Bollywood mega-mix featuring clips from Teesri Manzel, Bhoot Bangla, Chikubuku Chikubuku Railay, O Meri Maina, Pyar Hi Pyar, Ellam Inba Mayam.
Ann Margret, Elvis, Chubby Checker, Parliament Funkadelic, Michael Jackson, Little Richard, Ronnie Spector…Bollywood style. 30 minutes of vindaloo au-go-go: rock, funk and disco.
Over the past few years there have been a number of fanboys who have attempted to reconstruct Star Wars as a silent film. They convert the film to black and white, speed it up and add an old-fashioned piano score. But the ones I’ve seen have failed miserably to authentically replicate the actual look of a real silent movie…until now. This new one succeeds marvelously. It looks like something unearthed from the 1920’s - a really shitty print of a Metropolis outtake. Mark Hamill’s melodramatic facial expressions, his broad gestures and the heightened shadowing of his eyes resemble that of so many actors of the silent era.
Norman Mailer claimed he was “imprisoned with a vision” which would “settle for nothing less than making a revolution in the consciousness of our time.” Unfortunately for Mailer, he was far too good a writer to ever do that.
The writers who have achieved such a “revolution” have always produced poorly written and unrelentingly dull books. Marx and Hitler may have changed history, but ‘Das Kapital’ and ‘Mein Kampf’ will never be page turners, let alone literature.
As for Mailer, he wrote over 40 books, a dozen of which are important works of literature. No small feat when considering how often Mailer was reckless with his talents. Now Joseph Mantegna has directed a documentary film, called ‘Norman Mailer: The American‘, which examines the life of the great novelist, journalist, film director, and actor and promises to reveal the man behind these multiple lives, with unseen footage, and interviews from his wives, his children, his lovers, his enemies.
When Martin Amis unflatteringly compared Mailer and his legacy to the ruins of Ozymandias‘ two vast and trunkless legs of stone, languishing in the desert, Amis failed to appreciate how Percy Bysshe Shelley‘s poem had made the great King immortal. Mailer’s life and books don’t need a Shelley, but it’s certainly about time someone assessed the great man’s life and work, and thankfully it looks like Joseph Mantegna has stepped up to the plate.
Don Letts made a documentary about the great Sun Ra? Yup, apparently so. I know what we’ll be watching tonight! How did this one slip past me???
Born in perhaps the most segregated place on Earth – early 20th-century Alabama – Herman Poole Blount rejected his name, his origins and the conventions of the time (or any other, for that matter), re-creating himself as Sun Ra, emissary from Saturn (“planet of discipline”) and musical genius. Blending Egyptology and Space Age imagery, he projected a philosophy of radical empowerment for the entire cosmos; keeping a big band on the road for decades through independence and communal living, he became a patriarch of jazz and an avatar of freewheeling space music. Turning from the punk and reggae with which he’s most closely associated to one of the key figures in 20th-century sound, famed DJ/filmmaker Letts presents the Sun Ra story in all its glory, combining powerful footage of Ra and his legendary Arkestra, interviews with band members shot at their famous group house in Philadelphia and testimonies from sax great Archie Shepp, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and other admirers.
Here are some delightful handmade Harold and Maude paper dolls by Etsy seller littlegreygoose. I like these. I totally think they’re worth the $24.00 price.
Since we at Dangerous Minds have previously found ourselves marveling at his film Performance, it only makes sense to salute the wonderful English filmmaker Nicolas Roeg on this, his 81st birthday.
Check out Steve Rose’s great interview in the Guardian with the oft-aloof and prickly director (from which I paraphrase this post’s title), and for heaven’s sake check out the man’s films. He’s currently working on a screen adaptation of Martin Amis’s book Night Train.
Here’s a cool overview, with five themes spotlighted, by the excellent film video-essayist Hugo Redrose.
During a 1968 promo shoot for Apple Records, Peter Sellers visited The Beatles in the studio and some impromptu drug talk ensued. Lennon reminds Sellers of the time “when I gave you that grass in Piccadilly.” Sellers response: “it really stoned me out of my mind.”
Listen for Yoko’s remark about “shooting as exercise,” a none too subtle reference to her and John’s heroin use.
The second video is Sellers performing ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ in the style of Laurence Olivier’s Richard the Third on the Granada TV special The Music of Lennon & McCartney. Sellers goofy take on The Beatles’ tune was actually released as a single and made the pop charts.
Sellers performs ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ after the jump…