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Three songs and a short film by Marc Campbell
01.25.2012
12:22 am
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I was in New Orleans for the past couple of weeks and while I was there I visited Cypress Grove and St. Louis Cemeteries and shot some video and film footage. I combined that footage with some clips from some older films, including Alucarda, Tilly Losch and The Dance Of Her Hands, Danse Serpentine and vintage burlesque to create a short film. It’s raw and spontaneous and owes a bit of a debt to film makers I admire like Kenneth Anger and Stan Brakhage. Of course, they are masters and I am not.

The soundtrack is composed of three songs from my album Tantric Machine (release date: May 2012). The album will be a two-disc affair containing 24 songs and some videos. The recording sessions were produced by Hugh Pool and involved the use of old microphones, synthesizers, rhythm machines and effects boxes. I wanted the project to sound like it was recorded with instruments that had turn to rust - something ancient and yet modern.

As I sang some of the tunes, I found my voice going into a place it hadn’t really gone before. My Texas roots emerged and a “country” feel entered the songs. I made no effort to sing like a hillbilly convict. It just happened. I also tapped into my French side. The result is some kind of weird hybrid that sounds like music for a Gallic spaghetti western with some LSD thrown in. None of this was planned. I was taken by surprise and that’s what I love about making things.

Tantric Machine has been a long time coming. Not because of the time spent recording it, but because of my reticence to get back into the music business. Now that the music business is barely a business anymore, I’ve returned to seeing music in the way that I saw it when I started my first punk band in 1976; something that I do out of love.

Songs:
“Already Dead”
“The Night Goes On”
“Strangled By Flowers”

Thanks for indulging a musician who still heeds the voice of the Muse when she comes calling. Or as Jack Spicer called it (and I’m paraphrasing), “the Martian that re-arranges the furniture in your head.”

Contains brief nudity.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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01.25.2012
12:22 am
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Papercraft Darth Vader as Jesus Christ
01.24.2012
01:16 pm
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Lobulo Design created a simply stunning papercraft depicting Darth Vader as Jesus. This image totally stopped me in my tracks and I thought I’d share.
 
(via Like Cool)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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01.24.2012
01:16 pm
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So you want to be a Spy?: Watch ‘The Life of an Agent’
01.23.2012
07:04 pm
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If you’ve ever wondered what’s involved in being a spy, then take a look at Gábor Zsigmond Papp’s documentary The Life of an Agent, which showcases a selection of hush-hush training films made by the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior for their secret police from the fifties to the eighties. 

As Alessandro Cima points out over at his site Candlelight Stories:

This is a 2004 film compilation by Gábor Zsigmond Papp that presents a ‘best of’ series of clips from thirty years of Hungarian secret police training films geared toward protecting the socialist regime. Subjects covered include: how to place a bug, how to film people from handbag cameras, how to follow someone, how to secretly search a home, how to recruit agents, and how to effectively network for information gathering.

Amongst all this, the film also reveals that there were over 20,000 agents in Hungary, who spied directly on 70,000 people, and took an interest in a further 30,000, which added up to roughly over 1% of the country’s population. And let’s not forget another 100,000 everyday Joes who grassed up their neighbors, on a regular basis.

It may look fun and games now, but these films reveal the seriousness with which both sides enforced state security during the Cold War. And let’s not forget it was both sides, as pointed out by MI5’s counter-intelligence spy, Peter Wright in his memoir Spy-Catcher, where he fessed up to bugging and burgling his way across London in the name of Queen and Country.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The true story behind ‘The Mackintosh Man’


 
Via Candlelight Stories
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.23.2012
07:04 pm
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Wolfgang Riechmann’s ‘Wunderbar’ in a video mega-mix
01.22.2012
04:40 pm
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Here’s something from the Dangerous Minds’ archives that was originally posted on March 4, 2011.

Wolfgang Riechmann was part of the German electronic scene of the 1970s centered in and around Düsseldorf . He started composing music in the 60’s in a group called Spirits of Sound with Wolfgang Flur who later became a founding member of Kraftwerk.

Riechmann released only one album, the brilliant Wunderbar, just one month before he was tragically stabbed to death in a random act of violence.

In Wunderbar, which was released from Sky Records in 1978, the influences of the so-called Berlin school (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze etc.) and the so-called Düsseldorf School (NEU!, Kraftwerk, La Düsseldorf) can be recognised. The main elements of his compositions are simple sequencer and drum patterns, filtered through Riechmann’s personal harmonies and simple (even simplistic) but mature melodies. The music in Wunderbar has been described as ‘‘modern, electronic pop, in a league with Kraftwerk and NEU!.”

The following video consists of all six tracks of Wunderbar.

1. Wunderbar (5:40)
2. Abendlicht (4:21)
3. Weltweit (7:00)
4. Silberland (7:41)
5. Himmelblau (8:38)
6. Traumzeit (1:11)

The video is a collage of vintage European erotica that contains some nudity that most viewers will find more campy than sexy. But I think it works nicely with Reichmann’s music.
 

 
Previously on DM: Brad Laner on Wolfgang Riechmann

Posted by Marc Campbell
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01.22.2012
04:40 pm
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What’s wrong with British cinema: ‘Kevin Curtis is a Dead Man’ explains NSFW
01.21.2012
08:08 pm
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A spoof trailer explaining in a nutshell what’s wrong with British independent cinema. NSFW.
 

 
Via Scheme Comix
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.21.2012
08:08 pm
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Andy Warhol’s ‘Kiss’
01.20.2012
02:28 pm
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Andy Warhol’s Kiss is probably the artist’s earliest film work that was screened in public. Harkening back to the time when Hayes Office censors would not allow lips to touch and linger for more than three seconds in Hollywood films, with Kiss, Warhol decided to shoot male/female, female/female and male/male snogs that went on for three minutes. The concept was likely also influenced by a 1929 Greta Garbo film called The Kiss which apparently was screened at Amos Vogel’s influential Cinema 16 experimental film society right around the time that Warhol bought his first Bolex film camera.

The Kiss films were started in 1963 and shown in installments during weekly underground film screenings organized by Jonas Mekas. Eventually a 55-minute long version of Kiss was assembled. Among the participants were Ed Sanders of The Fugs, actor Rufus Collins from the Living Theatre, sculptor Marisol, artist Robert Indiana, as well as several of the outcasts and doomed beauties who would come to comprise the Factory’s “superstars.” The woman who you see kissing several guys, is Naomi Levine, who probably also came up with the concept (many of the kisses were also shot in her apartment). Andy Warhol referred to Levine as “my first female superstar.”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.20.2012
02:28 pm
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Pirate Bay’s brilliant statement about SOPA and PIPA


This template for the SOPA blackout (the one we used) was created by Zachary Johnson.

Depending on where you live, you might not be able to read the thought-provoking polemic posted by the Pirate Bay yesterday, so here it is in full. It’s well worth reading.

INTERNETS, 18th of January 2012. PRESS RELEASE, FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Over a century ago Thomas Edison got the patent for a device which would “do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear”. He called it the Kinetoscope. He was not only amongst the first to record video, he was also the first person to own the copyright to a motion picture.

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent.

There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them - like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

So, the whole basis of this industry, that today is screaming about losing control over immaterial rights, is that they circumvented immaterial rights. They copied (or put in their terminology: “stole”) other peoples creative works, without paying for it. They did it in order to make a huge profit. Today, they’re all successful and most of the studios are on the Fortune 500 list of the richest companies in the world. Congratulations - it’s all based on being able to re-use other peoples creative works. And today they hold the rights to what other people create. If you want to get something released, you have to abide to their rules. The ones they created after circumventing other peoples rules.

The reason they are always complainting about “pirates” today is simple. We’ve done what they did. We circumvented the rules they created and created our own. We crushed their monopoly by giving people something more efficient. We allow people to have direct communication between each other, circumventing the profitable middle man, that in some cases take over 107% of the profits (yes, you pay to work for them).

It’s all based on the fact that we’re competition.

We’ve proven that their existance in their current form is no longer needed. We’re just better than they are.

And the funny part is that our rules are very similar to the founding ideas of the USA. We fight for freedom of speech. We see all people as equal. We believe that the public, not the elite, should rule the nation. We believe that laws should be created to serve the public, not the rich corporations.

The Pirate Bay is truly an international community. The team is spread all over the globe - but we’ve stayed out of the USA. We have Swedish roots and a swedish friend said this:

The word SOPA means “trash” in Swedish. The word PIPA means “a pipe” in Swedish. This is of course not a coincidence. They want to make the internet inte a one way pipe, with them at the top, shoving trash through the pipe down to therest of us obedient consumers.

The public opinion on this matter is clear. Ask anyone on the street and you’ll learn that no one wants to be fed with trash. Why the US government want the American people to be fed with trash is beyond our imagination but we hope that you will stop them, before we all drown.

SOPA can’t do anything to stop TPB. Worst case we’ll change top level domain from our current .org to one of the hundreds of other names that we already also use. In countries where TPB is blocked, China and Saudi Arabia springs to mind, they block hundreds of our domain names. And did it work? Not really.

To fix the “problem of piracy” one should go to the source of the problem. The entertainment industry say they’re creating “culture” but what they really do is stuff like selling overpriced plushy dolls and making 11 year old girls become anorexic. Either from working in the factories that creates the dolls for basically no salary or by watching movies and tv shows that make them think that they’re fat.

In the great Sid Meiers computer game Civilization you can build Wonders of the world. One of the most powerful ones is Hollywood. With that you control all culture and media in the world. Rupert Murdoch was happy with MySpace and had no problems with their own piracy until it failed. Now he’s complainting that Google is the biggest source of piracy in the world - because he’s jealous. He wants to retain his mind control over people and clearly you’d get a more honest view of things on Wikipedia and Google than on Fox News.

Some facts (years, dates) are probably wrong in this press release. The reason is that we can’t access this information when Wikipedia is blacked out. Because of pressure from our failing competitors. We’re sorry for that.

—THE PIRATE BAY, (K)2012

UPDATE: The reddit thread about this essay is also worth reading.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.19.2012
05:57 pm
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Ken Russell: A documentary tribute to his life and work
01.19.2012
05:14 pm
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There was an interesting letter in that scurrilous rag, the Daily Mail yesterday, printed under the headline, “Let Ken’s movies inspire a new audience”. It was written by Paul Sutton, of Trumpington, Cambridgeshire, who gave a passionate plea for the BBC to stop using edited clips of Ken Russell’s early TV work to liven-up crap shows made by today’s lesser talented directors:

These Ken Russell films aren’t entertainment fit only for ‘found footage’. They’re films, works of very real cinema in which every frame,pictorial composition, cut and music cue has been thought through with a craftsman’s hand and an artist’s mind and eye. They constitute a body of work which stands with the best of any director working anywhere in the world between 1959 and 1970.

Mr. Sutton went on to explains how both Lindsay Anderson, in If…, and Stanley Kubrick, in A Clockwork Orange, lifted from Russell’s TV work, and concludes:

Every one of Ken Russell’s 35 BBC films displays the master’s art. We should be boasting about them and using them to inspire the next Lindsay Anderson, the next Stanley Kubrick and the next Ken Russell.

I for one, certainly do hope the BBC listen up and release all of Ken Russell’s TV films for all of us to enjoy, very soon.

Most recently, the Beeb made this fine documentary Ken Russell: A Bit of a Devil , and while it doesn’t cover all of the great, genius director’s work (no Savage Messiah, no Crimes of Passion, no Salome’s Last Dance) it does manage to show why Ken Russell was England’s greatest film director of the last 50 years, and one of the world’s most important film directors of the twentieth century.

Presneted by Alan Yentob, this documentary tribute includes interviews with Glenda Jackson, Terry Gilliam, Twiggy, Melvyn Bragg, Amanda Donohoe, Robert Powell and Roger Daltrey.

Read Paul Sutton’s blog on Ken Russell, Lindsay Anderson and Stanley Kubrick here.
 

 
With thanks to Unkle Ken Russell
 
More on L’enfant terrible Msr. Russell, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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01.19.2012
05:14 pm
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FDR: American Badass! (plus ‘Werewolf Hitler’)
01.19.2012
04:10 pm
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Taking its cues equally from Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter and the campy 60s Batman TV series, the upcoming FDR: American Badass! stars Barry Bostwick as Franklin Delano Roosevelt who “rides a ‘wheelchair of death’ to stop the world from werewolves who carry the polio virus.”

Dangerous Minds pal Jesse Merlin (who I mentioned in the post about Sherman Hemsley and Gong recently) plays Werewolf Hitler!

I do hope he doesn’t get typecast…
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.19.2012
04:10 pm
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‘Boy God’: Freaky Filipino kids flick, 1983
01.19.2012
03:23 pm
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A immortal little boy with superpowers battles witches, werewolves, vampires and a cyclops to free his parents from the limbo where they are doing penance for their sins in Boy God (also known as Stone Boy and Roco, Ang Batang Bato), an utterly insane Filipino children’s film from 1983.

Here’s a synopsis from Films from the Far Reaches:

The convoluted, yet linear story begins as baby Rocco (played by local child star, Nino Muhlach) is born the same night that his parents are viciously gunned down (exactly by whom is never made clear… to me, anyway). Fast forward eleven years and Rocco is being raised by his grandmother. She warns him not to display his newly found powers (which includes superhuman strength and the ability to croutch down like a ball and roll violently into things) and weakness (he loses his powers when exposed to water). Turns out easier said than done however because the evil scientist, Dr. Meagele has been conducting experiments on the locals, transforming them into either vampires or werewolves. After defending his home against one said lycanthrope, word spreads about Rocco, the Stone Boy. He is lured by a trio of witches who after weaking him by dousing him with water, tie him to a spit and prepare to dine on him like a Roast Pig (this is by far the most disturbing image in the movie). As the witches turn into wolfies, the heat from the fire that our hapless hero is basting on restores his strength. Fighting them off (as well as huge vampire bat that attempts to carry him off) Rocco seeks refuge in a cave. There he bumps into Vulcan, an elderly immortal who tells Rocco of his legacy; that he is himself, half immortal (on his father’s side) and must travel to the land of the little people to free his parents souls which are in limbo. Allying himself with said little ones and recieving help from a suspiciously Darna-like woman warrior, Rocco is off to the rescue, battling a Cyclops and various other nasties in his quest to free his parents’ souls.

You can download the entire movie at the My Duck is Dead cult film blog.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.19.2012
03:23 pm
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