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Huge David Lynch Head Sculpture
03.23.2010
11:47 am
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Photorealistic David Lynch head by contemporary sculptor Jamie Salmon. From the artist:

I like to use the human form as a way of exploring the nature of what we consider to be “real” and how we react when our visual perceptions of this reality are challenged. In our modern society we have become obsessed with our outward appearance, and now with modern technology we are able to alter this in almost anyway we desire. How does this outward change affect us and how we are perceived by others?

(via Nerdcore)

Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.23.2010
11:47 am
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Jeff VanderMeer: Tentacles!
03.22.2010
10:57 pm
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New Weird author Jeff VanderMeer unleashed a long-forgotten pile of shlock on his blog… TENTACLES, an Italian rip-off of Jaws featuring, yep, a giant octopus. This seems ripe for a comeback. Disturbingly, I actually remember this movie.

Yesterday, while doing our taxes, we followed up Pandorum, Dune, Moon, and Alien with a movie on cable…Tentacles. From 1977, clear rip-off of Jaws.

I have a feeling that everyone else already knows about this D-movie, but we were just aghast, watching winters, Huston, and others do their best impression of stink-o-rama. In one scene a killer whale trainer embarks on a long monologue aimed at convincing the whale to fight the killer giant octopus.

Here’s more of it, for masochists…

More clips at the original link.

(Jeff VanderMeer: Tentacles!)

(Empire of the Ants/Tentacles)

(Jeff VanderMeer: City of Saints and Madmen)

Posted by Jason Louv
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03.22.2010
10:57 pm
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The Hunger
03.21.2010
08:22 pm
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Forget about Twilight or that lame True Blood series, this is how vampire should be done! The insanely brilliant opening moments—featuring Bauhaus performing Bela Lugosi’s Dead—from Tony Scott’s 1983 film, The Hunger has lost none of its power over the years. The film stars Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon and if you haven’t seen it, it’s a sexy, smart delight. The unlucky goth chick who is the recipient of Bowie’s vampiric intentions in this scene was played by none other than Dangerous Minds pal, singer/actress Ann Magnuson.

This is one of the great opening scenes of any movie ever made if you ask me. I actually saw this in a theater all by myself—or so I thought—and the effect was electrifying. I was 17 at the time and I’d just gotten massively baked in the parking lot. I walked in, sat down to THIS and just when things calmed down a bit onscreen, I was scared witless by an extremely elderly woman, who had been sleeping two rows in front of me, suddenly darting up and staring straight at me and wagging her finger in my face!
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.21.2010
08:22 pm
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A Clockwork Orange
03.21.2010
07:01 pm
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Looking for the Chrome video posted below, unsurprisingly I was also shown various YouTube clips from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Check out this trippy trailer for the film. Nice. Also, take a gander at the various posters for A Clockwork Orange at Posterati or look on Google images for book covers. I especially like some of the minimalist Eastern European posters and covers you can find out there. What a great project to be thrown if you’re a designer.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.21.2010
07:01 pm
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Funeral Parade of Roses
03.20.2010
03:27 pm
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My friend Shaun Frenté is screening the Japanese classic “Funeral Parade of Roses” this Wednesday at Show Cave in LA—now the greatest venue in the city!

Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no soretsu)
Black and White. 1969. Japan. 105 minutes.
Directed by Toshio Matsumoto

Unequivocally the best Japanese 60s avant-pop tranny tragedy I’ve seen, Funeral Parade of Roses is a must-see time capsule (I only wish the future Thetans who sift through my ashes hope this is what the 20th century is all about). Part self-conscious art film, part exploitation film, and part gonzo documentary on Tokyo’s underground scene – though where the zones overlap is up for grabs. Even on DVD, the black and white dazzles, as one quotable image supplants another. If you’re into the whole Asian catholic schoolgirl ladyboy thing, and who isn’t anymore, this is the jackpot.

Pithy introduction and discussion following the screening – this is part one in our run of “New Waves” around the world.

(Arthur: Funeral Parade of Roses at Show Cave)

Posted by Jason Louv
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03.20.2010
03:27 pm
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All Black Punk Band from 1974 : Death lives ...For the Whole World to See
03.20.2010
12:07 am
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This article from the New York Times about a totally unknown, all black proto-punk band called Death, circa 1974, has me salivating to hear this CD. Except for some hardcore music fanatics, Death were totally forgotten, even by the participants, really. Then one of their kids heard his father’s voice on a record at a party in San Francisco and this started a chain of events that saw the music of Death released on CD by Drag City Records:

The group’s music has been almost completely unheard since the band stopped performing more than three decades ago. But after all the years of silence, Death’s moment has finally arrived. It comes, however, nearly a decade too late for its founder and leader, David Hackney, who died of lung cancer in 2000. “David was convinced more than any of us that we were doing something totally revolutionary,” said Bobby Sr., 52.

Forgotten except by the most fervent punk rock record collectors — the band’s self-released 1976 single recently traded hands for the equivalent of $800 — Death would likely have remained lost in obscurity if not for the discovery last year of a 1974 demo tape in Bobby Sr.’s attic. Released last month by Drag City Records as ”,,, For the Whole World to See” Death’s newly unearthed recordings reveal a remarkable missing link between the high-energy hard rock of Detroit bands like the Stooges and MC5 from the late 1960s and early ’70s and the high-velocity assault of punk from its breakthrough years of 1976 and ’77. Death’s songs “Politicians in My Eyes,” “Keep On Knocking” and “Freakin Out” are scorching blasts of feral ur-punk, making the brothers unwitting artistic kin to their punk-pioneer contemporaries the Ramones, in New York; Rocket From the Tombs, in Cleveland; and the Saints, in Brisbane, Australia. They also preceded Bad Brains, the most celebrated African-American punk band, by almost five years.

Jack White of the White Stripes, who was raised in Detroit, said in an e-mail message: “The first time the stereo played ‘Politicians in My Eyes,’ I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. When I was told the history of the band and what year they recorded this music, it just didn’t make sense. Ahead of punk, and ahead of their time.”

The teenage Hackney brothers started playing R&B in their parents’ garage in the early ’70s but switched to hard rock in 1973, after seeing an Alice Cooper show. Dannis played drums, Bobby played bass and sang, and David wrote the songs and contributed propulsive guitar work, derived from studying Pete Townshend’s power-chord wrist technique. Their musicianship tightened when their mother allowed them to replace their bedroom furniture with mikes and amps as long as they practiced for three hours every afternoon. “From 3 to 6,” said Dannis, 54, “we just blew up the neighborhood.”

This Band Was Punk Before Punk Was Punk (New York Times)

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.20.2010
12:07 am
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Yelp (With Apologies to Allen Ginsberg)
03.18.2010
12:57 am
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Great short by Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg. For more information about the National Day of Unplugging (March 19th to 20th sunset to sunset) visit the Connected website.

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.18.2010
12:57 am
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Good Stuff: 80s cult movie about homicidal yogurt
03.13.2010
10:26 pm
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The Stuff is an eighties cult movie made by director Larry Cohen. It’s was a perennial grindhouse flick of the decade, although I personally saw it for the first time in the hallowed halls of Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, during a festival of Cohen’s films. The Stuff is the story of a tofutti-like substance that bubbles out from the ground, and tastes great. Everyone who tries The Stuff, can’t get enough… but are they eating The Stuff or is The Stuff eating them?
 
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The Stuff was made on a low budget with several familiar faces like Garrett Morris (from the original cast of SNL), Paul Sorvino, Danny Aiello, Brooke Adams and Andrea Marcovicci. It has several fake commercials that looked quite real at the time cut in throughout the movie that up the camp value considerably.  The Stuff is as much an anti-consumerist rant as it is a horror film. That’s why it’s so much fun. Check it out, it’s one of the better, more entertaining cult movies out there.  It’s actually way smarter than the trailer below indicates.

Read more on The Stuff at the the House of Self-Indulgence blog. where The Stuff is described as: “A cautionary tale for all those who enjoy consuming dessert products on a regular basis, The Stuff is a hokey horror farce that manages to skewer everything from mindless consumerism to cold war paranoia, and yet, still be a movie about homicidal yogurt not from outer space.” Elsewhere on the web I saw the film describe as “yogurt product comes to life, causing devastation.”
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.13.2010
10:26 pm
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The Shining Cuckoo Clock
03.10.2010
11:16 am
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Amusing clock by artist Chris Dimino:

Every hour Jack breaks through the door and the and the famous line ‘Here’s Johnny’ plays followed by the scream of Shelly Duvall.

(via Nerdcore )

Posted by Tara McGinley
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03.10.2010
11:16 am
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The Muppet Wicker Man
03.09.2010
03:44 pm
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Somebody re-created the entire Wicker Man movie with the muppets, and made a flip-comic out of it. It’s about 500% better than the Nicholas Cage remake, I’ll give them that!

(Via Swen’s Weblog)

(The Wicker Man)

Posted by Jason Louv
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03.09.2010
03:44 pm
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