Author Archives: Cimaxion

The Charles Bukowski Tapes by Barbet Schroeder

by Cimaxion

Bukowski

During the lengthy production of the film ‘Barfly,’ director Barbet Schroeder conducted a series of short interviews with the poet Charles Bukowski. This is the complete set of those interviews and comes in at nearly four hours. Observe Bukowski and see what you think of his style. He was an incredibly sensitive soul trying to be a boxer. He was also one of those people who when they speak you just can’t wait to hear what they might say next. A real page-turner of a person.

If you want to read a fascinating book about the time of making Barfly, read Bukowski’s novel, ‘Hollywood.’ He changes the names of all the people involved, but you can easily figure out who they are. It is the best book about making a movie I have ever read in my entire life – without exception.

Singer Not the Song: A Film by Joewi Verhoeven

by Cimaxion

SingerNotTheSong

Singer Not the Song is Joewi Verhoeven’s beautifully made graduation film from Beijing, China. It tells the story of a young songwriter who finds an unexpected connection to a famous dead pop star. Liang Ming plays the lead role with quiet, building emotion. I enjoy the way this filmmaker mixes everyday observations of life in Beijing with an outlandishly melodramatic storyline.

Please Beware the Deadly Hipsters

by Cimaxion

Hipsters

Take heed parents! Protect your children from the evil of hipsters! This film directed by Tim Goggin, edited by Tim Goggin, and written by Tim Goggin shows us the warning signs of a hipster invasion.

Bob Dylan’s Interactive Video for Like a Rolling Stone

by Cimaxion | 1 Comment

DylanRollingStoneVideo

Bob Dylan has seen fit after 48 years to create a music video for his brilliant song, ‘Like a Rolling Stone.’ He’s made an interactive television channel-surfing nightmare of an interactive video that takes you into the basement den to slouch on the couch and watch hours of scintillating daytime television. It’s the perfect thing for anyone driven to insanity by daily app updates and 24 hour breaking news.

The producers of Dylan’s video, Interlude, have built the interactive piece with Flash. The interface is simple and effective. You may get into trouble with the heavy video streaming if you start pausing and restarting. If you do, reload the page and start again. Flash won’t play on Apple mobile devices, but Interlude has a free iPad app that will play the video… sort of. In reality, the iPad app is unusable and presents the user with no intelligible interface whatsoever. So if you are trying to watch Dylan’s bombshell of a music video on an iPad, you’re just out of luck.

I appreciate this because it’s been an obnoxious few years of listening to idiots whine about the bugs of Flash while hearing scant mention of how the powerful animation and coding environment empowered many young people with small or no budget to produce incredible visual stories, some of which spawned television shows. In the history of the web there has been no piece of software that even comes close to the creative explosion set off by Flash.

Dylan’s video gives us many channels on what appears to be daytime television that we can hop between while watching every anchor, actor, athlete, reality TV moron, pundit or spokesperson lip-synch to his song. It’s as if some maniacal hacker got into the airwaves and plastered Dylan’s song on top of every broadcast. Or perhaps the viewer is simply distracted and the multiple inputs of song and television merge into one general dream impression. It’s depressingly brilliant. It turns the TV into the internet.

You can also watch it on Bob Dylan’s official web site. It was produced by Interlude.