I caught up over the weekend with first time writer-director Ronald Bronstein‘s almost unbearably bleak Frownland, and still can’t seem to shake it.  Bronstein describes his ‘09 film (whose title comes from the Captain Beefheart song) as “a rotten egg lobbed with spazmo aim at the spotless surface of the silver screen,” but even that fails to do justice, I think, to its no-mercy depiction of Keith Sontag’s (actor Dore Mann) spiral downward into “burbling troll-dom.” 

And as hard as this might be to imagine, I think far more light creeps into the black-and-white world of David Lynch‘s Eraserhead than the colored, albeit grainy, one of Frownland.  In fact, compared to the almost terminally lonely Sontag, Lynch’s social misfit Henry Spencer comes off with all the charm and poise of Rex Harrison’s Henry Higgins.

No one is particularly likable, here.  In fact, the entire cast is loathsome.  But.  BUT…the performances are across-the-board astonishing.  As The New Yorker’s Richard Brody writes, “If there?

 
Coming to Paris in January,

 
George Lucas could hardly have been luckier when he secured the talents of the mighty Walter Murch for his first feature film, THX 1138.  Renown for both his sound design and editing chops, Murch’s resume reads as long as it is Coppola-impressive: Godfather I and II, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation.  In that last film in particular, Murch’s wizardry conjures up a sonic landscape that’s as dense and bewildering as Gene Hackman’s San Francisco.

Murch co-authored with Lucas THX 1138, and engineered its complex, way ahead of its time sound design.  You can now hear it for yourself over at Egg City Radio, who’ve assembled a great compilation of THX 1138 audio highlights.  Here’s what AllMovie says about the ‘71 film:

In a 1984-esque white-washed future underground dystopia where sexuality is banned, all humans sport shaved heads and the same shapeless outfits as they go about their work in a mandated state of sedation, listening to exhortations to ?

 
Meet the Cheech & Chong action figures as seen in their film Up In Smoke. Entertainment Earth is selling these awesome guys for $27.99 a set which includes “smokin” clothing and “appropriate” accessories.

(via Nerdcore)

 

 
Super blog Pink Tentacle has a delightful collection of classic Japanese movie monsters painted on black velvet. The paintings are by artist Bruce White and can be viewed here.
 
(via Pink Tentacle)

 

 
Here’s an amusing Flickr pool dedicated to crappy bootleg DVD covers.
 
(via Nerdcore)

Via Copyranter:

Pretty scary Ad Creepage currently up in Rio de Janeiro for the Mayan calendar Apocalypse flick, (I hope Woody Harrelson bites it hard) opening here in the States on Friday the 13th, of course. First off, when the Evil Doers next blow up and flood an underground tunnel somewhere in the world, my bet is, that ‘somewhere’ will be ‘here.’ Secondly, our tunnels already leak just fine, thx.

Last night I almost hit a bus crossing in front of me with a giant 2012 sign on the side. Doesn’t get much funnier than that.

Aaaaand OK, I might as well throw in my 2 cents about this one since it’s a hot topic: 2012 is a transition and demarcation point past which our culture will hit a certain no-return-point in shifting towards spirit and away from matter (read, on one level, as: life becoming almost completely Internet-mediated, while economy and physical infrastructure continues to fall apart by dint of being less exciting than Twitter). It is NOT the end of the world and one of the more productive things to think about around the whole issue is why, exactly, people are so addicted to apocalyptic thinking (as Alan Moore pointed out somewhere?

 
“I could seduce the President of the United States…but I have no political ambition.”  For you LA connoisseurs of obscure ‘70s gems, get thee tonight to the Egyptian Theatre!  For the first time in 38-plus years, Nelson Lyon’s The Telephone Book will be playing its first big screen engagement.

Much like ‘69’s Midnight Cowboy, The Telephone Book was branded in ‘71 with an “X,” but now probably plays as no more risque than an episode of Sex Rehab With Dr. Drew.  What a cast, though: everyone from Warhol superstar Ultra Violet, to character actor’s character actor, the great William Hickey.
 

 
The film presumably involves a woman (Sarah Kennedy) who falls in love with the world’s greatest obscene telephone operator.  Here’s what the excellent resource VideoUpdates has to say about it:

The opening quickly establishes a style and mood somewhere between Soviet Montage and a 16mm student film.  While its (literally) X-rated nudity and frank discussion of sexuality are hardly shocking in the 21st century, the offbeat humor and profound strangeness seem amplified by the decades.  Beyond that, there seems to be a very intelligent undercurrent to the madcap randomness.

Regarding writer-director Lyon, not much comes up on him beyond a brief, early writing stint on SNL, but he was also one of the people doing coke with John Belushi on his last night on earth.  He’ll be in attendance tonight (Lyon, not Belushi), so maybe not bring that up during the Q & A?   A trailer and clip from The Telephone Book follow below.

 
Official site for The Telephone Book

 
I’m always fascinated when the great European directors come to work in America.  Zabriskie Point, while a hands-down favorite of mine anyway, in my eyes, almost succeeds more as a relative failure because there’s something poignant about Michelangelo Antonioni‘s need to make sense of a landscape more disjointed than Rome (L’Eclisse), more baffling than North Africa (The Passenger), and possibly more empty than ‘60s London (Blow-Up).  Antonioni might not have succeeded in making sense of countercultural America, but there’s something undeniably beautiful about his attempt.

Jacques Demy‘s nearly forgotten film, Model Shop, is another example of a perceived failure that somehow manages to succeed all the more so for it.  Released, briefly, by Columbia Pictures in ‘69, when Demy was still basking in the international glow of his Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Model Shop stars Gary Lockwood as a Vietnam-dreading drifter who starts trailing around Los Angeles Anouk Aimee’s older French woman (well, who wouldn’t?!)  Thus begins a hall-of-mirrors roundelay that, despite it’s strained dialogue and meandering plot, comes off as much a love letter to Los Angeles as it does to melancholy romance.
 

 
And while Model Shop flirts with themes of the “universal condition,” it’s also wonderful to see (as it is in Don’t Make Waves or Play It As It Lays) what the city looked like back then, less burdened as it was by cars, noise, and signage.  A (typically) colorful clip from Model Shop follows below:

 
Bonus: Harrison Ford’s Model Shop Screen Test

 
No word yet if, as was the case with his prior successes, producer Barrie Osborne (The Matrix, The Lord Of The Rings) plans to build a trilogy around the Prophet Mohammed.  I’m guessing, though, that even a stand-alone film will attract its share of uproar:

Qatari media company Al Noor Holdings used Sunday’s closing of the Doha Tribeca Film Festival to announce its launch into the movie biz with a $150 million feature about the Prophet Mohammed, to be produced by Barrie Osborne.  Osborne and Al Noor execs are in discussions with a number of studios, distributors and ten-percenteries about boarding the English-language project.

Al Noor thus becomes the latest link between Hollywood and the Mideast, where companies are anxious to provide work for local filmmakers and to offer a more positive portrayal of Islam around the world.  Muslim cleric and TV personality Sheik Yousef al-Qaradawi will serve as a technical consultant.  “He was a profound genius who founded a religion whose name in Islam signifies peace and reconciliation,” Osborne said. “This is what our film will aspire to do.”

And while the film will cover the years from his birth to his death, a Mohammed biopic will prove especially tricky considering the Prophet himself cannot be in it.  In accordance with Islamic law, neither Mohammed nor direct members of his family can be visually depicted.

In Variety: Al Noor Sets Mohammed Feature