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The Beatles’ classic 1968 animated feature film, ‘Yellow Submarine,’ has been restored
03.22.2012
12:07 pm
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“Once upon a time…or maybe twice…there was an unearthly paradise called Pepperland…”

The Beatles’ classic 1968 animated feature film, Yellow Submarine, has been restored in 4K digital resolution for the first time by Paul Rutan Jr. and his team at Triage Motion Picture Services. No automated software was used in the clean-up of the film’s restored photochemical elements. This was a job painstakingly done by hand, a single frame at a time. The absolutely stunning Yellow Submarine restoration premiered last weekend at the SXSW festival and will be coming on Blu-Ray DVD at the end of May with a new 5.1 multi-channel audio soundtrack. Seeing the film unspool on the big screen of Austin’s historic Paramount Theatre was like watching a series of moving stained glass windows.

Directed by George Dunning, and written by Lee Minoff, Al Brodax, Jack Mendelsohn and future best-selling Love Story novelist Erich Segal, Yellow Submarine, based upon the song by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, is a basically incomprehensible series of musical vignettes, groan-worthy puns and lysergically-inspired kaleidoscopic eye-candy that sees John, Paul, George and Ringo saving the world from the evil Blue Meanies.

When Yellow Submarine originally premiered in 1968, the film was regarded as an artistic marvel. With its innovative animation techniques, it represented the most technologically advanced animation work since Disney’s masterpiece, Fantasia. Inspired by the Pop Art of Andy Warhol, Peter Max and Peter Blake, art director Heinz Edelmann’s work on Yellow Submarine is now considered among the classics of animated cinema. Yellow Submarine also showcases the creative work of animation directors Robert Balser and Jack Stokes along with a team of the best animators and technical artists that money could hire. The ground-breaking animation styles included 3-D sequences and the highly detailed “rotoscoping” (tracing film frame by frame) of the celebrated “Eleanor Rigby” sequence. The production process took nearly two years and employed 40 animators and 140 technical artists.

I must say, though, as happy as I was to be one of the first people to see the restored Yellow Submarine, I couldn’t help be to think that—with all of its merits—the film is just a little bit boring. If you responded negatively to the news of the (now shelved) Yellow Submarine 3-D remake, consider that not only did the Fab Four have precious little to do with the actual making of the original film (it’s not even their own voices) but that today’s kids—your kids—won’t have the patience to sit through it. Nor will they even understand what’s being said onscreen. Yellow Submarine, I hate to say it, was ripe for a remake. Sacrilege, I know, but it’s not like I’m suggesting that they remake A Hard Day’s Night or anything!

Below, a decidedly low res version of Yellow Submarine in its entirety. This isn’t really the way to watch it, of course…
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.22.2012
12:07 pm
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Roky Erickson and The Black Angels will melt your mind
03.22.2012
02:09 am
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Art: John Howard
 
Roky Erickson performing “Bo Diddley” and “Two-Headed Dog” with The Black Angels at The El Rey Theater in 2008.

The man who helped launch psychedelic music is backed-up magnificently by a band whose members were born almost two decades after he released his first single. And they’re all from Austin, Texas, where the The Akashic record of rock and roll is on replay.

This is an excerpt from the undeniably fantastic Night Of The Vampire DVD.

If you dig John Howard’s poster featured above, check out his ultra-groovy website Monkeyink.com. The dude’s a fucking genius. His 3-D posters will blow your frontal lobes out.

So fucking for real.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.22.2012
02:09 am
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Scenes from the Dangerous Minds party + one VERY unexpected guest DJ!
03.21.2012
01:12 pm
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Chris Holmes
 
Some scenes from inside last week’s Dangerous Minds-hosted SXSW party in Los Angeles held at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery’s Masonic Lodge. On the big screen were live performances simulcast from the Sub Pop Records SXSW Showcase in Austin featuring Spoek Mathambo, THEESatiscation and Niki + The Dove. The event was produced by Natalie Montgomery and curated by Tara McGinley (ME!), and executive produced by Largetail.

Seen in the crowd were Radiohead, Elizabeth Olsen, members of OK Go, artist Tim Biskup,  Amber Tamblyn, Jeff Garland, Aziz Ansari and more. The event was catered by Cool Haus, Grill ‘Em All and Mandoline Grill.

Like us on Facebook or Twitter to hear about the next party.
 

Inside Masonic Lodge as event is beginning
 

America’s Funnyman, Neil Hamburger was the event’s MC. His act went over the heads of most attendees—say 80%—but for those more familiar with his unique comedic stylings, the obvious audience discomfort made his shtick even more hilarious that night.
 

 
A lot more photos after the jump!

READ ON
Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.21.2012
01:12 pm
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This Boot is Made for Fonk-N: Bootsy Collins 1988 TV interview
03.21.2012
02:09 am
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Legendary deejay Donnie Simpson interviews Bootsy Collins on TV show Video Soul in 1988.

“I come equipped with stereophonic funk producin´ disco inducin´ twin magnetic rock receptors.” - Bootsy Collins, Bootzilla .
 

 
Many thanks to Jim Laspesa.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.21.2012
02:09 am
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Dusty Springfield: Excellent documentary on the White Queen of Soul
03.20.2012
08:36 pm
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dusty_springfield_smile
 
It was summer, I was a young child sitting in the living room drawing pictures when I first heard her voice on the radio. It made me stop and listen to try and understand what it was I was hearing. Her voice was full of a power and emotion that I could feel but didn’t yet fully understand. It gave a hint to some secret, adult world I was still to discover. It was sensual and seductive. The voice was Dusty Springfield. The song, “The Look of Love.”

Dusty was described by Elton John “as the greatest white singer there has ever been.” Never one for understatement, Sir Elton is almost right - though he is a tad forgetful of quite a few others from Maria Callas to Elvis and beyond. Dusty was one of the greats, and certainly the greatest white soul singer there has ever been. No one comes close.

Shown as part of Melvyn Bragg’s always fascinating arts series The South Bank Show, this excellent documentary on Dusty Springfield was first aired in 2006, and contains interviews with Burt Bacharach, Billie Jean King, Lee Everett, Charles Shaar Murray, Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe, Camille Paglia, and Carole Pope.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.20.2012
08:36 pm
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‘Burning Of The Midnight Lamp’ : Jimi Hendrix promo video from 1968
03.20.2012
02:51 am
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Here’s something quite special…Burning Of The Midnight Lamp promo from 1968.

I’m on a little bit of a Hendrix roll. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in a psychedelic frame of mind lately and this Hendrix video is quite trippy.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.20.2012
02:51 am
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Pentagram Sam
03.19.2012
03:00 pm
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I haven’t been this amused in a long time. I suspect I’ll receive some shit for posting.

“Pentagram Sam” by Da Grimston & Mist-E.
 

 
Via Jason Louv‘s Facebook

Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.19.2012
03:00 pm
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A Film About Jimi Hendrix: 98 minutes of your life well-spent
03.19.2012
03:36 am
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Art: under18carbon
 
Produced and directed by Joe Boyd and Gary Weis two years after Jimi Hendrix’s death, Jimi Hendrix is a solid documentary comprised of some great live performances and insightful interviews with friends, family and a cool mix of musicians including Peter Townsend, Lou Reed, Mick Jagger, Noel Redding and Little Richard.

There’s a particularly lovely scene of Hendrix playing a twelve string acoustic guitar… pure, simple and beautiful.

Live footage from Monterey, Isle of Wight, Woodstock, Fillmore East and the Marquee Club. Deeply satisfying.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.19.2012
03:36 am
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‘It Couldn’t Happen Here’: The Pet Shop Boys’ rarely seen feature film from 1988
03.18.2012
08:40 pm
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it_couldnt_happen_here_pet_shop_boys
 
‘What did you do in the 1980s, Daddy?’  For those who want to know what it was like to be young(ish) and middle class in Britain during the 1980s, then take a look at the Pet Shop Boys in their one-and-only feature film, It Couldn’t Happen Here. Originally planned as an hour long pop promo to accompany the release of their third album Actually, It Couldn’t Happen Here captures the style, the pretensions, the cultural obsessions and some of the most popular music of that decade.

The Pet Shop Boys are a hugely under-rated band, whose compelling, beautiful and catchy music by Chris Lowe, can often disguise the power and passion of Neil Tennant’s lyrics. For you see, despite what the music press claims (that means you NME), or the modes by which the band present themselves (daft hats and outfits), there is really nothing ironic about the Pet Shop Boys at all. They mean everything they do. Which is why It Couldn’t Happen Here is so frustrating. It could have been like The Monkees Head for the 1980s, with a hard, political edge, but it wanders without any sense of direction through a series of segments that revolve too literally around the songs.

That said, for a pop film it’s not all that bad, and the quality of the songs, and some of the eye-catching performances (Joss Ackland, Gareth Hunt, Barbara Windsor) make it almost passable. If only Derek Jarman (who collaborated on a stage show, and directed the promo for “It’s A Sin”) or Lindsay Anderson (the director of If… and O, Lucky Man! who would had directed the concert film of Wham, yes, Wham, in China) had been asked to direct rather than Jack Bond, then things might have been different. Even so, Bond made it look sumptuous and Neil Tennant found out he couldn’t act.

Time methinks to release the film on DVD.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.18.2012
08:40 pm
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Jimi Hendrix reading Mad Magazine while having his hair styled
03.18.2012
02:24 am
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Jimi Hendrix, Alfred E. Neuman and a foxy lady (no, it’s not Kate Pierson’s mom).

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.18.2012
02:24 am
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