While Ken Loach has his own film called Route Irish, which deals with “the most dangerous road in the world” (aka Baghdad Airport Road), coming out later this month in the UK, Irish film-maker, Eamonn Crudden made his own Route Irish back in 2007, but his dealt with the protest movement at Shannon Airport in Ireland. Crudden spent several years putting his documentary together, which documented:

...the emergence of the Irish antiwar movement between 2002 and 2006 and of the broad popular opposition to the US military use of Ireland’s civilian Shannon Airport in the build-up to, invasion of, and occupation of Iraq.

The documentary follows a loose network of activist groups, individuals and politicians through the story of the rise, fracturing, sudden decline and then disappearance of this movement and then retraces the way in which their combined efforts, energies and strategies served to effectively tear away the Republic of Ireland’s veneer of neutrality and non-alignment in the post September 11th era of the ‘War on Terror’.

The background to the story begins after the September 11 attacks, when the Irish government offered the use of Shannon Airport to the US government. Shannon is one of the three primary airports in Ireland, and is the country’s second busiest. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the Irish government still allowed the US military to use the airport. This was a highly controversial decision and sparked a series of demonstrations and a challenge to the High Court.

It also sparked a series of direct actions by demonstrators. In January 2003, a woman smashed a nose cone and attempted to cut fuel lines of a US Navy jet with an axe. Her trial led to her acquittal. Then in February 2003, a group called the Pitstop Ploughshares vandalized a US Navy aircraft at the airport. Members of the group were tried three time. They were eventually all acquitted.

A 2007 survey found 58% of Irish people opposed the use of Shannon for prosecuting the Iraq war.

Cult film director, Alex Cox (Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Walker) said of Crudden’s video essay:

“Route Irishis an excellent documentary. It deals very very well with the frustrations of a peace movement. It tackles some complex matters which aren’t usually discussed or even thought about.”

 
Bonus trailer for Ken Loach’s ‘Route Irish’, after the jump…
 

 
Here’s an impromptu performance by an MC/taxi driver in Negril, Jamaica. He’s got a boss sound system in his ride, eh?

Something tells me that the tourists who shot this video knew where to find the dank collie weed by journey’s end…

 
(via Arboath)

Donald Cammell with Anita Pallenberg on the set of “Performance.”

Though he only directed two films that are truly extraordinary, Donald Cammell will always hold a special place on my list of the all-time great cinematic mindfuckers.

Dangerous Minds readers will undoubtedly be familiar with the hugely influence Performance, but Cammell’s last film, the darkly witty and perverse Wild Side, deserves to find a wider audience. It was butchered by its original production company and released in a bastardized form that so depressed the already mentally fragile Cammell it sent him over the edge and he killed himself in 1996.

Wild Side was re-released in 2000 in a version that comes close to Cammell’s original cut. Cammell’s close friend editor Frank Mazzola managed to gather together the “lost” footage from Wild Side and reconstruct it in a form that approximates Cammell’s vision. It is available here as an import DVD. For some unfathomable reason the director’s cut has never been released in any form in the USA. I did manage to see it years ago at a Cammell film fest in NYC. It features one of Christopher Walkens’ best and most bizarre performances in a career of bizarre performances. Trust me when I tell you, you’ve never seen Walken at his weirdest until you’ve seen him in a kimono and a long black wig.

Wild Side is cut from the same dark cloth as David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. But I can’t stress enough the fact that the butchered version available on Amazon and elsewhere is worthless. Avoid it like a bad case of the clap.

Here’s a clip from Wild Side with Anne Heche, Steven Bauer and Walken to whet your appetite. “Off with the Calvins.”
 

 
Cammell got his professional start in the arts as a painter and photographer in the swinging London scene of the 1960s. He lived the life of a rock star, looked the part and was prone to the hedonistic excesses of the times as well. He worked with filmmaker Nic Roeg to create the greatest head movie of all time, Performance. Artistic recognition led to a series of disappointments in Hollywood and Cammell’s life quickly veered toward a sad end. His story is compelling and tragic and in this documentary his fascinating life unfolds like one of his movies.

 
Donald Sutherland is one of those rare actors who is not only wonderfully talented, but is gifted with a damn fine head of hair. It’s hard to think of any other actor who has made his follicles work so hard in every performance. I first became aware of this phenomenon, when in the mid-1970s Mr Sutherland opened the envelope at, I think it was, a BAFTA Award ceremony in London, where the tall, elegant Canadian, walked up to the podium and revealed a shaved hairline at odds with his long flowing locks. Sutherland was about to appear in the film Casanova, and remarked to audience’s gasps:

“When Fellini says get a haircut, you get a haircut.”

 

 
Though Sutherland started as a clean-cut co-star of Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (alongside Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee), and had appearances in The Saint and The Avengers (and even the voice of the computer in The Billion Dollar Brain), there was always this sense he was a geeky straight in a tight suit desperate to try some acid and, maybe if he liked it, wear beads and grow his hair long. Which is kind of what i thought when I saw him as Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H and of course, most memorably as Sgt. Oddball in Kelly’s Heroes.
 

 
More from Donald Sutherland’s hair after the jump…
 

 
After the success of his B-movie The Delinquents, Robert Altman was given the job of co-directing (with George W. George) a documentary on James Dean. The association of Altman’s surprise hit—about out-of-control kids who just “gotta have action”—and the young actor—who appealed to these troubled teenagers—was considered by Warner Brothers as too good an opportunity to miss.

Made in 1957, two years after the actor’s death, The James Dean Story is well-made documentary composed from archive and photographic footage, interviews and out-takes, which gives a great sense of Dean’s life and talents. The film was also a key piece in the actor’s mythologizing.

According to Forbes magazine, the James Dean estate makes $5m a year, which is more than the star made his lifetime. That his fame continues to grow says much about Dean’s ability to epitomize that certain something generations of film-goers have identified with over the past six decades. As Dennis Hopper once said about Dean:

“He seemed to capture that moment of youth, that moment where we’re all desperately seeking to find ourselves.”

Or, as Dean himself said, in a line from Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince:

“What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

 
View more Repulsion GIFs after the jump…
 

 
Histoire de Melody Nelson, a 27 minute rock opera released on vinyl in 1971, is generally considered to be Serge Gainsbourg’s magnum opus, albeit one that is somewhat smaller in scale than most operatic masterpieces. It tells the tale of a wealthy middle-aged man who crosses paths with a younger woman, practically killing her when his car collides with her as she is bicycling, and his subsequent erotic obsession for the girl. At the time of its release, the music, lyrics and production of Histoire de Melody Nelson were considered innovative, adventurous and provocative and still to this day continue to enthrall listeners and influence countless musicians.

Dangerous Minds’ Richard Metzger has previously written about Histoire de Melody Nelson in his typically tantalizing fashion and you can read it here.

Melody, a film based on Histoire de Melody Nelson made for French TV, was directed by Jean Christophe Averty with Gainsbourg and his lover Jane Birkin in the lead roles. Averty’s visual style was acutely attuned to Gainsbourg’s surreal sensibilities and the fusion of film to music and lyrics works wonderfully.

Here is Melody in its entirety:

 
Beginning tonight in Los Angeles, the might Cinefamily is presenting a three-day encore run of Chris Morris’s Four Lions, and a full retrospective of his classic British television shows:

The word “genius” is thrown around rather casually these days when describing talented folks who do a very good job of what they do—but Chris Morris is one of those rare people to whom the term genuinely applies, and we absolutely mean it when we say Chris Morris is a comedic genius. For twenty years, he’s been the foremost boundary-pushing satirist in British comedy, giving us savagely funny fare like the proto-Daily Show news parodies The Day Today and Brass Eye, the Lynch-meets-SNL absurdity of Jam, and the acidic hipster/Vice Magazine critique of Nathan Barley—and now, his riotous feature directorial debut, which skewers the modern-day jihadist movement! Chris’s unshakeable wit is often aimed at topics deemed controversial, but it always provides a social criticism underneath the sensationalism, lampooning hysteria and groupthink with heroic levity. We here at the Cinefamily have been Morris fans since before we can remember, and we’re thrilled to present not only an encore three-day run of Four Lions, but a full retrospective of Morris’s creations in British television!

My fellow Los Angelenos, don’t miss this rare chance to see Four Lions in a cinema setting, but gosh, which TV series to catch? The Day Today? Brass Eye? Jam? Nathan Barley? That’s hard because I’m such a big Chris Morris fan. I’ve shoved DVDs of all these shows into the paws of many a friend for about a decade now, but I still think I’d give Nathan Barley the (slight) edge when it comes to picking which of his series to watch in a room full of people. A communal experience of Jam would be great, too, but Nathan Barley’s vicious hipster satire would go down quite well with the Cinefamily audience, I think. No matter how you slice it, it’s an embarrassment of riches. The man can do no wrong in my eyes.
 

 
Below, my December 2010 interview with Chris Morris:
 

 
Some pages from the Dune Coloring & Activity Book published in 1984. Written by Arlene Block and illustrated by Michael Nicastre, the coloring book offered hours of enjoyment to Dune-loving kindergartners. Connect the dots to see what Paul can’t live without!

 
More images after the jump…

 
One of the UK’s premiere dubstep producers Shackleton this week releases a new EP called Deadman on London’s reggae and dub imprint Honest Jon’s. Dead Man is also the name of a fantastic 1995 film by Jim Jarmusch starring Johnny Depp as a man called William Blake, wandering through a black and white recreation of the old West while nursing a fatal gunshot wound.

I don’t know if the Shackleton release (sleeve pictured above) is an hommage to the film, but the enterprising folks at The 29th Nov films have made a video for the track itself using footage from the Jarmusch film. It’s great. Rivaling Neil Young’s original minimalist guitar score for haunting atmosphere, Shackleton’s signature sound of Eastern hand percussion hits, disembodied voices and washes of dub noise prove a perfect accompaniment to the gorgeous monochrome footage of Johnny Depp slowly dying:
 

 
Shackleton’s Deadman is available to buy on vinyl and download from Juno.

Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man is available to buy from Amazon.