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Psychedelic Glue Sniffing Hillbillies
08.01.2010
03:12 am
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Is Craig Smith’s no-budget 8mm Psychedelic Glue Sniffing Hillbillies the spawn of John Water’s bad seed, the white trash pappy to Harmony Korine’s Gummo or the most twisted home movie ever made? Is it a brilliant cinematic statement about America’s marginalized underclass or just a reel of crap celluloid found in the bottom of a grab bag at a West Virginia garage sale? Or, who gives a shit? Pound back a few Rolling Rocks and swim into the celluloid oil slick that is Psychedelic Glue Sniffing Hillbilles.

For the the fullblown glue sniffing experience buy the DVD at gluesniffcom. “It’s more fun than a two-headed tractor pull.”

Posted by Marc Campbell
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08.01.2010
03:12 am
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Before The Devils: Bad-Boy Director Ken Russell Calls Down the Angels in 1958
07.31.2010
11:37 pm
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As the British New Wave of filmmaking took off in the late-‘50s, filmmaker Ken Russell went a slightly different route than his cinema-verite-obsessed colleagues with his 26-minute Amerlia and the Angel. Armed with a hefty £300 budget (half of it supplied by the British Film Institute), the 30-year-old newly married and converted Catholic director got Mercedes Quadros, the nine-year-old daughter of the Uruguayan ambassador to London to play Amelia for this imagistic religiously allegorical romp through the City.

Though silent like his previous two shorts, Amelia features spoken narration, which adds to its storybook quality. Russell submitted the film to the BBC, which hired him to make documentaries, and gave him the skills he’d need to eventually become the iconoclastic director of The Devils, Tommy, Altered States, Gothic, and Lair of the White Worm.

Michael Brooke at the BFI website notes:

Despite the film’s minuscule budget, there are numerous imaginative touches: the choreography of the angel ballet at the start (drawing on Russell’s own training as a dancer), the butterfly wallpaper mocking the loss of Amelia’s wings, the hand-held camera mimicking a child’s eye view of the crowded streets, the almost Expressionist treatment of Amelia’s ascent of the stairs (including a surreal shot that initially appears as an empty dress descending of its own accord), and the ascent of the artist into the heavens on a ladder (against a backdrop of painted clouds) before descending with the precious wings.

 

See Part II and more after the jump!
 

READ ON
Posted by Ron Nachmann
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07.31.2010
11:37 pm
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Trailer From The New Movie By Romain Gavras, Director Of M.I.A.‘s Controversial ‘Born Free’ video
07.31.2010
12:36 am
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Romain Gavras directed the controversial video for M.I.A.‘s song ‘Born Free.’ That’s the one where redheaded kids (gingers) are blown away to a sample of Suicide’s ‘Ghost Rider.’ Here’s the trailer for Romain’s feature length debut, Notre Jour Viendra, which was originally called Redheads. It looks quite compelling and I’m looking forward to seeing it. The visuals are striking and it stars one of my favorite actors, Vincent Cassell.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.31.2010
12:36 am
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Exene Cervenka’s Punk Rock Western To Aid Gulf Coast Recovery
07.30.2010
03:54 pm
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Exene Cervenka, the director of photography and co-writer on Modi Frank’s 1986 silent western Bad Day, is making the film available on her website to help raise money for Gulf Coast residents.

Shot at a secret location near Chatsworth, California, the short film features an inspired cast of irregulars playing the residents of a small town on a bad day. Call it what you will: a cow-punk time capsule, a mock-Western, a guerrilla film forerunner – or just plain proof of a time when everyone didn’t take themselves so seriously.

“Bad Day” has a cool cast that includes, John Doe (X), Dave Alvin (Blasters), Kevin Costner, Michael Blake and Chris Desjardin (The Flesheaters).

A portion of the proceeds from “Bad Day” are going to the Gulf Coast aid organization the Committee for Plaquemines Recovery that helps the people affected in the Gulf region.

Now available for the first time as a digital download Viewers will be able to “pay” whatever they choose for the download.  Please view at www.baddaymovie.com
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.30.2010
03:54 pm
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Do It Again: Documentary about an obsessed Kinks fanatic
07.29.2010
09:26 pm
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Just read about this on the Cinefamily site. There was a screening of this earlier in the month and I missed it. You snooze you lose and we live so close. I’m going to have to start pinning their programs up in my office so I don’t miss things like Do It Again. This looks great:

Small-town newspaper man Geoff Edgers, dreading the approach of his 40th birthday, is a man possessed with an improbable mission: find the still-surviving members of British legends The Kinks, and convince them to reunite. Never mind that he’s an American with just one tenuous connection to Kinks leader Ray Davies, and never mind the fact that Ray and his fellow Kink/younger brother Dave Davies don’t speak to each other; through sheer willpower, Edgers will find a way to make it all work—and when his initial mission fails, Edgers turns the film into a meditation on the power of music and his own chance to testify on his love for the band (which is sometimes worn so unabashedly on his sleeve, you almost feel like you shouldn’t be privy to it, yet you can’t stop watching it). Director Robert Patton-Spruill follows Edgers from Boston to California, from Las Vegas to New York City as Edgers meets with Kinks fans Sting, REM’s Peter Buck, a deliciously irate Paul Weller, Zooey Deschanel and Robyn Hitchcock—but the highs and lows of Edgers’ ravenous obsession is the real centerpiece, and ultimately is way more important, relevant and fascinating than any possible outcome.

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.29.2010
09:26 pm
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Even—As You and I: Rare and Excellent Depression-Era American Film Spoofing the Surrealists!
07.29.2010
07:16 pm
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By 1937, surrealism was in its second decade as a movement. Its artists and filmmakers were making inroads into London and New York galleries, and becoming media stars. The surrealist bug also bit on the West Coast, and underground gatherings like the Hollywood Film and Foto League screened European avant-garde films regularly.

Such gatherings attracted politically minded actor Harry Hay and Works Progress Administration (WPA) photographers Roger Barlow and LeRoy Robbins. After seeing a magazine ad for a short film contest, these jokers sprung into action, making Even—As You and I, a short depicting themselves as broke filmmakers who cobble together clichés from their fave avant-garde films into a dorky film-within-a-film spoof called The Afternoon of a Rubber Band. In a “D’oh!”-style ending, the three realize they’ve missed the contest’s midnight deadline.

A damn clever little underground film moment. Hay—the curly-haired guy in the group—would go on to become the godfather of gay activism, founding the Mattachine Society in the early’50s and the Radical Faeries in the early ‘70s.
 

 
Check out part 2 after the jump!

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Posted by Ron Nachmann
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07.29.2010
07:16 pm
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All you need is love: E.T. and Yoda bromance
07.29.2010
05:21 pm
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All You Need Is Love from zed1.
 
(via Wooster Collective)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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07.29.2010
05:21 pm
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Bunker Hill: The lost suburb of downtown Los Angeles
07.29.2010
03:49 pm
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Marc’s post about Times Square yesterday reminded me about Los Angeles’ equivalent: The once thriving downtown suburb of Bunker Hill. In the very spot where now sits the Disney concert hall and the 1960’s music center complex was once a thriving neighborhood packed with turn-of-the-century Victorian houses, theaters, bars, restaurants and a large population of retired old folks. By the mid 1950’s when Kent Mackenzie, future director of the acclaimed film The Exiles (which also takes place in Bunker Hill), made this short documentary film the neighborhood was already doomed. By the end of the 60’s, save for a few buildings it was all gone. In a city such as ours which perpetually tears down the past and re-invents itself there was no way a few rickety old buildings and poor people would ever get in the way of progress. Fortunately we have the below film and countless other movies and books to remind us of what once was.
 
oops, the video was taken down. To view the short film, buy or rent The Exiles DVD. Sorry !

 
On Bunker Hill (great resource for Bunker Hill in films and literature)

 

Posted by Brad Laner
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07.29.2010
03:49 pm
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Rare German Documentary On Hippies And Acid Rock : Trippy, Man
07.29.2010
02:49 pm
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Documentary with performances by The Dead, Mothers Of Invention, Big Brother, The Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service and lots of hippies dancing and getting stoned. It was directed by Stefan Morawietz for German TV. It’s in German, but you’ll get the idea.

 
part two after the jump

READ ON
Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.29.2010
02:49 pm
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‘Who Killed Nancy?’ : New Documentary Claims Sid Vicious Did Not kill Nancy Spungen
07.29.2010
05:07 am
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Who Killed Nancy opens today In New York City. The film makes a strong case that Sid Vicious did not kill Nancy Spungen. Read about it at the Daily Mail.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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07.29.2010
05:07 am
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