A selection of artworks by artists better known for their work as actors, musicians and writers.
William Burroughs
Burroughs explains his shot gun art:
“Once you know where to point, all you have to do is get out of the way and let this thing happen [...] and letting what you really know take over.”
More celebrity artists, after the jump…
Two sixty-second versions of David Lynch’s Eraserhead: one by Lee Hardcastle; the other by Martin Funke, which was made for the Jameson Empire Done in 60 Seconds competition.
It takes Lee Hardcastle 10 days to make one of his 60-second claymations, as he told Don’t Panic magazine:
I have some shortcuts, biggest ones are within the story – keep characters/locations down to a minimum because that stuff takes the most time to create. Something I learned over time is that whatever you do, do not skip out on the animation. People watch a video for animation, not a static image or boring moving graphics.
I re-use materials like cards & clay. Once in a blue moon, I’ll invest in something, last year I bought & made three armatures at £70 a pop. If I need something, I’ll search the apartment for props/materials. Check out my Eraserhead claymation, the bed sheet they’re sleeping in are in fact the underpants am wearing right now. It’s just the rent I have to worry about.
Lee has made a variety of other great 60 seconds films, including Evil Dead and The Exorcist, all of which can be found here.
Martin’s Eraserhead was one of the 10 shortlisted finalists, and more of his work can be found here.
Previously on DM
Watching these Kodachrome color tests from 1922 actually took my breath away for a moment. I felt as though time had stopped and I’d entered a dream. The colors are so sensual I felt like devouring them, inhaling them like opium. This stunning footage is archived at the George Eastman House and is an early test of the Two-Color Kodachrome Process.
In these newly preserved tests, made in 1922 at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, actress Mae Murray appears almost translucent, her flesh a pale white that is reminiscent of perfectly sculpted marble, enhanced with touches of color to her lips, eyes, and hair. She is joined by actress Hope Hampton modeling costumes from The Light in the Dark (1922), which contained the first commercial use of Two-Color Kodachrome in a feature film. Ziegfeld Follies actress Mary Eaton and an unidentified woman and child also appear.
Read more about these gorgeous moving pictures here.
Vice online has a terrific piece on ‘Redsploitation’ movies.
Somewhere in the grey area between the noble savage and the savage-savage lies the Redsploitation film. These gems of schlock cinema feature Natives getting off their knees and kicking white ass all over the West.
For the whole scoop on really pissed off Indians in the movies check out the Vice website.
more vengeance after the jump…
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for this November release. Burlesque looks like a delirious mashup of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, Flash Dance, Coyote Ugly and Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. Who could ask for anything more?
In what is sure to be a doublewide’s worth of celluloid delight, Cher, her face in the last stages of rigor mortis, plays an aging exotic dancer who owns a down-on-its luck joint called The Burlesque Lounge. Into her life walks bright-eyed, Ali, a small-town gal from Iowa with big dreams and a set of thighs that could crack open coconuts. Hired as a waitress, Ali quickly works her way up to the stage, knocks the socks off everyone with her funky moves and soulful warbling, and becomes the star attraction at the lounge, the diva of the dive. Sounds great, right? And to add just the right amount of campy sweetness to the whole mix, Christina Aguilera plays Ali. Man, I’m choking up Jujubes just thinkin’ about it.
As added insurance that this glitzy, camp classic in the making, has street cred, Burlesque is directed by a former stunt boy from 80’s breakdance classic Beat Street, Steve Antin.
Oh, shit, I’m frothing at the mouth. I need a moist towelette. Quick.
Today marks the half-century anniversary of the premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, which—along with Fellini’s La Dolce Vita opening earlier the same year—used the artform of cinema to hold up the cracked mirror of compulsive desire to Western civilization.
Movies, of course, would never be the same. Who better to drive the point home than our friendly neighborhood Lacanian critical theorist from Slovenia, Slavoj Žižek, from his excellent 2006 documentary, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema?
