This is How it Happens Sometimes

Return, I will

notmyoyster — Fri, 13 May 2011 17:13:41 +0000

I watched Terry Gilliam’s Brazil for the first time this past weekend. At least, it felt like I was watching it for the first time. However, while watching it I had a strong recollection of the scene where Robert De Niro’s character, Harry Tuttle, reverses the flow of refuse into the suits of the Dept. of Works. I know I’ve seen this before. I thought it had been part of a horror movie that I saw in childhood because it gave me nightmares and had me fearing that my sheets would fill with shit and suffocate me while I slept(that’s basically how they meet their untimely demise). I guess I was young enough that I didn’t really understand what else was happening in the film. It’s strange, though, I don’t remember the beautiful flying apparatus that Sam wears in his dreams, or much of anything else about it.

I don’t have a whole lot to say, mostly because this is renowned movie that is beautiful and well constructed and interesting and it has been discussed a lot. I like dystopian films and I especially like movies that can create a universe that relates to the one in which we live, but is somehow very different. Terry Gilliam has a knack for interesting machinery and societal structure.

The Kuchar Brothers

notmyoyster — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 18:17:03 +0000

Recently I watched “It Came From Kuchar” which is a documentary about Mike and George Kuchar. Mike and George are twin brothers who are both underground filmmakers. The documentary is well constructed and allows an interesting glimpse into the brothers’ lives. The focus of the film is primarily George who comes across a little more extroverted and eccentric, he’s a professor in San Francisco and basically creates nonstop. His films are exaggerated representations of themes in old Hollywood and are put together with a fantastic spontaneity. He comes up with a lot of ideas on set and has no qualms about using everyday objects if they fulfill his need (for example a flashlight held by a helper on set to be used as an accent light for a character to pass through).

Whether you know anything about the Kuchar brothers or not, I suggest checking out the documentary. It’s interesting and fun to watch.

Music from Old Children’s Toys

notmyoyster — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 17:26:17 +0000

This is a great video about how this band modifies children’s toys to create an orchestra.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11176344

Guy Maddin

notmyoyster — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 22:47:47 +0000

If you are interested in filmmaking which trails along a different line, then you should really invest some time in a Guy Maddin film.

Quick blurb from wikipedia: “Guy Maddin, OM (born February 28, 1956) is a Canadian screenwriter and director of both features and short films from Winnipeg, Manitoba. His most distinctive quality is his penchant for recreating the look and style of silent or early sound era films which has solidified his popularity and acclaim in alternative film circles.”

Here is a preview of Careful (1992)):

Jud Suss: A Film Without a Conscience

notmyoyster — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 01:33:27 +0000

“It is still one of the most notorious films ever made: a perfidious, rabble-rousing, antisemitic product of the Nazi era, an infamous work of propaganda that is still kept under lock and key in the German film archives since it was banned in 1945. Jud Süss, originally made in 1940 and currently available for viewing only by a handful of bona fide academics and film historians, is back in the public eye owing to a new film about its creation, in what is the latest attempt by German cinema to dramatise the country’s recent past.”

Read the full article HERE

The Simple Song by The Residents

notmyoyster — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:04:09 +0000

The Residents are an avant-garde/experimental band based out of San Francisco. This is from their Commercial Album, all of the songs are 1min long and this video is from The Commerical Album DVD where a number of different artists created videos for their songs.

The Terrible Thing of Alpha-9 by Jake Armstrong

notmyoyster — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 14:41:14 +0000

A great SVA animation thesis film.
I saw this last night at a screening at 92|Y tribeca.

Eric Rohmer, French New Wave Filmmaker, dies at 89

notmyoyster — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:12:02 +0000

“Aesthetically, Mr. Rohmer was perhaps the most conservative member of the New Wave, the internationally influential movement led by a group of aggressive young critics, among them Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, who parlayed their writings for publications like Arts and Les Cahiers du Cinéma into careers as filmmakers beginning in the late 1950s.”

Read the whole article here: Eric Rohmer Dies at 89

The Internet as Desert Wasteland

notmyoyster — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:10:25 +0000

“It’s as if culture froze just before it became digitally open, and all we can do now is mine the past like salvagers picking over a garbage dump,” Mr. Lanier writes. Or, to use another of his grim metaphors: “Creative people — the new peasants — come to resemble animals converging on shrinking oases of old media in a depleted desert.”

Read the whole article here: The Madness of Crowds and an Internet Delusion

RENO by Cory McAbee

notmyoyster — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 14:27:31 +0000

Sundance commissioned five filmmakers to make videos exclusively designed for viewing on cell phone screens. Cory McAbee created ‘RENO’. He’s someone I personally know from being involved on some of his projects, and I very much enjoy the films he makes and also his musical creations(visit www.corymcabee.com for any of that stuff).
Anyway, here is his short short, ‘RENO’

You can see the other 4 shorts here:

http://sundance.gsm.org/index.html