What then is the object of cinema in the new century? To recover the old gods of its genealogy; to rectify the new techniques with the arrogation of old histories. Here is a film about the act of film-watching, the act of viewing, of seeing, of reading the screen on which no thing, in truth, exists, has existed, or ever will exist. It is a film to be watched by ghosts, because it deals with the great spectre itself: the flickering light, the whir of the celluloid wheel, the crackle of the soundtrack. [Read More]
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Sound in Grotowski’s “Akropolis” Nobody knows better than 60s avant garde theater directors Jerzy Grotowski and Tadeusz Kantor that simple theatrical choices can have a serious dramatic impact on a viewer’s experience. In Grotowki’s “Akropolis” (a play based on Polish dramatist Stanislaw Wyspianski’s play of the same name but set in the concentration camp at Auschwitz), [Read More] Films about the problems of children are always of an order more difficult than films about the problems of adults. When children are children, dreamy and infantile, directors with money will select to make an animated film, or an adaptation of a Roald Dahl book, or yet another Alice in Wonderland version. Here are two films set in real locations that are about children who are no longer children, who are enjoined to grow up, in a way that is prematurely violent, and in a way that defies their own [Read More] Robert Crumb’s latest and greatest project, finished after four years of research and A highly secretive undertaking at the drafting board, boogies its way from the bookshelf to the bedside with so much soul-shaking get-down you’d think Albert Ammons was trying to put you to sleep with the blues to back your prayers. Fusing elements from nearly fifty years of comic illustration, ranging from the LSD-frazzled, aphorism-spouting toon-yogi Mr. Natural to collaborations with Charles Bukowski and a illustrated life of Charlie Patton, Crumb seems to have been readying himself for the project of biblical yield the whole time. [Read More]
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Heads Will Roll (A-Trak Remix) [Audio clip: view full post to listen] I don’t know how I forgot about the video for Yeah Yeah Yeahs‘ “Heads Will Roll” when I wrote my blurb about monsters and music videos. This stunning piece of video performance dating back to this year’s [Read More] Best-of lists are of course an imperfect science in which omission plays as much a part as inclusion. I have attempted here to make a universal list of the 30 Best Films of the Decade. The criterion is simple: those films which have advanced the cinematic arts into locales unvisited before or through methods unimagined, or which have made relevant statements on the spirit of the decade and the state of the globalized world as it appears to its authors and victims. [Read More]
This week, to draw attention to the Copenhagen Climate Summit, the New Yorker has published Helen Simpson’s story “Diary of an Interesting Year.” It’s a story filled with cold nights, dirty parkas, weeping sores, and replete with the kind of maniacal attention to detail that comes with desperation. “Every one of us takes [Read More] If you can see this, then you might need a Flash Player upgrade or you need to install Flash Player if it’s missing. Get Flash Player from Adobe. There’s an amazing new video for Dam Funk’s “Mirrors“, taken from this month’s debut 5-lp record, Toeachizown (Stones Throw Records). The video meanders from a [Read More] The eminence of James Wood as a literary critic is rarely questioned; a few years ago the upstarts at N+1 (the McSweeney’s of the East), tried to do just that and ended up embroiled in a rhetorical chess match that they devoted whole issues to, whether that was resolved is anyone’s guess. In his latest [Read More] |
 How Does The Net Affect our Brains? Nicholas Carr and A Glimpse into the DebateIn 2008, Nicholas Carr wrote an influential essay in the Atlantic titled “ Is Google Making us Stupid” ? Since that essay’s publication the use of the Internet and its effect on our brains has become a highly divisive topic which has produced a large spat of journalistic and academic articles in its wake. [Read More]  Sanullim: Mountain Echo PsychSanullim is something of an anomaly in rock history. At a time when vintage rock was dying and new cultural tropes were diversifying the palette of pop music, Sanullim appeared on the margin in a country whose pop music landscape, heavily censored by the authoritarian bureaus of Park Chung-Hee, mainly consisted of traditional trot ballads and dance-pop music. Sanullim’s heavy bass lines, thunderous drums, chromatic fuzz guitar-work, and psych-image lyrics were a revival shock in a system which had gone dormant since the early 60s scene singlehandedly engendered by Korean rock godfather Shin Jung-Hyeon. [Read More]  We are Freak (Rap)By Adri Wong The abstraction of hiphop – sonically & visually – is a progression other commentators have discussed in relation to instrumental/beats artists like Flying Lotus and the unparalleled Dilla. But what of the lyrical persona in the abstract world? Which is to say, in this constantly expanding kaleidoscope universe, what happens to the MC? [Read More]  ‘The Housemaid’ – A Comparison of Two Korean FilmsIf Martin Scorsese had stopped making films after the 90s, he’d still prove an invaluable part of cinema history on the basis of his current film preservation efforts. Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, which works to “help developing countries preserve their cinematic treasures,” has gone a long way in preserving and promoting little seen, almost lost films from a wide range of countries. [Read More]  Film Review: The Secret in their Eyes (El Secreto de sus Ojos) dir. by Juan Jose CampanellaThe Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film last year was bestowed onto an Argentine mystery romance; a film that intermixes the pathos of unspoken love and the torture chamber of memory, and parallels these alongside the shadowy contours of law and corrupt politics. As the film frames all these disparate elements within a novelist’s remembrance of a rape and murder investigation that he was involved in as a young attorney in the court halls of Buenos Aires in the early 1970s, it continuously draws analogies to the mercenary political machinations of a dictatorial Argentina. This brilliantly scripted and acted film was written and directed by Juan Jose Campanella, a director who has now catapulted himself onto the international film scene with this minor masterpiece. [Read More]    |
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