Monthly Archives: November 2011

Attempt: A Short Film by Jennifer Sharpe

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

The film seems almost out of time. It could have been filmed fifty years ago. The gently swaying palms of Los Angeles fit between buildings easily but seem to have a romantic life in this film. The music, a piece for theremin and string quartet by Herbert A. Deutsch, fits the imagery in Jennifer Sharpe’s film to perfection. This kind of filmmaking, done with a small camera and then edited and colored in a relatively simple digital editor, is very close to the simplicity of the poet working in a notepad or the artist sketching from her window. Sharpe’s films are deeply felt poetic expressions that seem to exist in the only possible form that they could have. She turns her video images into something close to painting, extending time and finding mystery in simple movements. She has a very gentle approach but with strength in her observation and emotional ability, sort of like a butterfly with steel wings.

You can find out more about Jennifer Sharpe’s digital videos and paintings at her web site.

The Rebel Set: 1959 Beatnik Film Noir

by Cimaxion

Gene Fowler, Jr. directed this peculiar Beatnik crime noir in 1959. It starts right off with a Beat jazz club and then just gradually slides into trying to be a crime thriller. It’s about an out of work actor, an unpublished novelist and a movie-star’s son who are teamed up by the club owner to pull off an armored car robbery. The Beat scenes start off in Los Angeles and then the action moves by train toward New York, with a four-hour layover in Chicago where the crime is to occur. I love all the jazzy xylophone music, the black-clad dancing girl, the paintings on the walls, the bohemian sleeping quarters and the silly little beards. I think we really need to bring back the whole idea of the Beat jazz club. I’d go for sure.

The movie has some great touches. Like the hard luck actor reciting Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ along with an LP. There’s my favorite line, delivered by the club owner: ‘When in Rome, Sydney, do the Romans.’ The poet giving a performance with musical backing says, ‘The passengers on this sad train are the five senses.’

Happily Ever Over: An Epic Illustrated Fairy Tale by C Merry

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

C Merry has created an epic rambling fairy tale that weaves her own modern perspective through the classic stories that children have been familiar with for centuries. The result is both humorous and unsettling. C Merry combines these tales with mythology and Christmas to explain things that have been long forgotten. It’s a beautiful way to start the holidays. You’ll find out that the Pied Piper had money troubles and was working out of his van. Santa Clawz is a wormhole-travelling wildman who began the holiday tradition of sneaking into houses to counteract the effects of war. Instead of dropping bombs, he dropped gifts. He was also descended from grizzly bears.

The story unfolds over a series of partially animated illustrations that are gorgeously detailed, showing squiggly pen lines inside every detail. These pictures are backed by a dense and mysterious soundscape.

What C Merry seems to be doing is connected the world’s most charming tales for children to the much deeper and darker subterranean world of mythology. It works. She has created a mystical world of danger and beauty.

You can also read the entire illustrated tale at the author’s blog.

The Mad Ones: A Brief History of the Beat Generation

by Cimaxion

Krystal Cannon (PersonTV) made this short documentary about the Beat Generation in which she not only narrates as Queen Elizabeth, but also plays various roles including Allen Ginsberg, Joan Vollmer, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac, John Lennon, Edie Sedgwick and Abbie Hoffman. She gives a clear account of the Beat movement then moves into the general social reaction. She also makes some very interesting points about how women were sidelined even though many of them made great contributions to Beat culture. I think that what the Beats were working on is in very fine hands indeed with Ms. Cannon at work.

Thanks to Marc Campbell at Dangerous Minds.

Behind The Wall: The Battle for LA’s Murals

by Cimaxion

Oliver Riley-Smith made this short documentary about the disappearing mural art of Los Angeles. It features a prominent muralist complaining about how murals have been ‘bludgeoned by graffiti’ and ‘censored by the city.’ Perhaps so. The city does make it difficult to get permits for murals. But I don’t really like murals. They tend to be stiff and unoriginal. I like the murals that have been vandalized by the graffiti artists. Sorry but I do. They are much more interesting than the clean murals which are entirely unimaginative and offer nothing to move art in any direction whatsoever. If muralists want to preserve their images, they should paint indoors. Look at the mural on the highway underpass wall that’s covered with graffiti at the 42 second mark in the film. Beautiful. Much better than the mural ever was. The muralist in the film says, ‘Museums are for the dead. I want life.’

Bullshit.

There’s a guy in this film called ‘Ghost One.’ I like what he says about art.  He’s realistic and open to whatever comes along.  He says that taggers mark up murals because they assume that their marks will have more longevity that way. That’s a very interesting thought. An artists seeks longevity by making his mark inside the work of another artist. Fascinating. Much more interesting than the murals. Such thinking shows possibility.

But then the film draws the two sides together and our muralist says he ‘hopes our two styles can work together.’ Well, they can’t really, but it’s a nice thought.

University of California Has Physically Attacked Tuition-Paying Students

by Cimaxion

University of California at Davis students staging a sit-in have been attacked by school police with massive doses of pepper spray. The use of weapons against tuition-paying students by the university is grounds for removal of any administration officials with knowledge of these tactics. This is disgusting. Students have a long-standing tradition of free expression on their campuses. Sit-ins are a harmless and excellent way for students to express outrage. The pepper-spraying police should at the very least be discharged. There should also be legal charges brought against them.

The spectacle of the university going after its students with weaponry and armored police thugs is simply outrageous. It’s an appalling act of stupidity and cruelty. This school should be hammered with lawsuits and public outrage. While Penn State University allegedly rapes small children, University of California blasts pepper spray into the faces of its kids. What the fuck may I ask is going on in this country? Our higher education system has typically been the only thing giving our country an edge internationally. Now it would seem that even that system is cracking.

It seems clear that every single protester at every protest nationwide should be armed with a canister of pepper spray to use against police. Their faces are vulnerable under the helmet guards. Every single protester with pepper spray. It looks to me like the time for passivity might be ending. There is a tactic that I think could be used against police. It would be the singling out of an individual officer by hundreds of protesters. The surrounding of a single officer might put the police ranks into a very uncomfortable position.

Congressional Effort to Censor the Internet

by Cimaxion

The ‘Protect IP’ bill before Congress would give corporations and the government the power to completely shut down internet sites without any due process just for posting a single copyright infringing link. So for a site like Facebook, if a single user posted a single copyrighted something or other, the government could simply pull the plug on Facebook and turn it off.

But chances are the law would be used to stifle expression and ideas from smaller sites. The government would simply have to accuse a site of being engaged in piracy and that site would be effectively terminated.

That’s a terrifying abuse of power. It would complete destroy the internet and anything resembling freedom of communication. This is a glaring example of how a small number of large corporations have taken total control of the Unites States government.

You can sign a petition and learn more at fightforthefuture.org/pipa.

Girls: A Violent and Gorgeous Film by Maureen O’Connell

by Cimaxion | 2 Comments

This film’s writer and director, Maureen O’Connell, is a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. The school doesn’t make a good first impression with all its diction and dialects. But her film does. I’m a bit of a jerk about British drama training. Derek Jacobi once made an offer of employment that I refused while asked for another beer. That’s my general attitude about the Kenneth Branagh tribe. Nobody’s ever produced duller Shakespeare than Mr. I-Am-a-Hard-Working-Shakespearean-Dammit! O’Connell comes from Ireland… usually an ace up an actor’s sleeve… except in Mr. Branagh’s case. If O’Connell can keep RADA off of her back, she might just have something very fine going on as a director. She’s made a great film here. There are some technical issues with sound that annoy me, but they seem easily solvable by simply converting a stereo track to mono and blending a few audio transitions together. Someone could fix that up in a few minutes for her.

The film is about a comfortably middle-class girl who seems disconnected from her family and friends. She takes a sudden turn toward what I can only call suburban violence. The film builds quietly toward a surprising viciousness that seems very real. O’Connell darts around the action like she’s making a documentary. She works well with actors, somehow getting large groups of them to create scenes that are shockingly realistic and disturbing. There’s not a hint of awkwardness in her camera work. In fact, she seems, along with director of photography Arthur Mulhern, to revel in what I call the messy image. It is my belief that only people who seek out messy images can become great filmmakers. I will not explain that too much. It should be obvious to any filmmaker. The film contains a crystallizing and gorgeous image where O’Connell points the camera into the sun and tracks a running group of teenagers after a fight. It’s a great image that violates the norms of video photography. In fact, I notice quite a bit of light leaking into the lens during the film. O’Connell’s violence is shocking but also mesmerizing. She approaches it in a slightly off-kilter manner that I can’t quite get a handle on. Just when you think it’s time for her to calm down and quiet things, someone gets kicked in the face. She just has a natural sense of drama.

Her lead performer, Marilyn Bane, conveys her role brilliantly. She is a cross between likeable innocence and brute savage that I want to hit with a baseball bat. Really fine work. All the actors are terrific and the group of ass-kicking girls is just horrifying.

So this Maureen O’Connell is probably going to be making something very fine for the BBC soon. Get ready for it. Because it won’t be pretty. But it’ll leave a big bruise for a long while.  She’ll most likely have to get over all that RADA stuff.  Although, to contradict myself slightly, she does do this nice little Romeo & Juliet thing that I listened to!

Occupy Wall Street Keeps Coming Back

by Cimaxion

Rachel Maddow does a wonderful piece on the freedom of speech aspects of Occupy Wall Street. She contrasts the police at University of California’s Berkeley campus shoving students with batons to the 1964 Mario Savio speech in support of free speech for students. The police violence against students last week happened on the very plaza that celebrates Savio’s great speech.

New York City Police Attack and Destroy Occupy Wall Street Encampment

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

On the orders of New York mayor Bloomberg, the NYPD staged a brazen and unwarranted attack on the Zuccotti Park protesters of Occupy Wall Street late last night, removing and destroying the entire camp. This assault on Occupy Wall Street appears to be a coordinated nationwide effort with police departments in various cities operating in near concert.

New York has been foolish. The police should not have done this.

There are major protest activities approaching this week. The police assaults may be an effort to head things off before any more major statements can be made by the movement. However, it would be my guess that now all the gloves come off. It would not be unreasonable for massive numbers of protesters to shut down the entire Wall Street area. I think now the movement will be justified in the general public opinion when it escalates its actions. My guess is that if it wasn’t yet, Wall Street is about to become ground zero.

It does appear that there is a court order against New York to allow the protesters back into the park with their tents.  However, Mayor Bloomberg is ignoring the court’s order.

It is also reported that the police destroyed the protesters’ library of 5,000 books during their raid. Get it? That’s basically a book-burning.

It looks like the police also prevented press coverage of the attack. Network news helicopters were prevented from flying and journalists were roughed up and kept away.

However, it has now become clear that the Zuccotti Park protesters last week surrounded an emergency medical technician to prevent him from taking a mentally ill patient to hospital.  The EMT’s leg was broken in the scuffle.  That story fits in perfectly with the experience of a Rolling Stone reporter who was surrounded and prevented from interviewing someone.  One of those acts is a serious crime committed by the protesters against an emergency worker.  The other is an infringement of the right to freely speak with another person.  It is also an attempt to prevent a journalist from doing his or her job. I do not support such actions on the part of the protesters. But those are not reasons to destroy their encampments.

Here is Keith Olbermann excoriating mayor Bloomberg for his raging stupidity:

Here’s a television news report about the NYPD raid:

Here’s a live feed from the Zuccotti Park area:

Watch live streaming video from globalrevolution at livestream.com

Traumatografo: Magnificent and Mysterious 1975 Film by Paolo Gioli

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

I did not know this filmmaker, Paolo Gioli, existed until yesterday. And that really bothers me because I feel a very strong kinship with this filmmaker just on the basis of having seen two of his pieces. What can a filmmaker do with his own backyard? That is the question that comes to my mind as I watch his films. Can a filmmaker take his camera out back and make something astounding? Of course. In fact, that skill is central to being a creative filmmaker. It is the feeling I get from Gioli. He makes films that have a guiding concern but he is not afraid to slip a little off of the main track and let you see him experimenting. One can observe his enthusiasm for a new mechanical technique and he allows his film to wander into the territory of the new machine or splicing method for a while. And then he comes back to the main thing. He never lets this get out of control and it is a miracle to watch. One can learn how to experiment by watching a brilliant experimentalist. It’s that simple.

There are many filmmakers I wish I could meet and perhaps work with. Gioli is one of them. In fact, this brings to mind again my thought that things like YouTube are the greatest cinematic development of the past half century. The reason has nothing to do with screen format or size or image quality. It has to do with intimacy. The feeling of connection one can get by watching a filmmaker’s work on the computer is far more intimate than could be achieved in a theater. It is this quality that is the most important contribution of online film to world cinema. Intimate connection to the artist. It has a powerful effect on artists and communicates ideas and inspiration from generation to generation far more effectively than any prior cinematic display technology.

Here is a nice long article by Bart Testa about this wonderful Italian filmmaker.

Here is an article by David Bordwell on how Gioli’s hand-made cameras influence his ‘vertical cinema’ technique.

Penn State Students Riot and Attack TV Van Over Firing of Coach Who Would Not Call Police to Report a Child Rape

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

In a deeply troubling sign of the mentality of Penn State University’s student body, mobs of students rioted yesterday in protest of the university’s firing of football coach Joe Paterno. He is the coach to whom a child rape was reported by a graduate student who witnessed the crime and allowed it to continue. That graduate student is now active receivers coach, Mike McQueary. Why this person has not also been fired is a total mystery. Paterno apparently thought his duties only required him to report the grad student’s allegation to his boss. He neglected to call the police. It would seem that he also neglected to follow up on the crime at any time during a nine-year period. The moral failure of such neglect is immense. Penn State University was certainly correct to eliminate such a person from its staff as quickly as possible. But the callous disregard for the damaged lives of the young rape victims on the part of the Penn State student body is not only revolting, it is frightening. These are young adults about to move into society and take jobs. They are supposedly educated. But they are raging in the streets and destroying journalists’ equipment over a football coach who refused to take any sort of adequate action following the brutal rape of a ten year old child.

It would amaze me if the university did not immediately act to expel every student it could identify as having engaged in violence against the journalists’ van at the very least.

These are students that I would want nothing to do with. Ever. I’m sure there are students who disagree with these rioters and those should not be lumped in with these barbaric people. This is a mob that has been fielded by this university. It simply cannot be ignored. They are a repulsive example of what Penn State University has to offer to the state it serves and to its nation. They have no apparent feeling about the rape of a child. They seem to believe that a man can ignore his duty to protect children and still maintain his status as ‘living legend.’ These people in this rioting mob should remember for the rest of their lives exactly how they behaved in the face of children who were raped and who went unaided by the heartless, reprehensible Joe Paterno and other members of the Penn State administration. Horrible. Disgusting.

Here is video of the student attack on a journalism van. It appears to have been taken by one of the rioting students. Mature content with language:

Would you hire one of these people for your company? Would you want one of these people living next to you?