Happy Birthday Joe Strummer, who would have been sixty-years-of-age today. Strummer was one of Rock’s figures, the link between The Beatles, The Stones, The Stooges, Bolan, Bowie and Nirvana. He was a contrarian, a free-thinking radical, who didn’t speak for a generation, but encouraged that generation to speak for itself.

To celebrate Strummer’s 60th, here is the documentary Viva Joe Stummer, which “tells the story of the man and not his myth”, which is described on Vimeo:

The Sudden Death in December 2002 of Joe Strummer, frontman of the legendary seventies punk band The Clash, robbed the world of rock and roll music of one of its unique talents.

This year marks the 60th birthday anniversary of Joe Strummer. Viva Joe Strummer is the definitive story of one of the world’s greatest rock frontmen, and includes performance footage together with revealing and exclusive interviews with fellow clash members Mick Jones and Topper Headon, Tymon Dogg of the Mescaleros, and ex Sex Pistol Glen Mattock, along with close friends, fans and those who worked with The Clash on the road.

Packed with electrifying hits like London Calling, White Riot and Capital Radio One, the programme follows Joe’s career from his early beginnings as a member of London squat band the 101ers, through the triumphant years of The Clash, and latterly with his own nineties band, The Mescaleros.

Viva Joe Strummer is an authoritative and overdue tribute to one of British rock music’s greatest performers and songwriters who earned his own unique place in the pantheon of popular music history.

Please Note: If you have problems viewing this, check this link for the whole documentary on Vimeo.

Happy 60th Joe!
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
With thanks to Tara McGinley
 

 
From when I first saw Bambi at a tender age, I have always suspected that Walt Disney and his famous studios were responsible for releasing some of the most horrendous implements of torture, used to torment and traumatize small children. Possible proof of this can be seen in this rather disturbing video clip posted by Meredith Borders over at Bad Ass Digest:

Friend of a friend Geoffrey Roth took his sons to see the movie The Odd Life of Timothy Green, and, well, it affected them. Roth and his wife filmed the boys’ intense emotional response to the movie, which is apparently really, really, really, super, insanely sad.

These little fellas spoil the end of the movie, but dudes. Trust me. It’s worth it.

Thanks to Geoffrey Roth for giving me permission to post this amazing video.

Amazing? Not sure about that. Also, I wonder exactly why any parent would want to film their kids’ distress, which only reminds me of the end credits to Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom.
 

 
Via Bad Ass Digest
 

 
A young Tony Scott stars in his brother Ridley’s first film Boy and Bicycle.

This was the film that inspired Tony to make movies, and it’s a long way from the loud, brash, stadium rock ‘n’ roll films he became famous for in later life.

Tony Scott had considerable skill as film-maker. He was great at large scale, set-piece action scenes, which he manipulated with the ease of a master conjuror. He was more than capable at getting strong performances from his cast, even when characterization was flimsy. And interestingly, his films brought together the most unlikely groups of fans - the Goths of The Hunger, the jocks of Top Gun, the Hip of True Romance, and the Geeks of Enemy of the State. I always thought he should have made a Batman or a Spiderman, or teamed-up again with Tarantino.

The news of his death was shocking, but the manner in which he chose to die had something terribly dramatic about it - his fall from the Vincent Thomas Bridge was witnessed by on-lookers and even filmed.

Tony Scott will be remembered for those populist, large scale movies that captured the audience’s imagination, while at the same time reflecting the cultural ambition, fantasies and fashions of their decade.

Tony Scott R.I.P. 1944-2012
 

 
For Bonzo Dog fans, this is the equivalent of finding the Holy Grail. The original edit and soundtrack of The Adventures of the Son of Exploding Sausage - the rarely seen Bonzo Dog Band film from 1969. It’s the Bonzo’s own Magical Mystery Tour (yes, I know they were in that), a film with no real story, just a day-in-the-countryside, with some children and a farm. You’d probably get arrested for trying something like that now… Here’s how the BFI database describes it:

The Bonzo Dog Band drive into the country in a truck, unload their equipment in some woods only to find some of it taken away by some children. They eat and play at a party, and the Bonzos play a number of instrumentals in a stable yard, including `Rockaliser Baby’, `We are Normal’ and `Quiet Walks and Summer Talks’. At the end they are driven away in a white car. Note: No words are sung. Featured alongside the Bonzo Dog Band are the children Amanda, Jennifer and Ashley Lees, Edward Roebuck, and Olivia Smith.

Clips from this film have been on YouTube over the years, usually with “words sung”, but this original instrumental soundtrack is fantastic, which as one comment on YouTube says:

‘Not just a funky old time jazz band. They give early Pink Floyd a run for their money here.’

Ah, tis true. So, if you like Vivian, Neil and co. (and why not?), do make yourself some tea and scones, and settle down and enjoy this lovely trip to the delightful world of The Bonzo Dog Band.
 

 
Bonus clips of The Bonzos, after the jump…
 

 
Hotter than shit South Korean director Kim Ji-woon has created a handful of my favorite films of the past decade, I Saw the Devil, The Good, the Bad, the Weird, A Bittersweet Life and A Tale of Two Sisters . It should be very interesting to see if he can resurrect Arnold Schwarzenegger as an action star or at least make him weirdly compelling (which shouldn’t be too hard) in the upcoming The Last Stand, Ji-woon’s first American film.

Ji-woon knows his way around genre film-making and can mix brutal violence with black comedy in ways that would make Tarantino envious. My bet is Ji-woon and Schwarzenegger are going to blow minds with this one.

Ji-woon’s I Saw the Devil was in my top 10 of 2010 and is perhaps one of the most beautiful and grueling films I’ve ever experienced. For those of you who haven’t seen his films, be prepared to be stunned. A Tale Of Two Sisters is a good place to start.

Kim Ji-woon may be one of the few Asian directors to make the Hollywood transition without losing his mojo. I think he’s got the spine and guts for it….and he’s a badass.

I’m keeping fingers crossed that The Last Stand will be added to the line-up to this year’s Fantastic Fest, which Dangerous Minds will of course be attending.
 

 
Dean Cavanagh is that very rare breed – a maverick whose talents have been successfully proven over several different disciplines.

He is an award-winning artist; a screenwriter and playwright, writing the highly acclaimed Wedding Belles with Irvine Welsh and the forth-coming movie version of the hit on-line series Svengali. He has also been a journalist, with bylines in i-D, NME, Sabotage Times and the Guardian. Dean is also a documentary-maker, a film and TV producer and a musician, with along list of collaborators, including Robert Anton Wilson.

Now the multi-talented Cavanagh has written and directed (with his son Josh), his first movie - the much anticipated Kubricks.

In this exclusive interview with Dangerous Minds, Dean talks about the ideas and creative processes behind Kubricks. How he collaborated with Alan McGee, and developed the film with his son Josh, discussing his thoughts on cinema and synchronicity, and explaining howKubricks came to be filmed over 5 days, with a talented cast this summer.

Dean Cavanagh: ‘Stanley Kubrick has always fascinated me in that he was clearly trying to convey messages through symbols, codes and puzzles in his films.

‘For me his genius was in the way he presented the ‘regular’ audience with a clear narrative structure and for those who wanted to look deeper he constructed hidden layers of subjectivity. He was clearly a magician working with big budgets in such an idiosyncratic way that it’s hard not to be intrigued by him and his oeuvre.

‘I’ve been following Kubrick researchers like Rob Ager and Jay Weidner for the last few years and I really wanted to dramatize a story based around Kubrick as an inspirational enigma. There is a wealth of material about the esoteric side of Kubrick on the net and Ager and Weidner are great places to start the journey from.’

DM: How did you progress towards making ‘Kubricks’?

Dean Cavanagh: ‘I’ve been writing screenplays and theatre on my own and also with Irvine Welsh since the 1990’s. Up until last year, I never really had any desire to direct a film but Alan McGee encouraged me to have a go. He offered to produce a film if I would write and direct with the emphasis being on us having total control. This was music to my ears after having mainly dealt with people who are always looking for reasons not to make a film.  Alan’s credo was “just do it and let’s see what happens”. There’s a great freedom in working with him.’
 
Read more of Dean Cavanagh’s exclusive interview, plus free ‘Kubricks’ soundtrack download, after the jump…
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
Flavorwire crafted this video montage of some of the trippiest movies ever made:

Films (in order of appearance): The Trip (1967, Roger Corman), Head (1968, Bob Rafelson), Glaze of Cathexis (1990, Stan Brakhage), Allegro Non Troppo (1976, Bruno Bozzetto), Natural Born Killers (1994, Oliver Stone), Fantasia (1940, Armstrong, Algar, et. al), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick), Viva La Muerte (1971, Fernando Arrabal), The Holy Mountain (1973, Alejandro Jodorowsky), Performance (1970, Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg), Videodrome (1983, David Cronenberg), Dark City (1998, Alex Proyas), Belle De Jour (1967, Luis Buñuel), Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch), El Topo (1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky), Tetsouro, the Iron Man (1989, Shin’ya Tsukamoto), Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch), Dead Alive (1992, Peter Jackson), Waking Life (2001, Richard Linklater), Anchorman (2004, Adam McKay), Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch), Un Chien Andalou (1929, Luis Buñuel), Requiem for a Dream (2000, Darren Aronofsky), Lost Highway (1997, David Lynch), Pi (1998, Darren Aronofsky), Easy Rider (1969, Dennis Hopper), The Big Lebowski (1998, Joel Coen), Naked Lunch (1991, David Cronenberg), Skidoo (1968, Otto Preminger), Being John Malkovich (1999, Spike Jonze).

What no Sweet Movie? (Runs away).
 

 
Ken Russell’s 1975 ribald cult favorite Lisztomania will be screened this coming weekend at Cinefamily in Los Angeles as part of the Allison Anders curated Don’t Knock The Rock film festival:

The most fantastical, bawdy, synth-adelic, opulent and outré film ever from the Seventies’ most audacious cinematic enfant terrible! Following the huge success of Tommy, Ken Russell next tackled one of his trademark composer biographies—and the result was the life of Franz Liszt as channeled through Superman comics, 10-foot phalluses, glittery hoedowns, Frankenstein, Metropolis, Ringo Starr as “The Pope”(!), and a stupendous list of other impossible stuff. Portrayed by Roger Daltrey (and accompanied by an adapted score from keyboard wizard Rick Wakeman), Liszt is at first shown as a 19th-century equivalent to Daltrey’s real-life brand of rock ‘n roll animal—but, of course, Russell gleefully ramps every piece of sensory input to 11, pitting Liszt as a superhero priest sent to annihilate the scourge of vampiric Nazi mad scientist Richard Wagner. Not all pure insanity, Lisztomania also features startling moments of quiet clarity, exemplified in a heartrending flashback re-imagining Liszt’s idyllic romantic life as a cross-pollination between the winter cabin scenes of both Citizen Kane and The Gold Rush. Woefully misunderstood and critically savaged upon its original release, Lisztomania is one hell of a good time, and exemplifies a kind of radical chance-taking Hollywood can’t even conceive of today—the kind that Russell couldn’t conceive of not bringing to the screen.

Co-sponsored by the Warner Archive
 

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If you live in the Los Angeles area and you’d like to win tickets to this special screening of Lisztomania, Dangerous Minds is giving away three pairs of tickets. All you have to do is come up with a good caption for the above photograph of Roger Daltery and Rick Wakeman (seen here playing a particularly demented looking Thor).

The three “Caption This” winners will be chosen by the number of “likes.”

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Original Photo-spread for Ken Russell’s ‘Lisztomania’, 1975
 

 
Every year there is one special movie that says, “Please get high and see me.”

This year, one promising candidate for the top spot is Seven Psychopaths...

Oscar-winning writer and director Martin McDonagh’s bloody black comedy stars Colin Farrell as “Marty,” a screenwriter struggling with this new script, “Seven Psychopaths.” Marty becomes inadvertently mixed up in the criminal underworld when his idiot friends (Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell) kidnap a gangster’s Shih Tzu.

With Woody Harrelson as the gangster, Tom Waits, Bond girl Olga Kurylenko, Abbie Cornish and Academy Award nominee Gabourey Sidibe round out the psychopaths.

Seven Psychopaths comes out on October 12th.
 

 
Thank you Michael Backes!

 
I really like this Game of Thrones meets The Big Lebowski screenprint, available through Gallery 1988 for $40.00.

Via reddit