Empire Magazine held a photoshop contest and asked its readers to mash-up David Bowie with recognizable movie posters. The majority of the submissions were bad photoshop jobs, but some were really funny and quite clever. Here are a few that made me smile.
 

 
More after the jump…

The Looters. Paul Cook, Steve Jones, Ray Winstone, and Paul Simonon. Photo: Caroline Coon.
 
Here’s the first in a series of video compilations of fake bands. These are fictional music groups or solo acts that were created for film or TV. Some are quite excellent.

1. The Mosquitoes - “Gilligan’s Island”
2. Android - “Buck Rogers In The 25th Century”
3. The Looters -“Ladies And Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains”
4. The Flowerbuds - “Carry On Camping”
5. Drimble Wedge And The Vegetations - “Bedazzled”
6. Steven Shorter - “Privilege”
7. The Bugaloos - “The Electric Company
8. Tom Monroe - “SCTV
9. The Queen Haters” - SCTV

Compilation two coming soon.
 

 
Richard Metzger shared The Nomi Song with DM readers back in 2010 but the original source for the video is gone. Here’s a new link to the film.

Andrew Horn’s excellent 2004 documentary about New Wave opera diva from outer-space, Klaus Nomi, follows the rise of Nomi’s unlikely career until his death in 1983 from AIDS complications. With Kristian Hoffman, Kenny Scharf, Ann Magnuson, Tony Frere, Page Wood, David McDermott and in a great performance clip, David Bowie and Joey Arias.

High quality video and audio.
 

 
The phrase, “gangster film”, immediately brings to mind images of iconic, uber-male actors (James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Brando, Pacino, DeNiro, every actor in The Sopranos, etc) immersed in a near-operatic morality tale. Everything is big. The crimes are big, the characters are big and yes, even the violence is big. But what about the crime film that breaks it down to the utmost human level? Not only that, but focuses on the other end? Life is not always a cops and robbers show and nowhere is that more purely evident than in John Cassavetes’ often unappreciated masterpiece, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

Gone is the romance of crime, only to be replaced by the story of our hero, Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzara), a burlesque club owner/dreamer who becomes beaten but not broken. The plot by itself is basic. Cosmo, after paying off one gambling debt to the mob, ends up accruing a more massive one in one fateful evening. It is this particular debt that has the underworld figures, including such thespian heavyweights as Timothy “The Man” Carey and Seymour Cassel, all but forcing Cosmo to carry out a hit on our titular bookie. Everything that I just wrote is part of the danger of solely relying on plot descriptors, because this film is more than just a-b-c-d and crime, it’s about a regular guy, not perfect but good hearted, trying to live his dream out in a world full of sharks, vultures and parasites.

Cosmo is not just a man, however, but a breathing metaphor for any artist who was ever backed into the corner of moral compromise. In a lot of ways, you are seeing a thinly veiled story of what Cassavettes himself had been put through as a filmmaker. He’s lauded now but life was never easy for the man and the fact that Bookie was released to mixed reviews and bad box office back in 1976 is partial proof of that. The real testament of Cassavetes’ genius was not just in making great cinema but the fact that the 1978 version, which he re-edited for a second stab at success was actually superior to the original cut. A tactic like that never works creatively but with a guy like Cassavetes, all bets are off.

The centerpiece, the heart and soul of this film is shared with the rich performance by Ben Gazzara. We recently lost Gazzara on February 3rd, 2012, which is a heartbreak. (In a spooky bit of fate, Cassavetes died on the same day, 23 years earlier, which is fitting for the anima/animus factor.) His Cosmo is a charismatic who has elevated what is essentially a strip club into a spectacle that integrates the spirit of vaudeville with T&A. He loves, lives and treats all of the ladies in his life with respect. This is a good man whose one mistake ends up leading him down one hellish road with an uncertain outcome. Gazzara is so naturalistic and nuanced with his performance that this character stays with you long after you have finished watching the movie. Sure, he is tough and masculine but the vulnerability and weariness shows through in the smallest of gestures. Seeing him alongside another screen titan, Timothy Carey, is one of the best cinematic gifts one could ever ask for. Anything you have seen cannot touch the mastery these two actors provide.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is ripe for rediscovery. It is one of the smartest crime films ever made and features some insanely stellar acting work from both Gazzara and Carey. If you have an open mind and an understanding heart, then you too will see the perfection that is this film.

Both the 1976 and 1978 version of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie are currently available on the Criterion Collection’s lush box set, John Cassavetes: Five Films.

 
It was my birthday, I was to have a party, but what the hell do I know about throwing parties? You go to a party, You get drunk at a party, You take drugs, get buzzed then wasted at a party. You listen to music and meet interesting people with whom you have mediocre, consensual sex at a party. No, you never, ever throw a party.

“Think of the mess,” You tell yourself. “You don’t clean-up, that’s not You, that’s what friends and neighbors are for. You are a born guest.” But I still had to throw a party.

So, I looked for tips, asked around, shoe-shines, bar flies, and shadowy figures who smoked cigarettes in car parks. Then I googled it, and lo, there it was What Makes a Good Party?. I thought, I know this - alcohol, drugs, sex? No, I was wrong. What makes a good party is charades, conversation, dancing and a big smiley sing-song around a piano. Now you know. So, don’t flick ash on the carpet, use the coaster for your drinks, and brace yourself for small-talk. You still want to come to my party? No? It’ll be fun. We can do Twister.
 

 
Today is Gene Vincent’s birthday. And while the film I’m sharing to commemorate this date is hardly an uplifter, it is a touching testament to Gene Vincent’s devotion to his art and fans.

In 1957 Gene Vincent’s Be-Bop-A-Lula had sold two million copies and he was an International star. But his meteoric rise was followed by tragedy and tough times in the 1960s. While he continued to record and tour with some success, particularly in England, by the mid-60s his music career was as battered as his body.

Gene Vincent: The Rock And Roll Singer documents Vincent’s British tour of 1969. Working with a pickup band and playing dingy clubs and small halls at “the rough end of the music biz,” the film follows Vincent and his loyal crew as they struggle to make enough money to get from gig to gig. There’s a sad beauty in the whole mess.

In addition to the financial problems of the tour, Vincent was suffering debilitating pain from a 1955 motorcycle accident and the taxi cab collision that killed his fellow passenger and friend Eddie Cochran in 1960. As we watch Vincent perform in front of his adoring fans, you can practically feel his exhaustion and see the hurt behind his determined smile.

Less than two years after this documentary was filmed, Vincent was dead of a burst ulcer. He was only 36 years old.

Sweet Gene Vincent.
 

 
A trippy alchemical potion of a movie, Space Is The Place inhabits an alternative reality that could only exist in the Afrodelic cosmology of Saturnian jazz priest Sun Ra.
Directed by John Coney in 1974, the movie is a hybrid of B-grade sci-fi, Blaxploitation flix (on shrooms), the films of Kenneth Anger and surrealist head trips like El Topo and the electric western Zachariah.

In the film, as in life, Sun Ra is the quintessential outsider and space is a metaphorical Eden for this much put upon black man. The plot is threadbare, involving villainous pimps and dealers, Black Panther avenger protagonists, local nightclubs, pool halls, cat houses, and, of course, an Outer Space Employment Agency that Sun Ra sets up after coming to Earth from a faraway planet. To recruit a new colony, he espouses racial freedom through Egyptian epigrams, Stockhausen-like jazz and a spirit filled Rocket Ship. Of course, Ra is challenged by establishment agents and a supreme villain, the Overseer (Ray Johnson), who lures impressionable black men away from Ra’s brand of truth with the vices of sex and money. Ra preaches against decadence and hits a nerve when showing the pimp and his followers that they are no different than the White Man (Nixon, here) they rage against. Ra promises a land of racial harmony and social justice lies within the Milky Way’s stars, and who are we to argue?” - Alfred Eaker

The cinematic equivalent of one of Sun Ra’s free jazz improvs, Space Is The Place is all over the cosmic map so it helps to find that Zen spot where you just lock into the frequency and go with the flow. As Sun Ray instructs, get in tune with the universe.

“The people have no music that is in coordination with their spirits. Because of this, they’re out of tune with the universe. Since they don’t have money, they don’t have anything. If the planet takes hold of an alter destiny, there’s hope for all of us. But otherwise the death sentence upon this planet still stands. Everyone must die.” - Sun Ra

Set your controls for the heart of the Sun Ra.
 

 
Here’s a trailer for the comic A Muppet Wicker Man. The comic, which is described as, “Bad puns, paganism and the smell of burning felt…” can be read in its entirety here.

Let there be no doubt that this is a hell of a lot better than that shitty Nicolas Cage remake!
 

 
Thank you Trey Lane!

 
Shot in 1975/76 during The Rolling Thunder Revue tour, Bob Dylan’s four epic vanity production, Renaldo And Clara, is a pretentious hodgepodge of disconnected vignettes shot through with occasional moments of musical brilliance. But even staggeringly good performances of “Knocking On Heaven’s Door” “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” and “Tangled Up In Blue” can’t save this bloated folly flung from the depths of Dylan’s gargantuan narcissism.

A commercial bust when it was first theatrically released, Dylan later cut the film by almost two hours, leaving mostly concert footage, and even then audiences stayed away in droves.

In describing the making of Renaldo And Clara, Dylan said “a third is improvised, about a third is determined, and about a third is blind luck.” The improvisation part is clearly apparent and I imagine that the determined part is an allusion to the musical performances. But the last ingredient, the “blind’ thing, is what seems to have really driven the film…and blind ain’t good in a visual medium.

While a few critics compared Renaldo And Clara to French surrealist films like Les Enfants Du Paradis (must be Dylan’s mime make-up), I see absolutely no poetry or magic in the movie. I’m a Dylan fan and over the years I’ve repeatedly tried watching R&C with all the mercy and love I can bring to it. But it has yet to reveal any hidden genius to me. Are there readers out there who see something in this that I don’t? I’m open to having my mind changed. Really.

Anyway, here’s Renaldo And Clara in its uncut shambolic glory. It looks beautiful. Much better than the bootlegs I’ve seen in the past.

 
I had a good little chuckle while watching the trailer for the new zombie horror flick Osombie. You knew something like this was going to happen, right? Will I watch it once it’s been released? Probably not, but I thought I’d share the trailer with you anyways. Enjoy Osombie!
 

 
Via io9