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Jesus tries to cheer up Paul McCartney with a Lamb Chop sock puppet
05.04.2012
11:57 am
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There’s so much going on in this painting, titled “Jesus Broke Out the Lambchop Puppet and Hired an Angel to Try and Cheer Up a Clinically Depressed Paul McCartney,” by Kata Billups, that I just had to share.

Instead of breaking this puppy down for you, I zoomed in and took a few detailed screen shots so you can figure out what the hell is going on here on your own.

It’s deep.

From the artist:

This scenario from my imagination shows Jesus visiting a clinically depressed Paul McCartney. He is sitting on Paul’s right side and slides a Lamb chop Puppet in to Paul’s peripheral field of vision. Paul hasn’t bothered to get out of his robe. His white socks dangle off the ends of his toes. He is depressed and disheveled. On the wall behind him is the cause of his plight… Yoko…

Who is the happy, house-cleaning angel supposed to represent, I wonder?

The painting is currently on eBay and has a “Buy It Now” for $177,000.000.

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Via Christian Nightmares

Posted by Tara McGinley
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05.04.2012
11:57 am
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Lindsay Kemp is on the phone: Scenes from his life from Genet to Bowie
05.03.2012
07:33 pm
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Opening Scene:

Curtain up on a starry night. Comets fire across the sky. Center stage, one star shines more brightly than the rest, its spotlight points towards a globe of the earth as it spins from a thread. Glitter falls, as a white screen rises, the lights glow brighter filling the stage.

Blackout.

Single spot tight on a woman’s face

We are unsure if she is in pain or ecstasy. No movement until, at last, she exhales, then pants quickly, rhythmically. Her face glistens. The spot widens, revealing two nurses, dressed in starched whites, symmetrically dabbing her face.

The woman is Mrs. Kemp, and she is about to give birth. Three mid-wives are guided by house lights through the audience to her bedside. Each carries a different gift: towels, a basin of hot water, and swaddling.

It’s May 3rd 1938, and Lindsay Kemp is about to be born.

Blackout.

Though this maybe a fiction, it is all too believable, for nothing is unbelievable when it comes to Lindsay Kemp.

Lindsay Kemp has agreed to give a telephone interview. He is to be called at his home in Italy, by Paul Gallagher from Dangerous Minds, who is based in Scotland. We never hear the interviewer’s questions, only Kemp’s answers and see his facial expressions as he listens to questions.

Photographs of Kemp’s career appear on screens. We hear a recording of his voice.

Lindsay Kemp:

I began dancing the same as everybody does, at birth. The only difference was, unlike many other people, I never stopped. In other words, you know, I love movement. Movement gave me such a great pleasure, such a great joy.

Dance is really my life. I’ve always said for me ‘Dance is Life, Dance is Living, Dance is Life and Life is Dance’. I’ve never really differentiated between the two of them. It’s always been a way of life, a kind of celebration of living.

Kemp is an exquisite dancer, a fantastic artist, and a brilliant visual poet. No hyperbole can truly capture the scale of his talents.

In the 1960s and 1970s, his dance group revolutionized theater with its productions of Jean Genet’s The Maids, Flowers and Oscar Wilde’s Salome.

He shocked critics by working with non-dancers. At the Traverse Theater in Edinburgh, he often cast his productions by picking-up good-looking, young men he had spotted in the city’s Princes Street Gardens - good looks, an open mind and passion for life were more important than learned techniques, or a classical training. His most famous collaborator was the blind dancer, Jack Birkett, aka The Great Orlando – perhaps now best known for his role as Borgia Ginz in Derek Jarman’s Jubilee.

Kemp was the catalyst who inspired David Bowie towards cabaret and Ziggy Stardust. He taught him mime, and directed and performed in Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and was his lover. He also taught Kate Bush, and choreographed for her shows.

As an actor, he gave outrageous and scene-stealing performances in Jarman’s Sebastiane, Ken Russell’s Savage Messiah and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man.

“I’ve never really differentiated between dance and mime and acting and singing. I’ve always loved all aspects of performing, though I still can’t play the trumpet, but I’d like too. Well, it’s never too late to learn.”

He has performed across the world, from department stores in Bradford, through the Edinburgh Festival, the streets and cafes of Italy, to London’s West End and Broadway.

Kemp is a poetic story-teller, and his performances engage and seduce as much as the words that spill from tell such incredible tales. His voice moves from Dame Edith Evans (“A handbag!”) to a lover sharing intimacies under the covers.

A house in Livorno. A desk with a telephone. A chaise longue. A deck chair and assorted items close at hand. Posters and photographs of Kemp in various productions are back-projected onto gauze screens.

Kemp makes his entrance via a trap door.

The phone rings once. Kemp looks at it.

Rings twice. Kemp considers it.

Rings three times. He answers it.

Lindsay Kemp is on the ‘phone.

Lindsay Kemp:

Hello. (Pause.) Where are you in Scotland?

(Longer Pause.)

My grandparents are from Glasgow. I always pretend to be Scottish because I was born accidentally in Liverpool when my Mother was saying bye-bye to my Father, who was a sailor, and he was off to sea from Liverpool’s port, you see.

(Longer Pause.)

Well, I don’t quite know where that came from, unless I said it one drunken night, maybe when I chose to be more romantic than Birkenhead, where I was in fact born. I was born in Birkenhead on May the 3rd, 1938, but my family hailed form Scotland, between Glasgow and Edinburgh, and for many years I lived in Edinburgh, when I returned there for the first performance of Flowers, that show that put me on the map, you know.

I did so many of my productions, including the first version of Flowers and Salome, and Genet’s The Maids . I did many, many things in Edinburgh, I only left when I was doing a production of The Maids, incidentally with Tim Curry, this was just before Ziggy Stardust, late ’71. And that production we were doing at the Close, was scheduled to open at the Bush Theater, and at the very last, we were all there rehearsing, ready to go on, and we got a call from Jean Genet’s agent, who said.

Spotlight on Jean Genet’s Agent, stage right

Jean Genet’s Agent:

No, no. Non.

Light out.

Lindsay Kemp

And we were refused permission to do the London version.
 
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(Kemp examines some photographs on his desk, they appear projected on the screens behind him.)

Lindsay Kemp

I’ve got some pictures here of David Bowie at that performance, we gave just one performance, you see, which was a silver collection, we sold tickets for a collection. I don’t think David put anything in the hat. (Laughs.) Probably not, and I have some pictures here of David with his video camera, and he videoed that show, he videoed it, and sent his scouts out himself to find Genet, who he hoped might give us his permission. I’ve no idea what happened to the video, or if Genet got it, anyway, that was the end of that.

I played in The Maids myself at the Traverse for quite some time, playing Madame. But going back to Flowers, I’ll tell you how I began dancing in a minute, because we weren’t permitted to do The Maids that evening, we did Flowers instead, which was a production I’d recently done at the Traverse. So that production came to the Bush Theater, and it was there that it was seen by Larry Parnes, the pop music promoter, and he kind of restored an old cinema, which became the Regent’s Theater in Upper Regent’s Street, where Flowers began its West End run. From there it went to Broadway, and from there, you know, it went around the world.

I was…eh…I’d just rented a little cottage, a country retreat, in Hungerford in Berkshire, and my next door neighbor - it was one Sunday morning and we were listening to Round the Horne, we all did on those Sunday mornings - and my neighbor across the fence leaned over and said.

(Neighbor leans over a garden fence, Kemp is now sitting in a deckchair, still on the ‘phone.)

Spotlight up on Neighbor.

Neighbor:

Oh hi, I think this book might interest you.

(Neighbor passes Kemp a book. Spotlight down on Neighbor.)

Lindsay Kemp:

Holding up book.

And it was Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers. And I began to read it, and as soon as I began to read it I could already see it on the stage, and I could see myself as Divine, the central character. And two weeks later, we opened.

Dim lights, then back up to reveal gauze removed and a young Lindsay Kemp performing ‘Flowers’.
 

 
Lindsay Kemp

As the performance continues behind him.

I remember so vividly. I went back up to Edinburgh, and an aunt of mine had left me five hundred pounds and with that money, we put the show on. I collected the actors in those days from Princes Street Gardens, young guys who looked right. And we did this first, semi-improvised performance, not at the Traverse, but in the old Edinburgh Rock Factory, under the Castle, on very much the Fringe of the Festival. And from there it transferred to the Traverse, and then to the Citizens, and then into universities, then onto the Bush and the regions, and Broadway and around the world.

Blackout.

Lights up. Kemp stands center stage, he addresses the audience directly.

Lindsay Kemp:

To begin with, I began dancing the same as everybody does, at birth. The only difference was, unlike many other people, I never stopped. In other words, you know, I love movement. Movement gave me such a great pleasure, such a great joy. Dance is really my life. I’ve always said for me Dance is Life, Dance is Living, Dance is Life and Life is Dance. I’ve never really differentiated between the two of them. It’s always been a way of life, a kind of celebration of living.

Well, being born dancing, in Birkenhead, my Father was killed at sea, I mean drowned when, at the beginning of the war, his ship was hit by a German submarine, my Mother took me back to her home town of South Shields, and she enrolled me, at the age of two-and-a-half, in dancing classes because I couldn’t stop dancing.

I just loved it so much, and of course, all the little girls in our street, at that time, all had dancing lessons and all would do this little dance in doorways, and so on, and I began tap-dancing as young as two-and-a-half. I continued dancing and dancing classes and entertaining the neighbor’s children, and during the war years when the bombs were dropping entertaining the neighbors in our air raid shelter.

Straight after the war, going straight up to the local hospital, where I entertained the recovering wounded soldiers, whether they liked it or not, they got my repertoire – all my little dances that had been inspired by movies I’d seen, Carmen Miranda and Marlene Deitrich, and I would sing “Lili Marlene”, I was always an entertainer.

When I reached the age of 10, my Mother thought well, you know, I’ve had enough of this, you know the dancing and theater had become such an incredible passion, I mean I couldn’t think about anything else. This passion fueled by trips to the theater and my Mother taking me to the Christmas pantomimes, where I was totally infatuated with the magic of the theater and its transformations and the theater is a way of life, a very different world form life in South Shields, and I wanted to be in that world.

I always knew what I wanted, you see, really from birth. However, come the age of ten, my Mother thought well he needs is education and I was sent to a boarding school near Reading, the Royal Merchant Navy School, where my mother had hopes for me following in my father’s footsteps and going to sea. But, of course, I didn’t.

Blackout.

Lights up.

Lindsay Kemp is on the telephone. Behind him and to the side, is a school dormitory. Large b&w photographic back projection with about six beds. Lying in the beds are school boys. They have pocket torches with which they use to light a young Kemp’s dance performance.

The young Kemp makes his appearance during Lindsay Kemp’s speech. The young Kemp is dressed in toilet paper, wrapped around his body.

Lindsay Kemp:

At school I survived. It was a very tough school. I survived the bullying and the bullies’ blows by entertaining. You know, with my singing and my dancing, and so on, and putting on little plays.

And that’s when I gave my first performance of Salome.

Young Kemp begins to dance to the lights of the school boys’ torches.

Lindsay Kemp:

For which I was going to be expelled. Not for the sinuousness of the dance, but for the waste of toilet paper, which I’d wrapped around myself.

Spotlight on the young Kemp. He freezes. Lights down. Lights still on Lindsay Kemp.
 
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Lindsay Kemp:

All through school I continued dancing, I danced every day, I danced to entertain, I had my own dancers. Incidentally, that first Salome was very influenced by Rita Hayworth’s Salome, which I’d seen, and also from reading Oscar Wilde, a lot of his fairy stories were an influence on me, but particularly Salome by Oscar Wilde. Years later it was put on the stage.

Blackout.

Lights up. Lindsay Kemp speaks directly to the audience.

Lindsay Kemp:

I always wanted to be an entertainer, you see, I love all forms of theater. I loved variety and circus, and musicals and operetta. I loved it all. And of course now, I have become involved in all aspects of the theater, my dreams, my desires and my intentions, in fact all came true.

Linday Kemp goes back onto the ‘phone, talking to his interviewer.

But I was particularly attracted to the ballet, and at the age of sixteen, before leaving school, I auditioned at the Sadler’s Wells School, which is now the Royal Ballet School. And of course at the age of fifteen, sixteen, I thought I was God’s gift to dance. Of course, I was devastated when I received a letter from the principal saying:

(The words of the letter appear behind Lindsay Kemp, high on a screen. They are typed out word-by-word, as he reads the letter.)

‘Dear Master Kemp, Thank you very much for coming to the audition on September 14th, unfortunately we have to tell you that both I and my board find you both temperamentally and physically unsuited to a career as a dancer. Yours faithfully, Ursula Morton.’

I can see it as clearly now as on that day that I got that letter.

But what if I’d taken any notice? Think what the world would have lost? I’d could have given up and become a coalman…

(Blackout. The ‘phone cuts off. Lights up. Lindsay Kemp talks to the audience. Lights slowly fade during his speech.)

Lindsay Kemp:

I was so determined to become a dancer there was nothing else for me. I did auditions for a load of other dance schools, and drama schools, as I wanted to be an actor as much as being a dancer, and so a painter, come to that, all of those things. I did get a scholarship with the Ballet Rambert School. That was great, but that scholarship didn’t take effect until after I’d had my National Service, you see, because in those days you couldn’t get into university or further education or any jobs until you had done your service for two years.

So, I had to hang around. My Mother moved to Bradford, and worked in a shop, very high class, and that’s where a young David Hockney met me, and David encouraged me to go back to London and try again, and to pursue my dream at all cost.

(Lights out. Lights up.

The telephone rings. Kemp answers it.)

Lindsay Kemp:

Hello, I don’t know what’s the matter. (Pause.) Anyway, we better keep going before it happens again.

I walked into a recruiting office and signed-up for the Air Force on my seventeenth birthday. I couldn’t bear hanging around in Bradford anymore. I met a lot interesting people, the like of which I’ve never met before, very conservative, very right wing, kind of boarding school, very repressed, and I certainly didn’t allow myself to be repressed.

So, I began to do classes at the Rambert during weeks from the Air Force, they gave me special leave so I could train at the Rambert.

Going to the Rambert School was absolute heaven, I was in heaven there. And to meet such wonderful people dancing, other dancers I’d never met before, people with similar dreams and desires as myself, notably Jack Birkett, who later became the Incredible Orlando.
 
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(Lindsay Kemp on Jack Birkett;)

”Jack was Judy to my Mr. Punch, Harlequin to my Pierrot, Titania to my Puck, Herodias to my Salomé, Queen of Hearts to my Lewis Carroll. We shared flats, dressing rooms, boyfriends, bills, good times and bad times, success and failure; a couple of extravagant young dreamers, a couple of aching elders, always entertainers.

Lindsay Kemp:

And Jack said:

Jack Birkett, the Incredible Orlando, appears as an angel and is lowered on a wire from the wings. He is dressed as Eros, with bow and arrow.

Jack Birkett, the Incredible Orlando:

Look.

Lindsay Kemp:

I had another year to do in the forces. Aside No more, because I’d signed on at seventeen for three years. Anyway, Jack said:

Jack Birkett, the Incredible Orlando:

Tell them you’re gay.

Lindsay Kemp:

And I said, To Orlando ‘What’s gay?’

Jack Birkett, the Incredible Orlando:

Tell them you’re gay, dear.

Orlando flies upwards, firing an arrow.

Lindsay Kemp:

Anyway, so, I went to the medical officer and said, ‘I’m gay.’ I had no experience at that time, but I’ve made up for it.

Anyway I was out, there and then, I mean discharged., suffering from what the medical report said was ‘temperamentally ….’

And from there straight back to the Rambert School.

(Kemp addresses the audience.)

I had always put on my own little shows since the age of five years old, and then at boarding school, cajoling other boys to join me and we would put on plays and shows together. And in the forces, during that one year also putting on a lot of plays and performances and so on. And we continued to perform in garages, in fields, in parks, in gardens, wherever we could get a gig in those days, myself and my friends. And bit by bit, that company took on a professional shape so by 1968 or ’69 or something like that, the company as such, the Lindsay Kemp Company made its debut at the Lyric Hammersmith.

(Lights down, then up. On stage the Lindsay Kemp Company performs.)

 
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In the late 1960s, Lindsay Kemp met a young musician called David Bowie.

Bowie was on the verge of giving up his pop career, and becoming a Buddhist monk, when he met Kemp. The meeting would change Bowie’s life and career.

David Bowie on Lindsay Kemp:

”It was everything I thought Bohemia probably was. I joined the circus.”

Blackout.

 
More from Lindsay Kemp, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.03.2012
07:33 pm
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A Moment of Lost Elegance: Radley Metzger’s ‘Naked Came the Stranger’
05.03.2012
07:31 pm
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There are eighty thousand topics under the sun that can inspire great filmmaking. Out of that ocean of inspiration, the world of literary hoaxes, is not the first thing that comes to mind. But a handful films have come out of this weird wellspring, including Radley Metzger’s Naked Came the Stranger. (Directed under the cinematic equivalent to a purple-prose pseudonym, Henry Paris.)  Originally crafted as a sarcastic response to the lurid and highly popular works of bestselling writers like Harold Robbins and Jacqueline Susann, the book, “Naked Came the Stranger,” featured twenty four writers coming together to create one tawdry tale of marital infidelity in late 60’s America.

Now, leave it to a maestro like Radley Metzger to take this lovely bit of salacious NY Times chart topping pulp and turn it into a funny, sexy and whimsical film. A din of television noise begins the proceedings, all set in a bedroom riot of early 70s florals and crayola colors. A well executed shot reveals a slow sweep of the room, as an announcer intones “Immortal film classics to fall asleep by!” Speaking of which, an old fashioned alarm clock, with its face displaying a photo of legendary cinematic goddess, Marlene Dietrich, goes off, waking up Gilly (pronounced J-i-l-l-y and played by the woefully unsung Darby Lloyd Rains). Slipping off her sleep mask, she tries to rouse her hubby, Billy (Levi Richards) up with some well intentioned hanky panky before being stopped in her tracks as he calls out the name “Phyllis” in his sleep. Yes, something is afoul in marital Denmark, which is all too apparent to Gilly, from her husband’s bad bluffing about his dream to the comically flirty looks Phyllis (Mary Stuart) keeps shooting his way while the couple prepare for another installment of their radio morning show.

Phyllis and Billy, our two illicit lovebirds, carry on their affair with all the subtlety of a meat hammer, with Gilly finding solid evidence after she follows him down to his mistress’s (nice) NYC apartment. Hanging out on the stairwell, she listens in on their dirty talk, which is undoubtedly the worst kind of its stripe. I’m not talking Barry White, Big Daddy Kane or even Black Oak Arkansas, here, I’m talking the dreaded cutesy baby talk. They literally refer to each other as “love bunny,” much to Gilly’s horror, though it doesn’t stop her from having some manual fun.

This incident ends up being a catalyst for Gilly, feeling that to better understand her husband, she must depart on a series of her own little affairs. No love bunny nonsense here, just a grown woman exploring herself through the willing partners in her life, ranging from a high-strung “ineffectual creep” who is momentarily transformed by Gilly’s transgressive gift to a beautifully shot “silent film” encounter with one suave friend. (How suave? The man invites her to “capture a moment of lost elegance.” Bryan Ferry just swooned.) But the real question remains-will our heroine be able to better understand her husband or realize the grass is greener and move on? (Seriously, “love bunny”??? Grounds for divorce RIGHT THERE.)

Naked Came the Stranger is a perfectly polished and funny film. It’s definitely one of the more whimsical efforts of Radley Metzger, with the tone being very light and cheeky. Taking a book that was critically maligned and making a legitimately good movie out of it is a borderline alchemical move, but one that, in the hands of a master like Metzger, feels like a piece of cake.

The cast is terrific, with Rains taking the lead as the plucky and adventurous Gilly. She brings a likability and a strong sense of confident femininity to her role. This is a great contrast to the girlishness of Stuart’s Phyllis. Rains is alternately very funny, beautiful and sexy. The image of her in top hat and tails, Ala Marlene, is a striking one. Darby Lloyd Rains has the kind of powerful gravitas to pull it off without seeming like she is aping Dietrich. Stuart is also good as the cute but love happy annoyance mistress, making this a 180 from her role in Gerard Damiano’s masterful Memories Within Miss Aggie. All of the male actors are good too, but this is really the ladies’ show. (Though, Marc Stevens’ cameo during the costume party sequence is a huge highlight.)

With being a Metzger film, everything looks good. Paul Glickman, who was also responsible for the cinematography for Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann, did an equally wonderful job here, with even the urban jungle of NYC looking a bit dewy and pretty. There is also an assortment of fun touches throughout, including a reference to Metzger’s serious Camille 2000, with the film playing on the television, prompting Billy to remark, “Why don’t they show the Garbo version?” There is also a brief mirror shot, as you see the reflection of Gilly gently remove a wig off of Phyllis. Mirrors and reflection itself tend to be a trait of Metzger’s work, whether it is his softcore work with Camille 2000 and The Lickerish Quartet or his latter works, like Pamela Mann. This all gives further proof that you can have depth with beauty.

Distribpix has once again done right by both Radley Metzger’s work and the viewer by presenting this film in a gorgeous restoration of the original 35mm print. Artists like Metzger deserve to have their work preserved with the level of detail and love that companies like Distribpix provide. In addition to the restoration, there is also a bounty of extras, including a Director’s commentary from Metzger himself, a split-screen featurette comparing the “hot” and “cool” versions of the film, a “film facts” subtitle track, deleted scenes, trailers, ephemera gallery and much, much more. There’s also a photo card and a 40 page booklet, detailing the origins of the book, the movie and even the soundtrack. It does not get much spiffier than this.

Naked Came the Stranger is a fun and sweet-natured film featuring good visuals and a pitch-perfect performance from Darby Lloyd Rains. It would make a fun, couples-stepping-out double bill with the previous year’s Private Afternoons of Pamela Mann.

Posted by Heather Drain
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05.03.2012
07:31 pm
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Wild new anime from Japan: The Visible Man on shrooms
05.03.2012
05:10 pm
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Coming this summer to theaters in Japan and eventually to the rest of the planet, After School Midnighters looks like one of the freshest animated films to hit the screens in some time. I’m not a big fan of anime, but this I could get into.

The film’s producers describe After School Midnighters as…

[...] an original computer-generated animation film by a young and spirited director with a skillful VFX/CGI crew who has a lot of experience in movies and TV commercials. The main character ‘Kynst Lijk’ is a human body model that stands in a science room of an elementary school. Kynst Lijk also reigns over the school after midnight. One day, when a naughty kindergarden trio accidentally meets him, his ordinary life changes. The scariest and craziest after midnight adventure begins…

Imagine this on the big screen:
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.03.2012
05:10 pm
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‘Yellow Submarine’ posters that will make your eyes shiver with delight
05.03.2012
03:40 pm
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A collection of 10 different limited edition Yellow Submarine posters (in two box sets) by artist Tom Whalen are going on sale on May 29th at the Dark Hall Mansions’ website.

The posters are officially licensed from The Beatles’ Apple company and they’re stunners. They’ll probably sell faster than Kraftwerk at MOMA tickets, but scoring a set would be sweet. I’m in.

The posters release seem to be timed to coincide with the June 5th release of the newly-restored Yellow Submarine on DVD and Blu-ray. Having recently seen the restored digital version on the big screen, I can testify to its mind-altering beauty.
 
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Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.03.2012
03:40 pm
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Stunning movie posters for Martin Scorsese’s film restoration project
05.03.2012
02:48 pm
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As if there weren’t already enough cinematic goodness in Austin, Alamo Drafthouse has just announced a mini-festival of restored classic films from Martin Scorsese’s The Film Foundation. Here’s the good news:

Mondo & Alamo Drafthouse have partnered with The Film Foundation, Martin Scorsese’s film preservation organization, for a very special screening & poster series of eight classic films this May & June at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin, TX with beautifully restored 35mm prints.  The Film Foundation is the leading non-profit organization dedicated to film preservation and has worked with the nation’s archives to save over 560 titles. The foundation provides public access to the restorations and educates future generations about film language and history. 

The Film Foundation and its partners have provided pristine 35mm prints for King Kong, The Night of the Hunter, The Old Dark House, Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, Rashomon, Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, The Unholy Three and Film. The films will also get the Mondo treatment with an original, stunning work of art available for sale at each of the screenings

The posters by Mondo Tees are quite beautiful, with King Kong (artist: Laurent Durieux) and Shadow Of A Doubt (Alan Hynes) being my favorites so far. For info on tickets for the screenings and to purchase posters visit The Alamo Drafthouse’s website.
 
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Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.03.2012
02:48 pm
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Real Cinema: An introduction to Italian Neo-Realism
05.02.2012
08:09 pm
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This is where Anna Magnani broke away from 2 German soldiers, ran and threw herself down on the streets. The man is explaining the making of a film, rather than some historical event. It comes at the start of a short documentary on Italian Neo-Realism, from 1973.  She even hurt her knee, he adds almost proudly. A woman’s voice joins in, Aldo Fabrizi was there too. It’s almost religious, a celluloid Stations of the Cross, there should be nuns selling small statuettes of movie cameras, and T-shirts with Magnani’s face miraculously transposed onto 100% cotton.

The man and the woman were recalling scenes from Roberto Rosselini’s film Rome, Open City, when it was filmed in their neighborhood. Rossellini along with Vittorio De Sica were pioneers of Neo Realism. Their films brought a dynamism in form, that was countered by the self-reflection of their content that put Italian cinema at the center of the post-war world. Here was launched the careers of Rossellini, Fellini, Pasolini, Bertolucci, Visconti, Zavattini and De Sica, who described the post war years as a beautiful time - “Beautiful for artists, but ugly for Italians.”

Right after the war, passions were so strong right after the War that they really pushed us, they forced towards this kind of film truth. And this truth was transfigured by poetry, and lyricism. It was because of if its lyricism that Neo-Realism so captured the world. Because there was poetry in our reality.

Films like De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief, Rosselini’s Rome, Open City, and Visconti’s Ossessione presented a new and dynamic way of presenting the world, which went on to influence movements such as Nouvelle Vague and directors as different as Martin Scorsese and Derek Jarman. Neo Realist films dealt with difficulties faced everyday by the working class; stories were rooted in the reality of a war ruined Italy; there were no simplistic morality tales, issues were complex, and often open-ended; actors mixed with non-actors; stylistically the films were loose, fluid, often documentary-like. However, their content did not please some Italians, who thought Neo-Realism only highlighted the bad things about Italy, which they feared might make Italians seem to be just thieves and bums.

This was not how the directors like Bernardo Bertolucci saw it:

“Realism doesn’t mean showing real things, but showing how things really are. It was this definition by Brecht that critically challenged Italian Neo-Realism. Not Rossilini though. Rossilini is the only one in Neo-Realism who didn’t just show us things, didn’t just try to be a realist, but gave us an idea of things. He wasn’t interested in the appearance of things, but in the idea behind the things. Even the idea behind the idea.”

For Cesar Zavattini Neo-Realism was:

“The most important characteristic, and the most important innovation, of what is called neorealism, it seems to me, is to have realised that the necessity of the story was only an unconscious way of disguising a human defeat, and that the kind of imagination it involved was simply a technique of superimposing dead formulas over living social facts. Now it has been perceived that reality is hugely rich, that to be able to look directly at it is enough; and that the artist’s task is not to make people moved or indignant at metaphorical situations, but to make them reflect (and, if you like, to be moved and indignant too) on what they and others are doing, on the real things, exactly as they are.”

For Pier Paolo Pasolini Neo-Realism was intensely political:

“It stood for the first act of critical, political consciousness that Italy had experienced. Italy up to that point had no history, no unified history as a nation, only a history as many divided little peoples, divided little countries, and with a great gap between north and south. And then the last 20 years have been a history of Fascism - the history of an aberrational unity. It was only with the Resistance that Italian history began.

“First of all, Neo-Realism meant the rediscovery of Italy. A first look at Italy without rhetoric, without lies, and there was a sense of pleasure in the self-discovery, even pleasure in denouncing one’s own short-comings, this was common to everything.

“The other common quality was its Marxist character. All Neo-Realist works were founded on the idea that the future would be better, or else [there would be] revolution.”

These quotes are taken form the documentary Neo Realism (1973) which can be viewed here, and contains interviews with De Sica, Fellini, Pasolini, and Bertolucci, amongst others.
 

 
Trailers for Pasolini’s ‘Accattone’ and Rossellini’s ‘The Bicycle Thief’, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.02.2012
08:09 pm
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Danny McBride’s new project is based on Danish taboo-breaker ‘Klown’: Watch the trailer (NSFW)
05.02.2012
06:26 pm
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Austin-based Drafthouse Films is unleashing another cinematic assault on good taste with the release of Danish raunch fest Klown.

In a press release, Drafthouse Films gives us the inside skinny on Klown:

Klown is based on the six-season Danish TV show starring comedians Frank Hvam and Casper Christensen.

Mikkel Nøgaard’s Klown has been hailed as “raunchy, fearless and awesome!” (Eric Kohn, indieWIRE).  Based on a popular six-season television show by the same name, Klown is an uproarious comedy that follows two wildly inappropriate friends as they run amok through the Danish countryside plowing through social taboos and unspeakable debaucheries.

“No boundary is too taboo for this incredibly funny and utterly fearless film,” says Drafthouse Films’ Director of Acquisitions Evan Husney, “and for that reason Mikkel Nørgaard’s film is a perfect fit in our roster of incredibly unique and provocative works. Klown is soon to become a household name amongst comedy fans across the country.”

Klown follows two friends, Frank and Casper, as they embark on a canoe trip that thinly veils their true intentions of a weekend of debauchery.  When Frank discovers his girlfriend is pregnant and having doubts about his ability to be a father, Frank “kidnaps” her 12-year-old nephew and brings him along for the ride.  Despite their new impressionable travel companion, Frank and Casper make no changes to their original raunchy itinerary.  What follows is a hilarious series of misadventures.

Producer/director Todd Phillips (The Hangover) is currently working on an American re-make of Klown starring Danny McBride. Fuck yeah!

Got to love Drafthouse Films for helping to keep the grindhouse, arthouse and indie film scene alive.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.02.2012
06:26 pm
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The man who made the theme from ‘Shaft’ immortal: Charles ‘Skip’ Pitts R.I.P.
05.02.2012
04:02 pm
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Indelible and as evocative as hell, the wah-wah pedal riff that heralds the coming of Shaft, “the black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks,” is one of those great sonic movie moments that elevate a film into the mythical. And the guitarist playing that riff was Stax studio musician and a member of Isaac Haye’s band, Charles “Skip” Pitts. Sadly, Pitts died on May 1 of lung cancer. He was 65.

The ‘Shaft’ part was created because Isaac needed something driving for the beginning of the movie, when (actor) Richard Roundtree is coming out of the subway and walking through Times Square,” Pitts told Guitar Player in an interview regarding the song. “I was checking my pedals. I tested my overdrive, my reverb, the Maestro box, and then I started in with the wah. Isaac stopped everything and said, ‘Skip, what is that you are playing?’ I said, ‘I am just tuning up.’ He said, ‘Keep playing that G octave.’”

Pitts also played the ultra-funky licks on The Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing” and Rufus Thomas’s “The Breakdown.” Soul sauce slathered on thick and juicy.

Here’s Pitts playing the riff that will always be associated with his name at his last gig in Memphis on the eve of a brand new year, 2012.
 

 
Thanks to Spinner and The Black Rock Coalition.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.02.2012
04:02 pm
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Spaghetti western wildness: A Sergio Leone classic for your enjoyment
04.30.2012
08:20 pm
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It was 13 years ago today that Sergio Leone died, but dead or alive, his influence on film makers over the past two decades has been nothing less than formidable. Young guns like Quentin Tarantino, Takashi Miike, Kim Ji-woon and Robert Rodriguez, as well old skool, cutting-edge auteurs like Martin Scorsese. John Carpenter, Alex Cox, Tsui Hark and Alejandro Jodorowsky, owe much to Leone’s widescreen visions of a mystical and mythical American West where men face down death with the cold-eyed detachment of Zen monks staring into infinite space.

Leone’s films need to be enjoyed on the biggest screen possible. Decades ago I saw a restored 70mm print of Once Upon A Time In The West presented by Martin Scorsese at New York City’s Film Forum. It was a breathtaking experience. And for those of you who live in NYC you have a chance to see a newly restored 35mm print (presented by Scorsese) this coming June at the Forum. Details here.

As a reminder of just how splendid Leone’s epic is and to inspire you to see it when you can on the big screen, here’s the full-length Italian theatrical version:
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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04.30.2012
08:20 pm
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