PREMIERING AT CANNES: RUBBER
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyBAnZdIvf4
Quentin Dupieux, the director: I’m still naïve enough to believe that there is still room for unconscious and format-free films claims Dupieux. The too formatted films, structured as emotional machines, annoy me. I like the idea of doing a film on a living tire, with no narrative structure nor dramatic stakes. It’s possible! Also, The budget was very limited : I conceived the script, taking into account our means, and I like working like that a lot. Thus, RUBBER is the story of a serial killer tire that refers to his youth: Around the age of 12, my father’s video camera made me feel like filming. Then I discovered horror movies in video clubs and I instinctively needed to remake some fragments at home. And why a tire? I can’t answer questions starting by why. The introductive monologue of my film includes exactly 8 why. Life is full of mysteries… Why don’t we see the air around us? Why a tire? This is the same question.
Want to see.
Film & Music & Reviews
Guest PostsGIANT Guest-post: Kati Nolfi on The Runaways
I’ve been living life as a Runaway. I saw the movie three times, I read the books Neon Angel and Joan Jett, watched Foxes, and cut my hair. This narrative has a pull over me, a grown lady who should be done with slouching and greasy hair. The Runaways, the books, and the interviews, especially of Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning, are texts that clarify and complicate the meaning of child actors and musicians growing into adulthood.
Kristen Stewart is amazing. In interviews she’s not coy and cute, she’s weird and rude and awkward, defying the script of normal behavior. Her Internet lovers and haters seem obsessed with her nervousness and stuttering. Nothing seems to be a pose and that seems to piss people off, as if she should posture, stand straight and smile. The truth is in the YouTube commentariat, mean, gracious, and otherwise. One detractor says, “Kristen looks more like a hobo than a star.” That’s a good thing! Girl, meet me in the desert and we can be friends.
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May 10th, 2010 / 9:47 am
May 10th, 2010 / 9:47 am
MACHETE… MESSAGE TO ARIZONA
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKhChMHhBN8
Go Ahead: It is Friday
my father warned me about men and booze but he never said anything about women and cocaine.
for seasickness? a glass of champagne.
the sooner you know your lines the sooner we can go out for a drink.
look at that bitch, carl, look at that!
la-dee-da, lost at sea again…
i am hag-ridden with ambition.
this isn’t drink. It’s only wine!
dance? I’ll waltz your ass right up against that wall.
a blend of champagne, gin, a spot of sugar, a squirt of lemon juice, the whole topped off with a brandy float.
i don’t want to be taught!
i’m quick on the bottle.
codeine…bourbon… (last words [?])
if I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.
Connectivity in Lynch: Michal Ajvaz’s The Other City
[This post originally appeared on my personal blog last year. In light of a new audience, and a new book from Ajvaz forthcoming on Dalkey in a few months, The Golden Age, I’ve reupped it here. Thanks! BB]
The signs of connective tissue in the films of David Lynch are in places very clear. Beyond Lynch’s own mentioning of the mesh of words, most vocally between Mulhollland Drive and INLAND EMPIRE, but also, I would insist, between all the films, in many ways the blank or horrendous spaces that make the films seem the most ‘underneath the viewer’s skin’ are the creation of the space itself, a portal both from film to film, as well as, I must demand, into human.
The rips in spaces in Lynch are all throughout, and in many ways, the definitive space of Lynch: the totem-being behind Winky’s, Club Silencio, the Black Lodge, the pink house on the sound stage and the ‘other version’ of Hollywood & Vine in INLAND EMPIRE, the Rabbits, Ben’s house in Blue Velvet, the exploding shed in Lost Highway, perhaps the entire terrain of Eraserhead, etc., etc. You could list these rooms forever.
You could also list, in your own life, the spaces of your mind that are contained in memory or in associative practice: sleep rooms, childhood slurrings, ruined pictures, unrecorded thoughts, most any second mostly. That you could also not truly make this list is important too, as here is an example, in Lynch’s hands, perhaps, of what occurs in evidence of the reckoning:
[Watch the whole scene here]
Celestial Navigations
“Tens of millions of people have seen these films. No one knows who made them.”
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UdZSrEos-k
Another Blowjob, Live
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-0xDa4-fi0
And yet another (of the transfinite number) reason to live in New York.
Horror Affect
Been watching a lot of horror movies lately. Seems like there’s a lot to be learned affect-wise in the way certain films can build a space and response in the viewer by simple depictions, sound and color. Though often, these effects, by the end of a film, are dispelled: any inherent blank or fear in buildings or suggestions are explained away by removing masks, using weapons, spilling gore. This, for me, always is simultaneously a relief, because I can get out, but also a supreme disappointment, because then there is nothing left to rub. Specifically, last night I watched a pop horror film, The Strangers, and was actually starting to feel really activated, but then after the fear became murder it was easy to forget. There are, of course, though, horror films that don’t answer the questions, and have the affect, such as The Shining, and other films not quite horror in name but that cause that stir and don’t dispel it by the film’s end, such as Solaris or Invocation of My Demon Brother or Mulholland Drive. I can think of a lot of films like those, but much many less in the “official” horror genre, which seems weird.
What are some horror films that open these doors and leave them open, and also are beautifully made, clean of cheese?
What about books that cause this fear in you, and extend beyond page turners? House of Leaves is a close example, in that it has that affect, and the craft is decent, but I wish the book had had a more thorough edit to pare down the distractors.
A Six Minute Trip, But It Feels Like Eternity: Sundance Film Festival, a review.
11 degrees and snowing. The weather and its children–snow, slush, wet shoes, stung faces–frames Sundance. As much as I’d like to say I acclimated, I didn’t. But the weather does amplify a sense of frenzy & camaraderie already present for the sake of the namesake: movies. People go to see movies, buy movies, sell movies–share movies and share themselves. And, yes: if you don’t have passes, know that you should wake up at 6am or earlier every morning to stand in line for hours at the box office, just to find out that you can only get tickets to 2 (max) of the 5-8 movies you wanted to see. There was a guy, first in line, who camped out at the box office for the night only to be beaten to the punch for tickets by someone who paid faster (cash). Devotion.
So there is a madness to the festival. It is worth it. I met filmmakers–actors, writers, directors, producers–I highly respect, and had leisurely conversations with them. All were warm, all were happy to be sharing. I saw six films in four days and a night, three of them great. It was thrilling.
The title above comes from a line in Enter The Void–one of the characters is describing a DMT trip. I stayed away from the DMT, but the festival, all gathered & gleaned, is a very specific and inspiring drug and gauntlet.
Okay. Here’s what I thought of the films:
Film Comment Lists Films/Stephanie Barber
Film Comment has posted their “Avant-Garde Poll,” listing the best films and filmmakers of the last decade. Tied for #21 (I’m noting that the first 14 on the list of 50 are all men) is Stephanie Barber, whose book and DVD, these here separated to see how they standing alone or the soundtracks of six films by stephanie barber, will be available again from Publishing Genius in June.
That’s my favorite part of the list. There’s probably more to reflect upon. For instance, this Jim Trainor movie, which is fantastic:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZE_dBxM9IE&feature=related
May 6th, 2010 / 4:46 pm