by ·Comments Off on The Hyperboreans (2024, Joaquín Cociña & Cristóbal León)

Actress is on a soundstage recreating a lost film with Cociña and León, in which everyone but her is replaced by puppets. She ends up entering a spreadsheet cheat code, entering the hollow earth, and arguing with the Hitler-worshipping filmmakers. I don’t know what it all meant for Chile or for cinema, but I enjoyed every scene. After The Wolf House and Los Huesos, dudes are on a roll – and I’ve just learned that they did effects for Beau Is Afraid.

Antonia Giesen and her rock & roll patient:

Shooting a flower-creature shadow with a camera-laser:

The “directors”:

by ·Comments Off on The Piano Accident (2025, Quentin Dupieux)

Pampered internet-famous masochist flies into a murder-suicide rampage after discovering that she might suffer a consequence for past actions. However, the makeup woman knew what was going on, and shouldn’t have stood under that piano. Adele Exarchopoulos is up for anything, as usual – her little speech mannerisms are the whole movie, more or less. Her long-suffering assistant is comedian Jerome Commandeur, and their blackmailer is Sandrine Kiberlain, who just wants an interview with the press-averse star, who would rather die than participate. Happy ending for the bird, at least! Nothing inventive here from Dupieux, just a misanthropic little comedy.

by ·Comments Off on Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)

Kane’s death, then newsreel segment on him, then the news editor asking the reporter to find out more, seek the rosebud angle. So meek reporter William Alland (producer of 1950s monster movies) goes to see washed-up widow Dorothy Comingore (of Three Stooges shorts), who sends him away, then he finds his way into a chronological backstory with the help of others. Kane’s mom inherits a gold mine by chance, sends son away from an abusive dad to boarding school with rich guardian George Coulouris. The reporter meets boring old school friend Joseph Cotten and delightful newspaperman Everett Sloane, who tell of Kane’s takeover of the paper and his political aspirations. Kane’s run for governor is destroyed when rival Ray Collins reveals Kane’s affair with showgirl Dorothy while he was married to Ruth Warrick. Now that we’re caught up with her backstory, the reporter returns to Dorothy for his interview, but never finds his rosebud.

Rewatching for the first time in a long while… thought about listening to the four audio commentaries and watching the docs and reading two or three books on Welles, but the year’s almost over and I’ve got lists to make.

Lights & Mirrors:

by ·Comments Off on Go Down Death (2013, Aaron Schimberg)

Mildly Lynchian, but some scenes play too much like theater, despite all the big-swing cinema in the other parts. I feel like there’s photography here, and performance, and a sort of world or story, but none of it gels. It’s generous to its unusual actors at least. Playlist called it a “half-remembered dream” which seems right.

by ·Comments Off on Early films by Ken Jacobs

Orchard Street (1955)

Doc with good color, up and down a short NYC commercial street, staring at the shops and the workers and patrons. Pretty wonderful. Watching some Varda films this week, so this brings Daguerrotypes to mind. These are silent so I’m testing my new music mix, had to cut some Orbital.

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The Whirled (1961/63)

Different unreleased segments stitched together. In the first couple, Jack Smith prances through the streets of NYC. This has sound, but it’s generic silent movie music, so I thought it would be funnier to watch Jack prance to the new Nine Inch Nails Tron soundtrack. Then we get filmed-off-the-TV footage from when Ken appeared on game show Play Your Hunch along with Carolee Schneeman. Then Jack prances through a graveyard.

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Window (1964)

Both the Les Rhinoceros and the LCD Soundsystem songs that shuffle chose were inappropriately high-energy for this camera test looking at and through a building’s window and other materials (mirrors and rainy tarp).

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Blonde Cobra (1960/63)

We’ve reached Peak Jack Smith, as Ken films Jack doing face/body antics and also records Jack on an audio commentary doing voice/speech antics. “Mother, mother, mooootheeerrrrr.” Too much improv nonsense over black leader, I’ll be glad to be finished with Jack for a while. “What went wrong?!”

by ·Comments Off on Some Cartoons watched in late November

Plane Crazy (1928, Ub Iwerks)

The whole barnyard pitches in to build Mickey a rubber-dog-powered airplane, but it explodes immediately, so he sticks a propeller and a turkey tail on a jalopy to get some real power. After terrorizing everyone during takeoff, including some sweet first-person views that might account for this movie being on Jerry Beck’s list, he gets Minnie in the air in order to sexually harass her, but she ditches him mid-flight.

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Balloon Land (1935, Ub Iwerks)

No spoken words in the Mickey, this one’s got singing. In a world where everyone/thing is made out of balloons except for the dreaded Pincushion Man, who threatens to pop our dim heroes who wander into the woods. He follows them into town and goes on a mass murder frenzy until the armed forces fight back with tree sap and knock him off the edge of the world. The young couple gets away with bringing grave peril into town since the only witness who could’ve fingered them was killed.

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Music Land (1935, Wilfred Jackson)

Princess Violin of Symphony island and Prince Alto Sax of Jazz island have a tryst which starts a war, until the opposing sides chill out and hold a wedding instead. Great character design in this one, with the voice of each character “spoken” by the instrument it represents.

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Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938, Wilfred Jackson)

Just a string of parodies of movie actors ending in a full-cast dance-off. Gross Katharine Hepburn blackface gag, good Marx Bros and Cab Calloway.

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A Wild Hare (1940, Tex Avery)

The original Elmer vs. Bugs mind-game cartoon. Lost an oscar to The Milky Way.

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Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid (1942, Robert Clampett)

Now a well-established character, Bugs faces off against a dim vulture (condor?), the bird version of Elmer. The buzzard’s voice was a parody of a well-known ventriloquist dummy, created by Edgar “father of Candice” Bergen, whose other well-known ventriloquist dummy was parodied in Mother Goose Goes Hollywood.

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Screwball Squirrel (1944, Tex Avery)

Having co-created Bugs, Daffy and Porky, Tex fell out with the Looney producers and moved to MGM, where he appears to have created new versions of Bugs/Daffy (squirrel) and Elmer/Buzzard (dog) to torment with even wilder gags. Full of fun meta jokes, far beyond Screwy talking to the audience – the action hitches when a turntable playing the music score skips, he pulls back the screen to see what happens in the next scene, he interrupts the iris-out to extend the action. Has the same ending as The Palm Beach Story.

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Baseball Bugs (1946, Friz Freleng)

Bugs in invincible trickster mode plays every position at once, singlehandedly takes on an entire baseball team – some good gags and frantic energy.

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The Big Snooze (1946, Arthur Davis)

Fed up with being tormented, Elmer rips up his contract with the cartoons and goes off to take a peaceful nap under a tree. Bugsy Krueger takes sleeping pills and invades Elmer’s dreams, feminizing him and setting wolves after him, terrifying him into rejoining the chase. One of the shorts Bob Clampett left unfinished when he quit the studio and moved to Screen Gems, where he created Beany and Cecil.

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Tweetie Pie (1947, Friz Freleng)

Another Clampett castoff, redesigned by Freleng. Sylvester (here named Thomas) is chasing an bird outside in the snow, which is then adopted by the cat’s owner. Dig the rube goldberg contraption. Ends with the bird just pummeling the cat with a shovel. The first Warner short to win an oscar (vs. a George Pal puppetoon).

by ·Comments Off on A Woman of Paris (1923, Charles Chaplin)

Parents in these movies are all stern, stiff and disapproving, eagerly disowning their kids for dating somebody. Jean’s dad drops dead rather than say goodbye. When Jean doesn’t show at the station due to his dead father, Edna gets on the train and goes to Paris without him. A year later she’s a rich society chick, kept in jewelry and hats by Adolphe Menjou, when Jean shows up to act all righteous then lose her yet again. After a defeated Jean shoots himself, Edna does what all penitent rich women do: open an orphanage.

Adolphe and Edna:

After meeting up again Jean is hired to paint Edna:

I know Chaplin wrote original music for this but I ran my silent movie playlist instead, and heard Cluster, Takako Minekawa, Sly/Family Stone, Shigeru Umebayashi, London Sinfonietta, Sir Richard Bishop, Seefeel, Jacob Mann, Sun Ra, Hania Rani, Squarepusher, Neu, Cyro Baptista, Bar Kokhba, Matmos, bunch of Zorn Book of Angels tracks. Good acting, good cast, good final scene – it seems like Chaplin was determined to prove himself in an area outside his wheelhouse, and unlike Polanski he succeeded.

by ·Comments Off on Sirat (2025, Oliver Laxe)

End-times movie, as our characters drive through the desert of Morocco from one rave to another while WWIII appears to be starting offscreen. The main Spanish guy (from Pacifiction and Pan’s Labyrinth) loses his son while searching for his daughter, movie randomly ends up in a minefield where we lose half the remaining characters. Filipe calls it stupid and evil, I rather liked it but couldn’t figure out its point.

by ·Comments Off on Nouvelle Vague (2025, Richard Linklater)

Mostly it’s a casting triumph – they take inventory of the new-wavers with onscreen labels whenever somebody shows up. I could say that this doesn’t have much value if you’re not already a Godard/Breathless fan, but I suppose in that case why would you be watching movies at all? It’s not the first Linklater movie that’ll mess you up with its postscript text. Everyone looks like they had fun – that’s what is important.