the director as acrobat

the director as acrobat
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

a frame from Dusan Makaveyev's "innocence unprotected". Makaveyev often took a collage approach in his films, most notably in the essential "wr: mysteries of the organism." here, he takes a serbian melodrama called "innocence unprotected" made in 1942 under German occupation and selectively tints and hand-colors passages; these are intercut with then present-day (1968) footage of surviving cast members, including the fellow on the right, a death-defying acrobat and love interest who happens to also be the director of the 1942 film. contemporary footage of the grey-haired acrobat show him still unafraid to test the limits of the human body; at one point he takes a steel bar and bends it using his teeth as a fulcrum. he spits out the tooth or two that succumb to the show of strength. makavejev's most famous films, wr and "sweet movie" are joyously sexual. "innocence" is appropriately less sexual, though no less a celebration of the human body.

avian angst
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

whenever i call you friend

whenever i call you friend
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

crippled detectives

Ed Park in the village voice

As much as any book I know, Crippled Detectives transcribes the dream state, not just in its flights of fancy and logic-jumping juxtapositions, but in the mutating narrative tactics, the topsy-turvy focus ... [it] is a wonderfully sustained performance, a triumph of authorial impulse that never bores or confuses even as it runs circles around the helpless, happy reader.

I forgot to mention that Lee Tandy Schwartzman was all of seven years old when she wrote it.

via the village voice and maud newton.

a sample:

"Anne, where are you?" said Sylvia. They found Anne dead with a bullet in her forehead, lying on the floor dying with red fingerprints on the gun and a note which read:

A foolish girl who called the police first sight of me and if you want to live keep the police out of this or you will soon have a blown up Europe and 9,000,000,000,000 dead people including you.

Signed,
Red Romer

Their parents cried, Lisette screamed, Lee shuddered, and Sylvia gasped and the nurse fainted, but it seemed Anne was laughing. She opened her eyes and stood up. “Good trick I played on that Red Romer,” she said, and all saw her taking a piece of plastic off her forehead. Then everybody started laughing. The nurse woke up and rubbed her eyes and laughed too and went to do research.

read crippled detectives in its entirety here.

art!

Face to face with Freud

In the early days of his success half a century ago, Lucian Freud was a charismatic playboy, a lady-killer with an Alvis. He mixed as easily with Soho lowlife as with Mayfair toffs. Frail now, stick-thin, stooped, his face bloodless, his nose like a hawk's bill, I see him shuffling up Holland Park Avenue to Lidgate, the bespoke butchers, to buy steaks for the whippet; woodcock, quail and snipe for his human sitters. In crumpled chinos and laceless trainers, a thin grey scarf around his collarless neck, there's more than a hint of old Steptoe. Yet with an income estimated in 2003 as �12m a year, he is twice as rich as Robbie Williams, they say, and despite the geriatric grunginess, he can still mesmerise women old enough to be his granddaughters.

via from the floor

oh the things we will learn about living

oh the things we will learn about living
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

picked up by dcist!

vintage electronic music toys

the audio page can provide hours of densely layered poly-rhythmic fun.
via wfmu.

a thin line between cuddles and pain

ZURICH (Reuters) - A giant dominatrix teddy bear wearing a leather mask and brandishing hand-cuffs has been banned from sober Zurich's street display of man-sized model bears, the project's artistic director said on Tuesday.

via the village voice

frampton comes alive

frampton comes alive
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

bugs and elmer; a symbolic discourse

via the copacetic comics gallery

today's hot keywords

la wam wig coffin Wig Baby norway bandstand Wam cam Bomb shot american Hit
Like Me tuning You durgavich an Atomic establishing disco phooey Ashnak

acceptance
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

i like music because it puts pictures inside my head

I love to listen to loads of pere ubu at a million miles away!

the art of unintended consequences

"I think it's sort of indecent to have things so worked out that they end up like you thought they would. You think I want to be what I am? You have to expose yourself to more, and see what the consequences are."

--Robert Rauschenberg in the New Yorker.

i like music too!

atlanta's copeland are "Nice boys executing skillful, emotional performances of well-crafted, melodic rock songs." Listen to "Pin your wings" twice in a row like I'm doing.

stream the awesome new sleater-kinney album here. it'll be out next week, just you wait.

simpsons for the blind

The Simpsons as Described by WGBH

DVS is a godsend for blind viewers - how else could you follow the weekly couch gag? But as with any subtitled movie, there's a lot of editorializing that goes on. In this episode, Homer pretends to smoke a joint at one point and the DVS description of his action only says 'Homer pretends to smoke.' In another scene, Marge and Homer start to go at it under the sheets, and the DVS description dares not to describe their sexual cartoon antics. Unfortunately, other technology out there which addresses the problem that blind people face with television strikes me as unworkable - charting the visual action through sounds. Article on that here. How would you translate the couch gag into a series of squeals and whistles?

via wfmu

perspective

perspective
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

wig wam

Wig wam are Teeny, Sporty, Glam and Flash, and they glam rock Norway. Listen to "Bless the night," which isn't bad!

the lego harpsichord

Harpsichord

With the exception of the wire strings, this instrument is entirely constructed out of LEGO parts--the keyboard, jacks, jack rack, jack rail, plectra, soundboard, bridge, hitch pins, tuning pins, wrestplank, nut, case, legs, lid, lid stick, and music stand are all built out of interlocking ABS (Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene) plastic bricks and related pieces.

And is playable.

via music thing

the future

the future
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

from the 1983 video (beta!) "japanese electronic industry -- entry into the future" that I got at the book sale. a creepy awesome animation of man-in-outline walking amidst electronic devices-in-outline floating freely in space. someday soon the next wave of ephemeral film nostalgia will hit, and this will be acknowledged as a masterpiece of industrial video. mmm, gotta tape the a-team.

i was you
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

the riverside jewel
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

british sheep breeds
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

we don't need no steenking accreditation from the national commision for cosmetology arts and sciences

Man Busted For Manicuring Without License

The manicure performed without a license was undertaken right outside the state Board of Barbering, Cosmetology and Esthetics office.

'The reason I'm doing this is because it's one of the harmless things I can do to prove that the law is unjust,' Fisher said. 'Without the government's permission, you can't do nails, hair, lot of other things.'

Fisher said his manicure movement was inspired by the movie 'Ghandi'

via no more mister nice blog under the heading I wish I'd wrote, "THIS EMERY BOARD KILLS FASCISTS"

just the way you are

just the way you are
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

our cinematic history

watch nitrate film stock in all it's beautiful degradation, burning, alone, in a cinder block, and underwater!!

try this at home.

like drawings of bunnies with the water running

or so the spare childlike site of yuichiro fujimoto suggests. contemplative, lo-fi and Japanese.
via mystery and misery

the passion of joey patina

the passion of joey patina
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

sita sings the blues

The Sitayana by Nina Paley

all the barbaras in the world

all the barbaras in the world
Originally uploaded by a nameless yeast.

The 48 Hour Film Project presents

ALL THE BARBARAS IN THE WORLD
A Gregorian musical.

starring Joey Patina
written by Jose Padua
directed by Pat Padua
produced by John Durgavich


Tues, May 3, 9:30pm

AFI SILVER THEATER
8633 Colesville Road
At the intersection of Colesville Road and Georgia Avenue
http://www.afi.com/silver/new/

TICKET SALES
$8

Tickets may be purchased online at
http://www.afi.com/silver/new/nowplaying/2005/v2i3/48hour.aspx