by ·Comments Off on Kenneth Anger, volume 1 (1947-1954)

Fireworks (1947) – the one where young Ken daydreams that he is beaten by sailors and a roman candle is set off in his pants.

Didn’t blow me away as much this time, but maybe I’ve seen it too many times. Would still recommend to everyone as the definitive statement on being gay & 17, the United States Navy, American Christmas, and the Fourth of July. Just unbelievable that this was made in 1947, with practically no precedent… before even Stan Brakhage had picked up a camera. I guess Anger wasn’t old enough to know that this kind of thing was not done.

Fireworks sailors:
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Puce Moment (1949) – the one where a glamourous actress lives in her glamorous house, and a bunch of classic hollywood dresses are paraded in front of the camera.

Guess I didn’t see the point because I don’t care about dresses and glamour. Commentary was the best part. Anger’s mom or aunt or someone was a costume designer for the silent films, so he’s filming these dresses in vivid color which have only been seen on screen before in black and white. Part of a longer movie that got scrapped.

Puce woman:
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Rabbit’s Moon (1950) – the one where mimes do a dance in a forest, and one tries to reach the moon to impress a girl and I’m pretty sure he dies in the end, oh and there’s pop music playing.

Really neat, wasn’t expecting to find a mime movie on here. Anger says the film was commissioned and the actors were hired from the Marcel Marceau school. He talked about the storyline too, but I can’t remember much of that. Cool little movie – the one from this disc that I’d show off to people in my never-gonna-happen short-films fest.

Rabbit mime:
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Eaux d’artifice (1953) – the blue-tinged one where Ken just photographs water in some garden fountains and sometimes a woman (actually a very small woman) runs by in a fancy dress.

Maybe my favorite of the bunch. Just light sparkling through water, opera music playing. Peaceful.

Eaux d’artifice:
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Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) – the slow one where people in fancy costumes stand around and do stuff and finally blend in weird montages (or “the one with Anaïs Nin”).

I was dozing off, should watch again with the commentary on. A long, pretty, entrancing and colorful movie. Maybe best to watch while dozing, really.

Pleasure Dome montage:
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by ·Comments Off on Rabbits (2002, David Lynch)

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Rabbits! Eight episodes of rabbity nonsense, with Laura “Rita” Harring, Naomi “Betty” Watts, Scott “scenes deleted” Coffey, and Rebekah “Del” Rio.

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The rabbits seem to be having an actual conversation, but all the lines are out of order. So if you try to remember the dialogue in an episode, at the end you can piece it together, sort of. Or it probably doesn’t matter. And thrice there’s an episode where there’s just one person singing.

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And sometimes this happens.

by ·Comments Off on The Animation Show 3 (2007)

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Rabbit is an animated children’s book (complete with labels on everything) about a couple greedy, murderous kids getting their comeuppance via death by insects.

City Paradise is a cute Japanese girl learning English and wearing flippers – very nice look to it, reminds me of the Dave McKean short Neon.

Everything Will Be OK – good Hertzfeldt short, totally different style from the rest. More “mature” they’ll probably say. Too multilayered, sometimes hard to hear, gotta see again. Makes me a lot less apprehensive to see “The Meaning of Life” cuz even if it sucks I know he’s recovered since.
I watched this again a while later.

Collision – stars and stripes from flags colliding in neat ways. Pretty, short.

9 – awesome looking film of sock puppet guy with nightvision goggles, the ninth and last in a line of goggled puppets, using all his resources to defeat a giant rabbit monster. Soon to be a major motion picture by producer Tim Burton, who used up the only original ideas he’s had in a decade on “Big Fish”.

Eaux Forte – a light sketch sort of thing that I tuned out to recharge my mind’s batteries.

Overtime – funeral of a puppeteer given by the puppets, nice.

Dreams and Desires – funny, early plympton-looking drawn animation about a woman with dreams of being a great filmmaker making a horrible, drunken wedding video.

Game Over – video game scenes recreated with food, hilarious.

Guide Dog – surprisingly great plympton… I guess I like him again.

No Room For Gerold – CG animals sitting around a table having a confrontational roommate argument.

Versus – more CG, warlords on their own island castles fight over the tiny island between them, got big laffs.

TAS website says: “Versus” was directed by François Caffiaux, Romain Noel, and Thomas Salas from the French animation college Supinifocom. This is the same school that the film “Overtime” came out of. “Versus” has been one of the ‘hidden’ films in our current lineup but easily one of the better received audience favorites. More info on it soon!

by ·Comments Off on David Lynch shorts (1966-1995)

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Six Figures Getting Sick
is exactly that. With an annoying siren.

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The Alphabet
is my favorite David Lynch short film so far.

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The Grandmother
is so disturbing on so many levels.

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The Amputee
is lame, but it was a one-off overnight project so whatever.

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The Cowboy and the Frenchman
is pretty damned funny, actually.

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Lumiere
is neat, with some simulated cuts and visual effects.

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by ·Comments Off on By Brakhage disc 2 (1959-2001, Stan Brakhage)

A thorough viewing of the second disc of my favorite DVD set in the world this weekend. Some thoughts:

I do not know how to talk about Brakhage. Mostly on this site I talk about story, quality of performance… how do I talk about a non-narrative motion painting? Don’t have the background or vocabulary for that.

Cat’s Cradle and Window Water Baby Moving are early ones with actual camera shots of actual things. The editing of Window Water is entrancing.

Mothlight will be great forever. I’ve watched it twenty times now.

Then, chronologically, came Dog Star Man and Act Of Seeing, which I haven’t watched yet because I am afraid of them. The scariest nightmare I’ve had in a decade resulted from falling asleep during my only attempted viewing of Dog Star Man, and if Window Water is so attractive and disturbing, I can just not imagine how my stomach will feel after viewing The Act Of Seeing.

Eye Myth (a nine-second film) took a year to complete because Brakhage had to convince himself that it could be done, had never done a hand-painted film before. Mothlight was almost a decade earlier, but I guess Eye Myth was a big step. I’ve watched it a ton of times just because I can.

I’m not so wild about the visuals of The Wold Shadow (painting on glass over a view of the forest) or The Stars Are Beautiful (creation myths with shots of home and chickens with sync sound) or Kindering (kids at play), but then The Dante Quartet and Rage Net hit hard… some of my favorites of the painted films.

Black Ice and Delicacies and Study In Color are creepy. The screen shots below reveal nothing about those two. The Dark Tower is always a favorite. And I don’t remember ever seeing Commingled Containers before so I watched it three times. Can’t understand what it is, what those things are, what is happening. Something in a stream? What are “containers”? Beautiful, of course. That applies to all of the above… beautiful, beautiful, blah.

Need to read Brakhage’s book(s), to read Fred Camper’s writings, to read the DVD liner notes again and listen to the interviews with Brakhage on the discs. But I don’t expect to learn much that will gain me a deeper appreciation of the films… they need no explanation.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker were Brakhage’s students. He acted in Cannibal the Musical and loved the South Park movie. Incredible.

Katy did not watch it. I’m afraid to show her any Brakhage. What if she doesn’t love it? How will I explain or convince?

A barrage of screen shots.

Cat’s Cradle
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Window Water Baby Moving
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Mothlight
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Eye Myth
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The Wold Shadow
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The Garden of Earthly Delights
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The Stars Are Beautiful
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Kindering
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I… Dreaming
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The Dante Quartet
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Nightmusic
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Rage Net
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Glaze of Cathexis
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Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse
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For Marilyn
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Black Ice
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Study in Color and Black and White
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Stellar
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Crack Glass Eulogy
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The Dark Tower
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Commingled Containers
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Love Song
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by ·Comments Off on Four Short Films by Robert Morgan (1999-2004)

40 minutes or so of short movies. The evolution of Robert Morgan!

The Man in the Lower-Left Hand Corner of the Photograph (1999)
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Too slow and draggy with meat and maggots, all Svankmajery and dingy and stuff. Lonely guy watches his neighbor kill herself, drags her home, feeds her to his pet maggot, and she sorta comes to life all maggoty and sleeps with him and he puts their photos together or whatever.

The Cat with Hands (2001)
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Short and awesome, about a cat slowly becoming human by eating people and taking their parts.

The Separation (2003)
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Another good one, slow and dreary like the first, but not overdoing it this time. Conjoined twins are separated then consider getting back together again while working at a doll factory.

Monsters (2004)
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All live action, boy has nightmares, threatens to turn psycho, sister shows last-minute sympathy. Very nice looking. Guy’s got a bright future.

Katy glimpsed parts, thought was gross.

by ·Comments Off on Chant du Styrene (1958, Alain Resnais)

Weird little tour of a plastics factory. Starts with colorful flowers.

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Moves backwards through the manufacturing process…

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Ending with the explosive chemical processes that produce plastic in the first place.

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I guess it’s “quirky”. Guy who wrote the commentary was a novelist… wrote “Zazie in the Underground”, made into a movie by Louis Malle.

by ·Comments Off on Judgement (1999, Chan-wook Park)

Short b/w movie. Girl died in a public park or public something, and grieving parents (entitled to big payoff from the city) are there to identify her before the funeral. Funeral director suddenly says he recognizes her as his own missing daughter. Argument ensues, until earthquake knocks everyone down and turns movie to color. Weird.

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by ·2 Comments

“I have a friend,” the first girl says. And I settle in for what will surely be a darkly weird six-minute short. But nope, it’s just three girls talking to a DV-cam. The third girl is psychologically torturing the second for putting a hole in her stocking. Whatever.

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