The subjects of Nydia Lilian’s photography are varied—everything from landscapes to insects arranged in kaleidoscopic patterns—but she captures all of them in a similarly gloomy, evocative light, sticking to black and white for all of her creative projects. For her newest series, bad dream, Lilian explores the format of the venerable GIF.
Looking at landscapes, cityscapes, and wild patterns through a dynamic eye, she presents each piece flashing between its actual color (in black and white) and its negative colors. The alternating images give the illusion that you are eternally zooming in on the picture, moving quickly enough that they create a disorienting feeling akin to this psychedelic gem, although significantly more pleasing to the eye. Fun as they are to look at, let’s hope no one is actually having “bad dreams” of this nature.
Just in time for awards season, Focus Features concocted a clever campaign for their Academy Award nominee for Best Original Screenplay, Moonrise Kingdom.
The entire script of Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola’s film about a town searching for two runaway 12-year-olds in love is available for free online on the Focus Features website.
The brightly-colored illustrated script resembles the set design of the movie and features both behind-the-scenes photos and shots from the completed film. Handwritten production notes and inspiration artwork are also included.
Directed by Anderson, Moonrise Kingdom stars youngsters Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward as well as Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand and Tilda Swinton.
Click on the image below to download the script as PDF file.
Grounded in the elegiac compositions of classical composer Benjamin Britten, whose majestic choral Noyes Fludde ignites the film’s young lovers, Moonrise Kingdom features masterworks performed by Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic as well as popular gems performed by French chanteuse Françoise Hardy and the legendary country troubadour Hank Williams.
As in all of Anderson’s previous films, music is an essential element and once again it is used to masterful effect. Moonrise Kingdom includes an original suite by renowned film composer Alexandre Desplat as well as percussion compositions by longtime Anderson collaborator and Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh. This soundtrack is one of his most interesting and compelling releases.
The new video for Ty Segall’s crunchy garage punk track “Thank God For Sinners” gets real fleshy, real soon. Directed by Matt Yoka, it dares you to wonder just which writhing body part you’re staring at. Watch it below. That is, if you’ve got the stomach.
“Thank God For Sinners” is off Twins, out now via Drag City. His next single, “Would You Be My Love”, drops as a 7″ single today (January 22nd.) Pre-order it here.
In related news, the San Francisco rocker kicks off his first full North American tour in support of Twins this weekend. Check out his updated tour schedule.
Ra Ra Riot bassist Mathieu Santos released a solo album called Massachusetts 2010 last year, and today we’ve got the eyebleed of a visual for the single “Northern Mentality.” Given that the song is a percussive, hypnotic indie number, the video is pretty good match, with respect to aesthetic. Cole Hannon directs and composes.
The Beat Hotel, a new film by Documentary Arts, goes deep into the legacy of the American Beats in Paris during the heady years between 1957 and 1963, when Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky and Gregory Corso fled the obscenity trials in the United States surrounding the publication of Ginsbergs poem Howl. They took refuge in a cheap no-name hotel they had heard about at 9, Rue Git le Coeur and were soon joined by William Burroughs, Ian Somerville, Brion Gysin, and others from England and elsewhere in Europe, seeking out the freedom that the Latin Quarter of Paris might provide.
The Beat Hotel, as it came to be called, was a sanctuary of creativity, but was also, as British photographer Harold Chapman recalls, an entire community of complete oddballs, bizarre, strange people, poets, writers, artists, musicians, pimps, prostitutes, policemen, and everybody you could imagine. And in this environment, Burroughs finished his controversial book Naked Lunch; Ian Somerville and Brion Gysin invented the Dream Machine; Corso wrote some of his greatest poems; and Harold Norse, in his own cut-up experiments, wrote the novella, aptly called The Beat Hotel.
The film tracks down Harold Chapman in the small seaside town of Deal in Kent England. Chapmans photographs are iconic of a time and place when Ginsberg, Orlovsky, Corso, Burroughs, Gysin, Somerville and Norse were just beginning to establish themselves on the international scene. Chapman lived in the attic of the hotel, and according to Ginsberg didnt say a word for two years because he wanted to be invisible and to document the scene as it actually happened.
In the film, Chapmans photographs and stylized dramatic recreations of his stories meld with the recollections of Elliot Rudie, a Scottish artist, whose drawings of his time in the hotel offer a poignant and sometimes humorous counterpoint. The memories of Chapman and Rudie interweave with the insights of French artist Jean-Jacques Lebel, author Barry Miles, Danish filmmaker Lars Movin, and the first hand accounts of Oliver Harris, Regina Weinrich, Patrick Amie, Eddie Woods, and 95 year old George Whitman, among others, to evoke a portrait of Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso and the oddities of the Beat Hotel that is at once unexpected and revealing.
A few days ago we posted a mash-up article about Bob Mizer and thanks to it being mentioned by Claire B. Potter on his blog Tenured Radical, I realized there was an exhibition going on in Manhattan, so I decided to go see the Bob Mizer show at Invisible Exports, a tiny gallery on Orchard Street.
Given the size of the original archive (about 2 million pictures), the size of the exhibition (just a few pictures) was a little disappointing, however it was still totally worth it to take the time to see some of the pictures they have. The one at the top is the one I liked the most.
One thing that caught my attention though was the page with symbols below which I saw on the book Bob’s World in the gallery.
“Those familiar with the photo studio Athletic Model Guild will remember that many of their publications, Physique Pictorials, included sort of horoscope-looking cryptic symbols next to many models’ bios. No explanation was given within Physiqe Pictorial for these symbols and should a customer inquire to their purpose, he was often told they were for AMG’s own record-keeping.
However, if a customer continued to be on AMG’s mailing list for a some time and AMG became somewhat assured that the patron was not a cop, he was sent a copy of the legend, called “Subjective Character Analysis”. The wording of the legend is dubious and reads as some Jungian personality-test mumbo-jumbo which, in itself, is interesting enough. One only has to read between the lines, though, to understand the real message, ie: the size of the dick under those posing straps, whether the model was gay or straight, what exactly he was willing to do for money, etc.
Most of the information was based on the photographer’s interviews while photographing the model as well as gossip provided by associates and acquaintances. (One assumes it was probably a very SMALL world).
The reasoning behind presenting the information in such an arcane and guarded way was, simply, so it’s real intent couldn’t be proved in court. Remember, this is a time when posing straps and wrestling were as close to nudity and sex that one could legally publish. As secretive and furtive as AMG tried to be with this information, though, the firm was once closed down by authorities as being a front for an escort/hustler service — purely based on the existence of these Character Analysis codes.” (Taken from Monte Hanson)
In Fireworks are released, all the explosive pyrotechnics of a dream. The inflammable desires, dampened by day under the cold water of consciousness, are ignited at night by the libertarian matches of sleep, and burst forth in showers of shimmering incandescence. These imaginary displays provide a temporary relief.
FIREWORKS was first publicly screened in a version with no opening titles. A title sequence and narrated prologue were later added. In 1966 Anger exhibited a version with hand-painting, the only copy of which was subsequently lost in a fire. A later version featured a new title sequence and was printed with a blue cast.
UCLA has preserved the first two release versions in 35mm from surviving early 16mm prints, and is preserving the final version in 16mm from the reconstructed 16mm color and black-and-white A/B rolls.
This print is the version containing Anger’s prologue.
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, one of the sound effects units of the BBC, was created in 1958 to produce effects and new music for radio, and was originally closed in March 1998, although much of its traditional work had already been outsourced by 1995.
The BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop was born out of a desire to create ‘new kinds of sounds’. Alchemists of Sound looks at this creative group from its inception, through its golden age when it was supplying music and effects for cult classics like Doctor Who, Blake’s Seven and Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, and charts its fading away in 1995 when, due to budget cuts, it was no longer able to survive.
Igorrr (aka Gautier Serre) is a French composer of electronic and acoustic music who mixes genres as widely varying as breakcore, glitch, baroque, death metal and trip hop among others.
“Imagine what would be if a church organist goes crazy, learns to growl, masters the wisdom of working with sound on computer, learns to beat drums rhythms in the manner of Slipknot, plays drum machine à la Venetian Snares. His favorite musical instruments would be Latin guitar, he would listen to music of the Middle Ages and his hobby would be to collect old records. Have you imagined that? Well, Igorrr is something of this kind.” — Dmitry Quarck, soundproector.com
Born illegitimately
To a whore, most likely
He became an orphan
Oh what a lovely orphan he was
Sent to the reformatory
Ten years old, was his first glory
Got caught stealing from a nun
Now his love story has begun
All those beautiful boys
Pimps and Queens
And criminal queers
All those beautiful boys
Tattoos of ships and tattoos of tears
Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.
