7th Planet Coming in Oct.
First night Oct. 25th. Additional details forthcoming…
Gwildor Loves You
What do you do when you’ve been commissioned to make a fantasy cartoon based on toys into a live-action feature film? Keep in mind that it’s the 80’s, and you’ve been given $17 million or so. Hiring Henson’s people is out. Besides, they’re working on A Muppet Family Christmas. The cartoon has, among other whimsical and fantastic characters, a giant, green, talking cat, and a floating wizard with no face. How do you afford to depict such supernatural characters?
Well. If you’re working for Golan Globus, you axe the cat altogether. Then, you take Orco, the floating wizard out, and give him a goofy character analogue comprised of Billy Barty with stretched out ballsac prosthesis on his face and have him run around making stupid grins, talking to cows, and being generally loveable. (Please kill it.)
Gwildor is only one thing that makes Masters of the Universe a hilarious crapfest of a film. For example, they also give Dolph Lundgren a speaking part. (Even though they don’t let him talk, too much.)
If you want to subject yourself to this movie, (you know you do, masochist) while I make fun of it with Fatboy Roberts and Erik Henriksen, come see it on Sunday at 10pm at Coho Productions! You can yell at it, too. This movie deserves it. It’s a terrible movie!
Crowd Sourcing is Good Sometimes
Darth Vader?
…like when you’re making a stitchy remake of Star Wars: A New Hope using 472 15-second clips. Each done by a different person, and, of course, in a different style.
So far there are only 3 finished clips on the Star Wars: Uncut site. I have to say. I cannot wait until this is finished. I think I may even throw a viewing party for it.
Who’s with me!? (If you’re not with me, you’re against me.)
The Room is Awesome, Dudes.
Last night I had some people over to watch autuer Tommy Wiseau’s cinematic tour de force charmingly awful feature, The Room. Okay, well I invited some people, but actually @jarvitron was the only person with enough balls to show up. (with a 12 pack of Miller High Life, I might add. There’s a guy who knows how to party.) But that’s okay, because @jarvitron is awesome and my housemates @djscandal and @superBR were on hand, as well. Plus we had chips and salsa and I still have tons of fudgesicles, popcorn, ice cream sandwiches, etc, left for next week.
The Room was everything the trailer hints at, and more. At the risk of spoiling it for you, (impossible) I include this bullet pointed list of items that make this film great.
- people playing football on very small rooftops while having serious discussions
- random characters who show up out of nowhere at pivotal plot points and just sorta hang out the rest of the film
- a script that appears to have been written by a schizophrenic adolescent
The Room has a large cult following in LA, where there are regular screenings, allegedly often attended by Tommy Wiseau himself! According to the Wikipedia entry, Wiseau sells T-shirts and DVD’s at the events, as well as doing Q & A’s. Fans dress up as their favorite characters, throw footballs at each other from a few feet away, and yell insults at the film.
I highly recommend you check out The Room. (You may be able to download it from The Pirate Bay. Just sayin’.)
Thanks to Portland Merucury Film Editor Erik Henriksen for telling me about this stunning work of cinema.
Seen Around PDX
Some of you may remember that I started a photoblog, called SeenAroundPDX, back in May. That experiment has now settled down into a ghostly torpor. I’ve decided to do all my photo posts here. I’ll still keep seenaroundpdx up in case any of you want to poke around in the archives.
That being said, here are some photos I’ve been meaning to share with you. They’re not high quality (iPhone) but I’m going to say they have conceptual value!
DVD that one of my housemates let me borrow and my review, on a post-it
An ink jet printer, in the process of being dismantled, during one of my recycling shifts at Free Geek.
I forget where I saw this. In a men's restroom somewhere.
Time to laminate grampa again.
Sleeep.
In an example of re-use that should make all of Portland proud, these people turned their Halloween skeleton into a pilgrim. Wonder if it has a Santa getup now.
Gee, PG&E. Trying to get a message across? Why don't you just write "WE ARE FUCKING GREEN AS SHIT!" on a sledgehammer and bash my fucking brains out with it.
the imager in the build workshop at Free Geek. This is four computers with easy cradle insertion/removal for the hard drives. This is where we install Ubuntu Hardy on the drives that builders install in the computers.
A cat is sleeping
This is what I do when I’m up until six in the morning. It’s so bizarre that I’m not making six-figures working as an avant, rising-star creative for some hot start-up.
I just feel like the world needs this. I’ll prove it to you some day. I promise.
><: Level 2
i-cubed-HYPERMEDIA, those sneaky folks behind the very sexy, mesmerizing, and idiomatic video piece that is B-17 have been at it again, right under my nose! (I wrote about b-seventeen here.) I just noticed today they’ve already released several parts of a new short film, which is still a work in progress.
The film is described on the website by the Chicago based filmmakers as “A rhythmic and glittering master/slave story about international economics”
Fair enough. So far I’ve only watched the first part.
It nicely lived up to my expectations. It’s tough to find stuff with this level of originality and quirkiness that also has great production value. I look forward to watching the rest of the film, in the, uh, privacy and comfort of my own bedroom.
Here’s a link to the playlist:
Portland Indie Film Revival
There’s a mini film festival going on at the Broadway Metroplex (1000 SW Broadway) in Portland. A few of my favorites are in the schedule, including these three weeks in a row:
June 16: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
June 23: Punch Drunk Love
June 30: Secretary
I’ll be in there with my eyes taped to the goddamn screen for all these beautiful films. I’m bringing a group. If you’re gonna be in Portland and want to go to any of these, drop me a line.
via Portland Mercury’s Blogtown PDX
B-17 A mini epic
Somewhere in between all the nonsense teenage-boy videoblogs, duck vs. goat, and girl fights on youtube, you can actually find something genuinely sexy. B-17 is the story of Sarah and Yumi who are secret sex slaves, kept in a basement cell. It’s a collection of 11 videos that form the full short film. i-cubed productions managed to make something that has a ring of dark fantasy without taking itself so seriously that it becomes ridiculous or contrived.
A heavy fetish theme, an extremely cute main character, a meticulously constructed trash-art set, and a neat original “lo-fi” electronic score, among other things puts b-17 on my all time list of internet awesome. And, well, it’s fucking hot.
In addition to the 11 videos that form the main part of the series, there are bonus clips and behind the scenes materials on the youtube account. Here, for your consideration, is the second part.
The i^3 people also have some interesting and progressive ideas about filmmaking and creative process. Trying out things like “interstitial” media, and encouraging other artists to do so. According to their Hyper-Cinema Manifesto, their aim is:
“A cinema that bypasses the socioeconomic and administrative movie making machine, a gauntlet that turns many a film into just another watered down and unsuspecting vehicle for the “big message.”
I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for their future projects.
Koyaanisqatsi
For some weird reason, that could only be explained by the mysterious pulsing of my subconscious, while chugging down $1 pbr at The Lex, a film that I saw last year popped into my head.
Koyaanisqatsi is, mostly, a collection of time lapsed images put to frenetic music. The word, coming to us from the Hopi language, means “life out of balance” or “a state of life that calls for another way of living.” The film shows us how much our world is really some kind of fucked up factory. We’re all hot dogs, dude.
As unsettling as it is, and as difficult and anxiety inducing it was to sit through, it remains one of the most profound viewing experiences of my entire life.
I twittered to see who else had seen the film and I got a couple responses:
I also got a message from Orinz about it, but he DM’d me so I’m not going to put a screen shot here, but he put forth a film called Baraka as having the same concept but expressing it better. I’ll have to check it out
My ex, Nikol Hasler, also sent word that she’d seen the film and loved it, but I suspect her love for it has less to do with the actual film than the fact that the score composer just happens to be a cousin of this guy.
In any case. Watch it. Just try drinking chamomile instead of coffee beforehand.
