A Day In The Afterlife: BBC documentary on Philip K. Dick in its entirety (57 minutes).
A Day in the Afterlife focuses on the man himself, in all his crazy, drug-addled, paranoid glory. The mind behind some of my favorite books is fascinated by the constant bombardment of advertising, the effects of giant media conglomerates, and the overwhelming feeling that the world in which we live exists only in the glowing vacuum tubes of countless television sets. It is an ode to one of the most creative minds in science fiction, and another step in the crusade for a wider recognition of his accomplishments.” Ross Rosenberg
One of my favorite genres of exploitation films is Filipino action flicks. I’m thrilled that Mark Hartley who directed the fabulous documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild Untold Story Of Ozploitation has a brand new film screening at this years Fantastic Fest (which DM will be covering) called Machete Maidens Unleashed, an overview of legendary Z-movies from the Philippines.
During the classic grindhouse era of the ‘60s and ‘70s independent producers began turning out more and more exploitation features for less and less money. As the cycle wore on, there was a demand from audiences for more variety in settings and situations, and a demand from producers for lower budgets. Since it already had an infrastructure conducive to the making of inexpensive films, the Philippines fit the bill to a T. Labor was cheap, there were skilled technicians and equipment and, possibly best of all, the military dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos looked upon the enterprise favorably, contributing everything from tactical assistance to military firepower. One interviewee refers to the Philippines at this time as the “wild east”, and that assessment certainly seems apt as we hear story after story of gunfights in hotel lobbies, rats the size of poodles and the most insane, irresponsible stunts imaginable. As shocking and lurid as many of the women-in-prison, jungle action, mad scientist and martial arts movies made in the Philippines were, the back stories may actually surpass the films in their shocking details. But when the films being discussed and shown in Hartley’s trademark montage style are as wildly entertaining as For Your Height Only, Mad Doctors Of Blood Island, The Twilight People, The Big Doll House and TNT Jackson, it may be a tie.
I will be interviewing Mark Hartley during Fantastic Fest (Sept. 23-30), so stay tuned.
Here’s a clip from the classic For Your Height Only (aka For Y’ur Height Only) featuring the 3 foot tall martial arts master Weng Weng, the Filipino James Bond.
One hit wonders in Germany, Adam and Eve do their best Sonny and Cher in this video from 1967, “They Can Look At Us And Laugh”. The duo were Eva Bartova from Prague and American expatriate John Christian Dee.
There’s not much information on John Christian Dee that I can find. He was born in Buffalo, NY. He moved to London in his twenties. He wrote some songs for The Pretty Things and The Pink Fairies. He later married the infamous Janie Jones and together they ran a prostitution ring in London. He and Jones were busted and sentenced to prison but he fled the country. In 1975 he was jailed in Germany for stabbing his girlfriend. He escaped and disappeared somewhere in France. John Christian Dee died in London in 2004.
After Dee split for England, Eva continued to record with a new Adam, Hartmut Schairer, but the results weren’t nearly as interesting as her brief career with Dee. She died in 1989.
The video is a real oddity. The Sonny and Cher replication is pretty amazing. The song sounds like something Sonny would write, with its depiction of hippies as proud loners being ostracized and ridiculed by straight society. The first Sonny and Cher album was titled Look At Us - not much different from the title of this song. Dee has Sonny’s vocal mannerisms down pat: stretching vowels with a wiseass snarl.
Anyway, here’s Adam and Eve. If you don’t dig the song, you’ll love the wigs and bell bottoms. If you want more, buy the CD here.
More Adam and Eve after the jump…
The late animation genius, Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby, describes his experiences in the sixties when he was given LSD by his psychiatrist. From the Emmy award-winning documentary, Gumby Dharma.
Via Planet Paul
The sound isn’t great, but the video looks terrific and it’s new to me. Jimi kicks in around the 2 minute mark.
Footage from heart of Swinging London in legendary ‘I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet’ boutique, Carnaby Street. Jimi plays Like A Rolling Stone, Stone Free. footage was taken in 1967, Chelmsford, England.
This is a segment from a Danish Dutch documentary from 1977 called Wonderland. The entire film is available for viewing on Youtube. This is my favorite clip from the film. Warren extolling the virtues of the Tex Mex food at The Burrito King. L.A. at its finest.
Legendary Malaysian actor and musician P. Ramlee plays the totally groovy “Bunyi Gitar”. The fez , the shades, teenagers twisting like rock and roll angels, this video has it all. Thankyou DJGiantRobot.
P.Ramlee’s big break came on 1 June 1948 when he was spotted by Tamil film director B. S. Rajhans. The director was impressed by Ramlee, and in 1949 he was cast in the film Nasib (Fate). Seven years later, Ramlee directed his first film Penarik Becha (The Trishaw Man). In 1957, Ramlee would act in the first of his Bujang Lapok (Dowdy Bachelors) comedic films that he acted along S. Shamsuddin along with Aziz Sattar, which are still popular among the modern Malay film watchers.On 29 May 1973 P.Ramlee died at the age of 44 due to heart problems and was buried in Jalan Ampang Muslim Cemetery, Kuala Lumpur. In 1986, in honour of his contributions to the Malaysian entertainment industry, the P. Ramlee Memorial was set up in Setapak, Kuala Lumpur. In 1982, Jalan Parry in the KL city centre has been renamed Jalan P. Ramlee in his honor. He was posthumously awarded with the Malaysian honorific title Tan Sri in the early 1990s.
P. Ramlee superstar!
Dinner With Henry is exactly what the title suggests. Over a plate of food and glass of wine, the 87 year old Buddha of Brooklyn enthusiastically riffs on his hero Blaise Cendrars, D.H. Lawrence, Rimbaud and the surrealists. Shot by Richard Young and John Chesko in 1979, this “lost’ documentary has recently surfaced and it’s a wonderful peek into the life of one literature’s great provocateurs.
Henry Miller, along with Charles Bukowski, Rimbaud and Richard Brautigan, inspired me to buy a typewriter and attempt the life of a writer. Oh, what I would have done to have had a glass of wine with the great man.
Brenda Venus, the last great love Miller’s life, wrote about the filming of this dinner in her 1986 book Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller;
Two filmmakers had requested to film Henry speaking freely about wine. When they arrived at Henry’s home, he was in “an ill temper” explains Venus, who guessed that he’d had a bad sleep. When dinner time arrived, Henry was asked to “speak frankly and spontaneously.” At first, his comments seemed negatively focused on the meal. It’s unclear who prepared the meal, but Henry does not spare anyone’s feelings by calling it “pitiful” and refusing to eat certain things, or complaining about the order of courses. With some coaxing from Brenda, Henry is finally set on track to various personal commentaries. Although he does offer some comparison between French and American wines, he doesn’t offering any real opinion of the wines set before him, which had been the whole point of the film. “I kept encouraging Henry to say something about the various wines he was sipping,” write Venus, “but he pointedly ignored me while regaling the camera with his powers as a raconteur”
Henry Miller reads from Black Spring and is interviewed on French TV after the jump…
Jack Kerouac reads from Visions of Cody on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show in 1959. This clip is taken from the documentary film, Whatever Happened to Keroauc? It’s often mislabeled as being a reading from On The Road, but it’s not (to add further to the confusion, there is a close up of On The Road’s cover as Steve Allen is speaking).
In a promotional campaign for the new Resident Evil film, grotesque looking arms were strategically placed throughout the streets and buildings of Madrid to spook the living shit out of unsuspecting pedestrians. Funny and effective.
Music by System Of A Down.
I can’t believe how little this glaring fact plays in the general awareness of our little adventure in Iraq. As Glenn Greenwald rightfully points out: “It should be noted that on this chart the number of Iraqi deaths is the most conservative count”.
What is the real death toll in Iraq? (The Guardian)
Via Balloon Juice and Glenn Greenwald’s Twitter feed
Austrian filmmaker Virgil Widrich and his crew truly turned it out in 2003 with Fast Film, an amazingly obsessed confluence of film history, paper-craft and pre-digital animation.
Born from the scraps of Widrich’s equally well-crafted short, Copy Shop, Fast Film imbues its surrealistic qualities with familiarity, humor, anxiety, dread and hints of sexuality.
After the jump: How this incredible film was made…
