Another delectable mix of vintage clips of go-go and exotic dancers set to a rock and roll beat. Customized from old vinyl and decaying video tape for Dangerous Minds.

“Intercontinental Super Grind” features psychedelic, garage, pop, rock and funk from all over the globe.

01. “Srey No” - Lady Named No
02. “Saman Doye” - The Black Brothers
03. “Shake Me” - AKA
04. “Cumbia Pop - Los Beltons
05. “Generations” - Variations
06. “Songs Of A Sinner” - Top Drawer
07. “It Happens Every Day” - The Lemon Drops
08. “Paint It Black” - Patti Smith
09. “Lorke Lorke” - Siluetler
10. “Slave” - Sabana Breeze
11. “Leila” - Chiitra Neogy
12. “Pink And Green” - Shirley Hughey
13. “Treat Her Right” - The Bombshells
14. “Rule The Nation” - U Roy
15. “Kick Out The Jams” - Tubthumper
16. “Shake A Tail” - Big Wheel
17. “Caterpillar Crawl” - The Lively Ones
18. “Hold Me Now” - The Rumours
19. “Look At The Owl” - Sat Tee Touy
20. “Cat Walk” - The Soul Emissaries

Watch this in a darkened room with speakers at full volume. Burn some incense and a few candles to add the appropriate ambiance. Slathering yourself with precious oils is optional.  NSFW.
 

 
Panos Cosmatos’ Beyond The Black Rainbow, which screened at this year’s Fantastic Fest, truly earns the description “visionary,” not in the sense of being prophetic (though it might be) but in the sense of arising out of visionary states of mind. Cosmatos is not looking forward as much as he’s looking inward to a landscape where dreams and nightmares intertwine like the snakes of Athena, illuminating the darkest corners of the psyche. Beyond The Black Rainbow is bold, uncompromising, demanding and totally mesmerizing. It is an extraordinary debut for a first-time director.

Cosmatos, who looks a bit like a young Stanley Kubrick, draws inspiration from films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Saul Bass’s Phase 4, George Lucas’s THX1138 and countless lesser-known and lesser-quality sci-fi films from the 1960s through the 80s and concocts something that, despite its influences, is personal film making of a highly original style. Mixing the grainy, saturated look of old videotapes with ultra-mod visual design and sets, while exhuming artifacts of lo-fi sci-fi kitsch, Cosmatos, in a deft act of cinematic alchemy, transforms it all into something artful, visually coherent and mind expanding. It is unusual and gratifying to see a young director aspire to a type of film making that decades ago would have been termed “experimental,” evoking Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Alejandro Jodorowsky and William Klein. What you end up with is pop culture tropes spun through a pure cinema aesthetic. A movie that asks nothing of you other than to SEE it with eyes wide open.

I couldn’t tell you what Beyond The Black Rainbow is about. I’ve only seen it once and the narrative is more stream of consciousness mashup than a tidy tale with beginning, middle and end. In that respect, the storytelling resembles the works of William Burroughs, who Cosmatos humorously references in the film. There’s a free associative dynamic to the movie where images play off each other like musical notes in a Beefheartian jam, always on the brink of chaos while the center is holding to some still point, the Tao of now. It helps that the score by Jeremy Schmidt (from the band Black Mountain) gives Cosmatos’ trippy epic a primal gravitational pull that, in the film’s wildest moments, keeps the lysergic shards of color and shape from dissipating into the void.

The movie’s central physical location is an institution/hospital/psyche ward that melds the cold clinical feel of David Cronenberg with the Technicolor eye candy of Dario Argento. Within this de-humanized world, a drug-addled scientist is attempting to create a new form of cosmic human being. Under the spell of a mad, new agey guru (Heaven’s Gate nutjob Marshall Applewhite comes to mind) the scientist performs drug experiments on a captive young woman who has either gone insane or is the only sane person in the film. The movie for the most part takes place inside her head…I think. The plot is serviceable but mostly irrelevant, serving as a jumping off point for Cosmatos’ true mission which is creating a modern “head movie.” And he succeeds.

I imagine many viewers will complain that Beyond The Black Rainbow is boring (some critics already have), but the same has been said of many films and directors that go out on their own, without concern for commercial prospects, who audaciously create something that is pure and original, that requires of the viewer an openness and a willingness to surrender to what is on the screen. What may be boring to some, I find hypnotic and riveting. To be ravished by Tarkovsky is bliss compared to being mauled by Michael Bay.

Panos Cosmato grew up around big-budget Hollywood commercial film making. His father is George P. Cosmatos who directed Sylvester Stallone in Rambo 2 and Cobra, as well as the very fine Tombstone. He could have easily followed in his father’s footsteps (he has the skill to do so) but instead he opted to make a film that takes big chances and has done so with the delirium of an obsessed film nerd whose sense of cinema and creativity holds its own against many of his influences.

Cosmatos is a young guy and Beyond The Black Rainbow will open some doors. I hope he sticks to his guns and delivers on the promise of his mindtwisting debut. It will be released by the trailblazers at Magnet films sometime in the near future.

Here’s a trailer for Beyond The Black Rainbow followed by an interview with the director at Fantastic Fest.
 

 
Interview after the jump…

 
James Brown mistakes William Castle’s Homicidal  for an Alfred Hitchcock film in this 1969 clip from the Mike Douglas show. Rod McKuen tries to clarify things while Joan Rivers looks on.

Homicidal was a knock-off of Psycho. Hitch saves Brown some embarrassment by not correcting him. Class act.
 

 

 
I found the original August 3,1937 issue of Look Magazine on eBay at a “buy it now” for $30.00.

(via Nystagmus )

Above. Madonna and WIlliam Burroughs at his 70th birthday party at Limelight (not in the film).

The new documentary, Limelight; The Rise and Fall of New York’s Greatest Nightclub Empire, which opened this weekend, I thought, was a lost opportunity. Produced by Jen Gatien, the daughter of former Limelight owner and NY nightlife kingpin, Peter Gatien, and directed by Billy Corben, the film takes a “true crime story” approach and focuses too much on the details, giving the audience far, far too much information on legal machinations and the minutia of DEA procedures. They took a story that was positively teaming with sex, drugs and rock-n-roll and managed to turn it into fairly dry “he said, he said” kind of thing. It’s not much better than a standard a TV investigation, truth be told.

I suppose I should tell you that I worked at the Limelight for a little less than a year in 1985, so I’m bringing that to the table.  If you actually care about the details, as I did, then it’s almost interesting, but by the end I’d had enough. My wife just hated it. For someone who never walked through the doors of the club, or who didn’t live in NYC between 1983 and 2002, there is very little to recommend Limelight.

Quizzically, there’s very, very little in the film about the crazy shit that actually went on at the Limelight. Unsurprisingly, since he is her father, Gatien and Corben’s film, concentrates on Peter Gatien, the enigmatic eye-patch wearing nightclub impresario who stayed on top of NYC nightlife for two decades before being hounded out of the country by bogus DEA harassment and the IRS. Instead of giving you any real sense of the “scene” he presided over in an opening montage or something, the film starts straight off the bat more or less as a biography of Gatien. He is an interesting character, don’t get me wrong, but there were so many other (much more) interesting characters running around his clubs that focusing too much on Gatien is a mistake (My own memory of Peter Gatien was that whenever he was around, no one ever said anything and he himself was a man of very few words. There was always an awkwardness—in others, not Peter—when he was in the room. I think he enjoyed being intimidating).

The club’s early success is glossed over in a matter of minutes. None of the characters I saw there frequently are even mentioned (Billy Idol and Duran Duran’s John Taylor deserved merit badges for committing courageous acts of decadence, let’s just say) and even Michael Alig’s dramatic downward spiral into drugs and then murder, is given comparatively short-shrift. Clearly, Gatien’s goal with the film is to exonerate her father’s reputation and on that level it does a fairly good job. Still, outside of the Gatien family, employees of Peter’s clubs, or people who frequented them, I can’t imagine this film will hold that much interest for a general audience.

Bonus anecdote: I could tell you one of hundreds of stories about Limelight and some of the things I saw there, but here is just one: It was 1985. It was late, maybe 2am when this occurred. I was 19-years-old (not old enough to drink or work there, obviously) and standing behind the front desk/coat check area. A very jolly Rod Stewart walked in with two women, one on each arm. The trio was feeling no pain, let’s say. An extremely drunk Wall Street guy saw them and in a very loud voice exclaimed “ROD STEWART! Hey man, I’m your biggest fan!” Stewart stopped, cocked an eyebrow and wryly regarded the drunk yuppie for a moment and then, stating the obvious, whistled “Fuck off, mate” through his teeth and they continued making their way into the club.

I know that sounds mean, but it was laugh out loud funny. “Fuck off, mate” was the only thing to say at that particular moment… Maybe you had to be there…
 

 
For all you die-hard Twin Peaks and retro game lovers out there, Jak Locke created this free Black Lodge Atari 2600-style action game for PCs and Macs. According to all the comments I’ve been reading about this game, it’s damn hard to beat:

A day in the FBI was never like this before! You are Special Agent Dale Cooper and you’ve found yourself trapped inside of the Black Lodge, a surreal and dangerous place between worlds.

Try as you might, you can’t seem to find anything but the same room and hallway no matter which way you turn. Worse yet, your doppelganger is in hot pursuit! You have no choice but to keep running through the room and hallway (or is it more than one?) and above all else, don’t let your doppelganger touch you! Your extensive physical training in the FBI will provide you a seemingly limitless supply of energy to run as long as necessary, but running out of breath is the least of your worries!

You’ll find quickly that you’re not alone in the Black Lodge, though your friends are few and far between. Not only that, the lodge itself seems to be actively trying to trip you up at all times! You’ll be dodging chairs and crazed Lodge residents all while trying to keep your own insanity. How long can this go on?

No time to think of that now -here comes that doppelganger again. Just keep on running through the curtains or it will surely be curtains for you!

Go here and scroll to the bottom to download the game for your PC or Mac.

Below, a demo:

 
This Tuesday, September 27th at 8:00pm, Cinefamily and Los Angeles Filmforum will be presenting a look at Pablo Ferro’s body of work, with Ferro himself in attendance:

You may not know his name, but chances are you’re already a huge fan of Pablo Ferro’s work. Proclaimed a genius by the likes of Stanley Kubrick, Hal Ashby and Jonathan Demme, Pablo’s career as a movie title sequence designer has brought him mega-accolades within the world of film production, and his large and varied body of work brought titles into the modern era with a style and approach that still ripples through contemporary cinema. From the moving collage of The Thomas Crown Affair to his trademark hand-drawn lettering for Dr. Strangelove, Pablo Ferro is a world-class designer of the highest order. Plus, Pablo also created some of cinema’s most memorable trailers of all time, such as the mindbending promos for A Clockwork Orange and Zardoz! We are delighted to host an entire evening devoted to Pablo’s legacy and historic portfolio — with the man, the myth, the master himself in attendance. Join us for a evening of impossibly cool titles, trailers, rare animations and unscreened shorts, all spliced together by an extended Q&A with Pablo!

Tickets: $12/free for Cinefamily members
 

 
Dangerous Minds, reporting from Fantastic Fest in Austin…and loving it.
 
Released last year in Mexico during the country’s bicentennial celebration, El Narco (aka El Infierno) is the cinematic equivalent of a turd in the punchbowl. Director Luis Estrada’s intimate and epic gangster film is a brutal, darkly funny and deeply cynical exploration of the illegal drug industry that is reducing a great country into a decimated war zone. Estrada clearly feels that in 2010 there was little to celebrate in Mexico. And it’s getting worse. This was not exactly the film Mexican authorities wanted as part of its glorious national celebration.

In a resounding “fuck you” to the those who tried to thwart the film’s release, El Narco became a critical and commercial success in Mexico and it is easy to see why. Like the Godfather or De Palma’s Scarface, El Narco tells a story that is filled with melodrama, violence and tragedy and it does so with operatic grandeur and a brash attitude. What separates Estrada’s film from Coppola’s and De Palma’s is in its sense of place, a landscape that can be as unforgiving as it is beautiful, a place where men are dwarfed by forces they cannot control, where stretches of highway seem to go on forever and a dead pickup truck is the only sign of civilization.

With its characters struggling against harsh realities meted out by a ruthless God, man and fate, El Narco occasionally looks and feels like a Sam Peckinpah film. As I watched the movie, I could imagine seeing Warren Oates from Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia walking into the frame holding his blood-encrusted, fly-specked bag.  Estrada shares Peckinpah’s knack for peeling back the facade of a kind of ludicrous machismo that conceals the fear within the gangster mentality. Underneath the bling bling, big guns and bigger talk lurks men who tremble at an unexpected knock at the door, who deceive and are betrayed, who kill to keep from being killed… and the killers can be anyone at anytime. If the drug wars end it may not be because of any political or legal agenda, it may be the result of a bigass, collective, self-inflicted gunshot wound. Wait long enough and these fuckers may end up wiping themselves out. Except, as Estrada sees it, there is a younger generation just waiting to fill those dead men’s boots.

Throughout El Narco a Greek chorus of narcocorrido songs, drug ballads, comment upon and serve as ironic counterpoints to the action. Narcocorridos depict the drug lords as folk heroes, bigger-than-life figures that instill a kind of perverted national pride in Mexico’s youth. The songs serve the same cathartic function as old school gangster rap did for Black kids in the States two decades ago. For many young Mexican men, the choices are slim to none -deal drugs or make a run for the border. Either way, you end up enslaved. The ballads tell the tale but tend to glorify the gangster life in an all too familiar way, the difference lays in tradition, accordions instead of beat boxes.

The drug dealers in El Narco exude the seductive aura of money and power, implacable as Aztec gods, but in actuality they’re just expendable foot soldiers, as easily blown away as a line of cocaine in a sudden gust of wind. Estrada is very good at showing us the sweat beneath the swagger, laying bare just how pathetic and vulnerable these men are.

Although superior to most gangster movies, El Narco breaks no new ground. Its dramatic arc is tried and true, its narrative conventional. There is romance, intrigue, betrayal and cruel justice. It has fine performances, is beautifully photographed and emotionally engaging. It adheres to the rules of the genre. It had to. In order to get his message across, that Mexico is becoming a country run by drug dealing terrorists, Estrada had to smuggle it within a classic form of storytelling much like the folk songs spun by the singers of narcocorridos. El Narco is a song sung with the voice of a man who has seen the darkness on the horizon growing ever closer and who must keep singing.

El Narco has an American distributor and, after some foot dragging, is scheduled to hit theaters soon. Its an important film and a viable commercial prospect. Let’s get it out there.

Luis Estrada discussing El Narco after its screening at Fantastic Fest 2011.
 

 
Trailer for El Narco after the jump…

 
I attended Austin City Limits this year but somehow managed to miss Terrence Malick shooting footage with Christian Bale for a new film project.

Like most Malick projects, there is much mystery surrounding this film, virtually nothing is known about it, but that’s not surprising considering how private Malick is both in his personal and professional life. Seeing Malick in public is about as rare as seeing a white rhinoceros in Times Square.

Bale and Malick share similarly high standards in what they put on film so this has the potential to be very special. Malick’s last film Tree Of Life wasn’t perfect but what it lacked in narrative coherence it made up for in pure cinematic glory. No matter what Malick shoots you know its going to be extraordinary looking and occasionally consciousness-raising. How that translates to footage at a rock festival has me intrigued.

One thing that is known for certain about the movie is it ain’t the new Batman.
 

Via IndieWire

 
Since I couldn’t have a dog when I was a child, it became my ambition to become a werewolf. Vampires were dull and foolishly superstitious. Frankentstein’s monster whiney and self-pitying. Though the Invisible Man appealed, he was too cracked and not much company. So, it was the werewolf that clicked, for here was a creature driven by things that could not be so easily explained.

This fascination led me to Oliver Reed and The Curse of the Werewolf. I’d already seen Henry Hull in The Werewolf of London, which was running as favorite, putting Lon Chaney jnr’s The Wolfman into second, that was, of course, until I saw Reed possessed by the cast of a silver moon.

It was a metaphor I liked - life usurped by genetic code, oddly confirming Philip Larkin’s belief we are but dilutions of dilution. In its way it was an easy metaphor for Reed, that instinctual, soft-eyed actor possessed by a brilliant talent and a greater thirst for life.

There was great sense of joy about Reed, no matter how drunk or sober he always exhibited a relentless joy for living. It may have damaged his career, and limited his talents, but it was part of who he was - like Leon Corledo or Larry Talbot and lycanthropy. It made him always worth watching, even in his shittiest of films, for Reed was a life force, the like of which we have rarely seen since.

Here, Reed interviews himself on French TV, in a bizarre publicity package for The Return of the Musketeers in 1989. In it Reed asks himself questions other interviewers would never dared ask - that his career owed everything to Ken Russell, like Eliza Doolitlle to Henry Higgins in the play Pygmalion; and why did he drink? His answers range from the unfocussed to the honest, but underneath, there is the growl of a beast waiting to get out.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The Incredible Friendship of Oliver Reed and Keith Moon

In Praise of Oliver Reed