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I met Godfrey once[humblebrag alert] at the Telluride FF a few...

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:46:41 -0400

I met Godfrey once[humblebrag alert] at the Telluride FF a few years back, really cool, interesting guy. He was a former Roman Catholic monk, who was asked to leave the order because of the many politically progressive activities he was involved in, including health care and community organizing in the barrios of New Mexico, as well as working with the American Civil Liberties Union. He also happens to be a very tall dude, 6’7”. And as nice as they come.

Can’t really tell where this is going, but if it’s Reggio, I’ll take the trip.

tmaction:

Godfrey Reggio, the filmmaker who made Koyaanisqatsi, is completing a new film, his first in eleven years, entitled Visitors. This is a confusing trailer from when it was going to be called The Holy See.

Reggio’s “pure cinema” works are hard to sum up in a sentence, and the new film is no different. “It’s connected to the other Qatsi films in the sense it’s Godfrey’s wordless take on a certain subject, but he’s changed his game here,” Soderbergh said. “There’s more directing in it, more things he’s specifically staging for the camera than he’s done before, and there are performers in the film. He’s taken what he does and pushed it into a new area, which was really exciting for me to watch. It’s thirty years ago this year when Koyaanisqatsi came out. I watched it again, and there just isn’t a single, visual idea in that movie that hasn’t been ripped off, assimilated, regurgitated, built upon. Actually I watched all three films again, and it made me laugh how other directors just took his language and just ran with it. Here, he’s moved the goal post as if to challenge others and say, ‘Alright, let’s see what you can do with this.’ It’s so striking, but not necessarily immediately applicable to what everybody else does. They’ll have to work to steal this one.”

Stoked that Philip Glass scored it.

I listened to Rossellini’s interview with studio 360 on...

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:07:42 -0400

I listened to Rossellini’s interview with studio 360 on Sunday. I like her, and the series. She and shorts are creatively superweird, in the best way possible.

wnyc:

Isabella Rossellini is probably the only renowned female actress who has fully embraced the medium of the web video. In her latest effort, Mammas, she takes an unsentimental look at motherhood — very unsentimental. The mothers in the new series of film shorts take multiple husbands, abandon their young, even cannibalize them. And they take maternal self-sacrifice to an extreme, letting their hungry young devour them. Studio 360 got the lowdown.

Maybe the best intro…..ever? That was some spiritual...

Tue, 14 May 2013 08:51:30 -0400

Maybe the best intro…..ever? That was some spiritual shit.

kateoplis:

You may want to get up for this.

“Frenchie” from my short documentary series This...

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:04:18 -0400

“Frenchie”

from my short documentary series This Must Be The Place

Hope you like it!

Their paths cross again. dailydot: Spike Lee creepin on Reggie...

Thu, 09 May 2013 21:05:35 -0400

Their paths cross again.

dailydot:

Spike Lee creepin on Reggie Miller.

I’m a huge Fishing with John/John Lurie fan, and have...

Mon, 06 May 2013 10:15:29 -0400

I’m a huge Fishing with John/John Lurie fan, and have posted about Fishing with John here previously, but this reblog was too good to pass up - talk about comprehensive!

cinephilearchive:

Fishing with John is a 1991 television series conceived, directed by and starring actor and musician John Lurie, which earned a cult following. The guests featured are film director Jim Jarmusch, actor Matt Dillon, musician Tom Waits, actor Willem Dafoe and actor-director Dennis Hopper.

John Lurie played a mean sax before pursuing acting, starring in some of Jim Jarmusch’s best films—Stranger Than Paradise and Down By Law, among others. But it was the 1990s television show he conceived and directed which really catapulted him into a cult obsession: the strange, wonderful, and hilarious Fishing With John. The concept of the show was simple: each episode, Lurie would take one of his pals to a certain locale around the world and fish. Just real men doing real things. Those pals also just happened to be Jim Jarmusch, Tom Waits, Willem Dafoe, Dennis Hopper, and Matt Dillon. From Maine, Jamacia, and Thailand, Lurie would travel with his guest of honor and set out to brave the elements, search new territory, and, of course, catch some fish. The result was a fantastic exploration of finding the comedy in the mundane—the pleasure of watching two men sit on a boat in the heat or freezing to death on a frozen lake heightened to the surreal, with a narrated voiceover that could double you over. Tom Waits gets cranky, Jim Jarmusch is bored, Willem Dafoe dies, Dennis Hopper is…well, Dennis Hopper, and naturally a bit of disaster ensues. —Gone Fishing: An Interview With the Legendary John Lurie By Hillary Weston

All the episodes are available on YouTube, lets have some fishing fun!

Jim Jarmusch: Fishing for shark off the coast of Montauk, New York State. Out here, the shark is at the top of the food chain.

Tom Waits: Lurie and Waits fish for red snapper in Jamaica. Tom periodically becomes grumpy. A game of cards on dry land makes Tom feel much better. Waits catches a fish and puts it in his pants.

Matt Dillon: Dillon and Lurie fish in San José, Costa Rica. Supernatural events ensue.

Willem Dafoe: Ice fishing in northern Maine. Dafoe and Lurie run out of crackers and, the narrator tells us, starve to death.

Dennis Hopper: The narrator happily reports that Lurie is still alive. Lurie and Hopper search for the mythical and elusive giant squid in Thailand, which also is apparently hunting them.

Dennis Hopper: Part two in Thailand. The squid hypnotizes the protagonists with its “volley ball” sized eye. Deeper and deeper into Thailand, few are chosen.

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Hurry Up Now Artist: Harumi Album: Harumi Label:...

Wed, 01 May 2013 12:03:01 -0400

Hurry Up Now

Artist: Harumi

Album: Harumi

Label: Verve

Apparently Harumi was a Japanese musician, living in the US, and a bit of a mystery man. He recorded this album, and one more, before disappearing into the ether. Singing and speaking in English, his first record, Harumi, was produced by in NYC in 1967 by ’60s folk and pysch rock super producer Tom Wilson, producer for the Velvet Underground, Simon & Garfunkel, and Bob Dylan. Tom Wilson saw this as an artistic, not commercial, endeavor, taking the folky lyrics and singing of Harumi, and layering on funky psychedelic orchestration and grooves. This is definitely one of the tamer tracks from the albums(it’s a two album set) - the second album gets pretty out there - Samurai Memories is 15 min long, with Harumi, his sister, and mother, speaking at different times in japanese, with a funky pysch music bed underneath.

So who was Harumi? And where did he end up?

Via the great music tumblr playitasitlathes

Wow, awesome. Good for him, good for sports, good for our...

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:27:00 -0400

Wow, awesome. Good for him, good for sports, good for our world. Right on Jason.

“I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, “I’m different.” If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.”

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/news/20130429/jason-collins-gay-nba-player/#ixzz2Rrlwy6fL

shortformblog:

digg:

“I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay,” - Jason Collins

“The recent Boston Marathon bombing reinforced the notion that I shouldn’t wait for the circumstances of my coming out to be perfect. Things can change in an instant, so why not live truthfully? When I told Joe [Kennedy, a Massachusetts congressman and Collins’ college roommate] a few weeks ago that I was gay, he was grateful that I trusted him. He asked me to join him [at Boston’s gay pride parade] in 2013. We’ll be marching on June 8.”

Moondog is one of those only in NY characters: a blind...

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:29:43 -0400

Moondog is one of those only in NY characters: a blind musician, dressed like a viking, chose to live on the streets of Manhattan for 20 years. He also happened to be an amazingly accomplished poet, musician, and composer, hanging, playing, and influencing Charlie Parker,Benny Goodman, Phillip Glass, Steve Reich, Janis Joplin, and a ton of others.

Known as the Viking of Sixth Ave, a documentary by the same name, by Holly Elson, is due out later this year. He’s of my favorite musical stories, so I’m looking forward to this.

From the movie’s site:

For the first time on film, The Viking of Sixth Avenue tells the story of Moondog, New York Street icon, internationally renowned composer and the ultimate musical cult figure.

In 1943 a young music student named Louis Hardin, from Plymouth Wisconsin, stepped off a bus at Port Authority terminal. Like so many before and since, he had fled his old life for a new start in New York City. He had very little money and even fewer connections and unlike many other young hopefuls fresh off the bus, he was blind. Over the next three decades living and working on the streets of New York, Louis Hardin reinvented himself as Moondog and honed the handcrafted, otherworldly look and idiosyncratic musical style that would make him famous.

Featuring a rich archive, including international TV, radio and film appearances, never- before-seen home movies and personal and crowd sourced footage and photographs, The Viking of Sixth Avenue examines the life and work of the homeless musician whose influence on contemporary music continues to this day.

The Viking of Sixth Avenue is a fascinating tale of a man who devoted his life to music, eschewing all comforts and many personal relationships to pursue a singular artistic vision. The film goes beyond the popular and curious spectacle of the Viking to uncover the motivations of a man determined not only to create original music but to live a truly original life.

I had thought about doing a documentary project on this subject...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:57:00 -0400

I had thought about doing a documentary project on this subject back in the day. There’s been a few stories about Brian Price, a former inmate and prison cook in Texas who prepared over 200 last meals for prisoners on death row. It’s a sobering, weird, and thought-provoking detail, last meals.

Brian Price’s website here and a NYT interview here

minusmanhattan:

No seconds by Henry Hargreaves.

Recreated photographs of last meals.

Good stuff, Savides had the eye. tmaction: In Memory of Harris...

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 12:41:00 -0400

Good stuff, Savides had the eye.

tmaction:

In Memory of Harris Savides (1957-2012)
A great tribute from Press Play

“I don’t want to light their faces and bodies specifically. I like to light the space.” —Harris Savides

For my money Birth and Zodiac feature some of the best cinematography in the last decade.

PP: Birth is filled with “How the hell did they do that?” camera moves and astoundingly long takes, but his New York streetscapes and lush interiors aren’t TV-commercial glossy, or even fussed over; they seem like places where real people, not movie characters, might live and work. Coppola’s comfortably numb Somewhere has an early 70s stoner art-film vibe, but its locked-down wide shots, which let us simply watch characters behaving for minutes at a stretch, bespeak powers of concentration that Coppola’s earlier movies only hinted at. Van Sant’s hothouse triptych seems influenced by the work of hypnotically stripped-down European filmmakers who had become critical darlings in the U.S. around that time, Bela Tarr especially; but the casual-seeming quality of the light—radiant, even woozy, yet somehow not sentimentalized—is thoroughly American. Van Sant’s school-shooting psychodrama Elephant, in particular, merges documentary patience and movie-brat showiness in a way that felt strange and new; no wonder it divided critics.

In time, Fincher’s Zodiac might prove the most significant picture of the bunch. Shot digitally with the Viper cameraat a time when many directors and viewers were still suspicious of high-definition video, it was at once revolutionary and reassuring. No American movie had revealed the texture of night with such crystalline clarity. At the same time, though, the mid-’70s conspiracy thriller look that Fincher and Savides devised for Zodiac’s daytime and office scenes tied the movie to analog values, and sent an important subliminal message: tools change as technology evolves, but they’re still just a means to an end.

icphoto: americanphoto: Tomorrow night: watch Sebastian...

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 20:30:16 -0400

icphoto:

americanphoto:

Tomorrow night: watch Sebastian Junger’s Tim Hetherington documentary, Which Way Is The Front Line From Here?

Photo: From Hetherington’s Sleeping Soldiers series
© Tim Hetherington, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Stop by the School at ICP to view photos from Sleeping Soldiers from Grace Plaza. On view through May 13.

Tomorrow night on HBO. I’ll be sure to catch it. Powerful stuff, I’d imagine.

I am a huge fan of Les Blank’s work - this is a bummer....

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 22:12:11 -0400

I am a huge fan of Les Blank’s work - this is a bummer.

Burden of Dreams is still one of the best docs I’ve ever seen.

aquariumdrunkard:

NYT: Les Blank, Filmmaker Who Captured Life and Its Eccentricities, Dies at 77

Chrissy Zebby Tembo & Ngozi Family - “Feeling...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:27:00 -0400

Chrissy Zebby Tembo & Ngozi Family - “Feeling Good” (1974)

Everyone could use some Zambian afro-psych tunes to cure the monday blues, right?

Hands On a Hardbody available again

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:04:00 -0400

Hands On a Hardbody available again:

One of the docs that made me want to make docs

jkottke:

Hands On a Hardbody, a 1997 documentary about contestants vying to win a brand-new pickup truck, is now available in digital format for $10 (remastered and DRM-free, no less).

In S.R. Bindler’s 1997 cult classic, Hands On a Hardbody, two dozen small-town Texans compete for a brand-new “Hardbody” pickup truck at a local car dealership. The event is a contest of endurance and sleep-deprivation — whoever can remain standing the longest with one hand on the truck will get to drive it home. Capturing several days of lunacy, laughter, struggle and heartbreak, Hands On a Hardbody is more than a documentary about winning a truck. It is a remarkable study of competition, camaraderie, faith and determination-the ultimate human drama.

For an extra $5, you get 90 minutes of bonus material. The film has been unavailable in any format for years. I still have an original DVD in my squirreled-away DVD collection…it’s one of my favorite documentaries. (via@gavinpurcell)

from the bbc program on Morrison - One Irish...

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 16:47:42 -0400

from the bbc program on Morrison - One Irish Rover(1992)

wellplaid:

Van Morrison & Bob Dylan - Crazy Love

Gates of Heaven(1978), Dir: Errol Morris Morris’s first...

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 18:26:01 -0400

Gates of Heaven(1978), Dir: Errol Morris

Morris’s first film, on pet cemeteries and the people around them.

One of the all time greats, but also begs the question - are we laughing with, or at, some of these people?

Also, youtube has some rad films up!

March 7, 1973 — Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye opens in...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:53:02 -0500

March 7, 1973 — Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye opens in theaters.

“When the picture opened, it was a big, big flop. It opened in Los Angeles and Chicago and a few other cities, and the ad campaign was Elliott with a cat on his shoulder, a smoking .45 and a cigarette in his mouth, with Nina as a slick blonde beside him. And it just failed. I went to David Picker and said, ‘You can’t do this. No wonder the fucking picture is failing. It’s giving the wrong impression. You make it look like a thriller and it’s not, it’s a satire.’ So they pulled the film, and we got Jack Davis from Mad magazine to do a new poster with all the characters, and we opened it in New York and it was a smash hit. By the time that happened, it was too late for Los Angeles and those other cities. If New York had been our first opening, we would have had successful film. But the film has stood up over the years, in a strange way.

“Some British critics didn’t like Elliott Gould playing Philip Marlowe, and I was confused about that, because I had read a lot of the books, and what Chandler wrote was really a bunch of thumbnail sketches or thematic essays, all about Los Angeles, and Marlowe was just a device to unite them, and I felt we were very close to that. Everyone said Elliott’s not Philip Marlowe and I wasn’t being true to the author, but what they were really saying was that Elliott Gould wasn’t Humphrey Bogart. In fact, I believe we were closer to Chandler’s character than any of the other renditions, where they made him a kind of movie superhero. […]

“I decided we were going to call him Rip Van Marlowe, as if he’d been asleep for twenty years, had woken up and was wandering through this landscape of the early 1970s but trying to evoke the morals of a previous era. I put him in that dark suit, white shirt and tie, while everyone else was smelling incense and smoking pot and going topless; everything was health food and exercise and cool. So we just satirized that whole time. And that’s why that line of Elliott’s—‘It’s OK with me’—became his key line throughout the film.” — Robert Altman

One of my All-time faves. I mean, Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe? Altman? C’mon.

From Alex Soth’s great tubmlr LDM Dispatch - it’s a...

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:54:56 -0500

From Alex Soth’s great tubmlr LDM Dispatch - it’s a really fantastic combination of Soth’s documentary images matched with quirky descriptions and interviews of the subjects. It’s described as: An irregularly published newspaper of the North American ramblings of photographer Alec Soth and writer Brad Zellar.

lbmdispatch:

Stretch, pilot and skydiver. Lodi Parachute Center. Lodi.

The vibe at the Lodi Parachute Center is decidedly laid back and sub-cultural. On the day we visited, a ragtag cast of characters milled around the big open room off the parking lot, zipping themselves into jumpsuits, stuffing parachutes, and binging on energy drinks and Cheetos. Straight answers were hard to come by, and the whole scene might have been lifted from an unpublished Thomas Pynchon novel. A collection of what seemed to be stray dogs wandered in and out of the building.

Outside, right beside the runway, people waiting to jump or just hanging out were lounging on an assortment of cast-off couches that were strung out all over the place. Every 15 minutes or so, a Twin Otter airplane came back down, took on another batch of jumpers (as many as 24 at a time), and rattled back off down the runway. It seemed like every time you looked up, the sky was once again full of parachutes.

70-year-old Stretch is an Air Force veteran and a pilot at the Parachute Center. He had the day off from flying, and was hanging around waiting his turn to jump. “I gotta get a February jump in,” he said. “I’m just one of those people who need to get their knees in the breeze. I don’t own a damn thing in this world but a grave in Montana.”

Stretch, we were told by pretty much everyone we talked to, was a legend. He seemed like a legend. One of the Parachute Center regulars said that Stretch had spent 45,000 hours in the air. “That seems about right,” Stretch said.

“How many days is that?” I asked him.

He gave me a flat stare and iced me for maybe 15 seconds. “We’re talking years,” he said. “Math’s apparently not your strong suit.”

The last line is one of the better quotes I’ve read this...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 17:51:12 -0500

The last line is one of the better quotes I’ve read this week.

theparisreview:

“Nearly three thousand kilometers of railroad track crisscross the delta lowlands of Bangladesh, connecting Dhaka, the capital, with Chittagong to the southeast and Calcutta to the southwest. The system was built largely by the British and began operations in 1862, more than a hundred years before Bangladesh became an independent nation. Bangladeshi rolling stock now carries more than forty million passengers a year in three ticketed classes: air-conditioned, first, and second—and then there are the passengers who can’t pay. These riders, many of them daily commuters going to and from work, cling to handles, crouch in doorways, perch on the couplings between cars, and climb onto the roof. G. M. B. Akash, who lives in Dhaka, began riding the rails with his camera in 2006. He wanted to draw attention to the danger the stowaways expose themselves to; gruesome accidents are routine for free riders. ‘There is nothing to hold on to,’ Akash said. ‘It is very difficult to keep your feet.’ On a recent ride, Akash spoke to Majed Miya, a carpenter who has traveled on the roof for two decades. Miya said he enjoys riding on the roof: ‘no one really disturbs me there except the fear of death.’”

—from G. M. B. Akash’s portfolio “Nothing to Hold On To”