Thursday, January 31, 2013

'The Directors' - Conversations from a Boy-Hole

Curious that The Hollywood Reporter's round-table interview with 'The Directors' includes not a single woman. Mimi Leder? Kathryn Bigelow? Jane Campion? Sofia Coppola? Julie Taymor? A single A-List female director would have been nice. I don't know how much contrast that would have produced, but at times this conversation feels like a good ol' boys club, like bunch of dudes hanging out in a man-cave Boy-Hole. Sexist much Hollywood? Shocking! And all white dudes, but for Ang Lee. 

That being said, much of the conversation about work and art and time and motivation are pretty universal concepts, and pretty interesting to listen to/watch. And, of course, Tarantino steals the show by shouting, "I have to keep their dick hard!"

Check it:



Ps- note to Affleck, cause I know you're reading: tuning forks don't go out of tune. I know that wasn't your analogy, but I just want to point out to you that it's flawed and that you might not want to be associated with such fallacious ideas. Tuning forks don't go out of tune. That's the whole point of the tuning fork. That's why people use them. They stay in tune. They do, however, fade away...

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Bad Writing

Here's what it is: A documentary by Vernon Lott on Bad Writing featuring interviews from: David Sedaris, Margaret Atwood, George Saunders, Nick Flynn, Steve Almond, Yusef Kumonyakaa, Lee Gutkind, D.A. Powell, Kim Barnes, Robert Wrigley, Claire Davis, Daniel Waters, Lynn Emanuel, Daniel Orozco, Mark McGurl, David Nadelberg, Josh Olson, Brenda Shaughnessy, Alex Steele, Michael Wiegers, Miles Corwin,  Sally Wofford-Girand, Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Jillian Weise, and Scott Rice… just to name a few, hmm, yes?

I think it's only streaming for free for a few more days. Check it out or check out the website here.



Tuesday, January 29, 2013

"Unidentifying Object" Sigur Ros / UFO Target Earth Mash-Up

For this other project I'm working on I did this little mash up of Sigur Rós's "Refur" (B-side of "Sæglópur") with footage and voices from this incomprehensible 1974 movie called UFO: Target Earth. It's a pretty amazing piece of cinema, as the movie lacks all plot, character development, comprehension, and sense. That being said, these people, their voices so flat and non-actory, I think they sound beautiful. I've already used these people speaking in another piece, but right here was the first. Be sure to turn it up and Check It Out:



And if you really want to see the movie it's available from the Internet Archive right here.

Monday, January 28, 2013

Sounds: Beach House - Troublemaker

This is a sad Beach House song. (Shocking.)

Zoochosis: Case 1 - Aliens

My main damie, Patrick Scott, got his latest Zoochosis web-series picked up by Machinima Prime. Equal parts funny, sad, gross, and provocative. Check it out:



If'un you wanna check out more of his work, click'em right here.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Karl Schroeder: Emotions

"There are no distinct emotions. You have learned that in the human heart, love resides within such and such a circle, hate there in another, and between are pride, jealousy, all the royal and plebeian emotions. We say instead emotion is one unbounded field. Our way of life causes us to cross this field, now in one direction, now another, again and again on our way to the goals to which or world has constrained us. The paths crisscross, and eventually, the field has well-travelled intersections, and blank areas where we have never walked. 
We name the intersections just as we do towns but not the empty fields between them. We name these oft-crossed places  love, hate, jealously, pride. But our destinations were made by the conditions of our lives, they are not eternal or inevitable.  
We know that the answer to human suffering lies in changing the ratio of emotions so grief and sorrow lie neglected, even nameless, in an untravelled wild." 
-Karl Schroeder, Ventus.