Before there were Muppets, there was Jim Henson, experimental film maker:

Time Piece is nine very weird, sort of beatnik minutes of fast-paced, scattered imagery and sounds all set to the beat of a hi-hat.  He makes music out of everyday sounds.  So you get tapping, tick-tocks, footsteps, drumbeats, car zooms, whistles, screeches, pogo sticks, high heels, typewriters, on/off switches, dings, buzzes, bowling balls, elevators, champagne pops, zippers, dogs panting, rocking chairs, beers opening, tea kettles, crackers, coughing, and a shot of Henson painting an elephant pink.  The only word used in the whole thing is ?

 
I couldn’t be a bigger fan of Japanese director, Hiroshi Teshigahara, or recommend more highly his Criterion-collected films from the 60s: Pitfall, Woman In The Dunes, and The Face of Another.  Teshigahara has a wonderful way of capturing landscapes, and, much like Antonioni, uses them to suggest some aspect—usually existential—of the human condition. 

That being said, I find his documentary on Antonio Gaudi, stunning to watch as a tone poem of sorts, but lacking in terms of providing much context for the Catalan architect.  You can check out the complete documentary over at Ubu, titled, simply, Antonio Gaudi, but I just recently stumbled upon a more illuminating point of entry for the architect.

Ken Russell, the British director of such films as Tommy, Women In Love, and Altered States produced his own “film essay” on Gaudi in ‘61.  Sidestepping his usual “lurid” mode, Russell’s doc provides all the historical/biographical context missing from Teshigahara’s.  Not surprisingly, Russell’s short also accompanies the Criterion reissue of Antonio Gaudi.

For Russell’s take on some truly fantastical buildings, Part I of his film essay follows below with a link at the bottom to Part II.

 
Ken Russell’s Antonio Gaudi Part II

 
For what seems like days now I’ve been waiting for the official unveiling of Kobe’s true-to-scale statue of one of my childhood cartoon heroes, Gigantor (Tetsujin).  Like many of the stories I gravitated to back then, it was about a boy and his subservient robot.

More memorable than the cartoon, though, was Gigantor’s American theme song, whose cover by The Dickies was celebrated both here and in the UK.  You can watch their live version here, but in honor of the big guy’s unveiling, why not check out the original?

 
Kobe Tetsujin Officially Unveiled

 
This is just frightening! From Berno Polzer, director of artistic programming at the Wien Modern: “I think, its partially understandable, partially not. And it plays well with the limits of our construction abilities. That is, we hear sounds that obviously aren’t normal music, but neither they are language, and one could say that sometimes, a bridging happens. Personally, I think you can understand individual words even without knowing the text, and the Eureka moment happens when you see the text, and suddenly, the language is there.”
 
(via HYST)

 
Absolutely wonderful article from the Times of London where children review the new Beatles re-masters. To crib from another group of classic rockers, looks like these kids are all right:

?

 

 

 

 
Olafur Eliasson
 
Mekanism Skateboards
 
(via Today and Tomorrow)

 
From Independent.ie: “Since he saw Dresden being bombed as a boy, Victor Langheld wanted to know ‘why these things happen’. So at 25 he went to India to try to find the answer. The result is a unique sculpture park in Co Wicklow. Alison Bourke reports In a field, behind a raggedy hedge near Roundwood in Co Wicklow, live six giant granite Indian elephants, a fasting Buddha, and a huge forefinger.

Set a little behind these, a ferryman claws his way out of a small pond, a maze leads towards enlightenment, and a ‘bell of forgetfulness’ stands waiting to be pulled. Set in front of the humble Irish countryside, each piece looks about as at home as if it had been beamed down by an alien spaceship.”
 
More over at Irish Independent: Victor and his magical garden
 

I was introduced to this song a few years ago by my friend Shaun Frent?ɬ

 
(Above, Gore Vidal visits “Mary Hartman” (Louise Lasser) in the mental hospital on the Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman soap opera)
 
I have revered Gore Vidal my entire life. He’s a great writer and he’s a great American, perhaps THE great American gadfly amongst men of letters. The older he gets, the more spiteful he becomes about the state of this country. Interviews with Vidal in recent years fall into one of two categories, sometimes they’re terribly amusing, but alarming, other times just alarming. Lately, he’s really letting it rip. He’s 83, why should he pull any punches? In this long interview from London, a cranky Vidal holds forth on the Obama presidency with a jaundiced eye:

Gore Vidal is not only grieving for his own dead circle and his fading life, but for his country. At 83, he has lived through one third of the lifespan of the United States. If anyone incarnates the American century that has ended, it is him. He was America’s greatest essayist, one of its best-selling novelists and the wit at every party. He holidayed with the Kennedys, cruised for men with Tennessee Williams, was urged to run for Congress by Eleanor Roosevelt, co-wrote some of the most iconic Hollywood films, damned US foreign policy from within, sued Truman Capote, got fellated by Jack Kerouac, watched his cousin Al Gore get elected President and still lose the White House, and ?

 
Two examples from the UK artist/doodle-bug Charlotte Mann.  What does she need to create her incredibly convincing trompe l’oeil?  Just black markers and a blank wall.
 

 
(via MirrorMirror)