Let there be keytars!
“To me its the most ultimate musical instrument you can get”
“You can get lost in time with the QChord”
Via Robert Popper
“To me its the most ultimate musical instrument you can get”
“You can get lost in time with the QChord”
Via Robert Popper
After seeing the below trailer, I’m excited to see director Tamra Davis’s documentary portrait of painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child. The other day I found a photo I took of him at a New York nightclub opening in 1986 in a box in my garage. He’s just glaring at the camera, like he’s pissed off, but he looks cool doing it. The same roll had photos of Andy Warhol and Keith Haring.
A friend of the graffiti/Neo-expressionist painter, director Tamra Davis paints her own portrait of the artist, who died at age 27, and offers an indictment of celebrity culture.
Davis met Basquiat while she was attending film school and working as a gallery assistant in Los Angeles. In 1985, she filmed an interview of Basquiat, which comprises the centerpiece of this film, along with rare footage of him painting.
“I saw anger in him but I also saw this whole other side of him, very intelligent, funny, filled with life, smiles, dances and super-flirty, super-charming,” said Davis. “That was the person who, I felt, people were getting it wrong.”
Davis said being around Basquiat there was “always so much happening, let’s do this, let’s go here, let’s see how far we can push this, what would happen if I did this, let’s go as fast as we can, let’s fly to Paris, let’s go out to dinner to the fanciest restaurant and order the best wine. Pushing the limit the furthest, so being around him was really fun but also crazy.”
The documentary, which will have its theatrical release later this year, is a collage of period footage, including the interview with Basquiat and new interviews with his friends/colleagues, such as Julian Schnabel, Larry Gagosian, Fab 5 Freddy, Glenn O’Brien and others.
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child: Director Tamra Davis Paints a Portrait of the Artist (WSJ)
HUGE robot baby alert! From Sociedad Estatal para Exposiciones Internacionales:
Miguelín is a 6.5 meters tall baby, electronically animated. It breathes, blinks and dreams with the cities that we will leave to future generations will smiling visitors as they walk into “Sons”, the last of rooms that integrate the pavilion, which is managed by the Spanish Agency for International Exhibitions (SEEI) [...]
The baby’s “Mother” is film director Isabel Coixet who has pointed out that with this collaboration she has wanted to stay accurate to the Expo Shanghai’s Theme, “Better city, better life”. Also that Miguelín is a reminder that tells us that “all our actions have direct consequences on our children’s future and that we have to react to this”, said the filmmaker in an encounter with the Spanish Press at the Instituto Cervantes in Beijing.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Creepy: Giant Babybot With Giant Head
(via Everlasting Blort)
Last night when I stumbled across the Bob Dylan/Bette Midler bootleg on Vimeo, I saw that the poster, dagb (that’s all I know about him and I suspect he would like to keep it that way) had also uploaded One Man’s Week, the 1975 documentary about the late great British eccentric and Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band singer, Vivian Stanshall. Erudite—and alcoholic—Vivian is interviewed and seen working on his African-influenced album Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead.
If you’re a Bonzos fan, this is a little bit of heaven, I promise you.
For a quick overview of who Stanshall was and why you should care, I suggest watching this, first:
When I read a headline like “Ancient weapons emerge from melting Arctic ice,” three things immediately pop into my mind:
1. Oh f_K, they’ve discovered an ancient spaceship under the polar icecaps which contains Aliens, Predators, Alien-Predators, Terminators, Terminator-Alien-Predators and/or the Da Vinci Code;
2. These things will probably kill all of us as they see us as little more than pawns in an epic game/hunt that has been conducted across the universe for millennia and which we have just reactivated by finding this Arctic trove which should have stayed buried;
3. Lance Henriksen will be involved.
However, all that happened is they found some old caveman spears. *Phew.* Headlines should know better than to scare me like that.
A treasure trove of ancient weapons has emerged from melting ice patches in the Canadian Arctic, revealing hunting strategies thousands of years old.
The weapons, which include a 2,400-year-old spear throwing tools, a 1000-year-old ground squirrel snare, and bows and arrows dating back 850 years, have been found high in the remote Mackenzie Mountains, a region where Mountain Boreal caribou abound in the summer months.
Dotted with ice patches resulting from accumulation of annual snow that, until recently, remained frozen all year, the mountains have been the caribous’ shelter for millennia.
Seeking relief from the heat and annoying bugs, the animals huddle on the ice patches, becoming an easy target for hunters who recognized this behavior millennia ago.
The image above, “The Scallop Divers of Enceladus,” is from an exhibition in London that asks artists to imagine the world of 2050, with some very unexpected results. I want this screen-printed on the hood of my car.
“An exhibition in London right now asks artists to imagine the world of 2050, and the answers are weirder than you could possibly imagine. Just check out this print, “The Scallop Divers Of Enceladus.”
The Life In 2050 exhibition is taking place right now as part of the Sci-Fi London Film Festival. Organized by design studio Transmission, the exhibition brings together 22 artists, showcasing their visions of the world 40 years from now.
The image to the left comes from awesome artist Tom Muller, and the print is for sale. Here are a few other images we love.”
Found myself watching last week Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones. Without wanting to comment too much on it beyond saying it’s no Heavenly Creatures or LOTR, I can say its Brian Eno score was a definite highlight.
A soundtrack for Bones has never been released, a fact that drove me nuts because I’ve been playing non-stop the above, suspiciously Eno-esque track, “The Moon’s Lament,” attributed to the apparently Google-proof band “Cindy D’lequez-Sage.”
Buried no less in the closing credits, it’s a gorgeous, haunting piece of music with some seriously spooky lyrics. Is it Eno himself? Will the real Cindy D’lequez-Sage please stand up?!
Author Ted Cox’s last gig saw him going undercover at a “furry” camp. His next assignment brought him to Phoenix, Arizona, and “Journey into Manhood,” a Christian-backed weekend retreat designed to help gay men go straight.
In the guise of an SSA (same-sex attracted Christian man), Cox, who’s both straight and an atheist, experienced everything from the “Motorcycle” position, to having erections pressed into his back.
He also happened to witness a fellow retreater taking a baseball bat to a dummy of his own father and beating the shit out of it. Cox’s motivations for going incognito were, to say the least, complicated:
First, I was raised in the Mormon church, which has taken the lead against equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. It’s been ten years since I left Mormonism, and I feel a particular need to stand up against the church’s well-funded opposition to marriage equality.
Second, while the ex-gay movement has publicly declared that they can bring “freedom from homosexuality,” there’s no evidence that someone can change his or her orientation through these religiously motivated programs. Rather than turning straight, the men and women that I met throughout this project dealt with a cycle of repression, backsliding into sin, then shame, guilt, and repentance.
Third, these programs are dangerous. Ex-gay watchdog groups document the stories of men who, after years of failed attempts to become straight, resort to suicide.
As reads go, it’s long, but definitely worthwhile. A short segment with Cox on Fox News follows below:
What Happened When I Went Undercover at a Christian Gay-to-Straight Conversion Camp
God told me you were home alone checking Dangerous Minds on a Friday night. And then he commanded me to smite you with these videos.
Good night.
Indian patient Prahlad Jani claims he has survived without food and water for more than seven decades.
Currently being held in isolation by India’s Defense Research Development Organization, Prahlad Jani has now gone six days without food or water and has yet to demonstrate any signs of hunger or thirst (he hasn’t crapped or peed either). Doctors feel the long-practicing “breatharian” might possess some hidden “key” that will help save lives. And by “lives,” they mean, naturally, military lives:
Mr Jani is regarded as a breatharian who can live on a ‘spiritual life-force’ alone. He believes he is sustained by a goddess who pours an ‘elixir’ through a hole in his palate. His claims have been supported by an Indian doctor who specializes in studies of people who claim supernatural abilities, but he has also been dismissed by others as a “village fraud.”
India’s Defence Research Development Organisation, whose scientists develop drone aircraft, intercontinental ballistic missiles and new types of bombs believe Mr Prahlad could teach them to help soldiers survive longer without food, or disaster victims to hang on until help arrives. “If his claims are verified, it will be a breakthrough in medical science,” said Dr G Ilavazhagan, director of the Defence Institute of Physiology & Allied Sciences. “We will be able to help save human lives during natural disasters, high altitude, sea journeys and other natural and human extremities. We can educate people about the survival techniques in adverse conditions with little food and water or nothing at all.”
A short documentary on Prahlad Jani and breatharianism follows below:
Man Claims To Have Had No Food Or Drink For 70 Years