If you’re into the whole Asian catholic schoolgirl ladyboy thing, and who isn’t anymore, this is the jackpot.

Pithy introduction and discussion following the screening – this is part one in our run of “New Waves” around the world.

(Arthur: Funeral Parade of Roses at Show Cave)

 
This article from the New York Times about a totally unknown, all black proto-punk band called Death, circa 1974, has me salivating to hear this CD. Except for some hardcore music fanatics, Death were totally forgotten, even by the participants, really. Then one of their kids heard his father’s voice on a record at a party in San Francisco and this started a chain of events that saw the music of Death released on CD by Drag City Records:

The group’s music has been almost completely unheard since the band stopped performing more than three decades ago. But after all the years of silence, Death’s moment has finally arrived. It comes, however, nearly a decade too late for its founder and leader, David Hackney, who died of lung cancer in 2000. “David was convinced more than any of us that we were doing something totally revolutionary,” said Bobby Sr., 52.

Forgotten except by the most fervent punk rock record collectors — the band’s self-released 1976 single recently traded hands for the equivalent of $800 — Death would likely have remained lost in obscurity if not for the discovery last year of a 1974 demo tape in Bobby Sr.’s attic. Released last month by Drag City Records as ”,,, For the Whole World to See” Death’s newly unearthed recordings reveal a remarkable missing link between the high-energy hard rock of Detroit bands like the Stooges and MC5 from the late 1960s and early ’70s and the high-velocity assault of punk from its breakthrough years of 1976 and ’77. Death’s songs “Politicians in My Eyes,” “Keep On Knocking” and “Freakin Out” are scorching blasts of feral ur-punk, making the brothers unwitting artistic kin to their punk-pioneer contemporaries the Ramones, in New York; Rocket From the Tombs, in Cleveland; and the Saints, in Brisbane, Australia. They also preceded Bad Brains, the most celebrated African-American punk band, by almost five years.

Jack White of the White Stripes, who was raised in Detroit, said in an e-mail message: “The first time the stereo played ‘Politicians in My Eyes,’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. When I was told the history of the band and what year they recorded this music, it just didn’t make sense. Ahead of punk, and ahead of their time.”

The teenage Hackney brothers started playing R&B in their parents’ garage in the early ’70s but switched to hard rock in 1973, after seeing an Alice Cooper show. Dannis played drums, Bobby played bass and sang, and David wrote the songs and contributed propulsive guitar work, derived from studying Pete Townshend’s power-chord wrist technique. Their musicianship tightened when their mother allowed them to replace their bedroom furniture with mikes and amps as long as they practiced for three hours every afternoon. “From 3 to 6,” said Dannis, 54, “we just blew up the neighborhood.”

This Band Was Punk Before Punk Was Punk (New York Times)

 

 
Great short by Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg. For more information about the National Day of Unplugging (March 19th to 20th sunset to sunset) visit the Connected website.

 
The Stuff is an eighties cult movie made by director Larry Cohen. It’s was a perennial grindhouse flick of the decade, although I personally saw it for the first time in the hallowed halls of Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, during a festival of Cohen’s films. The Stuff is the story of a tofutti-like substance that bubbles out from the ground, and tastes great. Everyone who tries The Stuff, can’t get enough… but are they eating The Stuff or is The Stuff eating them?
 

 
The Stuff was made on a low budget with several familiar faces like Garrett Morris (from the original cast of SNL), Paul Sorvino, Danny Aiello, Brooke Adams and Andrea Marcovicci. It has several fake commercials that looked quite real at the time cut in throughout the movie that up the camp value considerably.  The Stuff is as much an anti-consumerist rant as it is a horror film. That’s why it’s so much fun. Check it out, it’s one of the better, more entertaining cult movies out there.  It’s actually way smarter than the trailer below indicates.

Read more on The Stuff at the the House of Self-Indulgence blog. where The Stuff is described as: “A cautionary tale for all those who enjoy consuming dessert products on a regular basis, The Stuff is a hokey horror farce that manages to skewer everything from mindless consumerism to cold war paranoia, and yet, still be a movie about homicidal yogurt not from outer space.” Elsewhere on the web I saw the film describe as “yogurt product comes to life, causing devastation.”
 

 
Amusing clock by artist Chris Dimino:

Every hour Jack breaks through the door and the and the famous line ‘Here’s Johnny’ plays followed by the scream of Shelly Duvall.

(via Nerdcore )

Somebody re-created the entire Wicker Man movie with the muppets, and made a flip-comic out of it. It’s about 500% better than the Nicholas Cage remake, I’ll give them that!

(Via Swen’s Weblog)

(The Wicker Man)

 
This is an episode of Post Mortem, a series that examined the “pathologies” of certain seemingly doomed artists who were touched equally by genius and madness. Other subjects included Beethoven, Virginia Woolf, Francis Bacon, and Nijinsky. This episode, about Montgomery Clift features interviewees like Kenneth Anger, Clift biographer Patricia Bosworth. Kevin McCarthy, and Barney Hoskyns.

The company who made this, Blackwatch Media, also produced the excellent Carry On Darkly documentary about the troubled personalities behind the iconic British Carry On film series of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Carry on Darkly is well worth looking for on the torrent trackers. I enjoyed it immensely.

Thank you Paul Gallagher!

 
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the cinema… there’s Birdemic: Shock and Terror, which I maliciously tricked Jason Louv into seeing last night. But what I didn’t know—why would anyone know this?—is that James Nguyen, “The Master of the Romantic Thriller”™ who, uh, created Birdemic, actually directed an earlier movie in 2003 called Julie & Jack.

I haven’t seen it—and seriously doubt that I ever will—but apparently, Julie is actually dead and her brain and personality are stored in a computer. This is what Jack is all upset about. Apparently. (Note that actress Tippi Hedren is in both of Nguyen’s movies).

 
When I was looking for a photo to run with this post in the L.A. Times photo database, the caption for the above shot of Malcolm McDowell as the perverse Roman emperor Caligula read, ” ‘Caligula,’ with Malcolm McDowell as the ruler, shocked audiences in 1980. Now it seems just unpleasant.” That was from a review of a 2007 DVD release. Not a good one, obviously!

Many of those associated with the film, including screenwriter Gore Vidal and actors Helen Mirren, Peter O’Toole and McDowell, wanted to distance themselves from Caligula but especially director Tinto Brass, now 76, who railed against the film’s producer, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione, for adding what Brass thought were “gratuitous” hard-core sex scenes. But now, inspired by the success of James Cameron’s billion-dollar Avatar, Brass wants to revisit the subject of “an abandoned project about a Roman emperor that was ruined by Americans,” implying he wants to do a remake of Caligula.

From The Guardian:

It remains to be seen whether Brass’s dalliance with 3D technology will spark excitement in other adult film producers. Thus far the porn industry appears to be adopting a surprisingly coy approach to the new medium, scared off by the high production costs. Added to this is the fact that most pornography is produced for the home-entertainment market, where viewers will need 3D TVs in order to enjoy it behind closed doors. “We’re very excited to do 3D production,” Rob Smith, director of operations at the Hustler Video Group, said recently. “But we don’t feel market penetration [of 3D TVs] has hit the level we need.”

The sad news for Brass, meanwhile, is that 3D technology is not quite the virgin territory he thinks it is. Other pornographic film-makers have been there before him, with 1969’s The Stewardesses widely credited as the first 3D adult movie. Shot on a budget of $100,000, this sensitive account of footloose cabin crew went on to earn a tumescent $27m from porn cinemas around the globe.

While it does seem rather obvious that 3-D pornography could help lead the beleaguered adult industry toward better days, the whole concept of a big-budget Caligula in 3-D — remember all the puking? — seems deliriously misguided. Production is due to start in Italy sometime in May.

Cross posting this from Brand X

 
Song: “Angel” by Massive Attack
 
The Letter (1940, William Wyler. Bette Davis)
The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston. Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor)
Shadow Of A Doubt (1943, Alfred Hitchcock. Joseph Cotten)
Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder. Barbara Stanwyck, Fred Macmurray)
Murder, My Sweet (1944, Edward Dmytryk. Dick Powell)
Scarlet Street (1945, Fritz Lang. Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett)
Laura (1945, Otto Preminger. Gene Tierney)
Detour (1945, Edgar G. Ulhmer. Ann Savage)
Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock. Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman)
Gilda (1946, Charles Vidor. Rita Hayworth)
The Killers (1946, Robert Siodmak. Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster)
The Big Sleep (1946, Howard Hawks. Humphrey Bogart)
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946, Tay Garnett. John Garfield, Lana Turner)
The Lady From Shanghai (1947, Orson Welles. Rita Hayworth, Welles)
Out Of The Past (1947, Jacques Tourneur. Jane Greer, Robert Mitchum)
Brute Force (1947, Jules Dassin. Burt Lancaster)
Force Of Evil (1948, Abraham Polonsky. John Garfield, Marie Windsor)
The Set-Up (1949, Robert Wise. Robert Ryan)
The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed. Orson Welles)
Criss Cross (1949, Siodmak. Burt Lancaster, Yvonne De Carlo)
Gun Crazy (1950, Joseph H. Lewis. John Dall, Peggy Cummins)
In A Lonely Place (1950, Nicholas Ray. Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950, Huston. Sterling Hayden)
Night And The City (1950, Jules Dassin. Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney)
Sunset Blvd. (1950, Billy Wilder. Gloria Swanson, William Holden)
Ace In The Hole (1951, Billy Wilder. Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling)
Angel Face (1952, Otto Preminger. Jean Simmons)
Pickup On South Street (1953, Samuel Fuller. Richard Widmark)
The Big Heat (1953, Fritz Lang. Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955, Robert Aldrich. Gaby Rodgers)
Night Of The Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton. Robert Mitchum, Lillian Gish)
The Killing (1956, Stanley Kubrick. Sterling Hayden)
Elevator To The Gallows (1958, Louis Malle. Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet)
Touch Of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)
The Naked Kiss (1964, Samuel Fuller. Constance Towers)
 
(via HYST)

Directed by Tamra Davis, the documentary features never-before seen footage of the prolific artist painting, talking about his art, and existing in the two years prior to his death in 1988.

The OST features music from Mike D and Ad Rock.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child was released on Feb 21st.

Thanks Manuel Hernandez!

 
It seems like I often write about the topic of bad movies here on Dangerous Minds. Good bad movies, not bad bad movies. Nobody likes a movie that’s just plain terrible. A good bad movie has to have that something special, like The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, Santa Claus vs. The Martians, or The Room. Or just about any Elizabeth Taylor film after a certain point.

And then there’s Birdemic: Shock and Terror, which I posted about earlier. Tara and I went to see it with Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin this weekend and I must say, Birdemic truly lived up to its good bad advance hype. It was bewildering, but hilarious. Tim and Eric’s Tim Heidecker, co-host of the screening we saw on Saturday night, stared out at the audience when the film was over and after a dramatic pause, asked “Don’t you all just feel like assholes for sitting through that?” In a sense he was right, although Heidecker admitted this screening had, in fact, been his fourth.

I was telling a friend today about the dubious cinematic charms of the utterly perplexing Birdemic and he asked me had I ever seen Gymkata? I had not and he suggested I look it up on YouTube. Here’s a brief review of it, from Film Critic:

I’ve seen Gymkata three times. That’s not a boast. The first time I caught it was on videotape in the late ‘80s. The second and third times it was on some late night cable station and I was either too sleep-deprived or inebriated to turn it off. I know it’s cliché, but the whole car wreck analogy fits almost too well. When Gymkata is on, I just can’t turn away. And I’m not alone - - the net is littered with sad accounts of similarly affected individuals.

Jonathan Cabot (Kurt Thomas) is a U.S. gymnast sent to the backwater country of Parmistan to participate—and hopefully win—The Game, a dangerous, obstacle-laden decathlon. Why? Because the U.S. government needs to set up a “Early Warning Earth Station for the Star Wars program” and sending in troops to do it is “out of style.” Indeed. Thing is no one has survived The Game in 900 years. There’s a reason for that, too. As if the course weren’t hard enough, contestants must maneuver through numerous ninjas, crazies, and Parmistani thugs that try and stop them.

A cheap plot description can’t do justice to the inanity on display here. Perhaps descriptions of a few choice sequences will: the film’s crowning triumph is the Village of Crazies, an entire hovel populated only with cannibal psychopaths and screaming schizos who try and claw our hero from the sky as he swings and vaults through the decaying town. What, that’s not crazy enough? How about the fact that there just happens to be a convenient pommel horse in the center of the town?!? Still not doing it? How about clumsy ninjas wearing fur vests? Or a guy named Thorg with a red headband and silver He-Man arm braces? Honestly, I could go on and on.

Did you catch the part in the trailer where he just happened to have the gymnastics horse to fight the baddies with? How does that get explained?

Not sure I could sit though this one. Yes, I’ll watch the movie with the poorly animated CGI birds that shit fiery bombs, but even I have standards.
 

 
Gymkata on iMockery
Thank you, Scott Dallavo!

 
Here’s a short animation using the real audio of David Lynch recalling his first meeting with George Lucas. It didn’t go so well.
 
(via Mister Honk)

 
Dangerous Minds pal Michael Simmons reviews When You’re Strange, the new documentary about The Doors from director Tom DiCillo (Johnny Suede, Living in Oblivion) on the Mojo blog:

DiCillo’s hardest task has been to do justice to the charisma of Mr. Mojo Risin’ (one of Jim Morrison’s many handles, in this case an anagram of his name); I saw The Doors live in January 1969 and can attest that Morrison glowed, generating tangible heat. And yet, 39 years since his death, the Morrison magic comes through loud and clear, as the film traces the transformation of 1965’s callow California kids into the jaded, burnt-out rock stars of 1971. Along the way, we witness every over-told incident in Doors history: Light My Fire and the subsequent string of hits, the adoration of trendsetters du jour like Andy Warhol, Morrison’s refusal to sell out - whether it be changing a controversial lyric for Ed Sullivan or selling a song for a car commercial - his increasingly self-destructive behaviour, the two books of poems published in his lifetime, the penis-flashing in Miami that never happened, and the poète maudit’s Parisian finale.

The musical contributions of the other Doors are emphasized, from drummer John Densmore’s deft swing to guitarist Robbie Krieger’s flamenco fingering and organist Ray Manzarek’s Bach mastery, serving to remind that there would’ve been no Doors without the other Doors. Morrison’s excellence as a singer is also noted, a fact often overlooked in the accounts of his antics. When he was younger, his vocal role model was Elvis; as he got older it was Sinatra and one can clearly hear Ol’ Blues Eyes’ in Jim’s caress of a note.

The footage feels fresh and intimate. There are clips of Morrison’s underground movie from his university days, a sweet Jim playing with children, fly-on-the-wall recording studio scenes, as well as the familiar live concerts where we witness Jim the consummate performer and Jimbo the inebriated clown. But it’s the shots lifted from Morrison’s own experimental films HWY and Feast Of Friends (the former the source of that Ford Mustang footage) that allow us entry into the omnivorous, risky, arty mind of the front Door.