Yearly Archives: 2011

Creepy Claymation Brings Satan to Mark Twain’s Door

by Cimaxion

This is a genuinely disturbing look at how you can teach your kids all about the cruel world they find themselves living in. Today’s pleasant little lesson comes courtesy of Mr. Mark Twain’s novel ‘The Mysterious Stranger‘ which had this scene adapted to claymation for the 1986 feature film, ‘The Adventures of Mark Twain.’ Satan him or herself pays an unannounced visit to Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Becky Thatcher so that he can show them how to build their very own little world of people and then destroy it with all the plagues and violence of mankind.

TV Commercials From the 1970s

by Cimaxion

Imagine yourself sitting in a finished basement room with wood panel walls, a nice thick shag carpet, and a long low console television. In the 70s, I remember running from house to house to see everyone’s color screens because I had a black & white at home. An episode of Star Trek in full color glory was a rare form of Nirvana for me. I wasn’t really as uncool as that sounds. Don’t let it fool you. Pretty soon our current infatuation with HD will seem just as naive.

Aleph: California Beat Artist Wallace Berman’s Only Film

by Cimaxion

While I was running through the Getty Center’s flagship portion of the massive citywide ‘Pacific Standard Time‘ art exhibit, I was struck by just how great this Wallace Berman fellow really was. Known primarily as the ‘father’ of assemblage art, he was also a member of the Beat Movement. He made a single film which occupied much of his time through the 1960s and 70s. It’s less than eight minutes long and it’s a drop dead gorgeous thing to see. He’s one of those film artists interested in what I like to call the messy image. The film seems to have been dragged through ink and dirt. It’s been scratched, wrinkled, folded, cut, slashed and stained. Letters flash by like subliminal messages. Pop culture crashes into modern art. He films magazines, papers, radios, faces, hands, rock stars, body parts, buildings, streets and apparently just about everything he had lying around in his studio. This film is a quiet little reminder that crystal clear HD and super sharp focus are not anywhere near the concerns of some artists.

And here is California assemblage artist George Herms talking about Berman recently as part of the Pacific Standard Time series of exhibits:

Crosscurrents: Film About Pacific Standard Time Art Exhibits Focused on Los Angeles Art From 1945 – 1980

by Cimaxion

Pacific Standard Time is a massive overview of Los Angeles art from 1945 to 1980. At least sixty galleries and museums are taking part over the next few months. I have already been to the largest exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Getty Center. The whole thing is a lot of fun and I have discovered artists I never knew about before. There are magnificent things on display and the curators have also published big books to go along with each exhibit. I seriously recommend that you always get the books because they have far more information in them than the exhibits themselves. I view it as my own effort to compile a record of this unique regional art show.

You can find almost everything you need at the Pacific Standard Time web site.

This film was put together for the Getty Center’s flagship exhibit, Crosscurrents, which covers 1950 to 1970. It’s a very nice little documentary about some of the major art developments in Los Angeles.

Congress Attempting to Hand U.S. Military the Power to Disappear Americans

by Cimaxion

The U.S. Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act which codifies into law the power of the U.S. military to arrest and detain Americans indefinitely, without any legal charges and without any oversight whatsoever. In other words, the United States government is handing its military the power to disappear anyone it wants to. The bill apparently designates the entire planet as a battlefield and makes it legal for the military to imprison U.S. citizens for any reason. No evidence of any wrongdoing is required. The military could simply suspect or dislike you and make you vanish. Forever. No one will even know what happened to you. A soldier can drive up, grab you, put you in an unmarked van, take you to a military prison, and keep you there until you die. That is exactly the same authority wielded by every South and Central American dictator over the past sixty years. It’s a power used by dictators and authoritarian police states across the globe.

Only seven Senators voted against this terrifying bill. They are:

R-Rand Paul (KY)
R-Thomas Coburn (OK)
R-Mike Lee (UT)
D-Thomas Harken (IA)
D-Ron Wyden (OR)
D-Jeff Merkley (OR),
I-Bernard Sanders (VT) (one of 2 Independen­ts in the Senate)

Well, now you know. It would seem clear that the other senators are becoming a threat to civil rights and the protections of the U.S. Constitution. I don’t really see any way to logically argue in favor of these people or support their continued presence in the Senate.

The Obama administration has said that the President will most likely veto this bill if it reaches him. But it is Obama who has opened the door for this bill by resolutely defending his right to kill any American citizen that he defines as an enemy… without charges and without trial. Our President now executes Americans without trials. And now our Senate wants the military to snatch people without trials.

Here’s the Facebook page for ‘One Billion Against Indefinite Detention Without Trial Law.‘

Trailer for Disney’s John Carter Film

by Cimaxion

Here’s the first official trailer for Disney’s upcoming film, ‘John Carter.’ It’s an odd way to retitle Edgar Rice Burroughs’ science fiction novel, ‘A Princess of Mars.’ But that’s what they’ve done. I don’t imagine there are too many people who will go see a movie named for someone called John Carter. But anything is possible. If you’d like to put up with some very bad writing by Mr. Burroughs, you can listen to Candlelight’s complete audio book version of the novel. I’m not sure why I recorded it at all. Burroughs turned what should have been a short story into a novel by making all of his sentences run the length of football fields.