“It was 8:27 on a Sunday afternoon when Peters mind exploded…”
 
This looks like some sort of Zeitgeist parody. If so, fantastic!
 
Thanks, Marc Campbell!

 
Much like a TARDIS, a Borges short story, or Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg‘s 1970 film, Performance, is far bigger on the inside than its outside might indicate.  Starring Mick Jagger, James Fox and Anita Pallenberg, and with its primary action confined to that of a London flat, Performance manages to explore, in its uniquely heady and hypnotic way, such notions as gender, identity and madness as a function of creativity.

In fact, it feels at times like there’s so much going on within Performance‘s 105 minutes, in terms of philosophical scope and ambition, movies like The Matrix or 2001: A Space Odyssey seem almost puny in comparison.

And much like the London flat itself, Performance is a movie to lose yourself in.  Since my preteen exposure to it via the Z Channel, I must have watched it a good dozen times.  Nevertheless, the film continues to surprise me.  Disorient, too.

Part of this was due, no doubt, to the alchemical editing of co-writer/director Donald Cammell, who sadly, took his own life in ‘96.  Cammell’s ultimately tragic life and career is certainly deserving of its own post at some point, but, in the meantime, what follows is Part I of an absolutely worthwhile 3-part documentary on the making of Performance and the controversy that’s dogged the film ever since its release 30 years ago.  Links to the other parts follow below.

 
Performance in the making, Part II, III

John and Yoko - $1200

John Cage and Merce Cunningham - $800

Harold and Maude - Sold
 
Here’s a fantastic collection of wedding cake toppers by seattle based artist Mike Leavitt. It’s totally worth a look. From Mike Leavitt’s website:

No longer shall little random plastic people rule the top of your cake. Why suffer the cruelty of impersonal sculpture poisoning the cake frosting you lick from your fingers? Weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, retirement, online bingo… The cake topper figurines can be of any person in any style. Some ‘cake toppers’ aren’t even the bride and groom, just plain loved ones. The finished figures are protected and sealed from any frosting surface damage. For further protection, they aren’t posable with the multiple body part pieces like the action figures. These are finely crafted sculptures that will be enjoyed as long as the union of love that they honor.

(via The Jailbreak)

 
Looking every bit like a Jodorowsky film made out of clay, well known psychedelics enthusiast and Gumby creator, the late Art Clokey’s little seen 1964 psychedelic masterpiece Mandala is a truly wonderous thing to behold.
 
Via Gumbyworld:

“Well, we shot that in our basement in Topanga. We had an 1100 square foot basement in a A-frame on a hillside. It was perfect for our needs. My whole family worked on it, my daughter and Gloria’s daughter. That was our second marriage for both of us. She had a daughter and I had a daughter. They were both artistic, and my son and Gloria worked with the camera. So it was a family effort all in clay.”
Art explained that the goal of Mandala was to communicate “the idea of evolving our consciousness from primordial forms to human form, and then beyond the human to the spiritual and eternal. The theme was the evolution of consciousness: we begin in the mud and we just go out and up.”
The film shows lots of masks and tribal images. “The masks were symbols of the condition that we live in where we are all behind the masks and the whole process of life is to discover who it is behind that mask,” Art told us. “Who are we? Who is that guy behind the mask we’re holding up there? That ‘s the purpose of all religion. You just have to find out who that guy is behind the mask.”

 
bonus goodness: Clokey’s title sequence for the 1965 cheese epic Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine with theme song by the Supremes !

 
previously on DM: Viva Art Clokey !
 
thx Carmel Conlin !

 
Music by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips.

(via Nerdcore)

 
My wonderful old friend that I miss terribly, the late, great Jac Zinder was a true visionary pioneer in his pursuit of the artifacts of non-western cultures existing within our diverse city long before the notion of “world music” ever became commonplace. Much like his close friend Jonathan Gold‘s endless uncovering of the huge spectrum of the foods of these cultures hiding in plain sight all around us, Jac was constantly finding amazing musical gems to stun his friends with, buying endless cassettes of Bollywood soundtracks at the many local Indian movie theaters long before it was even remotely hip to do so and then playing them in DJ sets all over town. This one tune in particular, by Indian film score master Bappi Lahiri, will always remind me of him, perhaps more than any other. Like Jac himself, this song is sublimely ridiculous. It’s such a strange approximation of disco that it could almost pass for a track by Flying Lizards. It features some of the most brutal Synare playing ever recorded !

 
Bonus: A brief clip of the actual number and another lovely tune from the film Morchha

 
Thanks, Marc Campbell!

 

 
Wave of Mutilation skateboard deck by Kevin Tong available over at SLOW for 54.90€.
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Miles Davis Quintet Skateboards
 
(via Super Punch)

 
Dangerous Minds pal, Julien Nitzberg, director of the amazing documentary The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, sent the following short note to Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin and myself:

“I was excited when Dangerous Minds profiled me. I was complimented by Boing Boing writing about me.  But why does this make me the happiest of all: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t711880/  WOW!”

Nothing says you’ve really hit the big time quite like seeing your nose and ethnicity mocked on a white-supremacist forum like Stormfront, eh? It easily trumps an SNL parody!

A sampling of what the skinhead Roger Eberts at Stormfront think of Jullien’s documentary:

This is the most anti-white, offensive thing I’ve ever seen.—Cougarspeed

Did you see the nose on Nitzberg???? I could park my motorscooter in there.—White Reverence

How do you like that jew who created the film? Seems like jews have a nose for what people will buy. Heh. Jews can smell actual metal gold from fifteen feet away…I swear. They are the perfect “middle man”. And they will do/film ANYTHING for money.—Embattled Warrior

The Wild Whites of West Virginia opens theatrically at the end of June. Available now as a download on Amazon and on POV from many of the large cable operators.

(Above) Director Julien Nitzberg, with nose, and the film’s executive producer, Johnny Knoxville.