Oh that lucky fellow, Saint Antoine! To find myself in his shoes as he is ‘tormented’ by the temptations popping in and out of his little cave! My oh my! What a lucky guy! This is Georges Méliès experimenting with making people appear and disappear magically.
Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin made this short film which is inspired by an 1882 illustration by Odilon Redon that was in turn inspired by the writing of Edgar Allan Poe. It has a kind of wild sinister fantasy about it that fascinates me. I like the way Maddin builds little sets that end up looking almost like illustrations. He also does a quick visual quote of a great old French film called L’Atalante by Jean Vigo. This is a frightening and beautiful dream film.
Pacific Standard Time, the roaringly cheerful celebration by Southern California of its own art from the late 40s through the early 80s is releasing short videos to pump everyone up for its brand of art. I should be horrified by this silly video, but I’m not. I kind of like Baldessari’s big ass head on the wall. It works all the way up until he says ‘Art should be fun.’ Yeah, really? I dunno. Sounds like the kind of thing you say to an idiot.
But whatever. I’m going to see a lot of the exhibitions that are part of this festival. Should be really great.
ADULT CONTENT
Here’s an awesome horror short that’s a very professional grade fan film based on Ben Templesmith’s ‘Welcome to Hoxford’ comic book. It’s bloody impressive and has a nice creepy psychotic edge to it. The film was directed by Julien Mokrani. Just what the warden ordered for Halloween’s month of October!
Here’s the fan film web site.
Let’s begin the creepy festivities of October with this short film by Pixar’s Rodrigo Blaas.
Django’s Ghost has posted a stirring and rather enthralling video compilation of the ongoing and exploding phenomenon known as Occupy Wall Street. The film is set to several rock & roll protest songs and it gets across the feelings of rising anger and the public’s growing awareness that it can in fact stop the corporate takeover of the United States.
The protesters seem to me to be a rather intelligent and well-behaved crowd. Some of the New York police however appear to be overeager. Cops always end up on the wrong side of these things. They never get it right. Many of them seem to be pretty easy-going, but there are always the brutes that come stomping in and make a mess of things.
I love the way the crowd is so heavily armed with photographic equipment. The protesters are their own journalists!
This movement is spreading quickly. It’s come to Los Angeles at City Hall and is springing up in other cities as well. People are angry about the corporate takeover of their country and their Supreme Court. Losing a President to corporate interests is one thing. That is rather expected. Obama jerked us all around and then turned into a cheeseball from General Motors. But when our Supreme Court gets bought out and turns into a boardroom… well, that is a terrifying problem. That is just about the end of the line. A democracy cannot survive the corruption of the judicial branch.
Thanks to Marc Campbell at Dangerous Minds.