Hard to believe that Uwe Boll could descend any lower into the cinematic septic tank, but the motherfucker continues to amaze. Auschwitz porn. Ilsa, she wolf of the SS, already plumbed these depths 40 years ago.
Les Kiriki: Acrobates Japonais, directed by Segundo de Chomon in 1907, is a lovingly hand-tinted artifact from the early days of French cinema. Similar in technique to George Melies, Aragonese film maker Chomon was a pioneer of cinematic special effects. In Les Kiriki, Chomon creates the illusion of complex, gravity defying acrobatics by having dancers lay on a black floor and filming them from above. The feat, while not as miraculous as if they were actually standing upright performing the balancing act, is still imaginatively choreographed, requiring considerable skill. The use of absurd Japanese wigs, pulsing colors and the primitive set result in a witty and surreal little film. For the soundtrack I added The Ventures’ “Let There Be Drums.”
The second video is Chomon’s Le Spectre Rouge which was also made in 1907 but released in 1908. Music by Shpongle.
The Red Spectre after the jump…
“Church can suck it.”
Act da Fool, a new short film by Harmony Korine for fashion line Proenza Schouler. Superb! Note use of Super 8 film stock.
Via NY Mag
Stefan Nadelman’s Terminal Bar is a document of the infamous New York City dive located across the street from the Port Authority bus terminal near Times Square. Stefan’s father, Sheldon, was a bartender at the Terminal from 1972 to 1982 and took thousands of photographs of the drunks, drug dealers, pimps and prostitutes that hung out at what was considered to be the roughest bar in NYC.
Sheldon also photographed the bartenders, bouncers and porters that worked the joint. I can’t imagine a tougher gig. I used to poke my head into the Terminal back in the late 70s. Its notoriety drew artists and punks and the curious. But, it wasn’t welcoming to slumming hipsters or bush league Bukowskis. It was an enclosed society with it’s own brutal code, not easily cracked by the voyeuristic aesthete.
Stefan recalls what it was like to live among the images of the Terminal:
Our house [was] basically my father’s gallery, I grew up looking at these faces of the Terminal Bar. My father would also paint on the matte around the photos to further make his point. He used a lot of wordplay…like GRAPE/RAPE/APE (the effects of wine). Each picture had its lesson or story and I think they subconsciously warned me of the ramifications of heavy drinking. Looking back, I can see how odd it may have seemed to have your house’s walls filled with 16x20’s of drunken strangers.
Terminal Bar is a stunning achievement, an evocation of a period in New York City’s history when the streets were wild with life and filled with the stench of garbage, booze, sex and death. The city is cleaner now, domesticated, safe, but lacking that certain soulfulness that is at the heart of Sheldon Nadelman’s dark and deeply human photographs.
Here’s the trailer and a clip from Terminal Bar. The entire 23 minute film is available on DVD here. Stefan is working on new video vignettes using his father’s photographs and I’m looking forward to future installments.
More of The Terminal after the jump…
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Chewbacca hairdid
The ultimate silent ‘Star Wars’
Sarah Brightman & Hot Gossip: I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper
Japanese ‘Star Wars’ Sea Chicken Commercial (1978)
70s French Disco Dance-Off Between Darth Vader And C-3PO
A-Team Intro vs. Star Wars
Darth Vader moonlights as symphony conductor
Star Wars vs. The Mighty Boosh
Star Wars: The Environmentalists Version
Robotic French Space Disco inspired by Star Wars (1977)
21-87: How Arthur Lipsett Influenced George Lucas’s Career
C-3PO Catches R2D2 Smoking
The director in a scene from Nice Bombs…
Chicago-based Iraqi director Usama Alshaibi seems to be one of the most prolific Arab filmmakers in the American independent film scene—and he’s almost certainly the most experimental. Working often in close collaboration with his wife Kristie, Alshaibi has jump-started the canon of what we might term transgressive Arab-American film.
In his over 50 short films, Alshaibi has updated the techniques of transgressors like William Burroughs and Kenneth Anger to transmit his obsessions with culture-clash, technology, religion, violence, sexuality and identity. He’s finished four features, two of which deal with porn and STDs, one with cross-cultural relationships and another with the personal reality of post-Saddam Iraq. He has three in production or post-production now, two of which—American Arab and Baghdad, Iowa—portray growing up Arab in the heartland in the in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and today, and the third, Profane, about a Muslim dominatrix in spiritual crisis.
As the news media shamelessly reduces the complex relationship between America and its Arab and Muslim communities into a dopey controversy over where to build a friggin’ cultural center or mosque, we need the perspective and imagination of Alshaibi’s work now more than ever.
Like most hard-working indie filmmakers, Alshaibi can always use financial help making his vision manifest. Click to donate to help him finish Profane or American Arab.
After the jump, check out a clip from American Arab…
2009 Indian mega-hit Magadheera is the most expensive film produced in the Telagu language of Southern India. Telagu (Tollywood) films don’t have Bollywood budgets, but Magadheera , a tale of reincarnation spanning 400 years, delivers maximum bang for the buck and, in this scene, some big laughs.
Directed by S.S. Rajamouli (watch out Michael Bay) and starring Ram Charan Teja.
The DVD is available here.
Let it not be said that Vincent Gallo doesn’t have eclectic tastes in movie roles…
Captured by the US military in Afghanistan, Mohammed is transported to a secret military black site somewhere in the Eastern Europe. When the armed convoy he is riding in plummets off a steep hill, Mohammed finds himself suddenly free and on the run behind the enemy lines, among a hostile, snow blanketed forest. Relentlessly pursued by an army that officially does not exist, Mohammed must constantly confront the need to kill in order to survive.
This’ll do well in the Red states! Directed by Jerzy Skolimowski starring Gallo and Emmanuelle Seigner.
Thank you Chris Campion!
Supremely groovy. Link Wray plays ‘Ace Of Spades’ while Maria does her dance from Metropolis.