This French documentary from 1992 is an enjoyable overview of Brigitte Bardot’s forays into pop music. It features insightful interviews with Bardot, Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, as well as dozens of clips of Bardot’s appearances in TV shows, Scopitones and movies.
Needless to say (though I’m saying it), Bardot was not much of a singer. But her willingness to poke fun at her sex kitten image and serve as a comedic and visual foil to the gruff machismo of Gainsbourg makes it easy to forgive her limitations as a vocalist and appreciate her sassy self-awareness. She’s having fun and so are we. One gets the impression that Bardot was perfectly content with her status as a pop icon, leaving the existential Sturm und Drang to her chain-smoking, brooding co-star.
British football legend and tough guy gangster in Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, Vinnie Jones demonstrates CPR in this British TV public service announcement. The result is one of the most amusing things you’ll see today that could actually save a life.
What a find! The Power Of The Witch is a documentary about witchcraft as it was practised in the late 60s and early 70s in the UK - apparently it was only screened once and there is practically no information about it on the web. From the uploader taitsitarot‘s YouTube description:
An extremely rare documentary about Witchcraft aired once in the UK in 1971. Featuring contributions from Eleanor Bone, Cecil Williamson, Alex & Maxine Sanders [above], Doreen Valiente et al. Very much of its time and with some very rare footage, also includes reference to the famously unsolved murder of Charles Walton on Meon Hill.
The Power Of The Witch is worth a watch even if you are not particularly interested in the occult - rather watch it as a document of its time, capturing as it does people’s attitudes, beliefs, fashions and plummy Brit accents. It’s a curious mixture of patriarchal stiff upper lip-ism and unerring belief in both Christianity and the forces of magic, making it feel very much as if it comes from a completely different era. Not to mention, it’s a goldmine of potential witch haus footage:
Joni Mitchell and Mary Travers appear on The Mama Cass Television Show recorded on Jan. 18, 1969. This was a pilot for a weekly series. It was produced by Chuck Barris of Gong Show fame.
Joni and Mama Cass radiate the last glow of the flower child era. Both will move on in different ways. Travers does Laura Nyro’s “And When I Die,” which Nyro sold to Traver’s group Peter, Paul and Mary for $5000. As much as I appreciate Travers as a vocalist, her folky take on the song just can’t touch the gospel feel of Nyro’s version.
Joni Mitchell: ‘Both Sides Now”
Mary Travers: “And When I Die”
Cass, Joni and Mary: “I Shall Be Released”
Laura Nyro 1966 demo of “And When I Die” and short interview after the jump…
Today is Patti Smith’s birthday and a little over five years since CBGB closed. So in commemoration of both the goodness of Patti and the sad fate of a great rock venue, we present:
Patti Smith playing the final night at CBGB on October 15, 2006. Five songs from a three hour show.
01. “Piss Factory’
02. “Pale Blue Eyes”
03. “Birdland”
04. “Rock N Roll N******
05. “Gloria”
Patti performs “Gloria” on Saturday Night Live after the jump…
This short film created by a collective of film makers, writers, and actors in Boise, Idaho may be the best horror movie of 2011. It’s certainly one of the most intelligent.
Three sad couch potatoes find comfort in the familiar commercials they watch every day of their boring lives. Their reality comes at them in 30 second bursts of hypnotic, frantic and indelible visual and audio propaganda. In the Television Commercial Network, they have found their perfect drug: a station where non-stop jingles, slogans and catch-phrases, assault the viewer with promises of better things to come while reminding us of just how shitty things are right now. They have pills that will make you feel better if they don’t kill you. They have food that will satisfy your cravings for instant gratification while filling your body with the same kind of toxic sludge that the commercials are injecting into your brain matter. The whole fucking thing is insidious.
How many Americans diagnose themselves as having physical and mental problems as a result of seeing countless upon countless commercials pitching drugs for depression and erectile dysfunction? Suddenly millions of perfectly healthy men are suffering from performance anxiety and taking mood elevators to deal with it. As women are made to feel neurotic about their weight, age and beauty. We’re being sold products that pit us against nature and if we’re not winning we’re not fully human.
As TCN reveals, the commercials are a drug, which eventually need to be countered by another drug in order to cope and feel better. And if you don’t leave the room or medicate yourself to a far off island, today’s quick cut frantic back to back commercials of corporate snuff, pill popping propaganda and padded butt panties, will easily leave you suffering from similar effects to that of a horrible acid trip.
You can read more about the folks who made this video at their website: American Films. They’re part of a group of absurdist video artists who are keeping it real and unreal in Idaho.
The Commercial Network exists right now. Turn on your TV set late at night. What do you see? And how long can you watch it before you lose all sense of who you are?
