Rather astonishing news from the fashion and film world. Dangerous Minds’ fave filmmaker Kenneth Anger has released a two-and-a-half-minute film dealing with the fall/winter collection of the Varese-based house of Missoni, produced by filmmaker/Anger manager/Dangerous Minds pal Brian Butler and scored by French composer Koudlam.

Vogue Italia‘s Mariuccia Casadio provides some details:

A man of few words, this fascinating former actor who still takes care of his appearance first filmed the settings for his film “Missoni”: mostly locations near bodies of water in the Sumirago countryside and part of Rosita and Ottavio’s garden. For the indoor sequences, he built a set in the Council Room of the Sumirago Town Hall, a basement room with a vaulted ceiling. The mood of the film and the poses and movements of Margherita, Jennifer, Angela, Rosita, Ottavio, Ottavio Jr. and all other [Missoni] family members are reminiscent of Sergei Parajanov’s “The Color of Pomegranates”, a 1968 film that inspired Anger to create his Chinese box-style storyboard.

Do yourself a favor and go full-screen with this one. And if you’re unfortunate enough to not be familiar with Anger, do yourself another favor and click one or both of the links below. You’ll be glad you did.
 

 
Get: The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 1 [DVD]
 
Get: The Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 2 [DVD]
 
Thanks to Ian Raikow for the heads-up!

Jamdown, the holy grail of reggae films is finally coming to DVD.  Other than a screening this past July 17th in London, this French documentary, directed by Emmanuel Bonn, hasn’t been shown theatrically or made available in any form since it was briefly released in France in 1981. Jamdown is essential viewing for anyone who loves reggae

Reggae historian Roger Steffens has described Jamdown as:

[...] a melodic time machine that transports us magically to a time of massive creativity as reggae was emerging to the outside world. We see some of its most rootical exponents at the height of their powers. The film’s re-emergence after three decades is almost miraculous, and it should not be missed by anyone who cares about Jah Music.

The film features some thrilling footage of The Congos and Toots And The Maytals recording at Lee ‘The Upsetter’ Perry’s legendary Black Ark Studios.

The Jamdown DVD hits the streets this Tuesday, July 27.

 
Watch the trailer for Jamdown after the jump…

 
I have no idea what movie this is from. If anyone out there knows, please comment.

 
Hollywood no longer provides the buzz that a hardcore movie junkie like myself requires. So, I’ve had to go to other sources for my celluloid kicks. For the past couple of decades, I’ve turned East to Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Bollywood to satisfying my cravings for a dose of the old silver nitrate.

As anyone who has followed my blogging on DM knows, I love Bollywood. And one my favorite Bollywood performers is Indian mega-star Rajinikanth. The guy is bigger than life, an action star, romantic lead, buffoon, singer and dancer. Like most Bollywood leading men, Rajinikanth can do all. And he’s never been better than in the 2007 film Sivaji.

Indian films are rigorously censored and sex is not allowed, so, whenever a couple is about to get it on, they usually break out in song and dance. But in Sivaji, instead of dance, sex is supplanted by a non-stop barrage of gunplay and violence. Bullets have replaced kisses, bombs orgasms, the scent of woman is gunpowder. It doesn’t take a degree in psychoanalysis to see the Freudian gun as cock symbolism in this shoot em up. 

As the hero of Sivaji, Rajinikanth displays his flamboyant style in action sequences that mash up Hong Kong bullet ballet with Spaghetti Western macho cool and psychedelic Peking Opera visuals. Note the incredible set design and use of color. No matter what the subject, be it lavish costume dramas or modern gangster films, Bollywood sees the world through prismatic glasses. In Bollywood, every day is the day the world turned day-glo.

Rajinikanth’s motorcycle entrance at the beginning of this clip is one of the greatest in the history of the movies. You’ll see what I mean.

The music is by A.R. Rahman, India’s greatest modern film composer.
 

 
By the time Montreal-born filmmaker Arthur Lipsett made his nine-and-a-half-minute long dystopian short 21-87 in 1963, he was well-aware of the power of abstract collage film. His short from two years earlier, Very Nice, Very Nice was a dizzying flood of black & white images accompanied by bits of audio he’d collected from the trash cans of the National Film Board while he was working there. And wildly enough, it got nominated for a Best Short Subject Oscar in 1962.

But with 21-87, the then-27-year-old Lipsett was not only using moving images, he was also refining his use of sound. And it got the attention of the young USC film student George Lucas, who’d fallen in love with abstract film while going to Canyon Cinema events in the San Francisco Bay area. 21-87’s random and unsettling visions of humans in a mechanistic society accompanied by bits of strangely therapeutic or metaphysical dialogue, freaky old-time music, and weird sound effects, affected Lucas profoundly, according to Steve Silberman in Wired magazine:

’When George saw 21-87, a lightbulb went off,’ says Walter Murch, who created the densely layered soundscapes in [Lucas’s 1967 student short] THX 1138 and collaborated with Lucas on American Graffiti. ‘One of the things we clearly wanted to do in THX-1138 was to make a film where the sound and the pictures were free-floating. Occasionally, they would link up in a literal way, but there would also be long sections where the two of them would wander off, and it would stretch the audience’s mind to try to figure out the connection.’

Famously, Lucas would later use 21-87 as the number Princess Leia’s cell in Star Wars. But although his success allowed him freedom at the NFB, Lipsett’s psychological problems would lead him to commit suicide in 1986, two weeks before he turned 50.
 

 
After the jump, compare with Lucas’s equally bewildering short Electronic Labyrinth: THX-1138 4EB!
 

 
Nothing like a good banning to warm an old gay punk’s heart—especially in the internet age. Looks like Australia’s classification of Toronto-based filmmaker Bruce LaBruce’s latest bit of hardcore underground gay gore, L.A. Zombie as pornography has prevented it from being screened at the Melbourne Film Festival. According to Melbourne talk-radio station 3AW, LaBruce couldn’t be happier:

‘‘My first thought was ‘Eureka!’… I’ll never understand how censors don’t see that the more they try to suppress a film, the more people will want to see it. It gives me a profile I didn’t have yesterday.’’

Virtually all of LaBruce’s films—from the skinhead-fetishizing No Skin off My Ass from 1991 through to the political-porno-zombie flick Otto; or Up With Dead People—have managed to shock and scandalize straights and gays alike with their violence and satirical stereotyping. It’s good to know there are some areas in the Western world that aren’t immune.
 

LA Zombie trailer
Uploaded by blankytwo.

 
Speedway is a typical lightweight Elvis romp from the ‘60s co-starring Nancy Sinatra who plays a sexy IRS agent who comes to audit racecar driver Elvis, whose business manager (Bill Bixby) is an idiot addicted to gambling. She succumbs to the King’s charms, natch. There are songs and a plucky homeless family living in their car. That’s the plot in a nutshell.

Carl Ballantine from McHale’s Navy and Gale Gordon, best known as Mr. Mooney from The Lucy Show are also part of the cast. One production number, for a song called He’s Your Uncle, Not Your Dad, takes place in an IRS office! It’s perfectly dreadful, if entertaining, drivel, but it does have two great numbers in it. Elvis does a rocker called Let Yourself Go that was released as a single, but flopped, which is a shame, because it’s one of my top favorite Elvis tracks. And Nancy Sinatra performs a swingin’ little number called Your Groovy Self, complete with minimalist mod choreography, It’s one of her best songs, certainly one of her best performances on film and the sole track by anyone other than Elvis to appear on the soundtrack album to one of his movies.

Two fun facts: First, Speedway was originally written for Sonny and Cher! Second, take a look at the nightclub: Quentin Tarrentino’s set design for Jack Rabbit Slim’s in Pulp Fiction was inspired by the decor of the Hangout, where Speedway’s in-crowd mix in a racecar booth ‘60s disco splendor.

The plot device that gets Nancy to sing is when Carl Ballantine, the maitre’d of the Hangout shines a spotlight on her, and for some arbitrary Elvis-movie logic, she has to “get up and do something.” This is what she does:
 

 
See Elvis’s big number after the jump

 
Here’s some fun unused footage from Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting. Fans of Trainspotting will certainly appreciate these awesome clips.

(via Interweb3000)

 
Cori Dials, looking a bit like Tura Satana, stars as nicotine addicted Cigarette Girl. Set in the near future, when cigarettes sell for $65 a pack, Cigarette Girl is a small time hustler in the black market distribution of cancer sticks. When she runs afoul of the major players in the tobacco world, all shit breaks loose.

Based on the trailer, this grade Z action flick looks inspired by the films of Roger Corman, Russ Meyer and John Carpenter. It’s the sixth film directed by Memphis-based film maker Mike McCarthy. Currently making the film festival circuit, I suspect Cigarette Girl will probably be a direct to DVD release. If it’s as trashy fun as this trailer, count me in.

 
Or HAL64.
 
(via Interweb3000)